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Yesterday I was watching the girls and four of the six hives in the home yard were bringing pollen.. What are the finding this early in the year?

I have seen some yellow and some olive green pollen coming in. I always thought the olive green was red maple, but it is a little early for that. I have seen some leatherleaf mahonia open and bees working it and I think I saw some camellia in bloom down the street. I'm not seeing a lot of pollen coming in, but any I see is encouraging.

All hives at the house were bringing in pollen today. I take that as a hopeful sign. I added shims and sugar blocks to 2 more hives that felt light and had a large number of bees in the top (food) supers.

I noticed the same thing over on Rankin Place. They seemed to be busy when it was warm. I got a feeding in during the warm spell. Guessing ought do an inspection soon if we can get above 55. The seasonal forecast I saw suggest a warmer milder winter....

On my walk this morning, I looked at a red maple down the street. This tree is one that produces very large blooms and it blooms on the early side of the red maple date range. It was definitely fully in bloom today. Last year, on January 20th, I thought it was a little early for the red maple bloom, but the very mild winter led to early blooming, an early nectar flow, and near disaster for the normal flow when we had a late freeze. This winter has been anything but mild as far as beekeeping goes, but the signs of spring coming are all around. If my bees will just hang on awhile longer. . . .

I took this video today, 2.18.18, of the number of bees carrying pollen. I still have my entrance reducer set to the smallest setting. It created a small bottleneck, needless to say.

Check it out here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/kKdwwlCIxmuWDMxE3

Good strong foraging activity--looks like you can put the reducer on the large opening for that hive.

I am thinking about changing the entrance reduce to the medium setting later this week. My thoughts are to reduce the entrance as much as possible since small hive beetles are a problem in my bee yard. It seems to be a balancing act to prevent hive beetles or a hive bottleneck.

The red maple down the street has some blooms that opened between yesterday morning and this morning. It is not fully in bloom, but its a good start. David's flowering quince bushes next door have a significant number of blooms open, and yesterday, a few bees were collecting a bright yellow pollen from them.