Recent content by italic63

Hi. I found this one quite useful. It assumes you start with clean wax already processed...

Or do they? Support for the stupid question and thanks for your help

I live in Piemonte about 150m above sea level. As you probably know beekeeping is very popular in this area but I don't have anyone in about 3km radius. One the local experts that has helped me in the past never feeds his bees. Wondering how they survive. Perhaps he doesn't aggressively harvest...

It's called a "Baravalle" here in Italy. It sits on the top under the cover and holds about 2 litres of syrup. See image...

I had a look. Cells look smooth and clean

Good afternoon everyone. My face is red with embarrassment as I write this email but if really need to get your expert opinions. I started treating my hive with Apivar strips about 6 weeks ago. The weather here in the North of Italy has been 26-30 everyday up until earlier this week. Unusually...

Here is a video...

Good morning from Italy... So the weather here has been sunny and hot thought-out September and is due to continue through most of October. 25-26 degrees here in the North. The bees have been unusually quiet despite the good weather... I inspected yesterday and found they had almost completely...

Ok thanks for the quick answer. I treated the hive last autumn so a year ago. No wonder I guess... What do you mean test or sunken larvae? Inspect for Varroa? Thanks again

Hi. Sorry for the delay. Heavy rain yesterday. Here are some pictures of the frames. There are less than a hundred bees left. A few moths and a strange smell, a mixture of honey and yeast. They had eaten almost no syrup at all before they left. No sign of the Queen. See pics.

I will inspect and take photos this afternoon... Back soon

Sounds likely and what you say makes sense. I forgot to mention that in this particular hive I noticed more than a few dead bees in the cover.

I looked in the brood last Saturday. The brood pattern was not good. Looked like the Queen had slowed down and/or stopped laying. Plenty of space therefore. Having taken some of their residual honey in the super in order to treat, I thought that feeding them would help replace super stores.

A couple of frames of stores, patchy brood pattern on about 5 frames and no sign of swarm cells

Hi from Italy... So last weekend I removed a couple of supers with a small amount of honey in order to be able to treat for Varroa... I added some 1:1 sugar syrup and cleared them back up. Ross morning they swarmed and all left. What the f...? Any ideas why? Thanks