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The mayor of my local council decided to have packets of bee-friendly seeds made, to hand out for free at the next May fair. He's asked me to make a list of suitable flowers, and so far I've come up with cornflowers, phacelia, cowslip, poppies. Anything else that could be added to the mix?

And when should I stop, to make sure that sugar doesn't end up in the honey? Mind you, I have loads of honey left from the last season, I guess I could feed some of that in the last week...

I'd like to try and harvest some acacia honey this year so I'd like to feed the bees beforehand to give them a kickstart and be ready for the flow. How long before the expected flow should I start and stop feeding? How do I evaluate how much to feed? I was thinking that if I feed only syrup the...

For the last couple of days the weather has been rotten. Not so much the rain or the hail, but the wind worried me. There were gusts of up to 100kph reported and I was quite frankly a bit afraid to drive (or even walk) in that weather. This morning it suddenly improved, and as soon as it was...

Yes, I did get that. I was just hoping that someone had put these discussions, or an edited version of them, in writing somewhere. I'm always interested in other people's opinion on things that interest me, even if I'm quite knowledgeable about them, more so if I'm still a novice.

That's very interesting. Has anyone written anything that can be consulted on the web about these myths being put on the shelf? I'd be curious to read about it

I did mean the environment temperature. We still have days with 20 degrees here, and the hives are quite heavy with honey, but wanted to top them up a bit. I'll be leaving tomorrow for three weeks, though, and I was wondering if it'll be too late to top up with syrup when I get back and check on...

I understand the concept of bees not being able to process syrup once it gets too cold, and fondant being better in that case. The question is, what is too cold? If day temps are around 10 celsius is that still good enough for 2:1 syrup, for example?

Good point. Mind you, they might ignore it with all the other forage around, but I can't really help it if they visit the garden centre...

Sorry to derail the thread a bit, but I've been wondering this for a while now, and it's kind-of related: what about having a hive near a garden centre? Would the bees benefit from having what is essentially a flower garden with constant turnover nearby? I was going to ask a farm nearby if I...

Removed the apiguard trays and the supers I had to use as ekes (yeah, I'll have to prepare better next year). Checked stores and gave them a feed of 2:1 syrup. On the way back home I bought some more sugar. I don't think I'll be needing it as they had plenty of stores, and the syrup I gave them...

It does. I didn't want the bees to get creative with wild comb. They're not filling it though. It's been there for a while and nothing has gone in it, they've kept filling the brood box instead.

To make room for the apiguard tray for the smaller colony. The larger colony actually still needs the super just for the amount of bees, I'm hoping that the numbers have started going down by the time I next check. It's still fairly warm here, so I didn't think much of leaving them the extra...

So, now my bees have their second tray of apiguard on, but I really would like to remove the super I added to make room for the tray. An eke is not an option right now, so either I leave the supers on for another week and a half, which I'm not happy with, or I need to find a way to sort this...

Added the second apiguard and checked stores. Started sorting the empty supers for the next season while the weather is still warm and it's still nice to be in the barn.

In this case it was planned though. Lost one of my two colonies last winter, so decided to split the remaining one to go back to two. I decided for a small split, since we were in full flow, so that the main colony had enough bees to produce a surplus for myself, and the small split would be...

Ok, thanks.

One of my hive has plenty of stores, even before I start feeding them. They come from a split I made from the hive that survived the winter, and I didn't harvest any honey from them this year, I just let them grow. As a result now they have 7 dadant brood frames of stores, and that should be...

This one is manufactured in Italy, as far as I know, but yes, I will wash it well. I guess it's better to risk washing it even if it doesn't need it than to risk it needing a wash and not doing it, if you know what I mean. This is it...

The cooperative from where i was hoping to rent the extractor shut down, so i found myself with a choice: either crush and strain (three supers, yeah right) or bite the bullet and buy and extractor. It should be delivered more or less when it's time to take the supers off. Now the bees should...