Recent content by Nirakaro

Three hives - two Warre, one horizontal top bar - that were all well-stocked and apparently thriving when I checked them in November. Now still with many kilos of honey, and all full of dead bees. How do I set about figuring out what caused that?

I once kept a hive in a spare bedroom for a while, got a roomful of bees whenever I opened the hive. I just left the window open for a while so they could find their way home. It was decades ago, but as far as I remember it worked perfectly ok.

Ok. The 'slow traffic' was defimitely steady traffic, a few going in and out every time I looked, over at least ten days. I hadn't realised the scouts would be as assiduous as that. Anyway, they're now happily installed in a hive.

I put it out late in April, and ten days ago I noticed that it was in use – a small swarm judging by the quite slow traffic in and out - and I assumed that the bee-pheromone equivalent of a 'sold' sign would send away any scouts from other swarms. Yesterday though, a sizeable swarm filled the...

I want to move one of my hives to somewhere about half a mile away. Difficult to move them directly, so I'm thinking to take them 'on holiday' far enough away that they'll forget this local landscape, then bring them back after a while. How long do they need to be away for?

Since we've drifted of-topic onto temperature, I have another question: I helped the bees through the winter by fixing panels of 50mm polyurethane foam insulation (rescued from skips) to the outside and top of the hives. AIUI they like to maintain the inside temperature around 38C; given that...

My three hives – like every hive design I've ever seen – have the entrance at or near the bottom. I've noticed though, that if I give the bees any hint of an entry near the top (whether deliberately or through poor quality control in the woodworking department), they'll use that almost...

Right, it's a small colony that I hived from a swarm six weeks ago, they seem happy enough, on six or seven top bars, though they haven't expanded much since I got them. I thought I should treat for varroa, so I vaporised a gram of oxalic acid in the bottom of the hive, then removed the...

There's an old saying that the only advice that's ever welcome is advice that's been asked for; but it seems that the beekeeping world didn't receive that memo. I don't think the OP was seeking advice on what kind of hives to use. I have three hives, two horizontal top bar and one Warré. I'm...

Back in April, I put out a few swarm boxes, that were shaped for easy transfer into my horizontal top bar hives. But over the summer, I built myself a Warré hive, and I'm now persuading a 'horizontal' swarm down into it. They've been in the box a few weeks, and are well-established on seven top...

Well, I fed them through the spring, and they survived but didn't thrive - only tiny amounts of capped brood. I figured that since they started to fade at around the time the original package bees would be dying off, maybe the queen was at fault. I put a new queen in at the back end of June, and...

I'm in a similar situation to yourself – near-beginner trying to get bees into a Warré hive. In my case, I have a couple of horizontal top bar hives, so I put out a few top-bar-shaped swarm boxes, but by the time a swarm arrived, out of pure cussedness I'd built a Warré hive, and now have the...

Ok, bear with me on this, because I'm pretty clueless: Last spring, I ordered a package of bees (not the best way to get bees I know, but funds were limited), and put together a top bar hive (I may be an incompetent beekeeper, but I'm an ace woodworker). The bees came at the end of June, and...