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I had a Nuc with a swarm that had a virgin queen that I had been giving syrup. It never drew the combs like crazy. I did my first check the other day and they had stopped at about 4 of the 6 frames and then filled them with nectar/syrup. I could not find a queen and after putting in a test frame...

I started two hives last year at the end of Jul. One lot of bees I was donated and I bought 5 frames of brood and a queen for the other. Though I rapidly chilled most of them 😳 I got them both through winter and now have 8 going. 1 is a recent swarm from elsewhere and the rest are from my own...

Thanks all. Even though it is a bit of a pain I think I’ll leave them at my mates then. With the nice weather finally at least I hope they will mate quickly.

I have some queens I moved in apideas to a friends place. They will potentially be mating at the moment. Can I move them back here before she has mated? Will she reorientate like the other foragers ?

That’s for bottom bee space. Abelo 12 frame is top bee space. So the excluder fills up the bee space on top resting on the frames. The frames above have a Mm or so gap to the excluder which then gets filled with comb.

Abelo 12 frame hives are top bee space. I bought the 12 frame queen excluders and didn't realise that they sit inside the bee space on the top of the frames. So now there is no way for bees to navigate over the top of the frames. I'm also finding the frames in the box above are all getting...

Was the footage any use in getting them nicked?

My hive referred to in the 'Queen cells torn down' thread has now fulfilled its role. I have now raised 6 queens and want to convert it to a queen right colony. I had placed a frame in on Sunday to work out if there was a virgin running around, which there was. She has been dispatched and I had...

Brilliant, I had all the remaining 6 queens emerge. The expected date was yesterday. I had one Tuesday ( I'd put into a colony before the rampage) 2 yesterday. 1 overnight. 1 this afternoon. I peeled back the caps of the last 2 and the queens emerged a little pale so they'd probably have come...

So the mystery is over. I must have missed a queen cell the other week. I found a virgin wondering around, so she is no more. I didn't want her nasty genes. Seems like I was in the nick of time to save the last 6 cells.

Maybe that is why. Not sure. The supers and top had a lot of bees but not the bottom brood box. I was doing it as a preemptive strike and also to let me lob in a few queen grafts.

Weirdly from all my Demarees I didn’t have a single cell raised from the frames. That was with two supers below and the top was packed with nurse bees.

So am I right that starting from the bottom, you have brood box. super, brood box. Then in the top box you are splitting with a dummy board and making up the ben harden? Or is it BB,BB (with ben harden and dummy board) supers? I had some success earlier this year with doing a Demaree. In the...

I don't disagree with that. Just to be clear, the grafts are not from the nasty colony.🤣 And I can't wait for the time I don't have to deal with them again. Any ideas on the questions please?

You are probably right but I’m also stubbornly focused on my end goal, angry colony or not😂 In the future I have no desire to have any defensive colonies and they will get short shrift. Having 7 bees sting around my neck was not fun. If I could go back I wouldn’t have split my nice colony. I was...

I didn’t have a lot of choice on the colony as I’m just starting out :) They were meant to be requeened at the start of the season but the nominated queen disappeared from the top of a vertical split. The angriness why I ended up doing a walk away split the other day to just have the nurse bees...

I had a peek this afternoon. Eggs still there. Brood still there. No QCs. I spent ages looking for a virgin and sieved them though I am not sure off the effectiveness of that with a virgin. Will they eat the eggs with a virgin in the same way as introducing a frame to a normal colony? I'll...

I’ve since put in a frame of larvae to try and establish if there is a virgin running about. I did also recheck the frames for queen cells and I could not find any. The frames are quite new so there are no hidey holes.

Today was a bit frustrating. I had a colony that was really not very nice. So I set it up in the ben harden configuration and killed the queen in the bottom box. I grafted from my nice queen and got 15 takes from 24 which I was delighted about as it’s only my 3rd try. This reduced to 14 by the...

Which bee space 🤣? About 8mm I assume? Thanks all, I've decided I'll just make bee space rims separate from the floor. Then I can perch the brood box on the rims as required. I imagine they'll get propolised in place not long after being added.