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I've regretted not having shared Terry Pratchet with my son who read all his books. When I shared your post with him just now he wrote straight back with this: 'Terry Pratchett mentions bees quite a lot in some books. A particular character keeps them. A few characters can “borrow” the minds of...

I knew about bees leaving with the queen on mating flights but I didn't know that this process could look so much like a swarm. Looking back through past posts, I came across this: I thought that was plausible.

Yes, three was plenty fondant. The cells that went into other hives were okay.

I arrived at an apiary to see a swarm come into the air from one hive. Glad that I'd got the timing right, I waited to see where it would settle. After about ten minutes, they all went back to the hive. I'd removed the queen from this hive a couple of weeks before, and reduced the cells to one...

I had 18 nice queen cells from a cell raiser in my final round of grafts for this season. This was about three weeks ago. I transferred 6 of them to hives and 12 to mini nucs. These nucs already had brood and the queens had been removed. A couple of days after inserting the cells I found that...

Coincidence! What are the odds of two pictures of empty queen cells stood in rows going up within a couple of hours. Mine came after and I had not seen the picture from @SWEET.

One of many silly things I've done recently but they're not getting the space on my desk any longer. I should add that I discarded these earlier queens because of doubts about being properly mated.

As you say. Ecclesiastes 1:9

I was trying to suggest that people who want to become garden beekeepers might change their minds when they find out more (possibly with a book like this), and that in fact it does not have the benefit that they thought it might have from an environmental perspective.

Back to the topic: I've recently read Richard's book from cover to cover (with a bit of skimming as you do with a reference book). It thoroughly deserves the accolade it receives in BeeCraft today. I think it would be an excellent book to give out a BKA Introductory courses. Although the first...

I've used vertical splits for swarm control this season and it has worked well. I followed K and D Basterfield's version. K and D said that they generally didn't bother removing all cells except one in the upper (queenless) box and found that it didn't result in swarms. So I tried that, just...

Never tried that. The mind boggles. Do you need to thin the honey to the consistency of thick syrup?

It's been a long day. Queen stuff this morning, then about 25 hives this afternoon and evening. I love how the bees in summer make a gentle hum, no matter how many are flying. Even the last hive, which is very defensive, didn't have its usual roar. This time I found that queen immediately, so...

All the best. I'm always keeping a lookout. Not seen this year so far. Which symptoms did you see?

It's something I've been trying and it's too soon to evaluate. It's meant to work as 'assisted' or 'enforced' supersedure, and apparently does sometimes. On one recent occasion, I seem to have lost both the resident queen and the new one from the cell.

Mmm. Spices: such as? Two days?! I'll take your word for it. In the fridge obv.

I'm about to restock some mini nucs. The virgins emerged in the incubator this morning. Anything I should know about 'running' virgin queens into a mini nuc? The mated queens have just been removed.

Maybe I should try that. I need any recorder I use to record me more clearly for audio to text to be intelligible and a mic might do that. Or maybe I'm a hopeless case, with my accent. Of course I could just listen to the recordings at home but it all takes time.

I asked myself this question just yesterday and came to the same conclusion. One of the great things about this forum, info just when you need it.

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