Recent content by JEP

That's only about 10 miles from me. If you want to pass my contact details on to them my email address is [email protected] telephone 01629 650457. Or you can PM their details to me if you prefer. Thanks James

Using strips of foundation (or last years combs with the bottom half cut off) is best in these little mating hives. It makes it easier to put in a good number of bees when you tip them in from the bottom. Bees don't usually draw many drone cells when in small mating hives like Apidea or Swi-Bines.

Formic acid i.e. MAQS are the best solution if you need to treat when supers are on.

Is all the wooden kit you are selling langstroth and is it cedar or pine? How many floors, brood boxes, supers, crownboards and roofs and what price would you accept for the whole lot? You can PM me if you prefer. Ps Please remember that wooden hives are obsolete these days when you work out...

This is brilliant info Murray and I really appreciate you sharing it. If I may ask a couple of questions though it would help me clarify some of the possibilities I am considering. 1. Am I right in assuming your primary varroa control is a winter oxalic acid trickle? If so do you suspect as...

I have lost loads of colonies to varroa in the past. These days I tend to go overkill on a diverse range of frequent mite treatments. I don't think I have lost any colonies directly to varroa for a long time now.

Not had any problems with outright winter losses of colonies in poly boxes. As with wooden hives any colonies that are lost can be attributed to the usual causes - queen failure, starvation etc. My comments were based solely on observation of the early season strength of full colonies coming...

My honest view is there isn't a lot of difference. I bought about 100 Paynes poly hives around 4 years ago. I have over 100 wooden hives so should be able to compare fairly well. I had plenty of experience of poly nuc boxes before this (some Paynes and some Maisemore). I also have around 200...

After extraction I sort through all the spare deep frames and those with the most pollen get put together into brood boxes and put over queen excluders on hives that are getting fed syrup. These hives are fed until the pollen clogged top box is full of syrup and capped over. These boxes are...

Cork is not ideal for that kind of construction. Its main problem is its lack of strength. You would be better off constructing the hive out of more traditional materials such as cedar, pine or exterior ply.

Popped into Booker this morning for sugar. Their current offer is 2 x 25kg bags for £20. This is the best price I have seen at Booker over the last couple of years. I don't know if the same offer is on at all Booker stores but I would guess it is, apparently something to do with the Chinese...

There are thousands of variations of how you can manage hives that build swarm cells so I'm not going to go into too much detail with regards that. Generally if you don't want more colonies you would be best combining as soon as you are either satisfied that the new queen is a good one (killing...

It makes sense to do this but there are caveats. 1. Only take bees and brood from colonies that are so strong they can lose bees and brood and still maintain a brood nest as large as their queen can lay. So basically don't take anything from a colony that is not filling at least a double BS...

I can't speak for anyone else but personally I don't stick to just one queen rearing method. For me it depends on how many cells I want to rear from a particular breeder. When in the season I am doing it, if I want to rear them on the site of the breeder queen or am prepared to move stuff to...

Just to offer a different perspective to the others, personally I wouldn't get too hung up on everything being compatible. I would go for the Maisemore kit at the cheaper price out of those two options. You need to have compatible kit on one site otherwise things become a real pain. But if...