FEBRUARY and March are the most difficult months for bees. They are also very difficult for new beekeepers who are anxious to know how well their bees have come through the winter.

Despite being the coldest months, there are usually a few odd sunny days when the bees are flying and you might be tempted to open up the hive and have a look inside to see how they are doing. Although your text book might suggest making a brief inspection in February, this is only for more experienced beekeepers who know exactly what they are looking for.

The bees should not really be disturbed yet. Inside the hive, preparations for the big spring build-up should already have begun. The queen will have had a short rest but should now be starting to lay eggs again. The bees will be working hard to generate heat to keep a steady temperature around 34-35C (93-96F) around the queen, her eggs and the young larvae in the brood nest. Opening the hive and giving them a sudden blast of cold air would not be very helpful. So be patient and leave them tucked up warm for now.

Watch the hive entrance However, you can tell a lot about what is going on inside the hive by watching the entrance on a sunny day. You should see quite a bit of activity with bees busily coming and going. Housekeeping bees will be throwing out the winter rubbish including a few dead bodies. This is normal. Many bees will be taking the opportunity to make cleansing flights (toilet trips) away from the hive. You may find yellow blobs and streaks on your washing. Sorry, but this is normal too. Some bees will have been out looking for water to dilute the stored honey ready for use and others will have been out collecting early nectar and pollen to replenish the larder. Pollen is particularly important and it is easy to spot the bees returning to the hive with tiny balls of coloured pollen in the 'baskets' on their specially adapted back legs. A good supply of pollen going in is a sure sign that there is brood to be fed.

Pollen From January to March trees, shrubs, wild flowers and spring bulbs are the main sources of pollen. Later in the year honey bees will be providing an important service to farmers, growers and smallholders as they pollinate their crops.

A mixture of pollens from different flowers will provide the protein food for baby bees and supply all the vitamins, minerals and amino acids that developing bees need. Worker bees that look after the brood are known as nurse bees. They will need to eat large amounts of the pollen to enable them to produce a special glandular substance referred to as bee milk or brood food which they will feed to the growing larvae.

It probably takes about ten loads of pollen (1 load = both baskets) or 125 mg pollen to rear one worker bee. Throughout the course of the year a colony of 30,000-50,000 bees will need to collect perhaps as much as 20 kg (44 lbs) of pollen.

Although the exact number of working bee hives is not known, it is estimated that the benefit from honey bee pollination is worth well over a hundred and twenty million pounds to UK agriculture. But the bees don't know that, they collect pollen because it is needed for food.

Entering the danger zone In January or February as the days get longer the queen will begin to lay her eggs. The bees will eat honey to generate the heat needed to keep the brood nest warm. The queen will gradually lay more and more eggs each day as long as there is pollen available. It will soon be change-over time in the hive. The old over-wintered worker bees will be wearing out now. Their job is nearly done and they will soon die. New bees should start emerging faster than old bees are dying, so the colony slowly starts to build up.

However, if the supply of stored pollen runs out, the queen will stop laying eggs. If the weather stays too cold for the bees to leave the hive to collect fresh pollen, the colony enters the danger zone. When old bees are dying and not enough new workers are emerging to take their place, there is a crisis. Instead of going up, the population goes down. The colony will start to dwindle away.

Even if the colony is expanding as it should be, this is still a dangerous time. A bigger brood nest takes more heat, so more honey will be consumed to generate it. If the stored honey runs out and the cold weather still prevents the bees flying from the hive to forage, they will all die. There are more colony losses in February and March than at any other time of the year.

Survival of the fittest This is survival of the fittest. Those colonies that collected and stored the most food in the summer are the ones that stand the best chance of getting through a long winter. It is a balancing act but one that bees are quite good at if left to themselves.

Unfortunately it is often the beekeeper who upsets the delicate balance by taking away much of the stored pollen along with the honey crop in the autumn. Even a generous feeding of sugar syrup only replaces the honey; it does not replace the pollen. A colony may well survive until spring but be so small that it takes too long to catch up. It will build up on the nectar flow instead of filling the supers.

One of the secrets of getting a really good crop of honey is having the maximum number of bees available for work when the nectar flow starts in your area. It is worth remembering that an inadequate supply of pollen early in the year could prevent your colony developing to its full potential.

Early pollen In areas where oil seed rape will be in flower at the end of April and during May, colonies need to be well advanced to take full advantage of this early crop. So some beekeepers feed pollen 'patties' (a pollen and syrup mixture) to encourage the queen to lay more eggs and so stimulate their colonies into growth earlier than usual. Most beekeepers, though, simply rely on Mother Nature to supply sufficient food.

But some areas are short of plants which provide food for bees early in the year so it is worth getting to know your local flora. For instance: alder, hazel, poplar, yew, willow (male catkins) and lesser celandines will supply pollen only. Butterbur, coltsfoot, crocus, gorse, laurustinus, snowdrop, willows, winter aconite, winter heath and various Prunus such as almond will give nectar too.

If you discover that there is a gap when early pollen isn't easily available you might consider planting some bee-friendly plants around the apiary for future years. If you are planting a hedge, think about including early flowering Prunus varieties such as cherry plum, wild cherry and blackthorn. Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) gives you the added bonus of fruit in the autumn to make sloe gin.

With a garden apiary it would be worth finding room for winter-flowering honeysuckle, Viburnum tinus (laurustinus) and lots of spring bulbs such as crocus, snowdrops and winter aconites planted fairly close to the hives. Then the bees will not have to venture far to collect a little food on chilly days. It may just help to keep them ticking over until the weather gets warmer and they can fly further. Every little helps.