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Yep it's pollen. I can smell surprisingly yucky until you get used to it. Try smearing a little bit on your hand, you should get a yellowish stain that smells sweeter as it dries

I've never seen Ivy flower so prolifically, I'm up to three supers again on each hive.

I agree with some of the earlier posts. Get your Varroa treatment in, spare supers off and then just leave them until the cold weather hits when you can check on their stores.

I thought I'd try something different this year and removed the queen excluders from my hives, I'm not sure if this is something I'll persist with next year, it's just context to my question. I carried out an inspection yesterday and was surprised to find that not only was the brood box...

I won't be giving it to my bees again, they hoovered the stuff up and stored it, ruining a super full of honey

Thanks for all of the replies. To address a few points. The brood box and nearly two supers are full of brood, so the queen isn't moving up because of ventilation issues. I'm not feeding yet, in fact I usually leave enough stores that I rarely need to feed in the winter. It's the timing that...

Hardly any from what I've seen. Probably just as well as the drones were kicked out of both my hives very early this year

MODS - apologies if this is in the wrong place. My wife is making beeswax candles to sell in aid of the charity BLISS. If you have any wax going spare and wouldn't mind shipping to me I'd be grateful if you could PM. I'll cover the shipping cost of course. Thanks

Well she's in to the supers now so I'll see how that pans out, but yes I think you're right, lot's of feeding and an eventual move to double brood

If she'd got her groove on back in June I would have been thrilled.

I have a first year queen in one of my hives and she's not only filled the brood box with eggs but she's filled a super and moving on to a second (obviously I'm not using a QX). Ordinarily I'd add another brood box and be unconcerned, but at this time of year it seems excessive and with so many...

Not a bad year, started poorly but improved. My single hive swarmed twice, on each occasion the swarms were caught and given to another beekeeper. I also found a queen egg faily late so carried out a split and successfully saw that through to a mated/laying queen. I was concerned that the...

As has already been said, what you're seeing is good space management from the bees. Of course they don't know that you're going to whisk away all of their stores so make sure you don't take the supers too late as you want to give them a chance to fill the brood frames with whatever forage they...

Lots early on but nearly all gone by the end of May, saw a few being kicked out

Deep in the ear canal. The amplified angry buzzing made the experience all the more unpleasant. It was painful enough to persuade me to suit up whenever I go near my hives

No rain in my part of Surrey for 9 weeks but there's still some forage coming in. I'm seeing the bees all over the kind of garden plants you usually only see bumbles on, so maybe they're falling back on to a plan B.

I can only tell you of my own experience. I got stung on my wedding finger last year and it stayed swollen for nearly a month, with a small lump being present for 6 weeks. Since then I've had a few more stings, including one in the ear, which whilst painful did not result in swelling or lumps...

The third year is where it really starts to come together...or was it 23rd?

Can pollen be fed back into the hive?

They're being difficult this year, I think I need to have a word with the queen. But thanks for easing my fears E