Recent content by Do224

Is dandelion on the chart? I don’t see it. That’s got to be yellow pollen…

I think I’ll wait until the start of May and then pinch a frame of eggs from my best colony and give it to the chalk brood colony to make a new queen with (after squishing their existing queen)

It needs to be 20 celcius for the bees to forage on the OSR? Barely getting to 11 or 12 here at the minute

I’ll keep my fingers crossed then!

I see your point and I agree. I suppose I was thinking of it like this. The OP has no bees. If a local beekeeper offered him a free nuc I guess we’d all say ‘go for it’, wouldn’t we? But couldn’t the nuc just as easily harbour disease as the single brood frame…? That was my logic anyway.

You can bait your hive as a swarm trap. Try and get an old brood comb off a local beekeeper. Put it in your hive and put your hive somewhere like a shed roof, facing south. Don’t put anything else in the hive…just the one old brood frame (right ant the edge of the brood box) and your swarm lure...

Made a tawny owl box a few years ago but it’s just been frequented by crows every year…

I’ve been reading about ‘homing’ them in…apparently you have to cover the whole thing in netting which goes down to the ground like a teepee. Then a month later you can release them properly and they should be settled.

That’s kind of you to say 🙏. Do you have doves in yours or is it just ornamental?

You could put up a bait hive. I imagine there are lots of swarms about where you are

I’ve no invert unfortunately. Would 1:1 be ok? They’ve both just been double brooded and each of them has about 5 frames of foundation to draw out across their two boxes. Probably only got about one frame of stores left max in each hive (perhaps a bit less) so I’m getting nervous.

If feeding would it be fondant or 1:1 syrup at this time of year? I’m in the same boat with two of my colonies

I’ve four colonies. Two are doing great and were given an extra brood box about 10 days ago. The other two are struggling and each only working about 7 frames. They’ve both got a few old black frames which probably should have been replaced. They both have a lot of chalk brood which I feel like...

It’s starting to come together. I underestimated just how complicated it would be to get the angles right on a hexagonal structure. Still need to put the roofing on over the ply base. Was going to use tiles but it’s already a pretty heavy thing so will just use shiplap as it’s lighter. Will have...

Quite a few dead foragers around the hive this morning…I guess they just returned exhausted and got chilled before making it back into the hive