Recent content by thisgardener

aint that the truth!!! 10 days of dry weather and spare equipment been used rapidly :-)

I have used leather gloves in the past, also marigold type gloves, the black industrial type marigolds, and the thin white latex type gloves . nowadays I have a pair of marigolds in the bee box just incase but routinely do not wear gloves when inspecting colonies .I find the advantages in being...

we used to keep a couple of hives on our allotments, alls well until someone gets stung and you will be surprised how quickly peoples views then change. we moved ours off the plots to stop the bees getting blamed for every horse fly bite wasp sting etc. I personally would not entertain an...

we keep on brood and a half through winter and have never had any problems with placing layed up frames from the super into the brood box. good luck :-)

I agree that abandoned derelict sites etc may look unattractive to people but are often the oasis in a desert for wildlife. we as a species always want to sanitize and get things in order so we feel pleased with ourselves in achieving something we think is an improvement. its our species that...

keep polly ticks out of it and be grateful that at least some organisations are willing to raise the plight of bees and wildlife.

what I should have said was checking food twice weekly and replenishing where needed , its been going down like no tomorrow. so anyway to take something positive out of the situation . we don't have to worry about shelling out for extra hives to expand into this season just repopulate the...

I will go and explain to our surviving colonies your theory on scare mongering unfortunately its too late for the 11 we have lost over the last 6 weeks. 1 degree in day time and hard frosts each night . feeding twice a week and watching our hard work perish and then reading you say about scare...

you can't beat the vegetablists for weird views as to why erveryone whose not like them is wrong and bad. poor pasty faced devils .

now changed, and theres a lot of early winter heather starting to flower.

north cheshire. any help ?

checked all our sites today and a lot of colonies were busy bringing in what looked like viburnum and possibly mahonia pollen . mahonias are flowering already around here. weve noticed a substantial increase in colony weight since the middle of october.

no losses all 35 hive doing well

we clip but dont mark

wildman this laughable your bees are arriving you come on a forum and rag half the people who could offer you advice help etc. stockport? yep there are quite a few beekeepers around stockport so many in fact theres a cheshire bee keepers branch based in stockport. but with the attitude ive...