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It's not just shook swarms... "You do not have to put the syrup into the hives. If, near to your house, you have an open feeder i.e. a syrup container with grass or straw floating on top, or an upturned honey bucket with holes drilled in, you may be able to enjoy the sight of foraging bees from...

Not much use to you, but I'm in a vaguely similar situation having been given https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B093QG5VQF/ for Christmas. It came with a basic recipe but I'm interested to see what other options people have tried and tested, rather than picking random recipes off the web. The...

I've been playing with the new GPT3 chatbot and it's scary how good Machine Learning/AI is getting. It can be useful: But it's also very easy to generate plausible-sounding articles that are totally fictional. The Internet has always had an element of "reader beware" but it's about to get a...

and on the theme of everything being confused, I found these on the morning dog walk: The bramble and laurel were just odd flowers, but the hawthorn was covered in mature buds with some already out. As far I could see it was just the one very confused tree though. Fatsia is also flowering at...

Very confused holly in flower here. Winter hasn't properly started, let alone spring... Hazels all covered in catkins too.

FLIRd the full colonies - all still alive, all still nailed down with stores. The one with the mega mite load has the smallest cluster and is still dropping ~40 mites/day after 5 vapes. Perhaps it's too late for them, but I'll keep vaping to give them the best possible chance.

Made it up to the allotment today - it's been somewhat neglected recently and needed a good tidy up. Borage and nasturtiums haven't realised summer's over. Decent number of bees (and other pollinators, mostly hoverflies) on the cosmos.

4th vape carried out today - will keep an eye on the drop but suspect a 5th will be needed. Numbers thankfully dropped off rapidly after the first horrifying vape, but there were still more dropping after the third vape than I'd like to see. Colony weights all good and all flying.

Are the shelves just resting on there? If so I'd glue 4 dowels (or similar) under each shelf, one either side of each support. That would lock everything together so the shelves can't slide and the A-frame can't do the splits, but the shelves would still come out after being lifted slightly.

My first NHS today - just attending, no entries. I rather enjoyed it and didn't part with too much money (Thornes order collection aside) - though I was talked into a bottle of Northumberland Honey Co fizzy heather mead (underselling it rather; the taster was very nice!) and I ended up with a...

24hr drop post-vape; I hope I've not caught the situation too late. They were given a course of vapes in early August, though drop was minimal.

22hr total, 53 mites. Course of vaping it is! Didn't check my other hives, if I'm vaping 1 I may as well do all 4 while I've got everything out. I had the same issue last year - treated in August with minimal drop (MAQs last year, OA vaping this year), high mite levels in October. Full course...

I'm going on Saturday. Got a Thornes order to collect, but no doubt I'll be tempted into buying more...

Removed the last feeder and put mouseguards on all colonies. Before starting I put varroa/inspection boards in, with the intention of leaving them 24hrs. I had a quick look at a couple before I left, maybe 20 minutes later. 3 mites on one board and 2 on another. Still planning to check back in...

Sheet of insulation in the roof, sheet of insulation in an eke with a takeaway tub-sized cutout in the centre. Takeaway tub lids cover any holes in the crownboard. If they need a topup over winter simply remove the cutout and tub lid and place a tub of fondant over the hole. I remove the...

The honey I extracted is showing 17%. The frames were all capped except the outer face of the outer frames, which were fully crystallised.

Removed my last super of the year - I put on an empty but drawn super on 26th August in the hope of getting some ivy honey, as I'd never tried it. What I've mostly done is clogged up a load of perfectly good frames... The 2 frames at either end were a total write off, but the central 6 frames...

Cheap crap jars? They could be highly collectible Uranium glass!

Maybe we'll all be producing green honey like @Curly green finger's except ours will glow in the dark.

I can't find any regulations regarding the space, but the recent article in BBKA News said there should not be a space between the weight and the unit.