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Accidental success. I mentioned in another thread that I had acted prematurely in replacing what I thought was a missing queen, the outcome was positive, here's what happened: I made a plait after the old queen swarmed from my main hive, putting one QC into a nuc and leaving one in place. Both...

I mentioned in an earlier thread that I though my main hive was queenless following a split, and that I would be adding the queen from the split to the main hive. So she went in earlier today together with three frames of capped brood and workers. I removed two mostly empty frames and one that...

Thanks. I went for the former, quicker approach. I'm hoping that the fact that the two hives and been in close proximity and that the bees all share the same mother will help. I placed the new queen in the old hive flanked by two frames of friendly bees. I watched for 15 mins and didn't see any...

~Hope you lads and lasses can offer some advice. The situation is this. I have a National hive which is queenless and I have a NUC from a split which has a laying queen with capped brood. I want to combine them but.... The frames in the NUC are deep and the frames in the brood box are deep as...

I appreciate the gesture, thanks. Hopefully I can galvanise some action in the hives this week, I hear that Hugh grant movies tend to make the ladies broody, so maybe I'll put in on loop on my Ipad and leave that playing in the garden

Awesome. I can't help but feel a landing strip would make them a bit more productive.

That would be an excellent suggestion if both my hives weren't currently eggless :nature-smiley-013:

Thanks, that's sort of encouraging. I think I'll give it a couple more weeks, but that would mean my youngest workers are 4 weeks old by that stage so it could be cutting things close

My hive swarmed on the 18th May, fortunately I was able to find two sealed QCs in the brood box and took one and three frames off to a nuc, leaving the other in place. At the beginning of last week I inspected both colonies. In my national the queen had hatched but there's no sign of her now...

Congratulations and good work. I've only had the pleasure of catching my own swarms.

When you say swarmed are you sure that's what you mean? If the queen swarmed from the NUC she would have left half the colony and some queen cells. If she and all of the other bees in the NUC left then that's absconding and simply catching them and returning to the NUC is unlikely to be a solution.

Swarming isn't always prompted by the lack of space. It seems odd that only one QC should be present. Is the colony strong enough to do a split? Can you lift the old queen into your other hive?

I saw a blackbird only yesterday with about 4 in its beak (presumably off to a nest)

We get a huge honey flow here. I harvested the main Summer 2017 crop in early September, and by the end of the month I had nearly three supers full of ivy honey, most of it setting fast. Most of it got cut from the frames and I've been feeding some back to the bees at opportune moments. I've had...

Has anyone had a problem with this? A local beekeeper mentioned that he lost a number of colonies over the winter after feeding back ivy honey. I'm currently feeding some to a split which has chomped through the initial stores I included

I don't react well to stings, I think 30 would have been enough to put me down. It's quite an experience when you realize that the bees have figures out they need to get inside the suit to do damage. I've had a crowd of them trying to squeeze into my boots and crawl under the velcro tab over the...

Nothing worse than bees inside the suit. Glad you're OK

They're wax melters. Edit- Uncle Betty beat me to it, stealing my glory hhhrrrmmmppphh

Just got savaged whilst poking around my hives, not sure if it's the thundery weather or that both hives are on virgin queens, but it was carnage. Six stings around my ankles and two on each hand all within the space of a few seconds. Last week they were like kittens, this week...monsters.

If you've only got 6 frames of drawn out in your brood chamber is it really sensible to create two weak colonies? If you have two hives wouldn't it be better to try to lure a swarm or buy in a NUC? It sounds to me like you're trying to rush things because you've bought in the equipment, that...