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I was wondering whether anyone had tried this? I am interested to know what would happen. I can imagine it going either, the virgin kills the original queen, or it works like a supercedure where they both kind of live together for a time. Would keeping them separated with a QE keep them apart...

I am going to build a fence in front of the hives in my garden, to force the flight path higher. Does anyone know the maximum size of hole I should use so the bees are not able to fly through?

Does anyone know what the situation in Italy was this year? Last year there was loads of information everywhere, including maps showing areas of infestation. I haven't heard anything this year, so was hoping someone in the know would be able to share any information. Thanks.

Today I found 2 queens in one of my hives, and I am not sure whether I should remove one, or just let them get on with it. This was a queen I purchased and introduced to a queenless hive. I had assumed they had rejected her, as they started building QCs from her first brood, plus I couldn't...

One of my hives swarmed the other day, I must have left an extra QC in there that I never saw, as I thought I removed them all. I want to combine this hive with a strong Q+ nuc I have. Can this be done when there is likely a virgin queen running around the main hive, or do I have to find and...

I have a hive which I did an AS on a couple of weeks ago. Today I removed the last QC and added it to a mating nuc. From a mating nuc I took a queen which was mated this year and added her to the hive I removed the QC from. When I added her i sat her in the cage on top of the bars to see how...

I was going to make a steam wax extractor for cleaning brood frames and sterilizing boxes. This would be just putting frames inside the poly box, with a drain box underneath. Seems alot less hassle than using bleach, as I have to weigh down the boxes inside the water. I just wanted to check...

Can anyone tell me what plant this is? When I walked past it, the bush was humming with the amount of bees on it.

How many frames of bees are needed to make a cell starter? I only have 14x12 hives, so I'm not able to do the double brood method, so I will likely have to borrow some frames from some of my hives.

I believe the queen in my strong hive seems to have ran out of sperm, and was removed by the bees. The most recent frame in the hive was basically a slab of brood on a 14x12 frame, but the bottom corners of the frame was spotty drone brood. The hive is definitely queenless as when I gave them...

If every season, you (may) have to perform AS on each hive when it begins swarm preparations, how are you supposed to keep the number of hives down to the amount you can manage? It sounds like you could end up with too many hives easily within a few years. Are you able to recombine them some...

Being in the suburbs, I believe my spring flow will be from Chestnut and sycamore trees as there are plenty of them around. It seems like they are just about to bloom, I can see the buds, so I expect it to start in the next week or two. This is my first spring, and I was wondering how long do...

I checked my hives out yesterday. 3 of them were fine, with brood in them all, however 1 was quite weak, with no brood, but there were eggs in the bottom of the cells, so I believe the queen is ok for now. The cluster in this hive was tiny, not much bigger than a tennis ball, and they have...

I was reading the "what did you do at the apiary" thread and someone was speaking of adding supers early, then others started saying this was a bad idea. This made me wonder, surely if you added supers with drawn frames, wouldn't this allow the bees to move excess stores up into the super, and...

I am going to start a TBH this year, and was considering doing a shook swarm to start the hive. I have never done this before, but every source I have found has stated that the two hives must be swapped so the field bees use the new hive. The problem with this is that I would rather the TBH...

I have a queenless hive from a split i made a about a month and a half ago. On both occasions, when I gave them frames of open brood, the queens that emerged did not seem to make it back from their mating flights or did not emerge. Either way the hive is queenless and the bees that are present...

Is there any problem with splitting a hive directly into a full brood box instead of a nucleus? I have a hive right now that is bursting with bees, and I have a spare brood box that I could use. Also, when would it be considered too late to do the split and still allow them time to build up for...