Recent content by Wingy

Just got these from Thorne bee supplies. I think they are a good idea. Any thoughts?

Ok, the bit I’m having difficulty getting my head around is how a queen changes from being born F0 and virgin to being mated. Surely it’s just the offspring that would change? For example: Pedigree Border terrier bitch (F0) mated with pedigree border dog (F0) = pedigree Border pups (F0) Take 2...

. This doesn’t make sense unless I’m missing something? F0 Queen = known parents both Queen mother & drones So why would the next generation be F1? As the F0 Queen is mated as above so her offspring are known. If a Queen is selected at this stage she should also be F0 virgin if then isolated...

But you do know the drones she mated with either isolated or inseminated

Help me out here. Is my understanding correct? If you buy a breeder Queen of known parentage both mother and drones then this is classed as F0 - right? So all its offspring will be F0 genetics ? Now if you produce queens from this am I correct in thinking the queens will again be F0, but if open...

Fell out with BE years ago and have tried many times to unsubscribe from their mailing list without success. Was getting 4-5 emails a week. Wondered why they had stopped a few weeks ago which coincidentally was when I received an email from Haden Bees. Reported & hopefully blocked. Not a company...

I have 6 apiary sites (including my garden where I keep my breeder queens) the total round trip is 17 miles.

Each colony that produced a charged queen cell I took all the brood off them and gave them drawn comb left Queen and all bees to carry on. The frames of brood I destroyed anything that resembled a queen cell and distributed the frames between other colonies

This season I’ve tried a new method of swarm control in order to keep my colony numbers down. It worked quite well and as such I’ve kept to 40 colonies going into winter. However some colonies ended up on treble brood and massive. I would like to get rid of about 7 or 8 with queens I don’t like...

Usually make my Nuc’s up for over wintering end of July, have even had to remove the odd frame of brood occasionally as some built up that fast I feared over crowding and a strong HB flow may have triggered a late swarm. Other thing to watch for is robbing especially if you have strong colonies...

Yes pear drops for me

Bramble all over the place here and HB won’t be far off either as it’s 3’ high in places now

So got to that stage now with 30 hives and have got to say enough is enough, but come swarm season before re-combining that number can seriously increase so here’s my plan and so far so good I thought I would share So hives shows sign of swarm preparation. - charged Queen cells 1) move the...

That thought was on my mind, although still loads in flower it is past its best and with the dry spell probably not as much nectar to offer

Just wondering if anyone doing inspections over the last couple of days have noticed any change in their bees behaviour? Have seen some suggestions that the recent solar / geometric (northern lights) may have had some effect?? My situation:- Have 14 hives on one site and all are calm with no...