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Love your enthusiasm and desire to educate yourself. As said it is better to be patient and get some hands on experience before buying anything- there is a lot of different bits of kit out there and you might be unsure of which suits you best until you have handled some. A 1 day course is...

Unite now and then treat , in your original schedule, if worried about the queens. You will use half the number of tubs of Apiguard. Have used Apiguard for many years now, without any queen problems

I would re queen the angry hive. No brainer

If you are lucky. I would not be trying.

Never take down any queen cells until you are confident you know what is going on in the hive. The bees have raised them for some reason and a knee jerk knocking them down can lead to a hopelessly queen less colony. I learnt the hard way too.

I keep my COT in a small mint tin, along with fluorescent pink pen, ( only colour I use) in the breastfeeding pocket of my suit. Always to hand

Two glasses are always better than one ,Giles

Age 72. Just been put on steroids for what is thought by rheumatology to be sero negative rheumatoid arthritis. ( doesn't show up on routine test). Feel bloody marvellous. Everyone should be on them . Pity it is a limited course. 😃

My usual set up is same as ericbeaumont. I do not have to worry about late winter feed as there is more than enough in double BB. Swapping the boxes over is a brilliant way to delay or prevent swarming, despite encouraging queen to lay. Mind you I am way down south, but still use plenty of top...

Totally agree. Each to their own. I started with leather but soon switched to " Marigolds", which I still use. The thing about leather is keeping it clean. I did find it reduced my dexterity

I will not allow anybody to wear leather gloves in association apiary. They collect alarm pheromone and make handling of frames unwieldy. They cannot be easily cleaned. They could be the reason your bees are so defensive. Rough handling or bad queens also. I use marigolds with home made...

I would generally put a super of drawn comb under the clearer for 4 supers to clear. How long it's left depends on what is happening. If it is not a lot, then I remove it after a day or so

I run double broods with QE. Rarely do I get attempts to swarm, rarely do I inspect bottom BB. If in a rush I just do a tip inspection of top box and might just pull one frame from its centre. How do you get boxes home for extraction without a vehicle? At the end of the day, the right set up...

I use fluorescent pink on all queens and put their details in the records. Much easier to spot

Take queen out and put her in a nuc then. She will last longer in a smaller colony, so you will still have her genetics. Also a good move if they do decide to swarm on these "supercedure " cells

Recently cleared 5 supers into 1 single empty, and both colonies cleared very well

I like to run double brood. Two colonies at present in singles, so their last "super" is a deep, but with no QE under it.

So your bees have a micrometer? Do they care?

Were they really strong enough ( on point of swarm preps) to Demaree . ? Never had a failure to produce QC when at that point

I love Hoffman in the BB. Just a bit of smoke to get them down and slowly abutt frames