All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—

The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—

And Winter slumbering in the open air,

Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1825

Coleridge wrote “Work without Hope,” the poem from which this excerpt was taken, in late February, when he was in his early 50’s. So chances are good that he knew a false spring when he saw it. Same, Mr. Coleridge, same.

We are having a very grand false spring here. The 10-day forecast promises 50-60℉ (10-15℃) days and above-freezing nights. The garden smells strongly of garlic. And mud. We’ll plant cold-hardy peas by St. Patrick’s Day (March 17). I ordered seed potatoes, which should arrive soon for planting. We must resist the urge to start seeds indoors for another couple weeks. The warm-weather crops won’t be safe to transplant outside until the end of May/ early June, and I’ve often caused them to be leggy and weak from starting them too early indoors.

The area critters have been out and about, with a bit of springtime strut through the yard; squirrels, rabbits, possum, and yes, skunk. (You can read about our dog’s 2024 encounters with the latter two here.) There may be a badger, which would be a first. Our neighbor saw an animal whose description possibly matches, and our youngest showed me the map of their range, which does include our area. I shall update you on any future sightings. Some type of nuthatch has been hopping around just outside the front window, eating the seeds from the flowers we left in the raised bed there through the winter.

But most exciting of all is the emergence of bees! Of the 5 colonies that entered winter, there is one that has survived. Which is sad, but yet…this is our first success at over-wintering a hive! Well, a qualified success, as they still need to make it through more snow and other false springs until True Spring, when there are blossoms. We’ve restarted supplemental feeding with sugar water and will soon give them pollen patties, for protein. This will help them feed their brood that will become their spring foragers.

We’ve done post-mortems on 3 of the remaining 4 hives so far, and harvested the honey they left. The causes of death appear to have been 1) fast cold snap that caught a large colony huddled at an outer wall 2) small colony with loss of our OG queen from last spring 3) varroa mites in our newest colony. We can’t know for sure that those were the reasons for their collapse, but each has its lessons for next winter. Sadly, there are reports from all over the U.S. about massive colony loss this winter, which will of course have a negative effect on this season’s crops.

This just in:

We dismantled the 4th failed hive; they had very little honey left and had apparently dealt with condensation mildewing some of the comb. Very sad, and another lesson learned. The Hive that Lived, however, are already taking foraging flights and coming back with pollen. Their legs are covered in little pollen pants of light yellow (maple) and golden (willow trees). There are little young bees doing orientation flights, so the queen must have been laying a bit. They’re so freaking amazing! And the first robin of the season landed on the garden fence this evening…yet I cannot give in to the false belief that winter may be truly over. It is not. There will be April snow and May frost.

Happy False Spring to those who celebrate!

—Erin, in Michigan