Recent content by Martin G

Hi Stuart, Was the mail from, or purporting to be from, this forum? If so it seems a little odd that a random spammer would connect you with this site. Spammers work on the law of averages and send out thousands of 'plausible' mails, attempting to imitate Flebay, apple or even a bank, hoping...

Caged Queens Good ideas, which I have done in the past. The thinking behind the idea was to create 'spare' queens in the same hive, keeping those that aren't needed safe. I'm assuming that the nurse bees will feed the caged virgins, but for how long? and how long will they last caged like this...

checking a hive today I found 3 capped queen cells all on the same frame, nothing unusual in that, but has anyone had experience in caging the cells with the intention of raising all 3 queens. They're supercedure type cells so on the face not on the frame bottom. Martin

Hi Tom, very interesting, I've been thinking of giving it a go and have found going over the thread a great help. Have you, or anyone else, thought of inserting a bar, horizontally across the middle of the frame, effectively cutting the frame in half and adding some 'support' (in place of...

Hive Site Hi Farmer Alex, what a great offer, I hope you can find a suitable 'partner' It can be quite difficult for people with land to let beekeepers know that they're willing to have a hive and visa-versa: there are loads of beeks with spare hives looking for a home. The WBKW have...

Hosting Hi Oscar, I have several sites hosted with one.com They offer good value, especially for the first year. Have you any knowledge of WordPress? You can run it from the control panel and there are loads of templates available, mostly free, have a search and see the Google results. Once...

App imfo Hi bbal, downloaded the app, does what I wanted. I've tried using diary records but they're a bit hard to search and I just wanted something straightforward. As I use it I'll keep you updated if you like. Questions: How big is the 'Note' field What does the slider do What about...

Thanks all, as per Jenkins I popped them both in a hive together. When I got the two groups together I found the majority of the swarm was in the tree. Just finished 'mopping up' the last stragglers and moved them to their new location. Fairly sure they were from one swarm so they should be ok.

forgot to mention that the bait hive is about 35foot up a tree which I raise and lower with a rope and pulley system and I didn't want to disturb them until it was dark

Had a swarm earlier which split into two 'clusters'. One, rather fortunately, went into a bait hive, the other on a branch about 10M away. 2 hours later the bait hive cluster seems to have all gone in, the branch cluster seems to have settled down with few flying bees. Should I expect that they...

Water spray, I'll give that a try. Do you give a spray mist over the flying bees once you've reassembled the hive? Oliver: I know what you mean, we should be able to sort these things out, and I'm sure I will, but sometimes it does get frustrating. Supercedure was certainly something I...

What do you suppose are the reasons a colony could become aggressive? I’ve got one that has grown well so far this year, with 2 supers both 90% full of stores and bias (no excluder). For weeks it’s been very aggressive with the bees following me around 20M to my car. It takes about 10 minutes...

I’ve got a similar situation, two hives side by side, one developing fast BIAS, stores a plenty and seams of bees. Next hive, bees and stores but no apparent brood. The peepers aren’t as good as they once were and I’d forgotten my specks so there could be eggs. I decided to leave them for a week...

Varied findings Checked an out apiary. The ‘main’ hive which I suppered a couple of weeks ago is growing really well. Loads of brood, sealed and newly laid. Loads of drone brood, mostly in brace comb around the frames, some broke open as I removed the frames with a couple having some mites so I...

No, you're quite right, but it seemed most reasonable given the bitter winter, Martin