Recent content by Helen

I've got a spare polynuc, so might as well fill it with something over winter. And who knows, maybe this queen plays nicely and can earn a full-sized hive next year.

Not really in the apiary, but picked up a small swarm today, with a big, fat, light-tan green-marked queen in the middle.

Just picked up a rather small swarm from someone's garden. Along with a large green-marked queen that looked very much like a buckfast - light tan. The bees with her were also light coloured, gentle in nature (so far). Similar to my buckfasts. 21 Sep is the latest I've been called out for a...

Thanks for the link. Interesting small batch recipe. However, I was really looking for first-hand experience of people on here making rhubarb mead. Lots of recipes on the net, but which are the good ones?

Hi. I'm looking for a recipe for Rhubarb Mead. Got loads of Rhubarb, and honey, so thought I woulld combine. No experience in making mead, so any guidance would be appreciated.

I use DiPel at a rate of 1.5g per litre. Not 10g. Seems to work at this dilution as well, for me anyway.

Wouldn't just taking the lid off encourage them to fly off and fine another home? Esp if it rained (artificial or natural) inside the bait hive?

I usually have a strip led torch like this https://www.screwfix.com/p/nebo-ne6373-lil-larry-led-torch-3-x-aaa/9107v

Ok, maybe not necessarily a prime, but very large compared to most swarms I've collected. I've not opened them up yet to see the queen, but will do at the weekend. Went back this evening as there were a few hundred bees left after the first collection. They had gone into the long grass, and I...

Nothing in the apiary, but collected a lovely prime swarm from the banks of a local river. They had collected on a small spikey bush, just off the ground. Very calm bees, look very much like tan brown buckfasts. Now sitting in my garden, where I'll give them sone food in a couple of days and...

:yeahthat: I tried newspaper merge a few times. Took ages, and bees didn't seem to want to go through the paper, even with big slashes across it. So tried the airwick method, and never had a problem. You could cage queen just in case, and release her a couple of days later.

First full inspection today. All bar 1 have the queens they had going into winter. One had no queen, the colony was roaring and fiesty and were trying to draw queen cups. So I did an airwick combine with a nuc with laying queen with that hive, to sort them out. Most hives on 8+ (14x12) brood...

Found out some more info ... it wasn't a beekeeper, but a pest control person who had 'connections to the Beekeeping Organisation'. As such, they may not have had any kit to remove them, so culled them instead. But left the comb 'lying all over the place in pieces'. The remaining (or...

Just received a call from someone with a colony (or maybe 2) in an old shed they are knocking down. Another beekeeper apparently went around a week ago, and said they couldn't do anything apart from kill the colony. The colony was found when an inner panel inside the shed was removed. Not...

I've got the sublimox which is a great piece of kit, if pricey. But as it's 240v-powered, difficult to use it when it's raining. It also requires a bit of extra effort to set up - long extension to reach from car to hives (you can run it off a battery of course), big box of bits to carry around...