Recent content by La Chassagne

Cheers, bpmurray! :) I am a member of our local beekeeper association, have been following their courses, read some books about beekeeping (not the Haynes Bee Manual, I'll be looking for that one!), have a neighboring beekeeper who I can turn to (there are several beekeepers in our rural...

Well said, Tremyfro. :) @jenkinsbrynmair - I'd rather you'd not bother to comment to my postings anymore as I am looking for constructive friendly advice. In the meantime, here's another “little video” of an inspection we did at the hive before it swarmed...

That's not what I've heard. Loss of commercial honeybees in the US since 2006: 40% Loss of commercial honeybees in Europe since 1985: 25% Loss of commercial honeybees in the UK since 2010: 45% But even if it were "only" the wild bees who are in decline, more honey bee colonies are then needed...

Everybody who starts out is full of ambitions and good intentions, whether they start out with wax foundation frames, flow frames, plastic foundation frames, or no foundation frames, a dadant, langstroth, top-bar hive, warre hive, basket hive and what have you. The practical knowledge and...

Thanks, Erichalfbee! I think in this case, the majority of the colony left with the swarm. We only had this colony for less than three weeks before they swarmed and we got them on (only) 6 frames, so it wasn't that big a colony to begin with, I think. Little holes are more difficult to defend...

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to provide them with a bit of nice starter food coming from their own former home. However, as I wrote in the original post: lessons learned are among others, Don't feed a recently swarmed colony! Why, b.t.w., should I take out all the other queen cells...

Hello everybody, Here is a short video on how our swarming adventure of the first bee colony we acquired this spring ended: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thExgguRHOw (With English youtube subtitles) Don't feed a recently swarmed colony! Cheers!

If you smoke the entrance, you do it from the side, of course. I did a little check on the super containing the flow frames, yesterday, and found that indeed there was some burr comb. Don't know if it is a problem. I left it there, for now. Maybe I should have taken it away? I kind of get the...

Cheers, Sugerbush, not smoking at the entrance does make sense. At the course I was told that smoking at the entrance is done to "calm down" the bees, and to make communication between bees less effective (so that the guard bees at the entrance won't unnecessarily "stir up" the rest, I suppose)...

That would be great! Thanks! :)

Thanks for the replies and the advice! :) I realised about the (mis)use of smoke as I saw back the footage while working on the video. However, "Experienced beeks don't smoke a hive entrance and drive the bees to the top prior to opening the top", I was taught at our local bee-association to...

However, somehow, the forum only turns youtube-links into a video in a frame when you use http:// , and not when you use https:// (In the latter case, it is turned into a clickable link).

Hello everyone, We are situated in a rural area the middle of France and, this (early) spring, have acquired our first colony which we transferred into our home-made beehive which accommodates 6 Australian Flow Frames. If you are interested, here is a short video about it. The video is in...

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