Recent content by Tomo

Some of the best advice I received from this forum was: use the smoker to control the bees. Two or three good puffs at the entrance or underneath the mesh floor then........wait at least three to four minutes, they need to get feeding on honey. Then slowly lift the crown board and a couple of...

Out of interest: I have an active wasp nest above the double glazed bathroom window frame, top floor of semi. They look to be going into the box barge board (usually where you get birds nests) above the window. I have left them alone for now, as they are not near my hives,however, once they...

No definitely Weetabix, ideas anyone?

Hi All. This time of year my bees are usually finishing their OSR foraging, however, this year there is not any about. My last couple of inspections I have noticed a smell very similar to weetabix, before opening up and during inspection. Any ideas as to the forage? Thanks.

To get back to my point......there was no sign of Queen cells. This is more a case of a newly mated queen getting into an established built up nuc (she must have drifted? Maybe I should re-site my nucs round the corner?), that had a fat laying Buckfast bought from a very respected supplier, UK...

I checked both nucs every week, no sign of QCs or any problems at all. Nice build up of brood all by the book then....hello who are you you huge fat unclipped unmarked Queen!

I had two nucs headed by Buckfast Queens, both started completely from scratch, absolutely certain they were the only queen in the box. Both have been in their nucs for nearly four weeks..both building well. One ready to re-house in full size hive. Inspected today and found a different Queen in...

This is probably a daft question but here goes. I have a few drawn supers with old style large plastic ends. They are still in good order, however, a few times when separating supers to inspect I have pulled a frame or two up out of these supers, along with bees i.e. from the super below! I have...

Just a thought about the quality of Queens......if you wanted to win the grand national you wouldn't enter a donkey for the race, you would use a thoroughbred horse bred for the purpose of winning. :winner1st:

RAB, I have only just put in a test frame. There appeared to be two emergency qcs but as I said I dont know what these were as there was no material there for them to work with, they looked as though they were made on drone, therefore, I broke them down and introduced a test frame. Why is...

Hi all, I did an AS and left the Q- section alone with one sealed Queen cell for the usual 3 weeks. Checked tonight expecting to see eggs or larvae. Instead I found the empty QC which had the emergence hole (now somewhat old), no sign of a Queen, but also two large emergency QC's. I assume these...

I think the bees will treat a virgin like any other bee. Just run her in through the vent/porter bee escape hole. Until she is mated she will be ignored.

Yes Finman I agree, I do not want chilled brood. That is not my goal. What I meant was that given the choice of a lost prime swarm or a few chilled brood due to inspecting in cool temperatures, when I am expecting them to swarm, I would sacrifice a few brood. Of course I would prefer that no...

Thanks for your replies. I have inspected twice so far, my hives are in a nice sheltered spot so it was warm enough for a t-shirt when I had them open. Different story now! Given the choice I would rather risk a few chilled brood than lose half the bees. No brainer! The bees would sort it out...

Hi. this is my third year keeping bees. According to my records and memory my bees usually start swarm preparations about the last week of April (ish). I know things move about according to the weather, however, armed with this information and temperatures of 6-8 degrees celcius at the moment...