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Recently moved my hives onto solid UFE floors. I used scrap timber so the floors are pretty thick - 40mm or so. Brood boxes are poly and I then have a solid 6mm polycarbonate crown board, which I then placed the old poly crown board on top of and finally a poly insulated roof. Throughout the...

Has anyone successfully overwintered Cucamelons? If so, I’d appreciate some advice on how to do it. I have about 4 vines in the greenhouse which I started this year. They are starting to die back a bit now. Should I trim them back and leave them be or should I dig up the root and store them...

Thanks. Plenty to think about. The current hive is poly and outside of the 5 seams the rest are full brood combs of capped stores. Just monitoring activity again today, it’s much lower than the other three so I might just do it once treatment is finished next week.

I have a hive that has struggled this season due to a number of mistakes on my part, I’ve learnt many lessons on what not to do this year. This particular hive is showing much less activity at the front of the hive in recent times than my other hives. A quick peak when adding Apilife Var tabs...

Yup, as everyone advises. Move and unite. I would probably move the Q+ nuc up the road and unite with the stronger Q- colony. That way you shouldn’t lose too many fliers and you’ll get the nuc out of the polytunnel. The resulting box will be alright strength wise so if you reduce the entrance...

Where is your queenless hive situated now (the one that the friend has moved over to your place)? Hopefully outside the poly tunnel, stick a sheet of newspaper ontop, queen excluder than a brood box. Transfer your frames from the nuc into that (hopefully all frames from both boxes are...

After removing my half filled supers a week or so ago and being generally happy with stores in the brood box and noted the strength of the bee numbers I started treatment. A brilliant week of weather has followed, and on inspection today I find a lot of the brood box is now filled with stores...

Thanks for the reassurance, I was shocked when I saw the drop as I hadn’t noticed any major signs of a high mite load - deformed wings, capped cells with little holes in them or the mites themselves (any others I should look out for?) - but now that I think about it, the activity in that...

OMG 😱 not here. Drop count after first 24 hours of Apilife Var. The other 3 hives were much lower though.

Thanks Eric, that is clear! I know what to do now.

I have a colony on a double brood that I feel should probably go down to a single to overwinter as it’s not got up to the size I thought it would over the season. What’s the best way to do this? There is BIAS in both boxes and stores in both as well. If also have a paritially drawn and filled...

I imagine the variance in weight is likely caused by a variance in stores in each nuc more than the variance in the number of bees. More stores = heavier nuc (assuming all nucs are the same brand etc). To determine the strength of the nuc, you need to visually inspect and see how many frames are...

Not a hope of a summer harvest here. It’s been raining flat out for the last 4 weeks. All the bramble and clover missed this year. I actually had to feed a small hive 2 weeks ago as it was empty of stores. They took down 3.5 litres every day for a week! Went over to help another guy local to me...

Same here. 2 weeks of continuous rain, I have a nuc I had just moved into hive before the rain started. Looked in last weekend and hardly any stores at all. Got a message during the week from a nearby association that feeding might be required for smaller hives. They have consumed nearly 6...

I for one, am relieved 😂

As the title states, what’s the best approach? I made up 2 double broods about a month ago. To date, in order not to disturb the hive too much (new queens introduced, one via nuc and another via cage), I’ve just looked in the top box, either spotted the queen or seen BIAS so left the bottom box...

I have very limited experience outside of a couple of introductions this season. They don’t appear to be acting overly aggressive. They aren’t trying to sting through the cage or arching their abdomens. They look to be easily moved as well. I would say it’ll be okay to pull the tab.

Thank you.

Is my apple tree bending like this due to the apples bad for it? Should I remove them? It’s been in place 3 years now and this is the first year with a good batch of apples. I’d like to keep a few if I can.

Thank you. Shaved a bit off and have it down to 8mm.