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I have had to make up a floor, crown board and roof at short notice for a standard national brood box. I have the floor installed already and the bees are happily coming in and out. The brood box is bottom bee space. Currently, I just have a piece of greenhouse plastic acting as a crown board...

An update. After 2 of us doing a thorough search for the original queen on Saturday and having no luck, I pulled the trigger and passes through a Queen excluder - not a pleasant exercise but we managed to spot and dispatch the incumbent queen within a couple of minutes. Put the hive back...

Queen cells are usually capped on day 9 so it’s probably fine for now and will be capped in due course. I imagine the actual queen cell itself is bigger than it was when you saw it first? Leave it a couple more days and then very gently have a look in if you really want to confirm it’s capped...

I’m looking to combine a weakish nuc with a decent hive (brood box and half drawn super currently) and I’m hoping to keep the nuc queen, remove the hive queen and newspaper combine. There are a couple of strings to this. Firstly, the hive, the queen in here is 2020, not marked and very shy. I...

Thanks for the replies. I’ve double brooded them there this afternoon and I’ll leave them be for a couple of weeks now before checking in again. My ideal plan is to get my 3 hives and 2 nucs down to 3 strong hives going into winter and to start off next year on the front foot. Time for a fresh...

I’ve a hive on single brood at the moment. Just at the end of its first brood cycle after a brood break due to requeening. As of last week, 9 of the 11 frames were at various stages of BIAS with 2 of stores. I also have 2 empty wet supers on which are in the process of being refilled (I can see...

What is the best way to use super combs for those that have heather honey in the autumn? I’ve extracted a couple of early supers this year and put them back with intact comb to hopefully get another summer crop at the end of July or so. Last year I put the extracted supers with comb back on...

Put in a frame of eggs from your nuc and check in a few days to see if they have made queen cells - confirmation that there isn’t a virgin or recently mated queen in there. If they do you could let them raise the queen cell or remove the queen cells and do a newspaper combine with a spare brood...

Marketmore 76. Thanks, sure I’ll give it a go and see. Might leave some of the others to go a little longer. Thanks

Silly question but are there any telltale signs for when a cucumber is ready to be picked? I’ve a couple of plants growing in the window and there are a couple now approaching 15cm in size, not as big as one bought in a supermarket but I’m wondering, are these ready to be picked or should I be...

Some good news from my side this evening. Checked both nucs and both queens happily released and laying very well! 👍

I had seen a lot of info about the success with those cages. I couldn’t source one easily in Ireland in the timeframes I had but I might get one or two for next time. Are they a new device on the market?

Good Luck I hope it’s successful for you! I introduced my queens to the nucs yesterday, both are definitely hopelessly Q- with only capped brood available to them. Put the queens in between 2 frames of capped brood. Watched each for about 5 minutes and there wasn’t much interest paid to the...

Got word that queens will now actually arrive on Tuesday so went down and removed all queen cells and added a frame of BIAS to each nuc this afternoon. I’ll open up on Tuesday and remove and new queen cells on the frames added today and pull the tab on the queen cage and insert.

I’ve finally managed to get a couple of queens on order for my 2 nucs which are currently in the process of requeening from undesirable genetics. The new queens are due to arrive in 7-10 days. Should I get rid of existing queen cells (emerging this weekend) in the nucs now to make them...

I would leave the remaining QC in the nuc as security. If there is a VQ in there already they’ll take care of the remaining capped QC. If she got damaged then they have something to fall back on. If they were going to swarm (which I would think would have been unlikely in the first place since...

I have actually and have been trying to source but there aren’t any local keepers openly breeding for sale. I’ve tried to source in a wider area around me and while Buckfast are available, Black bees aren’t until mid June for some reason. I could wait and I might do that but I was thinking it...

I definitely get that the current bees I have are in no way pure breeds and I accept that any future breeding will just result in mixing of genetics. Perfectly happy with that. Temperament is what I’d be keen to maintain. The current bees I have are dark bees which I sourced 5 miles away...

Is this something that could work and has anyone tried it successfully? I’ve done a search and can’t find much information on it which I assume is because it’s no good. Is there an ethical issue here or is it something that would be frowned upon? I currently have 3 hives and 2 nucs of the same...

I found the beer/ale traps effective last year in terms of quantity caught but my plants kept getting mown down. I then read that the beer has the effect of attracting lots of local slugs but not all end up in the trap! In the end, I switched to slug stop (Growing Success Slug Stop Barrier Pouch...