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Well, you can guess what has happened here - hive stand had collapsed shortly after my last visit about a week ago. The Q has evidently gone, and the Q cells are either like this, or horizontal - now that the hive has been reassembled. I chose to leave one of the horizontal ones, and destroy...

here - Hoffman Converter Clips

For the record, landownership and tenure is irrelevant when it comes to what is legal and illegal with respect to the General Licence.

before you get the air rifle out, read this. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wild-birds-licence-to-kill-or-take-to-prevent-serious-damage-gl42/gl42-general-licence-to-kill-or-take-certain-species-of-wild-birds-to-prevent-serious-damage

It's presumably the same technique as restringing a tennis or badminton racket; if you unthread one the threads don't simply go up and down in an expected fashion, but go horizontally and then vertically. Beyond that though I can't help, having just rethreaded a COT myself, which looks at lot...

Do bees feed on the sticky coating on the leaves, or do they 'milk' aphids like ants do?

Have a bad case of CBPV; colony Qless, so not optimistic. Followed advice here and raised hive and removed floor. Not sure how long to leave it before trying to introduce a queen, or do I just give up on this one? In which case what do I do - just shake it out - but won't that risk...

Think I must have done! All I can say then is that if this was a prime swarm, then it must have come from very small colony. As to where the rest of the swarm went, if that is the scenario then I don't know; there were no other bees in the tree, and I've no idea where they originated from...

Received wisdom (always a worrying phrase) suggests that cast swarms are headed by a virgin. So far this year i have picked up 6, either in bait hives or as a result of a call-out. all now have laying Qs My most recent was on Saturday evening. It was very small, about the size of an orange...

Two more cast swarms today (5 so far - none of which have come from my hives) and honey extracting - no OSR by me, yet amount of honey similar to last year - must be hawthorn. Was cold here on Friday when I started, and honey took an age to filter though. This is the end product -literally as...

FWIW I have had 3 caste swarms this year, which is three more than last year and no prime swarms. The queens are mating though, so they can trundle along in their nuc boxes for a while.

(not quite sure what happened there; hadn't intended to post anything - and can't see how to delete the post?)

a sparrowhawk will pluck the corpse; there's always loads of feathers on the ground.

But if nadiring avoid the rookie error (which I didn't after 15 years beekeeping!) of using drone brood foundation in your nadir super. Two mine were, and these hives are very full, and as a result I had an awful lot of drone brood in their supers. I don't usually practice drone brood removal...

See here for Food Standards agency view. The Food Standards Agency and Re-Use of Jars – Bee 1st beekeeping supplies Note also the 'compliance with European Legislation bit' All extant European legislation is up for review vial the Retained EU Law Bill, currently in Parliament.

might be of use - Traditional Mead UK - Making Mead

I just wonder what the point of this debate is really. I suspect both sides of the argument are right - non treatment will probably lead to a host-parasite equilibrium establishing itself, and ongoing treatment will push that relationship in favour of the host. The issue being really that...

An interesting thread (in part...) On evolution through Natural Selection, aka Dawinism (or Wallace-ism, who came up with the theory at the same time, but was pipped to publication by Darwin when he realised Wallace was on the same track), then yes, plenty of evidence that works. It works...

Ivy is open here (Rutland), with both ivy and honey bees. The ivy bee (Colletes hederae), a bit smaller than a honey bee, is a recent (2001) colonist, moving north.