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Just looked at one of my bait hives & I'm seeing drones coming and going amongst the worker bees. Should I take that as a sign that they've moved in?

This article on The Apiarist web site also talks of using the demaree method as either a pre-emptive or reactive method, similar to Lawrence. The caveat is that it's reactive up to & including open charged queen cells. If capped, it's too late. I'm guessing that the debate about whether this...

Thank you. They were split as equally as i could & butted up next to each other in the original location.

Back on the 19th May in my attempt to catch and mark the queen I must have maimed her in some way. I was having issues catching her not helped by the sweat dripping onto glasses as it was so hot. Anyhow... I gave up. Upon my inspection 7 days later (2 days ago) there were no eggs, no queen but...

What frames have you put in the hive? Full wax sheets, starter strips, drawn comb....?

Have to say that crossed my mind when I watched the video.

Thanks for that. I hadn't appreciated they would move it to the supers if scored.

Last Saturday i was lucky enough to have a large swarm take up residence. It went straight in a 10 frame Dadant - 1 frame capped stores, 1 drawn comb, 1 full wax sheet, 6 wax strips & 1 follower board (basically an all wooden frame....not really sure what it's called!). In 6 days they've...

Thanks for that - all done. In my inexperienced experience...(!), that was one big swarm. I didn't move them to their final position in then end, however, as they're so close I'll just move them a metre or two at a time, a few times a day and may even get them to their new spot tomorrow.

What do you think about moving them 7 metres at the same time to their final position? Or better to leave them at least in the same approximate position they arrived to for the time being? Thanks for your real time help by the way!

Sounds like a plan. What's your thinking here...that I risk them absconding if not?

I'm 10 days off being in my second year of bee keeping.....& I'm in a similar situation to when I first started! I'm beginning to wonder if my entry holes are two small? I have 2 @ 20mm wide from memory. I've had a swarm arrive today which compared to my 2 last year is very big. This picture is...

Mine's fairly black around the lip now, bad enough that closing it is becoming tricky and hence smoke escapes from places it shouldn't when lit. How do you clean your smoker?

There's a fair bet that if you do nothing you'll end up with laying workers & ruined comb. I'd just shake them out & move on. I believe there are other hives at the apiary(?), & if not, they're in the middle if a forest aren't they?

Could you get a frame of eggs / open brood from the other guy at the apiary? If so you could try a last ditch attempt at saving them as I had to do (which is looking very positive). I followed the process detailed here: The Apiarist website

That Dave is a bummer. Neither of us have fared too well over winter have we!? How many bait hives do you have?

Gut feel no, although it's possible I missed it I did notice eggs but didn't note the cell size so will see what it develops into. Thanks for the tip on adding a worker brood frame with the new queen which I can do.

In one, yes i saw the queen. Not in the second which I feel must have superseded in the last 6 months as they're generally much darker now than before. I'll have a good rumage around later in the week.

Oh well ... we'll see. Two nucs are for receiving queen cells next week, the third keeps the existing queen. Coincidentally I looked in my other Buckfast hive which looked much the same, and a black bee hive has substantially increased drone brood to 10 days ago (still way behind the Buckfast...

Thinking about it, if any available larvae are drones, will the bees still try to raise a queen cell anyhow? i.e. queen cells in the short terms won't tell me anything?