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I finally completed the tranfer and the dadant parts have been removed. Brood comb was suspended in four frames using string and drawing pins to fix string to frame tops. That worked really well. The honeycomb was put in and eke above a crown board and a queen excluder. There were a lot more...

There appears to be more comb (and bees) in the feeder than in the Warre. Lets check that with numbers: feeder external dimensions 10 x 500 x 430 = 21L. Supposed to be good for 14 L of liquid. A warre box is 18 L, which they have partially filled about 5/8 of incomplete comb = 11L. Therefore...

I got round to following the advice from this thread albeit many months late! The bees had built 5 comb in the Warre box but the brood chamber remained in the Dadant feeder box above, and honey stores were placed also there. The hive bees in the Warre parts seemed to be unemployed with no...

You found a seller of bees with incompatible frames to your hive. If he/she had Layens, I would definitely consider starting with the Layens hive, which is supposedly the most popular in Spain. Very cheap too! The online sellers (e.g.Tienda apicultor, Apidroche, etc) sell painted (linseed oil)...

The title of this thread was appropriate. I lost the swarm. Either they ran out of food, absconded, or have been robbed. Given that plenty of capped brood remained, it seems unlikely that they absconded. There were no nectar stores remaining and the feeder box was empty but for some dead bees...

Randy Oliver describes how the top of a hive is sealed with propolis (probably knowledge from Seeley's work), and its beneficial if top cover is insulated rather than breathable, and he discusses how bees produce and use moisture, benefiting from the energy gained in the process, and possibly...

Just in case useful for others, Randy Oliver gave a great presentation about overwintering bees. Dispels the chimney idea. Bees need insulation and sealed upper chambers, and the ventilated floor would be better off closed in winter, and the entrance reduced to a minumum. Well that truly...

Late afternoon, there were many more bees outside the hive than ever seen before, perhaps 100 in the air, and many congregating on the stand just below the entrance. These were probably not orientation flights, which were evident early this morning. What was unusual was that many flew under the...

@rolande Ah! I see. Better with older comb. Thanks for the clarification.

Tying broken comb into a massive Dadant frame didn't go very well. Its over 30 degreeC so the comb was very soft. The tying wire wanted to slice through it rather than support it. Masking tape was not up to the task. I've watched a video of this done successfully for Warre with tiny frames, but...

(Admanga, not Dani) The bees are there somewhere! They are visible when the orange trees are in flower, much earlier in the year. The motorway north towards Valencia is traversed by bees, lots and lots of them. Car windscreen got plastered with a sticky mess of bees and nectar, not easy to wash off.

I put out three hives as swarm traps in June, two double Warre's and one Dadant 10 brood box. For lack of spares, I took back the crown board from the Dadant to use elsewhere. As luck would have it, a swarm was caught by the Dadant sometime between 7 and 20 July. The swarm trap that worked was...

This hive now has its inhabited feeder box at the top (completely full with a mix of brood comb and honey reserves), warre brood chamber with 5 of 8 comb drawn from top bars, and a second warre box below in case they need more space. They seem to be doing well on their own (obviously I can't...

Hello James, I'm just back from a holiday in Marina Alta. I saw only one bee in two weeks. Delighted nonetheless. I did not see any hives, though I cycled around the countryside near Teulada, just within a radius of 10 km this time. Plenty of flowers in gardens, but the countryside looks barren...

@monoenduro, I just put spare roof tiles on top of the hive to help shade them from direct sun. The flat tin roof was getting too hot to touch. @Antipodes, It rained yesterday but I expect proper summer (30 degC) to arrive soon, which means every day sunny and very little rain through to...

The bees mentioned above are now in a "frankenhive", Dadant above, Warre below. They are building new comb in the Warre and appear very happy. Lime blossom is out (silver lime) and their numbers are increasing steadily. I obtained a second swarm today, 5 Dadant frames from a split. Also...

Read this week Treatment Free Beekeeping, David Heaf. Excellent book. Points out that those successful in going treatment free in North Wales typically had insulated hives, and there is a photo of an externally cork clad hive. This led me to a web search and I came across a paper by researchers...

All right, all right. Of course I meant colonies not bees. This thread is not a welcoming place for a newbee to hang around! I'll move on.

I've read Joe Bleasdale's "Honey Without Harm" and "Care of bees in Warre and Top Bar Hives" and really enjoyed reading both books, the first is more recent and includes a lot of the second, which the author explains on the back cover. For 4E for the kindle version this is a gift. Even if you...

@jenkinsbrynmair absolutely not forgetting the sauna aspect. Guillaume and Freres even though that an antiseptic shower is created with a heavily propolised mosquito net above the top bars or frames and condensation containing propolis raining down on the bees. @madasafish, Since writing the...