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Not much will break me out of my summer absence. But this is one. The sad fact of having a decade long experience of dealing with EFB means I can assure you that not all cases are so obvious as showing the contorted larvae etc, especially of they are really good cleaners. Sometimes the larva...

Probably amongst my very final posts of the season........things are marching on and spare time now vanishes...in the blink of an eye it will be September......that's how our seasons feel. May June July and August just vanish in a blur. November (my most hated month) December and January feel...

Been out 'flagging' OSR sites all day ready for the teams moving bees this coming week. Passed quite a few apairies of smaller scale beekeepers and amazed how many were in there, fully suited, opening their hives up and examining them. It was 11C and in this area they are not growing yet...

In all but a couple of specials for customers it IS iserted into a grooved topbar and then embedded..so the top section does not flop when it gets warm. The ones with no top groove are for those who want vertical wiring...in which case the wires themselves hold it in place. Its of limited...

I can assure you it is NOT a myth that heather is an inferior winter food. Yes...most winters you will get away with it...but until you do a significant number of colonies over a decade of trying...which we have....you dont find the real pattern. Maybe one year in five or more it is a problem...

There are so many conventions based on opinions...rather than actual experimentation. For sure...done the tests years ago...... Bees do somewhat better with the same spacing all the way up. They also do better in an all deep set up. Spacing the frames out and getting really fat combs was...

NEVER castellations...anywhere. Being able to slide the frames along is a massive time advantage in all parts of the hive..with castellations you have to lift every frame individually. Everyone to their own but to me castellations are a museum piece and half the speed you can work a hive...

This afternoon I had a long call with a member of the trade very familiar with this story from the inside. The article is not complete and would not be nearly so sensational if the full story was printed about the UK linked findings. 1. None of it involved honey that was UK honey or purported...

I used to sell Greek pine 'honey' in the past..to some of the UK's top retailers. Its a honeydew rather than a honey....some analytical methods do not include the sometimes very complex and unusual sugars found in it. They are still sugars...........but in the mangled words of McCoy in Star...

There are multiple threads on this across multiple media and massive conclusions are being jumped to by lots of people, worst of all the journalists involved. There is very little, or even nil, adulteration of UK origin honey. Also beware of HAN. They are a pressure organisation set up and...

Agree with you there Michael. We use a parallel colour system to be sure we know which are our 'bred' queens and which are just field raised. Its the same for customers if they find a violet, or orange, or pink..and so on..marked queen. It is a very helpful management tool.

Never said it was. However water miscible and oil miscible compounds tend to stay within their own family of mediums. (maybe not strictly scientific..but unless they are specific types of compounds like soaps which are partially soluble in both then they keep largely to their own type. OA and...

Gee...what a strange thread. Take it down to the simplest basics. Oxalic acid is a water soluble substance. It is not an oil miscible substance to any degree. We handle many tonnes of wax a year.....both our own and imported...and see and obtiain analyses. We NEVER bleach our wax, the bees...

If it truly is fake. Chinese honey CIF Felixstowe currently less than you can buy sugar for. You could feed bees on it (not serious!) as invert is now even more expensive. If it is fake it would not have AFB/EFB risk with it...........(but probably does!). However much of the UK price on sugar...

Had my spring meeting with British sugar this morning. Currently trading at £1000/t and still rising. Astonishingly 95p is not looking high. Even the rejected joblots we buy are going up by 150 per tonne compared to last year.

Some makes do not have the groove in the topbar and so cannot get into the head, but that is more common with vertically wired frames. However that is guessing as I do not know what style Richard uses. We prefer the grooved topbar and the foundation up into it....you do not get any 'flopping...

Had the perennial question about the wax being short sized. In this type of frame it is best that way....the gap avoids sagging or bellying and once the bees join it on themselves it stays nice and flat. It is international normal that way.

I presume Helen has got this in hand? If not I will ask her tomorrow.....she is away today.

That is about the going rate to candle making companies for rendered clean block wax (they melted filter and dry it again anyway so 'showbench shiny' not needed). Makes the 2 for 1 'straight swap' deals seem very expensive.... Even at 12.00/kg, at 2kg wax for 1kg foundation in exchange, it...

Not going to go too deep into this on mainstream forum......it goes contrary to the interests of those who sponsor the place. Best done by PM. Have generally tried to avoid commercialising my presence on here.