Search results

Just checked my bees and the most industrious hive has a couple of half- to two-thirds-filled supers of capped honey, despite lousy foraging conditions recently. I swiped a capped frame to thin out the super and offer a bit of token honey to the neighbours. Interestingly, from the taste...

(for those who are having a rainy day...) not worthyjust found some old Miniscule animations on YouTube - they are so perfect! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtagJ9ZH6Gg Their portrayal of insects is adorable, but with very lifelike behaviour (well, mostly!). Also, there's a rather nice hive...

This year I will be leaving queen excluders off all year except possibly for queen breeding/splits manipulations. I have sometimes used them in the past (except over winter) in the fond assumption that they might make life easier, but really can't be doing with them any more. My main reasons...

Grate some nutmeg into a toddy glass or mug, sprinkle some ground cinnamon, and dump about a level teaspoonful of unsalted butter onto it. Add a spoonful of dark honey and a good slosh of rum - Morgan's Spiced if you like the vanilla flavour, a darker rum if you prefer a more "burnt sugar"...

It looks as though the bumper winter has caught up with my bees already: I hefted the hives last weekend and they were about what I would expect (still fairly heavy). But this morning they were both egg-box light. I put a pack of fondant on each one and peered through the transparent...

I wasn't happy with the varroa situation this autumn - despite their usual treatment, in good weather, there was still a small mite count afterwards. So, for the first time at this apiary I decided to do an oxalic acid treatment as well. I'm not generally keen, but don't want the bees to have...

.... but now love! I just went to Stroud's AMAZING farmer's market and stocked up on all sorts of yummy locally-grown goodies, then came home and harvested veggies from the garden to make a casserole. It was only when I was cutting up the broccoli that I remembered how much I hated this stuff...

Apologies for the ungainly title, but I'm probably not alone in hearing this every time I mention keeping bees. I get tired of saying "well.... actually honey bees are not all about to croak it overnight and leave us all to starve... but you might like to think about what's happening to wild...

Did I just imagine seeing 26C forecast for Gloucestershire at the end of next week?! Is it me or is that hotter than it's been for most of summer?* I suppose the last few virgin queens from supercedures etc. that are flying around looking for mates, will benefit. Assuming there's any drones...

I united two hives over the weekend - putting a smallish but good colony with a 2011 queen over a medium-strong colony which had a 2009 queen. The Q+ box (the top one) is a 14x12 bb, the older one below is a BS box which I want to empty. I united them in the traditional way with a sheet of...

I found some median wasps feeding on cotoneaster nectar! They're quite a bit bigger than common or German wasps, but not quite as big as hornets. They are variable, but often have a lot of black, with just thin yellow stripes. They also have a yellow "7" shape on their shoulder. They aren't...

I thought I'd share a nice experience to encourage all those who are flagging whilst waiting for their bees to sort themselves out, queens to get mated etc. After a very mixed start to the year, I had the pleasure this afternoon of putting a bustling, heavy, 6-frame nuc into a new broodbox...

Well, my two very early-mated queens now have their first lot of brood hatching, and it's a 50% success so far: one clearly didn't mate well at all, whilst the other appears fine. :mad::)The nuc with the good queen had a good pattern of eggs and brood, and now has big slabs of brood at various...

I recently hived a big swarm which had settled on my neighbour's shed. It didn't look much from the side - but the visible ones were the (inverted) tip of the iceberg! They were all tucked up underneath the eaves. I decided to hive them that evening rather than risk them legging it the next...

:oSlushy, indulgent post warning, but still true: I've changed my avatar in honour of Tia, after discovering that her friendly lick seems to have completely stopped the bee sting on my arm from itching! I don't normally put anything on stings except sometimes ice. I've heard of a lot of...

FERA have a leaflet out about queen trapping for controlling varroa: https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/downloadDocument.cfm?id=204 Basically you enclose successive brood combs in a queen excluder barrier, and leave the queen in there (confined to one comb) for 8 days; on the 9th day...

No sign of my honeybees collecting pollen just yet, but I spotted a queen bumblebee collecting winter aconite pollen today, despite the very recent hard frost. When I last kept bees (ages ago) they used to really struggle in spring sometimes, and often needed quite a bit of extra food once they...