Recent content by frenchbees

Thanks for the responses, I'll wait a few more days and remove the super when the brood has hatched, hopefully she won't lay anymore in there. Like you Alldigging I am not sure if uncapped honey will last 4 weeks. I will put the super in a bin bag, remove as much air as possible, seal and...

I have just put on clearer boards so I can start Apiguard treatment. Problem is one of my hives has a large amount of brood in the lower super. (I took out the queen excluders earlier this year as they were getting totally blocked with propolis, wish I hadn't now) Do I remove the super and...

My queen stopped laying in May and the 2 supercedure cells had disappeared by 20 May. I saw larvae on 16 June, looked nice and even, but on doing an inspection today there were large amounts of drone brood on all frames, one very small patch of worker brood and a supercedure cell. I have read...

I think l'm right in calling it a fast feeder, its about 4.5 cm deep with a a arrangement at the front to allow syrup into a narrow strip for the bees. When the syrup is gone they can get through the gap into the feeder. Hope that makes sense, it's difficult to describe, seems standard here...

A friend collected a swarm for me last Friday, due to various circumstances I couldn't collect them till Saturday morning. I was worried about leaving them another day so decided to hive them straightaway. I went for the method that uses an empty super on top of the bb to contain them. So far so...

Reassuring to know other bees are not behaving according to the rules. After loosing a swarm a few weeks after the hive arrived last year followed by weeks of "Am I Queenless?" I was determined to do an AS this year and have 2 colonies. Bees had other plans. Big plus though, they have remained...

At the beekeeping lesson yesterday I described the state of my hive. (No larvae, sealed brood and empty cells, no queen cells on the bottom of the frames but 2 sealed supercedure cells) General consensus is that they swarmed about 6 to 8 days ago. Advised to leave supercedure cells and not buy...

To continue, just finished inspecting. No larvae, lots of clean empty cells, single supercedure type cell in the middle of two frames (but not very big), not in the place I saw larvae 4 days ago. Seem to be less bees (difficult to be sure as they have 3 supers and are spread out) and they have...

I've been reading threads about Queens laying less when nectar flow is low. It's very dry here, I checked on 5th May and noticed a lot less larvae (can't see eggs, need to get different glasses). Today only a very small patch of larvae, about 2 inch square, but they are very small (2-3mm)...

I did wonder about the quality of the new queen. Changing the queen later at my leisure sounds fine, problem is I've yet to spot her and not confident of being able to in the future. Think I'll wait a bit longer.

At a recent beekeeping lesson, the instructor split a hive that didn't have any queen cells. 50:50 split of frames, hoped queen in hive in original position. (He didn't actually spot her) He also created nucs in the same way. I'm still waiting for evidence of queen cells and more interested in...

Thanks for the lovely pic. I assumed I knew what I was looking for, then had doubts. Would you be looking for them only on the bottom of the frames as a precursor to swarming? These seem to be within the frame.

Does anyone have pictures of playcups?

Think it's a cherry, they don't always fruit every year, or it may be a flowering cherry.

I know about the importance of making regular inspections from now thru the swarming period. My question, if we get a prolonged period of cold/wet weather, what should take precedence, inspections or not opening the hive? Would I be right in thinking that bad weather will supress the swarming...