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There are many very competent beekeepers (and I have examined quite a few of these myself over the years) around with these despised "bits of paper . In well run BKAs these will be involved in passing on the skills and knowledge and mentoring the beginners and they should have in my view a...

" how to deal with a badly behaved hive? " It is indeed an important topic. If Stiffy would care to have a look at the BBKA general husbandry syllabus there is a section to deal with this very question! 4.15 The actions required to deal with a vicious stock of bees Also in the module 1...

Several possibilities. Sealed cells are sometimes empty. Some eggs can take ages to hatch. Egg from laying worker (they exist even in queen right colonies).

My garden bees are working the holly today

This family of plants previously called the Umbelliferae are now classified as the Apiaceae. I grow parsnips and often let them flower to get their seed for future sowings. Get not only solitary, bumble and honeybees but also flies, ants and other insects visiting them.

Sorry to hear eggs not accepted although probably to be expected. Acceptance of grafts depends heavily on how well the cell raiser is prepared but also on current external conditions. With very little foraging going on due to the cool weather and rain there would probably be poor acceptance of...

In the absence of queen pheromones they will likely produce lots (possibly more than a dozen) emergency cells in both brood boxes which will need to be found and reduced to one in each box. Not sure I would go down that route. Better in my opinion to do the normal demaree where under low levels...

drone with one black and one red eye.

One of the two colonies I keep at home was demareed on 25th April and when I looked a week later it had generated three queen cells. Two were on the same frame so today, I took advantage of a brief warm spell to harvested one of these by cutting around it with scissors and set it up with...

Although where possible you should always use 1 day old (maybe 2 days at a push) larvae, I have on three occasions transferred cupkit plugs (via grafting frames each with two bars of 10 plugs) containing just eggs to the cell raiser and got 50 to 60% acceptance ie 10 to 12 decent sized queen...

Large cells are drone cells. However in first pic the downward projecting cell is a queen cup probably of no significance (unless charged). Queen cup also on bottom bar (near the middle) on slide 6.

Also photographed another Andrena species entering its burrow. Is it Andrena bicolor?

I think this is a male Andrena photographed today at country park near Rotherham Anyone here who can tell me which particular species it is as there are so many of this genus.

Assembled a few dozen brood frames and fitted them with foundation yesterday. Not a very exciting task one might add but had a pleasant surprise. One pack of ten sheets of Thornes foundation contained eleven sheets! The foundation was acquired a few years ago when I traded in 109 kg of wax and...

Spotted within seconds : Alopecia of the thorax for me was the clue to first pic.

Has Yorkshire been warmer than the Midlands? Our part of South Yorkshire (Doncaster south ) is often warmer than the Midlands. My parents lived in Sedgley Nr Dudley and my fruit trees always came into blossom earlier than theirs (they had the same varieties). People often refer to "sunny...

Spent a couple of hours checking through the 27 colonies at the out-apiary (last checked them 3 weeks ago). No signs of any swarm preps. Apart from a couple of weak colonies they were all generally looking strong and healthy with frames of brood in both top and bottom BCs (typically 12 to 14...

Elainemary: "could be a sign of nosema apis a Protozoa" Sorry to be a pedantic biologist but Nosema is not a protozoan even though it was classified as such a few years ago but people who know about such things decided that microsporidians like Nosema should now be considered as Fungi.

Sunny day and back garden reached 16 C in early afternoon so opened up one of the garden hives to remove 2019 queen with paralysed left rear leg (seems to be affecting her laying pattern) and replace her by paper uniting 6 comb nuk with much younger queen (mated july last yr) that is laying...

Always interesting to see what gets thrown out of the hive. Today this colony seems to have found, killed and thrown out a greater wax moth larva