Recent content by beefaye

getting insulted on this forum is more painful than being stung - all this abuse just because I asked if people have ever watered down ambrosia !!!! Gimme a break with the feeding - it was a four frame colony that I was feeding for 4 weeks to get them kicked started - not worth the apocolyptic...

thanks everyone I will keep being guided by my mentor as he is telling me to feed & I will bear in mind everyone's replies - he has over 30 years experience & a thriving apiary so I need to trust what is being taught I agree that observation is the key as there is no hard & fast rule It is...

hiya thanks everyone I am feeding 1:1 at the moment to stimulate their wax production as they need assistance with only being a 4 frame new colony. They do not store 1:1feed so are not wasting valuable brood space. It is working extremely well as they have drawn out almost four frames. The...

For the last month, I have been feeding my two new colonies 1:1 sugar syrup to stimulate the drawing out of wax. I have ambrosia in the garage from last winter that I intend using in Autumn. I ran out of sugar this morning so I thought I would use ambrosia as a 'one off'. The ambrosia liquid...

thanks for this....I had a swarm cast that reduced to half a frame in colony size over the last month. They only had a tiny piece of raised comb and had a laying worker and drone cells building. I finally accepted defeat with them tonight and shook them all out and removed their hive. I am...

I started out last year with another 11 keepers....5 have backed out after the first year. reasons varied from having to relocate because of job change; too expensive to buy all the equipment that mounts up into the second year and beyond; too much time needed to tend hives when coping with...

opened the hive with the queen cell this afternoon and my supplier was correct...it was a dummy sealed cell. Workers had torn it down by the time I inspected today and my queen is happily laying without a worry in the world. the other hive still has chalk brood on one frame and dead bees stuck...

thank you for all your advice....I stuck with the advice about leaving the bees alone for now. I will give them another couple of weeks then check what I have. I will then decide if supplementing is required. I have just set up my new site and all colonies are new so I can't easily add in new...

hiya I transferred a swarm cast to a hive last Monday. A couple of days later I checked for a queen and spotted a virgin queen scurrying about. I closed the hive and have been feeding them ever since as I had no drawn comb available for them. The colony have been working away as they should...

hiya received two new nucs last week and doing my first inspection tomorrow when I was transferring the frames, I noticed the first nuc had some chalk brood. I didn't worry about this much due to the wet Spring we had and the fact they were now being placed in a well ventilated South facing...

had just set up two new hives on my site for nucs I had ordered for delivery this week. came across this swarm on a wall the day before delivery of my nucs...thank god for backup hives...the swarm caught me by surprise so had to catch it with a pillow case & a dog blanket (only things I had in...

beejoyful - thanks for the warning about air circulation the platform is raised just over a foot good idea about the trench as the site goes downhill slightly so hopefully i can reroute a little...my site is just on the border of the marshy area so just a couple of feet of wet land that is...

thanks for replying everyone as I was starting to obsess over it moving the site isnt an option as it is all posted into the ground and I dont have anyone to help with that type of work black comb...thanks for replying about leaving them if the site is raised....it is well raised and the...

hiya my hive site holding 2 hives is secured on raised posts on decking at the bottom of an acre of grass field the weather has been so bad lately that the ground under my decking and to the back has started to get sodden and marshy...the farmer who owns the land thinks the change is due to...

hiya ben your association and this forum will keep you right. I am in my second year and didn't realise what a huge learning curve there is within the first few years. Sometimes daunting but always fun.