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If humidity is high and condensation is low I suggest bees would be less thirsty?

If you slip a nicely fitted polystyrene sheet into the fat dummy it should work a treat. Just use some aluminium tape on the top to stop nibblers or even a frame with poly sheet on each side with a tinfoil wrap - I have done this to insulate the brood nest internally.

Bound to be less honey in 11 frames surely as there is more space taken up by their side bars etc. The advantage of 9 frames is that over 5 supers you use a full super of frames less ie 5x11 against 6x9 frames. However you really should start with 11 and the following year move them to the...

No it duzzent......................

I have always wondered why anyone would insulate a hive all around but have ventilation which would chimney away the heat which you have tried so hard to preserve. Harking back to the 1970s and 1980s Bernard Mobus introduced me to poly hives with polystyrene lined roofs on top of crown boards...

Yulia, Patience in beekeeping as in many things is a virtue. I feel that buying bees now will teach you little but waiting until next sprig and buying then will let your knowledge grow with the bees. Looking at a hive in an apiary in the autumn, not inspecting, no bees to be seen for a few...

Did your wife do that so she can find you easily in the apiary?

I was given some advice a long time ago about wasp killing. I generally leave them alone - they are a pain in the proverbial for a relatively short time but if they decide to nest in a place where the public or home owner is at risk then something needs to be done. The advice was to puff ant...

I had a couple of colonies with CBPV a couple of years ago but fortunately not since. It was before the "remove the floor" advice which seems sensible. I allowed the dead and dying bees to fall towards the ground at the front of the entrance. I had laid triple sheets of newspaper on the...

Not the apiary BUT sugar in Lidl yesterday was £1.09 a kilo. The Lidl plus app was giving 15% off sugar and we had the £250 saved up to give us another 10% off the entire shop. A really good saving off the 50kg I bought. (and a few very strange looks at my trolley). One lady made a comment...

I like well filled, well capped frames then I feel the water content should be OK. The bees to frame ratio may also be important getting the job done. I leave it all until mid August and anything they bring in after that is theirs. I don't get heather honey so guess at that stage the majority...

Suddenly a decent number of bumble bees on the lavender and the runner beans are coming along at last. Isn't nature wonderful the way it finds different ways to produce (mostly!)

They don't like the cool smoke up 'em sir.

The bees know but they don't actually "know" - they react to instincts and neither the bees nor beekeepers know all of those or how they interact, thank goodness - it's complicated enough!

The only thing I would say is that the frames in the group would be in that position if the brood box had been flipped upside down then back upright. Ir doesseem unusual. The roof is also upside down which would be right. A bit of a mystery.

Not completely sure of the arrangement but if the excluder sits flat on the top bars of the frames in the brood box then in effect you do not lose any bee space as the box above it has the bee space below it due ti=o the top space of the brood box - so no problem. The excluder I guess gets...

We had a problem in the village a few years ago where a crow went rogue. It stripped the flexible part of car wiper blade rubber . It pecked and pulled the seals out of double glazed windows and the rubber seals out of car door windows. It became a pest everywhere and many a ruse was tried to...

Can you provide a link to the rectangular Ampulla ones you use - I also have a Lidl jam maker. Thanks

Have got loads of flowers on the runner beans but few bumble bees which are one of the stronger insects able to access the flowers and allow fertilisation. I have seen a few more on the lavender so fingers crossed. Like JameZ it has been a strange year in the garden. I think that early...

I think that 12oz is 340g according to the labels. How that relates to ml depends on the density of the contents. The old puzzle for kids - which is heavier a gram of feathers or a gram of lead!