Search results

No, it's George covering this corner. I think he is based your way though.

I opened a demaree hive yesterday and came across several balling in the top box, including one queen. Left them to it and when I opened the bottom box after removing 3 supers, the resident marked queen was also being balled. Closed the lot and left them to it. I can't recall leaving a Qc in...

Yes, as described. I have 100s dead outside and on the hive floor as the house bees can't keep up. You can also see small clusters at the entrance with bees trying to clean others or motionless. Crawling on the ground as well. What strikes me is the rotten smell of dead bees☹️

Funnily enough the new bee inspector rang me last week to arrange a visit of my apiaries after the flow. Will see what his mantra is on this point and his visit will be short lived if he suggests that 🤣

That will work, all my hives are about 2ft of the ground on 3x3, there will be plenty of space!

Thanks Emyr, will do that tomorrow.

Hi all, I have 3 colonies down with CBPV in the same apiary. 2 seem to have gone through the worst of it and the other one starting to get bad. Other than the usual good hygiene anything else I need to do? Also, what would be the consensus with supers and frames which will be removed at the end...

£5 for locals, £6 for tourists? This is the approach I have....although with Gower having more outsiders than natives, it is sometimes difficult to identify who is who!🤣

Wishfull thinking, 8p more per jar, sorry!

I guess one of the main factor is whether beekeeping is your bread earner or like me, a side hobby which means that I can take a small drop in profit without much impact....next year though, my honey will be going up by 50p a jar!!

I have decided not to put prices up this year although I will be paying 8p per jar on my next order. £6 for 340gr at the gate and £5.60 to retailers who sell them for £8.20😭. It's a fine balance, yes everything is going up but I don't want to be stuck with 100s kgs of unsold honey.

It has to be an AS split with the old queen after a swarming attempt. Made a few of these last month and went from 2-6 frames pretty quick.

Crikey, that's a downer if I consider how grumpy my dad is and how grumpy my grandad was.... I may need to prepare for a late divorce or my own murder!

Try to cram as many buzzwords in a sentence as you can 🤣. I read it as 6 frames local mongrels.... hence perhaps colouring of your bees. I would agree with Wilco though.

yes, although sometimes you end up with a lot of pollen frames which are not so easy to get rid off unless you make lots of nucs or have hives looking light. I have 2bb full of them and must find space for these before winter!

Not a problem though, either extract these frames when ready or just do another demaree and placed the back filled box over the upper most bb or under as a super (assuming you didn't leave them raise a queen in the top box). This year I have been able to dismantle early season demaree and...

I don't run dble with all of them, some I split or just take the new queen out to make new nuc or requeen other colonies. I don't seem to have problems with swarming but then again I don't run dble queens too early in the season, I usually let them raise one towards the end of May, early June...

I use it on my best colonies (those I am happy to raise daughters from) and add supers above the top box as well. Once the summer flow is over, I split into 2 hives or unite keeping the best queen.

Mix of hawthorn and sycamore will give you a darker, thicker honey at this time of year. Rarely being capped by bees and the water content is very low, 16-17%. I have supers full of it this year and only need to find time to extract it all to return the supers as the brambles and clover are in...

I will fully agree with Eric, JBM and Ian. You may think it's ok to do nothing about improving genetics but the majority of (sensible) beeks want to work with manageable and calm stock. Personally, I think it's irresponsible beekeeping to maintain these genetics, not only because they could...