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I’ve decided I’m going to give making my own soft set honey a go. I watched a very good Norfolk Honey Co. video (aren’t they all!) to get me familiar with the process. I have 2 questions arising from it though. 1. How do you get the crystallised honey for the initial seed? I’ve seen all sorts...

I have 3 supers of heather honey from the home apiary and I was hoping to extract using a manual heather loosener. All frames are foundationless. Tried the first one there and eventually had to pack it in and mash the comb to get the honey out. Is it possible to use a loosener with...

Thanks Enrico. I actually ended up swapping the supers back around to their original sequence and managed to get the top super off no problem. Will just leave the bottom super on over winter and go brood and a half next year to try a different format to see if it makes any difference. Got the...

National brood frames, not a bother. The extractor is built for whatever they use on the continent so national supers don’t fit but this is easily sorted with a couple of cable ties (thanks to whoever mentioned that in an earlier post, worked a treat). Spun out 11 foundationless super frames...

I have 3 hives which I am in the process of winding down for the season and removing supers. 2 of the hives have I super on capped and ready to take off. I have the rhombus escapes on today above an empty undrawn super. Bees have drawn some come in the foundationless frames but not a whole lot...

Thanks for that. That answers my question.

Apologies if this is a silly question that I should already know the answer too. Inspecting the hives today and noticed that the bees have stopped producing drones. The last few are hatching out. Still plenty of worker brood being laid though. I thought the drone cells would be repurposed for...

Funnily enough, I just bought the 4 frame version this weekend. Arrives by courier tomorrow! Fast service and hopefully up to scratch. First ever extraction taking place this weekend I hope.

Really good video Enrico, a follow up question (or two or three!) to that if you don’t mind. What temperature do you set the heat gun at and how far away do you hold it from the frame? Are the bees happy enough to reuse the comb then after the heat gun has been used on them? I also saw some...

Maybe an interesting observation from the swarm and the swarmed hive. Got around to moving the swarm from a nuc into a hive and luckily I did because they had all 6 frames fully drawn and packed with stores and brood. Interestingly, I spotted the queen and she wasn’t the queen I was expecting...

Hi All, Today was the 1st good day in the North West of Ireland in over 2 weeks and the bramble flow is in full swing. Due to the bad weather, it’s been 17 days since I last inspected. You know what’s coming next! Opened up the hive to inspect, found one capped queen cell and 2 queen cells with...

Thanks. I thought so but just wanted to check to make sure I’m doing the right thing. The hive itself has plenty of options to ventilate the boxes and the crown board that came has 5 ventilation holes with ventilation covers. Not sure why they are there though. Would a situation ever arise where...

That is exactly what it sounds like. Should I try and assist by removing the white plug on the brood box? There is a plug on both supers as well and the crown board is currently solid but I can open up ventilation up there as well if needed. I had read somewhere that if you have the OMF then it...

Hopefully an easy one for all you experienced beekeepers out there. I’ve noticed a real pick up in activity in my hives over the last few days which is likely the result of non-rainy weather and the bramble starting to bloom. The bees in my stronger hive have literally been falling over each...

Thanks for the replies, I’ll give it a go.

I was actually thinking I might do this after reading through another thread over the last few days - newspaper method to combine a Q+ and Q- colony. If I took this approach would I need to wait a week and clear the queen cells before combining with newspaper or could I do it at the same time...

Hi Folks, i hope it’s not a faux pas to post multiple questions in one post but it’s been one of those days! 1) Helped a fellow new beekeeper today with 2 swarms - a prime and a caste which seem to have left at the same time due to a few days bad weather - we went through the relevant hive...

Quick update/follow up question on this post. Swarm was much larger than I thought, nuc box was very very busy during the day last week so went to move into a full hive on Saturday. Amazingly, the bees had drawn out 4 full foundationless frames with comb (perfectly straight) and had started on a...

I have found Hive Manager really useful, easy to use and free!

Thanks for the replies guys. Happy to report that I picked up the nuc last night after dark and put them in their new permanent home. Bees are happy out orientating this morning. A few stragglers at the original house but they should find their way back to their original hive over the next day...