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Scouts or robbers? How do you tell the difference?

I’ve come into possession of a rather large bale of sheep’s wool. Is this any good for insulation in hive roofs instead of PIR boards? I’m also thinking of making a few insulated ekes for fondant feeding over winter and could use some of it for this project.

And possibly a silly one at that. Thinking of feeding for comb building. I see a lot of advice to ‘trickle feed’ rather than glug a couple of kilos of syrup on and let them take it down. What do we mean by trickle feed? A litre at a time or 1.5 litres, let them finish it, leave it a few days...

I moved over to solid UFE floors last season on my hives. I previously was on standard OMFs. The winter cluster last year in the hives was very much centrally located which makes sense as that’s where the brood nest was. This year, since I made the switch I notice the cluster and brood nest very...

Recently moved my hives onto solid UFE floors. I used scrap timber so the floors are pretty thick - 40mm or so. Brood boxes are poly and I then have a solid 6mm polycarbonate crown board, which I then placed the old poly crown board on top of and finally a poly insulated roof. Throughout the...

I have a hive that has struggled this season due to a number of mistakes on my part, I’ve learnt many lessons on what not to do this year. This particular hive is showing much less activity at the front of the hive in recent times than my other hives. A quick peak when adding Apilife Var tabs...

After removing my half filled supers a week or so ago and being generally happy with stores in the brood box and noted the strength of the bee numbers I started treatment. A brilliant week of weather has followed, and on inspection today I find a lot of the brood box is now filled with stores...

I have a colony on a double brood that I feel should probably go down to a single to overwinter as it’s not got up to the size I thought it would over the season. What’s the best way to do this? There is BIAS in both boxes and stores in both as well. If also have a paritially drawn and filled...

As the title states, what’s the best approach? I made up 2 double broods about a month ago. To date, in order not to disturb the hive too much (new queens introduced, one via nuc and another via cage), I’ve just looked in the top box, either spotted the queen or seen BIAS so left the bottom box...

I have had to make up a floor, crown board and roof at short notice for a standard national brood box. I have the floor installed already and the bees are happily coming in and out. The brood box is bottom bee space. Currently, I just have a piece of greenhouse plastic acting as a crown board...

I’m looking to combine a weakish nuc with a decent hive (brood box and half drawn super currently) and I’m hoping to keep the nuc queen, remove the hive queen and newspaper combine. There are a couple of strings to this. Firstly, the hive, the queen in here is 2020, not marked and very shy. I...

I’ve a hive on single brood at the moment. Just at the end of its first brood cycle after a brood break due to requeening. As of last week, 9 of the 11 frames were at various stages of BIAS with 2 of stores. I also have 2 empty wet supers on which are in the process of being refilled (I can see...

What is the best way to use super combs for those that have heather honey in the autumn? I’ve extracted a couple of early supers this year and put them back with intact comb to hopefully get another summer crop at the end of July or so. Last year I put the extracted supers with comb back on...

I’ve finally managed to get a couple of queens on order for my 2 nucs which are currently in the process of requeening from undesirable genetics. The new queens are due to arrive in 7-10 days. Should I get rid of existing queen cells (emerging this weekend) in the nucs now to make them...

Is this something that could work and has anyone tried it successfully? I’ve done a search and can’t find much information on it which I assume is because it’s no good. Is there an ethical issue here or is it something that would be frowned upon? I currently have 3 hives and 2 nucs of the same...

Today, was probably the worst possible day I could have had beekeeping and I can’t imagine there will be many worse in the future. I have a queenless part of a split I did last week - brood box and super. I wanted to check to see if there were any queen cells and that all was going to plan. I...

I’ve been reading up on the Demeree methodology for swarm prevention - thanks to JBM for the useful blog post. Could this method be used to split a strong colony into 2? If you were doing this, would you still complete the Demeree as described or would you potentially split the brood box 2...

Brood and a half inspected 10 days ago (Friday April 7) before I went away returning today. The hive looked pretty full, brood over 6 frames in the Brood Box and maybe 3 or 4 up in the super which I had left on over winter. I did notice a lot of stores, and a lot of capped honey which I was very...

Came across an article on a new method of Varroa treatment - Hive Guard - which is essentially an entrance block infused with thymol. Simply, The bees coming in and out of the hive come into contact with the thymol and kills off the mites. Additionally the block slowly releases the thymol...

First winter as a new Beek with 3 hives, 2 started from nucs and 1 swarm from one of the original nucs. The two original hives have done well. Warm weather over the last couple of days has seen both hives out in big numbers and I see a good bit of dark yellow pollen coming in. One has a super...