Recent content by cweaton

It's still early days with this colony and I'd say best to leave it be for the time being, although your manipulations seem to have worked out well. The queen cells could well be an attempt at supercedure (in which case I'd say they know best and let them get on with it), but you'll probably...

One crazily strong colony, overwintered on double brood and now approaching 12 frames BIAS. The rest at least 7. Almost no emerged drones though, and not really very much drone brood.

To me it's mildly convenient to have the flexibility of a square box, but this would be a less important factor than the size of the brood box (whether you prefer smaller or bigger). I have switched orientation of the frames once or twice, but it wouldn't have killed me if that hadn't been an...

Whether smock or suit (I have one of each and they both get used), the best bit of kit added for my protection has been stretchy tubular bandages to go over the cuffs. These work well both with bare hands and with rubber gloves, and stop the bees getting caught in the cuff and panicking. Use...

I've moved a hive around a hill, about 400m. I leaned some shrubbery against the hive, but blocking them in with grass would work well. I moved the hive in the evening, and left an empty nuc in its place. I went back to the old site the next evening with a dustpan and brush and collected the 100...

You mean chuck a badger in the hive?

I'd certainly be interested to hear of instances where queen cells have been found in the bottom box only of a double brood/brood and a half arrangement. I guess this might be more common during supercedure. I've tended to find that most of the cells are on the bottom of the upper box, with...

Thomas Seeley's book The Wisdom of the Hive covers organisation of collection and storage of pollen, nectar and water in great detail (but I don't think there's much on distribution of brood). Seems that recruitment and storage is quite flexible, e.g., if a forager can't offload nectar within a...

They're just fans of Beeradley Wiggins

Looks like there's room for about eight more! Maybe the next one to the left (in the photo) and facing south, but I'd make plans for positioning say six rather than just two - next year you may well temporarily have four or five (after performing artificial swarms or deciding you want to keep a...

I said I'd post again to let people know how the move went. I'd say neither unsuccessful nor a complete success as there were a couple of hundred bees back at the old site the next evening. I'd left a nuc with a couple of undrawn frames there and it was interesting that less than half the bees...

The plan is just to put foliage in front of the entrance. We're shifting them this evening. I'll let you know if it works! I'm guessing we'll lose a few, but that's probably better than the disruption of moving them twice.

Thanks. We have plenty of gear for doing all of the operations (nationals). Re the distance we're moving, this is a discussion that I have already had with the person who I am looking after the hive with. We have means of moving the hive somewhere else and then back again, but he insists that...

Hi, I've (jointly) taken over a hive in a slightly complicated situation, and wouldn't mind another viewpoint on how to go about a whole string of operations please. Here's the situtation: At the moment we have one very strong colony of placid bees in a double brood box, with evenly...