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Hi do you have the reference for the top 75cm being superfluous? Thanks

I must be missing a trick Here’s a quaint apiary I came across where the ivy is in full flow and there are still several supers on. Mine came off before the ivy flow starts and varroa treatment commences.

Alas as we are all using the only licenced OA treatment flavoured with sugar shorter intervals may be required.

Sorry if already posted. Experiment by Randy Oliver on dead bees exposed to different delivery methods & additives to Oxalic acid. He measured the ‘acidity levels’. Adding sugar caused the acidity to rapidly decline- think Api Bioxal. Vaporisation persisted the longest 90% at 4 days.

Some good data you got there. It’s not unusual to see bees exiting or returning on mass. Survival of the fittest selects for those that are tuned into when the flower are yielding their nectar. I was recently surround by 1000’s of bee’s returning from the heather.

I wouldn’t judge a colonies strength from just looking through the crown board. Plenty a time you see all the bees on top of the frames and not much underneath and the reverse is also true. How many frames are covered by bees, brood, stores? A frame of brood will give 3 frames of bees so the...

You could heft them first

If the brood box has little to no stores with brood still to feed then they can starve really quickly if you take the honey supers off. If in doubt take supers off & give then a temporary feed whist waiting for ivy flow. This is what I’m doing for my colonies since supers came off for varroa...

Checked the nuc 3 days later and low & behold I found what looks like a completely different queen. Calm & relaxed with a retinue of workers looking after her. Don’t know what happened to that flighty virgin queen!

Hi I check all the mini mating nucs 3 weeks after inserting a queen cell. Any with a laying queen she goes into a full sized nuc. The mini mating nucs will then be getting the next round of queen cells so haven’t got the luxury of checking capped brood or workers. Personally not had a problem of...

I’m coming round to accepting when I make up the nucs as queenless splits of my main colonies some of those main colonies will be superseding so will have 2 queens. Interesting to see if she makes it back to the nuc? If she was in the nuc at the start then she’s been there 2 weeks so should have...

This happened twice this season after introducing over 40 local mated queens. Queen was one of my own locally mated in mini nuc and introduced into a 5 frame nuc at the Egg Laying stage- 3 weeks after emergence, Nuc checked after 1 week no BIAS & queen not seen. Test frame inserted. Checked 1...

Michael Palmer uses a ‘shaker box’ to prevent queens entering his cell builders. This could work in finding your elusive queen! https://www.beesource.com/threads/using-a-shaker-box-to-find-elusive-queen-s.196757/

Brood boxes nice and heavy so no risk of starvation. Most have multiple supers as heather in bloom so moving capped frames into a single super before clearing.

House move, retirement and bees pushed into the corner. Now moved to Anglesey, Wales and bees moved across in March 2023. Not done a full season yet but location has exceeded my & the bee’s expectations. Expanded from the 20 nucs (some were 4 story) to many production colonies with local queen...

Some use seeing a few mummies which are on the OMF or thrown outside without any signs on the comb as an indication of hygienic behaviour.

try this http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/refractometercalibration.html

It's likely the QC's were not kept at 34'C. As you transferred them 4 days fafter grafting the cooler temp delays development. I transfer the QC's 10 days after grafting and they emerge on day 15 or 16.

Unless my eyes are deceiving me it says: 'That makes it 304mm'

Dave Cushman's site under 14x12 says it should be 304mm deep. I'm sure mine were 314mm Don't recall errors on the old Cushman's site! http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/nat1412.html