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So I've just seen one of our neighbours cats waiting outside our hives. As it's incredibly mild there's the odd bee put on cleansing flights. Pesky mog seems to be waiting for them to leave and then pounces on them. It's pretty entertaining to watch, I'm just waiting for them to get their...

A hive has gone queenless and we need a replacement queen. Not too bothered about her being a thoroughbred but good non-swarmy stock would be nice. Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

I've been reading up on combining hives as we have several caught swarms that we'd like to merge with our stronger colonies. I'm comfortable with the newspaper method and will be trying it out this weekend, weather permitting. However, our stronger colonies have supers on. Should the weaker...

Following several weeks of wet and cold the weather has just taken a turn for the better. At the last inspection that I was able to do, I saw play cups but no queen cells. Now, with a bit of sunshine there is a huge surge in activity. There are a lot of bees on the faces of the hives. I...

We've just done our first full inspection of our two hives and have found a couple of issues. Hive A: This hive had a lot of bees and was the stronger going into winter. However, the inside of the hive was very damp with a lot of slugs and woodlice. There was minimal mould but it was very damp...

I'm hoping to expand one of my hives to 14x12 this season but am left scratching my head as to how I can do this. If I were to move a few frames over, as with a normal split, they would surely end up building several inches of fragile brace comb under those frames. Is there any way to avoid...

So, I think I've made a mistake and am not sure whether to put it right or just leave it. I'd heard about people nadiring a super on their hive over winter and misunderstood this to mean that the full shallow should be moved from the top of the hive to the bottom. I did this in late October and...

Our hive was getting ready to swarm about 6 weeks ago so we did an artificial swarm (didn't stop them swarming, but that's by the by). Just had our first look in the hive which we left a single queen cell in and found the queen. But there was no brood, open or capped. As we had a great April...

One of our hives swarmed (not sure why, only one had a QC and the old queen had been taken out). We managed to catch it and put it into a poly nuc, but without frames for now. What should we do next? I imagine it's a case of either putting them back into their original hive, once it's been...

Morning all, We came back from a weekend away yesterday and someone had kicked our hive over. Roof, crown board and super were on the floor and hive stand was looking decidedly wonky. Luckily it had been reasonably warm and most of the bees had found there way back into the brood box. Had it...

Hi all, I'm very new to this game but just did my first inspection over the weekend while it was good and warm. I couldn't see the queen, which I can happily accept is due to my lack of experience but didn't see any eggs either. That could also be lack of experience I suppose. There were...

Hi all, I'm pretty new to this but have a few local friends with experience to help me out. I'm looking for a basic setup that will get me going this year. Definitely after a National hive for convenience of expansion, etc. Looking for a mesh floor, brood chamber, Queen excluder, one or two...