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If you're willing to come and get them, in Gloucestershire, with your own Langstroth hive, I have a full colony you can have for nothing. Read my blog on here to understand where we're at. We now have three strong colonies and we only want two. This is the first colony we had (although the...

We've now got three colonies. The darker bees swarmed last summer, while I was away in another country. Fortunately, Mrs FG rose to the challenge. She saw them hanging from an archway in the garden and bundle them (a few times) into our old wooden hive. We swapped them onto new frames when I...

Mrs FG and I went through the two colonies at the weekend and have finally seen both queens. Both are really pretty and fairly huge, compared to the workers. No drones seen yet, but some of the cells are built up higher than the norm, so I guess that's what they are about. The dark colony we...

Advice or thoughts required . . . I found a fairly small swarm (maybe football volume?) hanging from a holly bush at head level. This sounded much easier than the ladders and chimneys I've heard about :-) so I put in into a poly nuc hive with frames of foundation and a full frame feeder of...

Due to my lame beekeeping, and some captured swarms (maybe mine, maybe not), I have 3 and a bit colonies of bees and I only want two. I caught a fairly big swarm (10 days or so since they moved in) in a full hive and a much smaller cast swarm (4 hours or so since they moved in) in a poly nuc...

OK, so I've been lazy this year. A combination of bad weather and lots of work stuff has meant I've just kept an eye on my two colonies and left them to it (so far). I have a pale yellow colony (from GWW) in two Lang brood boxes. I have a darker colony in one Lang brood box (from PH). Last...

I have two colonies of bees; one is a full Langstroth box and the other nearly a full box. They are positioned 50m or so up the Hill from the house and garden. We have a pond on a raised patio with fish, currently toad-poles, and the bees use this as a source of fresh water. The last few...

Mrs FG and I just finished inspecting our two colonies on a beautiful day. Good news: they are both doing really well, loads of stores, loads of larvae and capped brood, loads of bees :-) The smaller colony was filling half of a brood box already and going great guns. Loads of stores - where...

Just checked on colony 2. They hadn't eaten any fondant :-( I had presumed they were hiding to the right, under the second bee escape in the crown board so I dug that out. No bees at all :-( I decided to lift the crown board right off and see if there was anything left. To my surprise, the...

Just checked the bees with Mrs FG (I was kitted up, she is hard core and laughed at me). I'd been very worried about colony 2. We got it from PH quite late in the season as a nuc, then Apiguarded it which stopped it expanding much for 3 weeks or so. Overall it's much smaller than colony 1...

The bigger colony, from GWW and Widdershins was out and about last week when the temp hit 10 C. The smaller, later, colony from Polyhive was nowhere to be seen. They had been out the week before at about the same temperature but nothing this time :-( They are probably being sensible - there...

No sign of life from either, but I'm not checking closely - just leaving them to it. I hope they have enough stores to last . . . FG

Both colonies going crazy at lunchtime today, foraging like it might be their last chance this year. Temperature was only 12 C so a pretty good effort, I thought. Couple of bees leaving each second from Colony 1 (!). FG

I intended to take the feeder out today, remove the wooden super and batten them down for the Winter in Poly-warm loveliness. They begged too much. They were running round the rapid feeder, looking for more nosh. I gave them another half litre of so of gloop. I'll take it out tomorrow and...

Colony 2 is lapping up the gloop, big style. Yesterday wasn't good weather, so colony 1 was sulking a bit until nearly sunset when they got some quick flying in. Colony 2 was laughing all the way, with their free fast-food restaurant in the loft :-) Lots more humming as the Ambrosia is filed...

Just checked the feeder on colony 2. They are troughing the food down at a rate of knots :-) The whole hive was humming away constantly, driving off the water from the Ambrosia syrup and making wax to cap it away. The temperature was 15 C this evening and both hives were foraging strongly...

Colony 2 have been given another 2 litres/ 2 kgs of sugar gloop in a rapid feeder. Hopefully they'll gobble that up and should then be a reasonable state for winter. I tried tapping on the hive of colony 1 and got a lovely roar which settled down again quickly, just like the books say. Colony...

All the bees had made it down the porter bee escape - none left in the feeder :-) The wax cappings are all clean and honey-free. Polyanwood seems to be quite right that they won't re-use the wax - it's all left there, most of it beautiful white new wax (just a bit from the half-sheet of...

Just checked colony 2, to which I had given the wax cappings (still containing some honey) from the frame I crushed and strained. There were about 20 bees in the feeder, which was a rapid type, with a hole in the middle going down to a hole in the crown-board. They had completely levelled the...

Colony 1 is still going strongly. I took out the Apiguard tray, despite crystals still left in it: they were dry and powdery and no longer had a smell. I removed the super/eke and closed everything up to let them get on with it. Colony 2 is now growing again. I saw eggs and very young larvae...