Recent content by redpola

Cool story. :)

Got em. After an hour of banging frames together and a hastily assembled spare hive, I dropped half of them into a cardboard box and then scooped as many of the rest in with my hand. I'm hopeful that I got the queen, though it was hard to see anything and my girlfriend who was holding the box...

Hi all, So, it seems my single hive has decided it's time to swarm. The swarm is in a tree about ten feet from the hive and are easily accessible. There is also a small "beard" of bees in the hive. A tap on the box tells me there are plenty of bees left inside. Now, this being still my first...

I'll add my vote for a non-flash-based live chatroom. Cheers! Neil.

I watched an episode of QI the other day in which they posed the question of what animal has the same common name as its latin name. They could only find one - the Boa Constrictor. I humbly submitted that our friend, Varroa Destructor is another such example. Agree? Disagree? I'm no zoologist...

You can form a company at, for instance, www.theformationscompany.com for five quid. I just searched google for "247 company formation" and a bunch of them pop up. You're required to fill in some stuff, including assigning some share capital to your company (for instance 1 share at £1), choose...

Congratulations! :)

I think I might slip the super on and see how they get on. They're certainly showing no signs of slowing up - in fact they seem busier now than in early July when they arrived.

Thanks for all the replies. I wasn't saying that I'd necessarily been given bad advice - but more that I'm greedy! I'll probably extract and treat this week I think.

Thanks Chris. I'm pretty central - Broom. Near enough to the centre (1m) for these to be urban bees. :)

There's been mention on here of specifically trying to get some Ivy honey. It's really not clear to me, this being my first year and all, how close to the winter we go before tucking the bees up for the year. If I put an empty super on now (drawn out) when I would I be thinking about taking it...

Sorry I forgot to say - this is a healthy strong colony.

I've a super whose foundation hasn't been drawn out. Is it likely that if I put it on now it will be drawn out this year, or am I putting too much drain on the ladies resources?

I've been advised twice now by local experienced beekeepers to get my (only) super off my (only) hive and extract it immediately, then treat for varroa right away. I suspect there is an element of "go away and stop bothering me" about this advice and in fact at least one of the advice givers has...

In the world of computer software, I was once told that ignorance is a reasonable defence when producing so-called clean-room implementations of software algorithms. So if I invented something I called a "web browser" provably from first principals then I'd have a sturdy answer when I was sued...