Recent content by Craftypint

"On Thursday 22nd June a small primary nest of Asian hornets was reported to the NBU. A National Bee Unit Inspector investigated the report and collected samples which have been sent for analysis by scientists. Traps have been set for hornets returning to the nest site, and follow up activities...

Planning to, I use them as a way to see different parts of the country, and I'll see a LOT of countryside at the speed i'm currently riding. Done LEL before? I did 2009 and 2013, and volunteered at Brampton in 2017.

Used to do quite a few but only been doing a couple a year for the last few years, and got a shock yesterday when I found i'm entered into next Saturday's 212km 'Rutland and Back'. Entries have been carried over from last years cancelled event, which I'd completely forgotten about.

The timeline was, inspected on Tues 12th, all looked fine, had a good look and didn't see any queen cells. I'm terrible at finding the queen but there was bias. Couldn't inspect last Tuesday but did Wednesday and found the 2 sealed queen cells and some unsealed. We thought there were plenty...

I've just looked at my hives and there are thousands of bees flying and on the outside of the hive. What should I do? We had a couple of sealed queen cells when inspecting on Tuesday and assumed we'd already missed them swarming.

Shame you got cut off twice, I thought the Q&A was getting really enjoyable. On the plus side, I did win a scented candle in the raffle.

I've done that before, was only a small section melted and didn't seem to harm bees. I have a thin plank of damp plywood that I put on top of the correx now. rest the pan on that with a piece of foam filling the gap between correx and floor at back of hive

I discoverd the pan had detached from the rod on my Thorne Vapmite last week. Had used it around 10 times and don't remember knocking it hard on anything. I used a small twig as a shim to wedge the rod back in place and it works fine. Any suggestions on what could be used as a more permanent...

Thanks for the replies. Once I saw all the queen cells my measured approach to the inspection went a bit haywire. From memory, it looked like the brood didn't fill each frame and there was space around but then I'm also thinking there was new glistening stores in some of that. On overfeeding...

I just did my first inspection of the year and found the queen and then 6 uncapped QC and 1 capped. 5 of the QC were around the edges of frames but the capped one was more in the middle. Wasn't sure if this was likely to be a swarm or supercedure and if swarm I was very lucky that the queen...

Another audax cyclist here, need to get back into it as tailed off from a couple of London-Edinburgh-London's to no 200km ride for 2 years. Need to cycle to counteract the calories from other hobbies; homebrewing and cooking. Like hiking and river fishing too.

Thanks for the advice so far. I've done 2 vapes 5 days apart so far and and saw approx. 250 mites drop in 24 hours after first and ~200 after second. Doing third tomorrow. If the varroa population doubles roughly every 3 weeks, unless my ApiGuard hadn't worked at all I don't think I'd see...

Before I started treatment in August I did a count over a few days and it was around 8 per day. I didn't do a count when I finished the apiguard and spread the remainder on top bars on 28th September (forgot). I did another 24 hour count on Friday and it was 20 and I'll stick the board back in...

I completed 6 weeks of Apiguard treatment on 28th Sept but there was still quite a lot left crystalised in the tray. I spread that over the top bars as suggested on here. I put a varroa board under the hive on Monday and after 2 days I can count 100+ dropped mites. From what I've searched and...