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I successfully remove bumbles each year for people. What I do is spray them down with thin sugar and water. Gather them up put them in mini mating nuc and leave them somewhere nice and shady. They usually stay in there till the end of the season then leave.

Take2 frames of sealed brood plus bees and 1 of feed from another colony and unite them using newspaper to the queen and handful of bees. Bròod will hatch then you'll have 6 frames of bees to look after the new brood when the queen lays

I have an order pending for almost 2 months with then going to email again at end of week. Ordered several things mainly a pollen trap and queen pheromone strips. Other others from them have been v prompt. They did reply quickly to my previous chased email

With all that Turnip in the samples Baldrick will be happy.

Bramble and clover out already here 6wks early so June gap this year is last week in May gap. Done and dusted with no feeding

If going to the 3 into 1 at the same time personally I'd cage the queen for a day to make sure she's ok.

Ditto, but I use a one handed queen catcher.

Check each of the suspected quuenless one carefully incase there are virgin queens in. Also check to one with a little drone brood in to make sure it's not a laying worker (Multiple eggs in cells). Then place a couple of sheets of new paper on the top of the queenright colony. On top...

I enjoyed watching scouts waggle dancing on a swarm the other day. Was going to video it but i was balancing precariously across a ditch. Was interesting to watch which way they were advertising locations. Especially as I watched Tom Seeley's honey bee democracy video the week before. It was...

Yeah waited but she was off like a shot wasn't just a little wing stretch. Lesson learned though

Hatch a really nice virgin in the incubator. Went to put her in mating nuc. But left cage door open. I can confirm her wings were I good working order as she flew away :S

Personally I would leave it a week and see. 5 frames of sealed brood will be 10 frames of bees on hatch. Next inspection check for hatching and fresh eggs and bee coverage on frames and decide then. My gut feel without seeing it is maybe 2 weeks time would sound plausible but not yet

Ive got one and use apibioxil in it. I think its great. Lot easier than a traditional sublimator with 12 or 24v car battery. Yes you need to be v careful with any sublimation I use a full face mask rated for acids. And use acid rated rubber gloves. I would imagine the very thin copper...

Ive switched this year from using paper notes to using the Bee Watch app. There are a few improvements I think could be made to the app but generally I like it. You get QR codes for each colony then you just scan the qr code with the app and log inspection on your phone. You can also...

Thanks for all the replies. The sanding video is what I needed I think. The main problem I was having was that the wax was only drawn within last week and my Chinese tools were just going straight through the floor of the cells and not bending much. Ive just sanded one down and...

If there are eggs there it will be fine. If there is no Q the bees will make more Qcs from them. If ever you see Qcs then first thing to do is confirm if there are fresh eggs also if there are no eggs then don't destroy all the Qcs. leave one. At the start of your beekeeping...

Hi all. Just tried grafting for the first time. Any recommendations on the best grafting tools? The cheap ones I bought weren't great.

Hi on YouTube check out Beekeeping Basics by Stuart Spinks. He produces videos weekly and he is extremely good as explaining everything. The videos are targeted as helping beginner beekeepers. I have two people who I will be coaching this year that ive directed them to watching this...

I always use virgins rather than Qcs unless I have mated ones desperate for a colony. If I have Qcs I drop them in the incubator. When hatched I check their wings etc mark them and run them staight in a quuenless colony. Give the colony a lot of smoke. Then let her out on the top of...

Yes it's very common in my experience that LWs make QCs from drone larvae. Again just my experience but they seem to only do this when the workers first start laying. After a while the seem to stop doing it. Ive found ive had more success recovering the situation when they are building Qcs...