Recent content by MJBee

We are also the "wrong" side of the high pressure system so even though we have blue skies and wall to wall sunshine the bitter NE wind has kept temperatures down to less than 10C, without the wind it would be 20C+!! Some hardy bees were flying yesterday - mainly collecting water!!

Signs of Spring here in SW France unfortunately the weather is not in sync. 1st cuckoo heard 11 March, first swallow seen yesterday, willow covered in pollen but not a bee in sight the temperature is struggling to get to double figures C and we had a hail storm pm yesterday. The bees are all...

Wall to wall sunshine and +16C here today so my 4 hives in the garden got their first inspection of 2015. 2 hives are strong with 5 frames of BIAS and plenty of honey and pollen (gorse) 1 hive is OK but weak with 2 frames of BIAS 3 empty frames were changed for drawn comb containing stores...

Removed the rear entrance blocks and varroa inserts from my hives yesterday and the aroma (stink) of ivy was overpowering - saves on sugar though :-)

I take the quick way out. I clear and remove all the supers. I then sort the frames into 2 lots - more than 50% capped and less than 50% capped. The frames that are more than 50% capped are then extracted and the honey kept. The rest are extracted and the nectar/honey mix is fed back to the...

Thanks Itma, I could have done with that gem a week ago:icon_204-2: Method copied out and in the bee folder for future reference.

Amen to all the above posts. My regret is that I didn't congratulate him on his record breaking post. RIP.

Quote "I wear black heavy duty rubber gloves from Wilk....son''s." Unquote Melbee - part of your problem may be the colour of your gloves! Bees do not like black, if you can find the right size try an inspection with white/blue nitrile gloves over you black ones - it may make all the difference.

You're welcome - sorry CERN not recognised.

Nope it's in 1 kilo poly pots, had some in 500g pots but sold all that. These pots seem to be the acceptable "norm" over here.

:iagree: However in mitigation we have had very high temperatures - mid 20s SHADE temp - so a bit of ventilation wasn't a problem. Also if I had put a solid crown board on I am sure they would have swarmed (again) the extra space to "expand" into saved the day:winner1st:

This colony "slipped through the net" of the 7 day inspection cycle.:hairpull: It is a swarm from my bait hive which had drawn 8 frames of a National and was growing nicely when inspected on 15 June. On the 7 July this is what I found!! Sorry first pic is out of focus. Neglect the 7 day cycle...

:iagree: I have always put 3 supers between the brood boxes and have not had any problems. I use that system as a queen cell raising colony and had 12 accepted from 18 in the last batch.

I have decided that I have too many hives because I still have 50+ kilos of last year's harvest:winner1st:

The Jenter instructions (similar system) say brush the cells with molten bees wax then introduce for 3 days then cage the queen. The was coating only needs to be done once - worked for me:winner1st: