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I think I may be hesitant to base any of my purchasing on the auction prices based on that.

You can almost feel their expectation can't you.

Is this for bulk or just the odd kilo?

Anyone know roughly what the current wholesale price per kg beeswax is?

There, fixed it for you.

Started making candles for some stalls... Going to be busy with this all weekend and whilst its quicker to melt wax than in Autumn, it's also much slower to demoulding!

I've perused the title again.

I have this at some sites - certain areas there seem to be issues, others not. Does make you question yourself at times! I'm trying to be much more brutal with my tolerance level for defensiveness. Having more mini mating nucs helps as you can rear more queens and only keep the really good ones.

Checked the uni hives, lovely contented buzzing albeit slightly warm. A couple of grumpy guards on one colony with one of this year's queens, others doing well. Hopefully three shallows from the Buckfast colony, others- a locally caught swarm and their descendants less productive. Useful...

If you're keeping them and doing any selection for certain behaviours or traits, they are no longer local bees but a selected variant descended from locally acquired stock... So claiming they're local bees or naturally adapted to the area is incorrect... Then there's also the highly spurious...

It's not conservation.

You're pointing out they turn to a locally adapted type when the selection influence of man is removed (although potentially different to what would be there had man not been involved at all), which is rather the point I'm making with bees. Whilst man is still selecting, you end up with a strain...

Yes, you are. This is really basic biology in terms of understanding natural and artifical selection. The beekeeper applying a selection pressure means the genetics differ from what would happen naturally. The bees may well continue to do well in the area but this is no longer a naturally...

You seem to have missed the point. If there is a hypothetical free living population adapted to an area, as soon as a beekeeper keeping a colony of those bees does anything to select for their preferred genetics- or even something as simple as knocking down some queen cells- they are applying a...

Could be Carpathian if you compare the queen's markings to the one on the BMH website, or even have some Carniolan or something else in her. Dark does not automatically mean AMM.

I'm not sure heterosis is the correct term here. Heterosis, or hybrid vigour, is where a trait in the offspring is greater than the average of the two parents. This is usually used in the context of those parents already being above average in that trait. So for example, having a very docile...

It is rubbish though. Doesn't matter how well meaning it was, it was ineffective then and is ineffective now plus causes stress to the colony. It is completely fair to call it rubbish even if it was the best option at the time.

Had a call around 20:15 this evening. Some kind individual had dumped a box of bees on a rec ground at the end of someone else's garden. These were found by a dog walker or, more correctly, their dog. The home owner reported being stung at least four times and pursued perhaps the length of a...

I missed that... Will blame that bit on colour blindness!

Oh yes, remiss of me- most raptors have yellow legs. Might just be a woodpigeon...