I'm in the heart of the South Downs National Park and in the 13 years I've been keeping bees I have had an abundance of OSR, this year not seen a single field. I have yet to learn of any fields within reach of my hives being planted with anything resembling bee forage. Luckily the hedgerows have had plenty of blackthorn. But the weather has not been great, sightly warmer than some of you further up country have had, but most days it's been blowing a gale, and now the 'spring showers' have come at the wrong time, we could have done with them at the beginning of April.
Unfortunately I had to relocate my hives and now don't have much shelter from the wind. Yesterday I thought I might get in a quick inspection. Arrived at the field and the foragers were active. Within minutes the clouds appeared, the sun disappeared, the wind started to gust and the temperature dropped. I lit the smoker (on the third attempt, as the wind kept blowing it out). Looked at the hive entrances , not a bee in view; a few stragglers battling to make it back across the field. The bees weren't going to thank me for opening the hives; and I like to enjoy my beekeeping. I gave up and returned home!
One hive was doing really well and has supers on, not sure now how full they will be. The other two struggled out of winter and I have now put some feed on as a safeguard because of the poor weather (nice tempered bees so I don't want to lose them).
The forecast is for a rise in temperature, but the Met Office is showing winds gusting at up to 40mph in my location again on Monday. The weather patterns have definitely changed to when I was a gal.