Recent content by Elaine

Glad to hear they are doing well. I wouldn't necessarily correlate their temperament with your observations regarding varroa tolerance, I don't treat, and the bees are usually quite docile, tends to be some external influence that makes them more defensive at times. At the moment there are a lot...

Yesterday united two hives over newspaper (queen that had been laying, but untidy, turned drone layer) , half way through, with bees all over the place is not the best time to realise that the zip on my boots has failed and is gaping open! Luckily very calm bees, and as they are in the...

It depends on your definition of what you expected to happen without a QE. I don't use them and the system works well for me and the bees. They can move up and down the hive as they want to, and create the central nest area to the shape they want. They then surround that with pollen and honey...

When I have used elastic bands in the hive to hold wild comb into frames, it doesn't take long before the bees have fastened the com into the farm and then chewed through the bands and dragged them out. I've also seen them drag large pieces of cling film from a feeding eke, through a 10mm...

I use an inkjet printer, and Avery labels, using their (free) templates to sort out the print layout. Once the ink is properly dry, and the labels have been on the jar for a while, I think they comply with the 'waterproof' rules. Some of my customers return their jars, which I use for myself...

Thank you for your advice, Karol. The nest we destroyed I think was still in the hunting phase, but we were careful to wait until it was dark and there were no more returning to the nest, but its position and the number of wasps coming and going during the day meant it had to be dealt with...

I have one hive at the moment that seems to run around more than the others, but doesn't cause me any specific problems, other than tickling the palms of my hand! ( my preference is also to not wear gloves) - maybe it is just a matter of scale, and they are not really 'runners' - just the least...

I just wondered why you think it is not good to have them running around the hive.

I'm afraid it would still have had to go, as it was where I need to stand to do inspections, but I'm sure there are other wasps nests in the garden, which I won't do anything about them unless I absolutely have to.

We've just got back indoors after destroying a wasps nest :-(. Unfortunately they had set up home less than half a metre from one hive, and about 1.5m from another. Never one to pussyfoot about derek used a 2ft flamethrower!!!! Actually it was a large nozzle on the propane torch, but has...

I use tights as the filter mesh in my solar heater - seems to work ok

If the queen doesn't perform - the bees will vote to supersede her - so I would leave them to decide for themselves.

Guilty as charged :-) despite best efforts and checking for new queen cells every 3 days, these emerged from the q- half of the AS this morning and ended up in our apple tree. I checked the original hive -. only one empty queen cell evident - and I did not find another queen - just have to wait...

You are bound to need a second hive - so why don't you check that the second one is all correct, transfer the bees, then sort out this one, which will be much easier without bees in it :-)

We don't have any comparable data on this, as other factors were not necessarily the same, such as hive type, and whether they were given fresh or already drawn foundation in the supers. I could say that last year was the first year we used this method, and that I got my best honey yield ever -...