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If the hive had lots of healthy bees then surely they'd have done a better job of clearing up all that mess visible in the photos, all the same, well done for getting on with vaping and good luck with saving them. If they continue to go down hill I'd take the hit and not pass on their problems...

Yup, lots of dwv and dead brood under cappings, colony may be too far gone to pull around with treatment.

Intriguing, do share the different jobs

The swienty ones do, the abelo ones come pre painted, in fact the abelo ones are superb imho whereas the swienty ones need a bee space and painting. The maisemore ones are 500mm by 500mm and come unpainted but are so thick I haven't bothered painting them and have suffered zero leaks so far...

A good portion of my colonies are totally broodless at the moment, native bees in a dearth, but without looking you dobt know and some for some reason (younger queens, different cycles?) do have a few frames of brood so vaping would be pretty futile for these.

Good idea

Yeah they eat the bait you can get over the counter for fun, its definitely worth the £50 the rat catcher charges to put the strong stuff down, they're so clever there's only so many you'll get in traps before the other buggers learn. I still set them to catch new arrivals once the rat mans...

Me too

the result of my last graft of the season, wish they'd all been this good

Honey stored in cells has been filtered by the magic of the proventriculus and isnt exposed to anything but the sheer cell wall, that will seed crystalisation. As soon as its extracted its been exposed to lots of particles that can seed its crystalisation.

I sell to a number of shops and they come and go, most stick and some I've been selling to from last century, no point getting agitated about it, though it is frustrating seeing a substandard product sitting on a shelf not getting sold where once I did good trade.

Also perhaps a quick note to mention that though this stacking of supers from various hives to clear is generally a workable scheme, if there's any efb(or afb, cpbv or chronic nosema) in the area its best avoided.

Sort of, drifting is a thing and disorienting a load of bees will increase it

Anything that compromises the general health and immunity of a colony can lead to greater susceptibility to any of the endemic bugs and virus in the bachground.

As others have said, best not split weak colonies this time of year. Another option, quite a good one I think, it used to be quite common practice, is to buy a nuc to go into winter with. Most nuc suppliers are glad to give a good discount at this time of year, and with some careful husbandry...

Offline at the mo, soon to be back up and running all being well. Still on faceache

Flagging people with opposing views as bigots is also fashionable, maybe Amm beekeepers will get cancelled by the herd🤣

So maybe a better analogy would be Scottish wild cats, and you're arguing that introducing a load of domestic toms is fine as they're the same species and can inter breed. There's no doubt in my mind that small pockets of virtually native wild cats and honey bees are going to be a thing of the...

What is the repeated false claim about "keeping local bees"?

The bees will adapt, maybe it'll take us as a species to fail to give them time to reach their natural equilibrium again but they've been around for many more millennia than we have and I guess they'll still be around virtually unchanged by the time we've fizzled out or been superceded.