Recent content by kittietrixie

Hi. If you are right, it is particularly painful as I had an empty national right beside the nuc but used my human brain to conclude that it would be too big for them!

Hi. No, there was no brood or stores - it was the beginnings of my beekeeping kingdom so there was no other colony from which I could take them. I thought I had compensated with the frame feeder and fondant, but perhaps not?

Hi. No, it was in the shade.

Any advice gratefully received! I reared a queen cell successfully in a mini-nuc. I moved the laying queen and her bees to a nuc box to provide them with more space. The swarmed from the nuc despite having lots of drawn comb, a frame feeder and fondant. I found them and returned them to the...

Thanks for all your views. I'm waiting to see if eggs are there for the next inspection. Fingers crossed.

True. I put in the queen cells x 3 two weeks ago. Does that narrow it down?

Hi everybody. Taking advantage of the sun today, I inspected my hives and was delighted to find a queen in a colony which I thought was queenless. I put in queen cells a few weeks ago, so it worked! Anyway, queen present but no eggs. Is it that she hasn't yet gone for her mating flight or is it...

Thanks for all your advice on this. Since my last message, they simply upped and left, flying off to the south! A strange experince over all but sound learning! Thanks again.

Not sure what the difference is to be honest! It was a large swarm so it looked like a full colony to me, but then this is only my second season so...!

Thanks Jimmy. I'll give it a go.

Hi. One of my colonies swarmed and I re-homed it in a nuc box yesterday with 6 frames of undrawn brood foundation. 5 minutes ago they swarmed again back to where I collected them from yesterday. Any ideas what's happening and what I need to do to settle them? Thanks for any advice you can give.

Many thanks for your guidance and advice - really appreciated.

There was no brood in either hive.

Yes, the queen cell was closed. In the first hive, the QC was large. In the second hive, there was a mixture of large and small QCs.

So now just hope the queen cell emerges?