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LOL..possibly so......thats what I get for reading stuff when half asleep at the dead of night....then responding in the morning from the machine I am logged in on at the office..without re reading the posts. Sorry Gilberdyke!

No agenda. 1. It was not my idea. 2. It ain't going to happen. If you look for a concrete underlining of this...the project would have taken an investment of close to £100k. After a fair bit of research it was apparent returns (as in profits) would be minimal...albeit not a loss as it would...

Depends who you buy them from. Some just mate to whatever is around and don't really drone flood. Others only mate them in areas where they strongly flood and control (as best as they can) what is in the drone pool. Dont ask you to name names in open forum...if you want to take this exchange...

I am a bit sorry a lot of people get all worked up about how you say things then forget to LISTEN to some of the wisdom that comes from you. In that line you have the nub of the issue. In the areas where our friends in Italy operate they have practically eliminated EFB through proper...

Jolanta does indeed do pin tests...but only on colonies already selected for use in the queen unit. By her fussyness about bees that keep a tidy hive it seems she has been incidentally selecting for this. Some of her stock......even before the pin tesat was being used by her,.... tested very...

Waited overnight to consider my response to this as it could be seen as deliberately provocative. One death threat if I ever set foot on the island of Ireland with bees was enough, never mind the diatribe from both sides and constant reposting the *very* incomplete tabloid coverage of our 2009...

French black bees are not all that early in their availability. Will not suffice for the truly early market. Cypriot are expensive and Greek are crossed on A m.cecropia which is a pretty modest bee in the north and west of UK and Ireland. Needing to get black bees early exposes you to the 'back...

Its actually a very clear yes. France has more AMM colonies than all of the British Isles combined....by orders of magnitude.. there are dozens of smaller scale breeders over there who offer 'noires' among the lines they sell. There is history in this too that may well mean some of the special...

Yes indeed...the milk tops were the work of Blue ****. Showing my age that I remember that. Also when it was hard frost and the tops were pushed up onto little towers.

Suspect Great ****....can be surprisingly destructive....just has the look of their work.

For more years than I care to remember I have had a running disagreement with some of the 'local black bee' people about us breeding for our desired criteria, using the occasional bought in breeder queen and also offering the same stack, and Buckfast, who stated vehemently that we were ruining...

Some discussion of associate membership of BFA here. At the time we made the transition (stop laughing after the shoes thread!") from the old model to the modern version of the BFA the associate membership was introduced. Its intention was to provide an entry route for those who did not meet...

To quote the late great Kirsty McColl 'I doubt you'd survive!'

Foraging in these conditions is generally bad news. Colonies that are overactive at this time usually die out. Foraging in really low temps when there is no real purpose is futile. Leads to early burnout. However...in the original post it is not clear what the temperatures actually were at the...

As a board member I can say I did not hear of any 'spanner in the works'. Also...there is no set number of colonies owned for entry. Some have less. There are frequent applications from people who are just too early in their move from a hobby to a professional, sometimes even just starting out...

Listened to a talk some time ago about AVM. In many cases it may well be an illusion.....there are drones from other apiaries congregating in the area. Their DCA just happens to be adjacent to your hives. The apiary drones may well actually be toddling off to another place 'on the hunt'.

This thread reminds me of one of the key distinctions I make when talking to groups about how we can possibly run so many colonies on what to most seem very short visits. What turns a hobby beekeeper into a potential professional. The distinction between what you NEED to know...........and what...

Funny you should say that. I share my home with a Chinese lady..have done for quite some years. She reckons quite a few things I say sound Confucian (as well as confusing). I probably know, from long before she appeared on the scene...a tiny handful of Confucian bits and pieces mostly about...

We have that one here...as a little bit of humour among the reference books...its actually very good!

No superman. I have staff. Rather a lot of them. Wages day after the end of each month is painful. The queen and nuc unit is run by Jolanta with very little day to day requirement of my time, the bees have Pawel as the chargehand and we have a discussion every morning about the days work...