Recent content by garlicpickle

I put clearing boards with rhombus escapes on both my colonies yesterday morning with a shallow home made eke underneath each clearing board, to allow the clearing bees space to disperse. Both colonies have 2 supers which need to come off. Last year I did this and 24 hours later the supers were...

I should have taken pics, but normally I expect to see drone brood in "clumps" either up near the top of the frames or in wild comb added to the bottom of frames. I would say about half and half. It is dotted around seeingly randomly although as I said, there was some worker brood mixed in too...

unfortunately I didn't renew my membership in January due to domestic circumstances. I do have a couple of contacts and wil email them to see if anyone can pop over and give me a hand. Tried to find the DLQ again this morning but without success. She is still laying some worker brood as well...

I'm in my second full year and struggling. I had high hopes during the early spring build up, did my Snelgrove A/S on my 2 colonies in a timely manner (or so I thought). Had to skip 2 weeks inspections because I was ill, went back on Monday hoping to find effectively 4 colonies, 2 of which would...

My husband made one for me last year, but we aren't living together any more and my woodworking skills are non existent. So when I needed another one this year I bought it from Richfield (go*gle for the link) It was 15 quid plus postage which is a bit cheaper than the main suppliers and it's...

Quick check after the weekend's strong winds and before today's showers hit - both QC above both Snelgrove boards had emerged. Fingers crossed there's a healthy virgin queen in each one, so no more door changes or disturbances for now :) Hopefully there will be some clear weather windows for...

Still couldn't find the Q in hive 1 despite splitting the colony between 2 brood boxes and putting a QX between them last week. I knew she wasn't in the top box as there were lying-down eggs in the bottom one. Unfortunately there was also a sealed QC in there which I must have missed at the last...

Went back to finish yesterday's AS which got rained off. Went through the mother box above the snelgrove board checking for QC. Tried to do the same with my other colony but couldn't find the Q. She's been busy though. There's a few play cups but they aren't seriously in swarm mode yet. So I...

Dodged the showers today to try and get AS done. Managed to spot the Q in Hive 2 so whipped that frame out into a fresh box of foundation and put the snelgrove board in. Broke down a couple of charged QC in the mother box and removed some burr comb hanging from the other frames which was getting...

I popped down briefly to take the mouseguards off as I'm just about to go away for 2 weeks. There's still fondant on both hives and they were up in it, so I decided to leave it on until I come back.

Took advantage of a sunny morning for a brief visit to the apiary. One colony was up in the fondant which I put on last month, the other colony hadn't touched theirs. Plenty of bees flying and orange pollen coming in.

Welcome - I just moved to Locks Heath but my bees are in Stubbington :) I've been to a couple of the Fareham association meetings, they seem a friendly bunch apart from that Pargyle chap who is a bit of a weirdo :icon_204-2:

Oxalic today, I've been hanging on in the hope of a cold snap but thought I'd better do it before it gets too late. I had to smoke one of the colonies down as they weren't too happy when I took the lid off. First time I've visited the apiary since the recent storms, lots of trees came down and...

Luckily I already had one from my winemaking days :)

It's a pain for me, mine are at an out apiary and I only have a 2-seater car with quite a small boot! Driving down there with a 3 gallon bucket of syrup sloshing around in the passenger footwell is a good way of ensuring I don't corner too hard :)