Recent content by hemo

No two colonies are the same, one won't know until one tries the manipulation.

The answer is a simple one, stick any crystalised honey back on a/the colony and let them sort it out. No free meal will be left alone, recently did this with some two year old stored ivy honey during April as colonies were getting short of stores. All stores as of the weekend were utilised...

Why not ? It depends how well you know your bees and their past history to read what they are up to. If they haven't swarmed and no QC's then Demeree splits them, keeping the colony as one and improving/keeping any honey crop /forage ticking along. If one can't get all the brood in to the...

I rarely get stung , on the hands. My protocol is blue flocked type marigold main glove and a nitrile over glove, each colony has it's own over gloves and if the over gloves remain usable they are placed under the roof for next time. Each colony I use a seperate hive tool.

I Demeree double brood with three or four supers.

One can Demeree a double brood (I do if needs be) , a super may give bees space but not laying space. Go back in asap and look to see if any QC's have been built , if none Demeree them . If QC's are seen then one will have to AS them.

If they decide to go with swarming then 5- 6 days from egg to sealed, it all depends when they first feed the hatched egg. You will have to keep an eye on them and check the progress of those cups in to QC's with RJ fed larvae.

If just eggs in a cup then they may remove them, might be worth Demereeing them straight away to nip any other ideas in the bud .

To me a scrub queen is one produced under EQC conditions where a sub optimal larvae is selected and fed RJ later in the process.

Got round to checking my six colonies quite thoroughly today, all swinging along quite nicely . Food a little scarce but should have a few days to change that now, all very busy inside and outside. No QC's and very few play cups , zillions of drones that would cause worry and panic for a few on...

Not exactly doing himself any vaours in the popularity stakes. Anti social behaviour and poor husbandary skills, the open feeding of old comb /stores is very much frowned upon . Not only bees and disease are attracted but every other insect interested as well. . One suspects if he isn't open...

All my colonies have a lot of drones and a BB may contain two or three combs worth of drawn out Drone cells, a bit more then most colonies as I am foundationless and they tend to draw out more drone then worker cells at times. Still seeing nonsense from posters regarding QC's and drones...

One QC tends to be superscedure and often is , but at this time of year they will more then likely swarm on a SS cell if there is a Q present (given that we are in swarm season). Likely cause of SS with resident queen is lack of pheromones or older queen, if a new rplacement queen then it may be...

Was the queen clipped or her wings looking tatty ?

Thunder & lightning early hours and horrendous down pours to follow, grey and o/c all day no wind today, tomorrow a bit on/off according to forecast then for next 8 days days it is looking quite good and very spring like.