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I'm just a beginner, however, my climate is perhaps closer to yours than many in the UK (near Perpignan in France). Last year we had a very mild Jan to Feb period & I did indeed have a colony swarm early March which shocked me (.. it then snowed April 3rd...). Swarms here are generally April &...

Obviously.....but if you don't grease do the ants remove the varroa mites as a good source?

Interesting - i didn't know varroa calculation tables even existed! Where would i find them?

Thanks for that. I've noticed my boards (when they are in place which is only immediately following OA treatment) having half a dozen or so ants on there scavenging. Will they remove varroa for munching back at their nest?

When you place a board under the OMF to measure varoa drop do you grease the board in any way? It occurred to me that perhaps living varoa drop through & then "wander off" which they couldn't if the board was greased. Thanks.

That was a mistake I made when I bought mine last year.... just checked & it definitely can't take brood frames. Oh well...

Interesting. I'd heard that this could happen but have no idea how to prevent them filling those top frames with honey. JBM says in his reply above that "if you are in the middle of a good flow, you have little choice but to leave them fill up the top box with honey". So perhaps you just have to...

When you say your 'main mistake'.....what happened as a result?

Bad choice of word on my part - you're right. Really, really helpful reply.

Thinking forward to spring and getting my head around the demaree swarm control method. I get the principle of how you set it up, however, the following two outcomes have me a little puzzled as to what happens after. 1. Aim: swarm control, no colony increase - in the top box all QC's get...

You'll get replies a lot quicker if you translate them into English and then post on the forum. I'm in France not that far from Barcelona and the Asian Hornets have been terrible this year. They are just starting to reduce in number now, but still very much present.

It looks to me like you have / have had a wax moth infestation. How many frames are in the hive and how populated is it? A strongly populated hive wouldn't have this problem. If you don't have enough bees in there, remove a few frames and put a dummy board in to section the unused part of the...

I bought this - works just fine: AliExpress

Looking at their website they do produce some honey from UK sources - Rowse Heather Max (British heather honey) and British Honey. Additionally they say: ..."sell honey that is blended from a variety of countries that is very popular with UK consumers. Rowse specially selects honeys from all...

Thanks for that - i'll take a look this evening if i can get there in time & also steal a QC for the colony i'll be talking my mated Queen back from!

In fairness I'm confused as to what to do. I had 4 emerged queens from a grafting bar I'd done and hence was creating some nucs. In the first nuc I took a stored frame from a large donor hive and then went through said hive looking for the marked queen. Couldn't find her, checked the stores...

That is a concern I have. So is the safest thing to remove the marked mated queen and see what happens?

I hope not! I was very pleased, if a little surprised that my mated queen came out on top. I felt the colony was very receptive to the new virgin queen hence did a direct release.

That's a relief to hear. And yes, performing very well.

Last Sunday (28th Aug) I made a up a nuc for a newly emerged virgin queen. In my carelessness I put my mated queen into the nuc before 30 minutes later adding the virgin queen. Cutting a long story short, having a niggling doubt I checked the new colony today, saw eggs & larvae an my marked...