Search results

Just a point of interest really. I collected a late swarm and put them in a poly nuc and donated a frame of capped/ just emerging brood from another hive. I am going to have to put them into a poly national as they are still drawing comb like crazy - 5 frames of foundation drawn pretty much in 3...

I collected my first swarm a couple of days ago. I've recently acquired a new apiary site but was going to wait until Spring to move some hives but I am going to put this swarm there. Would it be a good idea, as it's quite late in the season and I don't have any any drawn brood frames, to give...

Collected a swarm this evening. Due to work I had to leave them in the hive where I collected them. And I'm not going to be able to get over there tomorrow until the evening again due to work commitments. I can't leave them where they are because they are too near the landowner's house. My...

I've got the chance of a new apiary site which in Spring and Summer should offer some really good varied forage, BUT, it is quite exposed to the North and East. Would I be better leaving them in my current spot until the Spring and then moving them, or would plenty of kingspan and making sure...

I'm going to look at a new out-apiary site tomorrow. As well as being on an organic farm that has a fair few acres of wildflower meadows it's only a couple of kilometres from copious acres of sea lavender on the North Norfolk coast which I believe flowers for quite long periods. Bees like it I...

I didn't intend on doing a full inspection today just a quick look to see if another super was needed: one nearly full and another started. However, on the very bottom of the super directly above the excluder I noticed 5 or 6 drone cells. I opened them up and they were nearing maturity. This...

The advice on the FERA website is to feed 'heavy' syrup to a shook swarm, but I've also read in other places to feed 1:1 syrup. Is this a case of ask a different beekeeper and you'll get a different answer?

Having just heard that the supplier of a nuc I bought last year has EFB I'm awaiting the bee inspector's visit. If the worst comes to the worst I have read about shook swarms and antibiotics but also about destroying the hive. Can anyone reassure me? Someone who has had it in their hives?

Artificially swarmed which seemed to go well. After I moved the hive to the other side of the hive on the original site, the little buggers have swarmed any way. I have 2 questions which if someone could help me with I'd be extremely grateful. 1 - should I have knocked down all but one queen...

Hive number 2 is queen less, maybe I squished her don't know, with a laying worker. They've moved most of a nearly full super down in to the brood box and the worker's laid in the super. There's one queen cell below the QE. Hive number 1 seem set on swarming, knocked down queen cells last week...

Does everyone go through the set/ warm/ cream etc. road with OSR honey, or do some of you bottle as is?

Firstly I hope you all had an over-indulgent, alcohol-befuddled very merry Xmas. I went to my apiary today to treat my two hives with oxalic and give them some fondant as a bit of insurance; I'm a bit nervous as it's my first Winter. I have a crown board then two slabs of celotex as insulation...

No not what the BBC is guilty of, but I have a hive currently on 7 frames of stores and brood. I'm treating for varroa, am going to start Winter feeding tomorrow though they are busy, busy, busy at the moment and the forecast is looking pretty good - late teens, early twenties for this weekend...

I'm treating with Apiguard at the moment. Over the last few weeks I've seen several mentions of thymolated syrup. Are people talking about thymolating (not sure if that's really a word, but sounds good) Winter feed? If so at what concentration, and is it just as a 'top up' to treatment? What...

Spent the morning at a local food festival. Surprisingly few wasps but lots of bees on all the jams and preserves stalls. Lost count of the number of times I had to tell people that they were not wasps but honeybees. One woman even turned to her husband after she thought I was out of earshot...

After all the Finman malarkey on other threads I was researching the pros and cons of queen excluders, and I found an interesting article about some research carried out in the States that appeared to show honey flow was much improved in hives without queen excluders. Even more interestingly it...

I have two hives - one a swarm which a friend collected earlier in the year and we transferred to my first hive about 6 weeks ago. They were jam-packed into a poly nuc on 5 full frames of BIAS and stores. He advised me to take one of the frames out and put in a dummy board but I completely...

I have only experienced bees from my two hives, and a friend's 4 hives - one of which became my first hive. Both of my hives seem - to me with little experience - quite calm. When I carry out my hive inspections there are bees flying about, but I don't get any bees landing on me, and only the...

As we had such a late Spring - at least 2 weeks, and in parts of the north and here in the east things were as much as a month behind - will there still be nectar flowing a correspondingly late period into Autumn do you think?

Hi everyone. Just joined up and I have a question. I've recently started my first hive with a fairly large nuc on 6 pretty full frames which I got from a friend. I keep them on a friend's land, and he has just offered, if I look after the bees, to fund another hive. Is it too late for this year...