Recent content by mike99

Hi Richard. I am still a novice but those pictures look like worker brood to me. Drone brood has a much higher relief IMHO By the way. I absolutely love your location. :)

Thanks for that information. I will store it somewhere safe. Hopefully I won't forget where that safe place is.

I was 5m away from a hive that a guy was vaping. I breathed in a tiny bit. That hurt a lot. definitely don't want to repeat the experience.

I fed my hives with syrup till the weather got cold. removed the Apivar strips and gave them a tray of Fondant. checked yesterday after about a week and they have cleaned every single bit of it. next reasonable day I will top it up again.

Just had to give some more syrup to all 3 hives. they are drinking it like there is no tomorrow.

I am using Apivar and they are drinking the syrup like crazy. I need to top them up again after a couple of days.

Really? the only place I have seen them grown is in Alnwick Gardens. They have a poison garden with all sorts in and the last one they show you is the Tobacco plant as it's the biggest plant poison.

I did a course last year with a guy from my Association and he uses tobacco in his smoker. seemingly it's the left over stalks from the manufacturing process and has a low burn rate. very popular with pigeon keepers as nesting material seemingly.

That is a brilliant approach!:winner1st: I am going to see if my association would take that on.

I put some in the entrance of the poly nuc and it melted a bit. I recovered a small swarm in it yesterday. it had used and undrawn frames and when I got them home I added some 1:1 and by this morning they had vanished apart from a few for some reason. I guess they didn't like the dark brown...

I presume they are mine but a neighbour had a swarm yesterday. by the time I got there they had up and left never to be seen again. this morning I think it returned to a nearby apple tree. I recovered it into a nuc and left it upside down while the stragglers went in. an hour later they had...

I also have a double brood and when I did an inspection the lower BB was fine but the upper BB had a lot of QC's. all of them open but a couple of them charged. there were larvae in various stages in both BB's. the queen was easy to spot but the markings might have worn off as I struggle to...

One thing I noticed that around my hives there always seems to be a Bumble Bee circling the hives. Never going in but constantly circling.

Thanks for the replies. I will just keep and eye on it at the moment. when I inspect next I will see how much they have added to the new super and the part filled one. the full one isn't completely capped yet so I will leave it for the time being. There isn't any OSR around here any more so...

Hi. This is the first year I have any surplus honey. I have two colonies and currently have one full super with a new super added on sunday to one hive. The other colony is on double brood but little stored in the super. I bruised some of the really heavy brood frames to try and encourage...