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I use long cuff nitrile gloves - keeps my hands clean of propolis, but allows me to feel that tell-tale flutter of a bee close to my hand and in danger of getting accidentally squished. The long cuffs mean that I can put these over the top of the elasticated cuffs of my suit. I've never been...

Don't know exactly what you've got in the way of frames, but the brood is generally concentrated in the centre of the nest, so frames with most brood are in the centre of the box, and then gradually less as you move towards the edges of the box where it's pretty much just stores of honey/pollen.

I've had a new wax frame break on me this way, but all of the older darker comb frames have been fine for me. My brood frames are all wired, and obviously I don't spin at high speed, and spin out partially from one side before flipping over etc. just as you would with any tangential, but it...

I do similar. I have a 9 frame radial but can get in 3 deep frames tangentially without any screens, just propping them up and getting the bottom lug in one of the gaps meant for a shallow frame lug. To be honest I didn't want to have to store yet another bit of equipment if I bought the proper...

Also not quite in the apiary, but got to use my new motorised extractor for the first time 😀 Only did one super today as I needed a sample of honey from this year's crop, but once school's out I can't wait to extract all the other supers now - hands free!!!

Finally feeling reasonably in control with the apiary at the moment - but well aware I've probably jinxed it now. 😅 Combining back to 4 colonies is all finished and 3 out of 4 hives are full of bees, have beautifully laying Queens, nice polite workers and are packing in honey at top speed, with...

You make a very good point! But one I'll choose to ignore,😃 particularly since I've just had to collect another small swarm from just up the road. These bees have no respect for my weekend plans 😉

First swarm arrived today. Only a tiny swarm, but at least I can absolutely definitely say they weren't mine 😉 I was outside gardening all day and saw them scouting in the morning and then arrive by lunchtime.

Had one hive with a couple of queen cups with eggs in last weekend. No royal jelly, just eggs, but I knew I couldn't put off an inspection this weekend, despite temperatures barely over 10C and few breaks in the rain. Managed to get through inspecting three hives late Friday afternoon, and did...

I seem to have luck with bait hives on flat roofs, and that makes them easy enough for me to access. I tend to put out 6 frame poly nucs as bait hives or an old Paynes nuc with the feeder cut out. They're not as big as is recommended, but as beekeeping equipment seems to get rapidly out of hand...

Finally did my first inspection of the year = 16°C and sunny today. All were beautifully calm bees. One colony still a bit small, but Queen is laying so will just have to see how they get on over the next couple of weeks. Double brood colony already has drones, with plenty of capped drone brood...

I'm a castellations user in my supers. However, when i got my first colony they were on brood frames with plastic spacers. I was put off using them in supers because they were so hard to get off once they'd been on a while and well and truly propolised into place. Of course frames in the supers...

It will come up again from the smallest scrap of root - I seem to be on an eternal quest to remove it from garden!

Thanks for the advice. I actually have couple of replacement ball bearings I got for my manual extractor. If I'm lucky they'll be the same size.

No gouts of smoke in my hives - but still smoke in my lungs as the wind blows and the smoker stands off to the side (just in case) not mention the amount as I'm lighting it.

Just ordered Thorne's electric heavy duty plastic extractor, so glad to see you recommend it. Until now I've been using a manual 2 frame plastic extractor, but it's just getting too time-consuming and laborious with the amount of honey I'm producing each year, so I've bitten the bullet and spent...

Been busy reorganising the new apiary over the last couple of days. I've now taken over the chicken's area of the garden giving me much more room. The last chicken died a couple of months ago, and we'd already decided at the start of last year not to get any more. I really hated having to...

I bought an Apisolis last year - not just because it's another gadget ;) I'm a teacher, so it feels like I talk non-stop all day long, and I noticed that on Monday/Tuesday my voice was suffering, before gradually improving again as I went through the week, until my next weekly inspection on a...

Had planned to put escape boards on the hives today so I could take the supers off tomorrow afternoon, but the lack of fully capped supers changed my plans. Going to leave them one more week, with the uncapped frames in the hopes that some of them will be capped in this week's forecast hot...

I got 4 spare veils for my suit at £1.50 each. Considering the original lasted me 3 years I should be good to go for the next decade or two. I'll miss STBK