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Couldn't do much today as I went for a job interview that turned out to be further away time-wise than I or my satnav estimated (two hours twenty-five minutes for a sixty-five mile drive; without any particularly bad traffic?!). I did manage to get the last of my bait hive brood boxes fix up...

Dare we ask what you do with yours? James

I suspect it might irritate rather than encourage in a queenright colony. James

Is there anyone who actually attempts to justify why (alleged) supersedure cells might be on the face of the comb? Or why cells on the face of the comb are likely to be for supercedure? If there's a laying queen in the colony, why would supercedure cells be any different from swarm cells (other...

I think it must be pretty much on the limit of the 3km listed in Beebase. I'd left a couple of potential sites in the database that eventually came to nothing which allows me to get a reasonable triangulation of the source (unless of course there is more than one). James

I've just had an email from our SBI (or what looks like another SBI who may be covering our area in addition to her own patch) asking to inspect some of my colonies as they've just found a case of EFB locally :( Can't believe that I've barely got through my first inspections and we're having to...

A new one. James

I have just been out to sort some stuff out in the bee shed. It is cold, breezy and raining. The bees are flying from every hive. Not in huge numbers, certainly, but they're giving it a crack. How hardcore are they? James

Yes, I did think of stencilling some sort of identifier onto the boxes, then decided that perhaps it wasn't that great a plan :D James

A quick search doesn't turn up anything obvious suggesting that bees are sensitive to day length. I wonder if other environmental factors that may vary with day length are actually the driver. For instance, day length may affect the amount of forage that can be brought in, just because there's...

I make mine the same width and height as a standard frame, so they have the same spacing between the sides and walls. The bees are free to go around them if they wish, much like a standard dummy board. James

From the BBC today: "Over the weekend just gone, some parts of central and eastern England had half a month's rain, contributing to now an overall wetter than average month. Parts of northern England, central and eastern Scotland have had more than twice the average rainfall for April." James

At last! After doing an early-morning airport run and having an hour or so's nap to restore my brain to a level close to normal functioning, I finally finished rebuilding my last roof today (for the moment, at least). Oddly the last one had an aluminium sheet roof covering rather than the more...

As far as I'm aware, the landowner can't legally deny a bee inspector entry if they want to check for a notifiable disease. I don't know that much happens if they do however. Makes life awkward for other beeks with hives in the area though, not knowing whether there's a potential reservoir of...

Got my last hive back home as it was getting dark this evening. Normally I can carry a double brood fairly easily when it's early or late in the season, but there was no way I was going anywhere with this one. Had to barrow it everywhere, which isn't much fun over bumpy ground. I have to take...

Personally I'd prefer not to leave it to chance, and remove all but the healthiest-looking open cell I could find. Not that I'm really any judge of what constitutes "healthiest" when it comes to it. I've seen it suggested that what happens when bees build emergency queen cells might be a bit...

I don't think so. If you have a number of them then you might be able to compare them to get a rough idea (abdomen size, thorax size etc.), but I believe many of the criteria preferred by researchers for gauging the quality of queens tend to be, err, "fatally invasive". James

I stick my trowel in the ground, pull the soil/compost aside, drop in the potato and cover it back up. For earthing up I just spread more compost around the plants. James

David Evans wrote a fair bit about this some time back, covering the research that has been done. From memory, where the bees have a good range of egg/larva ages to work with and therefore have the opportunity to choose which they use, "emergency" queens were no significantly different from...

The super from the hive I still have to move is now at home (saving the most awkward colony for last), screen on the hive and I'm just waiting for evening to go and pick them up. Now the super is off the colony will fit in the back of the car. They were so much more pleasant than when I was...