Search results

One of my colonies is from a captured swarm (this years and from an unknown source). I've dealt with aggressive colonies in the past and whilst it can be a bit unnerving I always manage to get the job done. But not this time. I harvested honey from my other two colonies yesterday, nice and easy...

It's the same every year, the bees forage on masses of ivy around the garden in the autumn, usually filling a couple of supers per colony. It remains untouched through the winter and I inevitably end up feeding. Then in the spring it remains untouched. The last couple of years I removed most of...

I popped my garden hive open yesterday to feed the bees, there's plenty of ivy honey stores but it's very hard in these cold temperatures. The cluster was nice and deep and looked good but it got me wondering at what temperature would I nee to insulate (something I haven't done previously). The...

I caught a swarm in a bait hive in May. They're the gentlest and least aggressive bees I've come across, I don't recall one attempt at a sting all summer. The downside is that in total they've only managed to fill 5 frames worth of honey, which is clearly sub par. There's no evidence of...

It was a crappy winter, made redundant just before Christmas, one of my queens died unexpectedly in January and both of my remaining colonies were obliterated by a tree which came down during the big storm in February. So it's now mid March and I find myself with two rebuilt hives, no bees and...

It's been a pretty hopeless beekeeping year. I went down to one colony after losing one over the winter, but I decided to keep going with the one remaining colony hoping good luck would avert disaster. How wrong I was. - My first inspection in early March revealed that the queen was no longer...

Deleted

Evening all As the weather here in Surrey has been wet and cold for the past month I refrained from checking my one remaining colony until three days ago. On inspection all was not well. The only brood present were drones and in a scattered pattern. My queen (who I found immediately), is nearly...

I made a cast iron promise to myself that I would stick with just the one colony, it's all I have time for I've just set up my third. Help:eek:

Bees need to drink and we've had a really dry month. Take a little dish with sloping sides and put it near the hive. Try to keep it away from birds to stop your bees being predated when a fat magpie comes for a drink

This post continues from a related one I made earlier, which covered my last desperate attempt to save a situation. I'll leave you to decide which of the problem I list are due to my errors and which are just bad luck. So a few weeks ago I carried out a split. 3 frames of bees with brood...

I have a split for which I've needed to buy in a queen. The queen arrived in a cage with 6 attendants. 2 of those attendants have now been killed and it looks like the resident bees are doing all they can to finish off the rest. Is there anything I can do to avert disaster?

Afternoon. I carried out a split last week and was rewarded with a new queen 6 days ago. I've just had a quick look n her nuke and there's a problem, one of her 4 wings (the lower left), looks like it failed to develop, it still has that stringy, unfurled look that wings of newly hatched bees...

I carried out a split on Monday and have been rewarded with a newly hatched queen. Of the bees present in the new NUC, some are engaged in foraging, others in domestic chores. There's a healthy mix of brood, pollen and honey stores. My one concern is the number of bees. I shook in several...

A couple of weeks ago I decided to carry out my first full inspections of the year. First Hive no drama, but during the second inspection I noticed too late that I had a rip in my veil and a hood full of angry bees. It all happened fairly quickly, I received 14 stings to the face and neck and...

This is really just an observation rather than a request for advice. One of my hives has kicked out all of its drones, the same hive still had some crawling around in early October last year. Stores are good, same queen.

Seems a little early, but I'm seeing very young drones being dragged from their cells and flung out of the hives. I know this is normal but the last two years I recorded it as happening 7 weeks from now. Anyone else seeing this?

I've experimented this year with one of my hives going completely excluder free. So this morning I carried out a quick examination and discovered that I have 4 supers full of brood (about 25% drone), in fact it's so prolific I've started feeding and I'm back on swarm watch. With 10 frames per...

So 'Harriet' the second of my star queens is acting a bit weird.During inspection today I observed the following Brood box - 70 mixed brood, 10% stores, 20% empty 1st Super - 50% mixed brood, 30% stores, 20% empty 2nd Super - 80% stores, 20% empty 3rd super 10% stores, 80% drone brood, 10%...

One of my hives shows no sign of swarming, the queen's laying well, it's teeming with bees and they're doing great work, I just whisked off the second full super. If they don't swarm this will be my first year with a colony that either hasn't swarmed or been split, and I'm curious as to how the...