Search results

Good morning *EDIT* the bees haven’t capped any of the frames, in case this detail makes any difference to your answers A fellow beekeeper asked me if it would be ok if she collected her super frames now and freeze them for a few days before extracting. She has a very tight timetable that...

Hi I don’t have have an incinerator. Would burying old combs be ok in terms of getting rid of them? I’m assuming that one shouldn’t just dispose of them in household bins, but I don’t know. Also, is there a place/company where beekeepers take old combs to be incinerated in the South East? Thanks

Hello, I wonder if anyone could help, please. Yesterday I witnessed 3hive inspections. The main purpose of the inspection was to feed 250grams of fondant each colony. They were Nationals, overwintered and run on 2 brood boxes each, one super underneath the bottom brood box, one above the top...

What to do with colony that became laying worker just now, in Hertfordshire? My fellow beekeeper, who owns this colony, started beekeeping this year and this is the only colony she has. Note: There’s a beekeeper at the same apiary that has a very very small colony which was a swarm that he...

Hi all I’m thinking about next season and wondering where in the hive should I place fresh foundation if the hive has a warm way set up: near the entrance, end of nest, where stores end, or where? Thanks in advance

Whoa, have a look at what has been invented! Don’t have any more info about the video but it looks as though the machine is programmed to pick a set larva size

New to this business of clipping and happy with the success I’ve had with my previous clipping, I accidentally clipped both sides of my queen’s wings. Believing (maybe wrongly) that to achieve the end result of wining a couple of days in the swarm prevention process, one pair of wings must be...

Due to emergency circumstances, I had to introduced a mated queen using a push in cage to a handful of bees (less than 50 bees) made queenless for about 5 hours, with plenty of stores & drawn combs, in a poly nuc. The following day (yesterday) I made queenless for 9.5 hours 2 capped brood frames...

So as I was marking a donated oldish mated queen to introduce her into a 3 frame “nuc”, which is actually a 14x12 hive as I had run out of nucs, made up on the spot on a bid to save that queen, the marker pen spilled and not only did the paint cover her thorax but also her eyes and a bit of her...

Swarm caught and hived 2 days ago, took bottom queen excluder out today and when opened hive just to see if found eggs I saw a little bit of drawn comb but no eggs and spotted the virgin queen. Tried to catch her just to mark her (aware some people are “against” marking virgin queens and their...

One of my colonies was queenless and had 5 open emergency queen cells. I destroyed the cell wax work of all 5 of them, killed one larva with the hive tool and scooped all the other 4 larvae out and left those larvae on somewhere around the lugs for the bees to cannibalise or kill or move them...

Did a split in one of my colonies on 7 May and the colony left queenless made emergency queencells. I opened that hive a couple of times to thin the cells down to only one cell and left the hive alone. After opening the hive on 9 June to look for a laying queen, I found no eggs, the bees seemed...

A colony in my poly nuc died and I spotted a bit of nosema and sac brood. Practically It would be virtually impossible for me to do the boiling method. What’s the best alternatives to the boiling method? Wondering if I cleaned them with warm water & washing soda first and then scorched them I...

A friend had a cast on her garden and another friend helped her put into a Correx boxes earlier. This friend is going to take said cast to another site tonight less than 2 miles away. They are wondering whether to open the box tomorrow night (with a load of grass stuffed in the entrance so they...

Just bought a second hand Snelgrove board and paranoid about EFB as I am, I thought I’d scorch the board before using it. However, I’ve never done this before and don’t have a blow torch. So I was looking on Amazon and was wondering if a professional kitchen cooking torch would do? Also, any...

In my first full April inspection I’ve noticed that one my colonies lost many bees to starvation. So now I have 2 brood combs with dead bees stuck inside the cells. I took them home abs started plucking the bees out one by one. However, was this the optimum thing to do? Should I have left the...

Has anyone tried the MJT Cell Punch? Thorne sell them but I’d like to hear some of your experience before I buy it. Thanks in advance https://www.thorne.co.uk/image/data/Documents/MJT%20Cell%20Punch%20-%20article.pdf

Is it at all possible to permanently run 1 colony on top of another one, separated only by a Snelgrove board? If so, how do I actually do it? Where do the supers go? Has anyone done it? Does anyone know any good website link? Want to have 2 colonies at home but space is an issue. Would...

I was going to follow a method of Converting nation deep to 14x12 adapted for the beginning of April. Said method involves feeding them fondant this time of the year to encourage them to draw out combs. I shared the method with an experienced beekeepeer who told me that bees won’t draw out wax...