Recent content by pete darbyshire

I have found that turning the 1/2 brood 90° over winter reduces the occurrence of isolation starvation...

I dont think you can beat a hydraulic fruit press for heather honey

it looks like this!!

Walk amongst the heather and breath it in. If your hives smell the same as that, its heather honey. Plus the may be bringing in grey pollen.

Heather here is amazing. One super per hive filled in a week.

Personally I think it's a bonkers idea - but what have you got to lose? BOTH OF THEM??

If you are lucky the queen will find a new home, and the hive will rear a less fecund sucessor.

Option three, ignore all the advice to give the queen more space and just get a crappy queen!!

They are bringing in pollen, but no nectar.

Totally agree, mine are the same, especially the swarms and splits. They are all getting syrup till the BlackBerry flowers. Could have inspected in a tshirt last week....not this though

I didn't realise a swarm was "the mating process"....prime swarm, old queen?

My bait hives vary from " designed " ply boxes to polystyrene salad boxes.

My lay lines depend which way the bed faces😴😴

I personally don't like castellations, I like to be able to slide blocks of frames along. For example if I take out the outers I slide 5 to the front and5 to the back, putting clean frames into the middle

I presume they are hoffman frames ,and you have 12 in. I use a THIN hive tool down the hoffman wedges on a centre frame to break the propolis seal, before levering out with a j tool. Try 11 frames and a dummy board. When really stuck, I have put a small lengths of 3 x 2" wood under the ends of...