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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?

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...

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?

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...

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...

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...

This is addressed mainly to people who have three or fewer seasons of beekeeping under their belt, but anyone feel free to respond. Just curious to hear from newbies like me what they are planning to do. Personally I'm planning no weird manipulation, split, increase or anything else. I just...

I have bought my hives last year each with a super, but also inherited a lot of equipment from the owner of the land where my apiary is. The two supers I bought have 9 frame castellations, while most of the old supers are 10 frame ones. A couple of them were without castellations, so I nailed...

I'll be checking on my main hive tomorrow afternoon, and I have a new super ready to add on it in case they need it. That would be the fourth one. I was planning to rent an extractor from a shop in Florence, but the shop closed down in February and that is no longer an option. I'm looking to...

I only have two hives and have no intention of expanding. This because it is only as a hobby and for personal use. If I were to start selling the surplus I'd run into a net of red tape I'd rather avoid. I would be happy with just one, but have two as an insurance against losses. This said, I...

also vs any other method I haven't thought of right now. What is your favourite method? Why?

Last week I was stung on the thigh, just above the knee, and the whole leg got swollen, and it was fairly painful to bend it for a couple of days. By far the worst reaction i ever had, but had no problem anywhere but on my leg, so I wasn't too concerned (I did have it checked after a day of it...

I added a frame of eggs and young larvae on monday. When can I check for a queen cell? I was thinking of checking on sunday as per usual for inspections, but I'd like to check sooner so I have more margin to intervene if necessary. Would tomorrow (thursday) be too early? Also, what are the...

I have just added a frame of eggs to my colony to get a new queen. I have plenty of drones in my hive, so I'm not worried about the queen mating, but I was wondering if she might mate with drones from the same hive. She won't be related to them (at least not closely) because those drones are...

I've come to suspect I have a queenless hive, but I'm not seeing any laying workers yet. I'll check the colony on saturday and see if there's any fresh brood. Now... how do I make sure the hive is indeed queenless? Ok, no brood is a good indication, but I don't want to try and introduce a new...

Why "might"? The frames I put in as bait had still a bit of stores, so they might have been robbing. What makes me think it might be a swarm is this: started raining, the bees were still in the nuc. Didn't rain much, I'd call it hardly a drizzle, but the sky was quite ominous, and I wouldn't...

I'm thinking I'd like to replace my queen. I could buy one, but I want to learn how to do it by myself. I have a number of plastic queen cups and a few chinese grafting tools, and I've already done grafting during my apprenticeship in London, but t hat was with an existing wax cup, and with a Q-...

Once I extract the honey I'll be leaving it in a large decanter to have all the wax bits and air bubbles float to the top and anything heavier sink to the bottom. Is it better to get one larger tank or a few smaller ones? From what I understand decanting works better for larger quantities, but...

I'm planning to use 2 six frame dadant nucs for these traps, and I have plenty of smelly old frames to bait them. The question is: do I fill the nuc with frames (maybe a couple of frames of foundation for them to draw) or do I just put one or two as bait and let them draw wax on the nuc lid...