Recent content by Nickod

Or talk to a local farmer about keeping them in a corner of a field. Best is a dairy / sheep farmer rather than arable (pesticide). And you'd need to fence off the area. Several beekeepers close to us do that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi Colin, can you mentor some new beekeepers and keep your hand in without getting too close? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@jprickard How is your eye this morning? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think there may be other reasons for the differences in how frequently people get stung. e.g temperament of the bees and temperament of the keeper: My bees are very relaxed most of the time. I've seen some very aggressive bees in another hive and virtually all of my stings one year came from...

The previous reply would explain why the horse owner is concerned. I believe that the main concern is a horse jumping a fence and knocking over a hive. Most countryside fences (post and rail - about 4ft high) keep horses contained most of the time, but many horses could jump most fences if...

Details of Horse & Bee tragedy in East Sussex 2011 ..from the secretary of our neighbouring beekeeping association: I expect by now you may have heard that one of our new members at ##### have had an awful tragedy involving their four horses, which were severely stung. One of the horses...

It sounds good to me. There are several angles you could take and whilst all are interesting it could make a survey complicated unless you separate them a) number of stings in a season - and factors contributing b) reactions to stings and how they vary e.g. during season, over seasons, based on...

There have been a couple of threads about stings and how to treat them recently. I am interested in the range of reactions to stings and whether the reaction gets more or less over the years. Or whether the question should be - does it get less over the year? For me it doesn't seem to. I don't...

The article suggests setting hornet traps in apiaries. What are these and how do they work?

I hadn't thought about the issue of them pooing where they drink. Maybe their preferred source of water has to be far enough away from the hive that this is unlikely - and off of their main flight paths. Where they are coming to fits all of this as well as being close to a south facing wall.

That may have been part of the issue originally, but the water has been replaced completely during the last week's rainfall. Maybe they remember it tasted bad and haven't tried again?

Spot on. The back of the house does face South.

My bees are ignoring water placed close to the hive entrance, with bits of wooden peg floating in a bowl for them to land on. Instead they fly to the back of the house where I have been sowing seeds in small seed trays, and they are apparently drinking (invisible) water from the top of the seed...