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So. I have a split that didn't work out. In that split there is a drone layer, unmated queen or worker that started laying on the 24th of last month, I don't know which. The drone brood is on 3 or 4 frames and in groups not just dotted around the frame, there is zero worker brood and no...

Hi Guys, over here in Ireland we are doing our first inspections and finding hives packed to the brim with ivy honey, in some cases up to 6 full brood frames leaving very little space for the queens to lay. Are you guys across the water seeing the same? Torq

As above.

Just read a few French articles saying that inbreeding due to limited genetic diversity has caused the Asian hornet to decline in France. In a nutshell too many males and not enough workers...

Hi Guys, I've a queen in a 5 frame nuc that will only lay on 1 frame, She has old drawn brood comb on either side but just doesn't wan to lay on it. I was thinking of taking a frame of point of emergence brood from a hive and putting it in beside her hoping that the cells in the brood left by...

This morning in front of 2 of my hives I noticed a few dead bees. On inspection they are all young, some with their tongues out (newly emerged, or died before fully emerging) and the others have dvw (yea, there's varroa in there) I'm guessing it's all part of an autumn clean out and it ties in...

Hi Guys, I've to move a hive off the garage roof and 300M tomorrow morning. I was planning on just closing them up, moving them and releasing them after 3 days with the hive in a different orientation and a bush in front of the entrance so they have to re-orientate. It's a good strong...

So if like me you have a few of the poly nuc ekes which are in my opinion a bit too big, there is now an easy way to get a National poly brood body. Buy a poly super and stick it under the eke! The gap between the top and bottom frames is 22mm but it is easy enough to remove 16mm from the...

13deg C and sunny today so did my first inspection of the year. Checked 4 of my 5 colonies. All have capped worker brood, larvae and eggs. Plenty of stores and pollen coming in. Will check the last one tomorrow as it is on a roof and they are a bit(very) aggressive. But it's looking...

Just opened a small bottle of honey from East Timor. It's very dark, runny and tastes of.... bananas!

Hi All, It's a strange year! I've never had so many bees and now it's causing a problem. 2 of my hives on national brood boxes are completely full of brood and stores, there is practically no space available for laying until the current capped brood hatches. I the mean time the bees are...

A friend lost a prime swarm on Saturday. You would think that at this time of year they should be settled down and chilling out in anticipation of the impending autumn/winter.

Hi Guys, my girls are still producing drones and laying eggs in drone cells. And before anyone asks they've not gone drone layer. Must be the good summer we've had. Torq

Hi Guys, for the first season ever my bees are filling National brood boxes, usually they struggle to do 7 frames. They are still pumping out brood at a massive rate and there is loads of pollen (green last week, yellow this week) coming in so there's no sign of them slowing down. These boxes...

For those who have never seen wasps harvesting "protein" Have as look at these guys in action.

Hi Guys, saw this plant being worked heavily by the bees in Dublin Zoo. In fact I've never seen anything being worked so hard. I couldn't tell if it's a shrub as it was so dense. All I can provide is the few bad pics (I've only a phone camera now, thanks to my 3yr old son!) and that the stems...

I won't go into the details but I've an apidea with a handful of bees and the tiniest queen I've ever seen, she's not much bigger than a worker. But is she really a queen or a laying worker that has elongated her abdomen slightly. I've no history of her and there's no laying yet as the bees...

Morning all! One of my colonies had a laying queen and a big dark capped supercedure cell 6 days ago. This morning I see about a dozen bees on the landing board in a bit of a huddle. So I have a closer look and there is a queen on her side legs folded in but with antennae twitching. I...

Hi Guys, here's a couple of pics through the escape hole of some of my bees, notice that some have a light brown first abdomen segment and some have no brown at all! The queens sister in the hive next door has uniform coloured bees and are darker. None of my other hives have any hint of light...