Carolina morning colors to send one off on their way is a happy palette.

Orientation flights remain one of my most favorite things to witness and experience in the bee yard. There's nothing like the sight, feel and sound of it. Here's a video of a Friday afternoon's orientation. Right now it's occurring around 3:30 each afternoon. When someone says, "your bees are swarming" they usually mean this. It's something mentees aren't used to and wonder "what's happening?" All good things, as young bees orient themselves to their home and learn to fly.

It was time to say goodbye to some over-wintered nuc's that I'd used to make even more colonies. It was bittersweet loading up these spectacular queens and nuc's for sale and travel. I used the Brushy Mountain "superior design" nuc box. It's heavily waxed. But it does not secure itself, meaning the bottom will fall out unless you secure it. But tape on a waxed surface doesn't work well, not even duct tape as you can see here. Still, clear mailing tape on the outsides did the trick. This nuc was the largest I said goodbye to. It is MONSTROUS. When I started out 6 years ago my two Russian nuc's were teensy in comparison, not even a third of this size. I do believe in providing my best to the customer.

A third nuc was finally all settled in, and showed off a nice group of bees. The next morning before the temps rose high enough for the bees to start flying I shut the entrances on the nuc boxes so the customer wouldn't lose the field force.

Goodbye, sweet 2015 nuc's. You've been amazing. I kept the screen raised on each with a wine cork. After inspection with the customer, we lowered the screen mesh sans cork and they were ready for travel. They rewarded me with a single sting as I carried a nuc to his vehicle. Seemed like a perfect parting gift.

After those goodbyes, it was time to say hello to my next round of queens in the making and nucleus hive starts. Here's a beautiful frame with several queen cells, the last of which is being capped (you can see the tip of the queen larvae inside the open cell).

I made sure to put at least two frames of bees in each, and opted for a third in the long run just to be sure. A frame of food and a frame of capped brood went into each start.

More beautiful queen cells on a gorgeous frame mixed with worker brood and honey. A perfect frame to make a start with. All in all, I took one hive and hopefully will end up with five when all is said and done (the old queen with her contingent making up one of the nuc's, so 4 new colonies plus an artificial swarm with the original queen).

This same hive that generated such beautiful queen cells was also generating lots of honey. Queenless bees in a populous hive during a spring nectar flow will put up some honey. Just two weeks ago it got its first honey super. The frames were half drawn and filled with capped honey. Fresh honey on fresh comb is also one of my favorite things.

While mowing the grass I stopped to literally smell the flowers. These little tiny flowers of "weeds" (or survivor plants as I call them) were one of the first flowers to greet them as they came out of winter. So I let the plants flower before I cut them.

The grand old red tip tree is in full bloom now, as are the tulip poplars around our neighborhood. Morning sun on their fluffy throngs of blossoms was also a beautiful way for me to say hello to a new day and week as I said goodbye for now.

You can get a feel for a what's going on inside a honey bee hive without ever opening it up: just be observant. How many orientation flights have you witnessed in front of your hives? What does it smell like? How heavy are the boxes when you heft them? Are they defensive at the entrance or mellow? This is one wonderful sight to behold. These hives have been orienting quite a bit lately = this is great!