Recent content by brianmc

Female Andrena Wilkella? https://www.flickr.com/photos/63075200@N07/sets/72157639396785955/

I don't really believe that they'll fill another super at this point but they really must be out of space in some of my boxes the way they've been pulling in stores. An empty drawn super underneath gives them the option of extending the broodnest down as they pull in whatever more they do...

I'm wondering the same thing. I'm adding a super of drawn comb under each hive where I can. The weather is expected to go into decline from later this week though...

What kind of larvae are in the photo on this pdf? http://www.eathappyproject.com/download/media/263228/glossary_5-11_honey_intro-10.pdf Nice resource though! :)

My hives have been packed out with both fresh stores and plenty of brood over the last couple of weeks. Supered one out of four a week ago and gave them a second yesterday along with supers on two more. Granted I did move them to OSR over the weekend too. Kildare, Meath area. Your season...

Easy...

Thanks itma, I was hoping someone would come along and say "if they're only just starting you'll be fine" but I guess not! I can do a shake out, then move the colony to the other apiary and merge. Alternately, I could bring the recipient colony to the donor colony and do the shake out with...

Hi, Thanks for all the input folks. I'm 95% sure the old queen isn't there. She was nicely marked and I would spot her without intention on most inspections. Two thorough trawls through the box (in two halves at one point) show no sign of her. That and the emergency queen cells. I'm also...

Yeah, I can't imagine the surface of Kingspan allowing for years of use, scraping off brace comb and getting knocked about. Have you an intuited notion of how much of my insulating efforts I'd be wasting if I put a skin of plywood in?

Since this thread has Derekm's attention... With regard to "easy wins"... Insulating the top of the hive (crown board) seems to offer the most benefit with the simplest interventions for someone with wooden national hives. I've bought 50mm Kingspan to provide insulated "crown boards" to my...

Ah! Sorry, I missed a bit... I did throw the two parts back together into the original hive on Friday evening in preparation for the planned move on Saturday. No sign of a queen anywhere. Yesterdays inspection was of the full recombined colony. Re 7 days... The last time the queen was seen...

A litany of mistakes So, mistakes upon mistakes. Hopefully I'm learning from all of this. MasterBK seems to be on the ball with one possible adjustment to his explanation. On Saturday evening I went back to the site with the intention of removing the hive to another site where I have a...

While the bee population expanded for a while they didn't draw out much extra space. There were 9 frames available (6 from the nuc, 3 foundation) but they didn't draw out much more than one one of the foundation frames. As suggested before the queen may not have been great from the start...

I think it's bee supplies .ie in Dublin in Ireland here. The poly nucs they sell are Pa*nes nucs though.

Underperforming as in there is currently no new brood. That's not a conclusion though on whether it is the Queen's problem or simply due to the apiguard. To be honest I can't really comment on the quality of the brood. My last real inspection of the frames was back at the beginning of August...