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I'd just like to jump in on this too and request same, as about to do my first market also. Do people just rock up with a trestle/fold-up table and plonk it on and let it speak for itself, or take other materials etc to make an appealing design?

Roger that. Will throw a slab on. Thanks.

Yep, they’re on a teeny, tiny entrance, and I was feeding 1:1 syrup before the flow a few weeks ago as they didn’t have much in the way of stores. Will whack some Apivar strips in pronto.

Sound advice, thanks BB.

agreed, but the previous queen took a looong time to start laying and even the. Wasn’t a particularly prolific layer then either, which I guess is why she was superceeded also. So rather than a population explosion over spring and summer, it’s all been a bit pants. Varroa-wise they had apivar in...

Yea, that was my concern. They’ve kind of dwindled this year, all stemming from a supercedure at the start of the year, leading to her being superceeded herself by this current one. Just bad luck after bad luck for this particular colony when all their neighbours have been going great guns. Not...

I’d say around 10-15 over 2 frames (4 sides). This queen hasn’t been laying long, so there’s no more brood than those 2 frames.

Evenin all. Recently we identified a case of sacbrood in one of our hives. It’s in a hive that has struggled a bit all year for various reasons and recently requeened (supercedure). Obviously this queen is struggling too, so it’s probably bad genetics. I’ve read that the only way to deal with...

Put a super of undrawn Langstroth shallow frames on a week last Friday, went off to the Lake District camping for the week, came back, whole super drawn, filled, capped and ready to go. And this was in Suffolk, which had pretty bad weather last week, so I'm impressed. Needless to say, whacked...

Yes, please do. I had a scary reaction last year to 2 stings that gave me an all-over body rash and panicky feeling that doctors have given me epipens for and put me on allergy therapy for. Been stung since and not had it, but would love to know what the battery trick is. TIA

Yea. Absolutely right. This is a beginner’s forum and everyone jumps on the guy’s back. Well done Mark. I feel your excitement! There’s a flow on, your bees are drawing comb, queen laying eggs, all good! Hat off to you! Amen to that!

Took a walk out into the fields to find a borage field in full bloom covered in our bees, then walked in the opposite direction to walk down an avenue of lime trees in full bloom, covered in the other 50% of our bees (and a lot of dead bumbles underneath, their brains pecked out by the Great ****).

Suffolk here also, and have had to deal with 2 wasp nests already. Seen a couple of wasps outside the hives, but since dealing with the nests haven’t seen much else so far. Touch wood it won’t be like last year, which was waspmungous.

We have a big Sumac tree in our garden and it's just coming into flower now. The bees go absolutely nuts over it every year.

Well that's a very good question, I hadn't considered that. not worthy I could add a bit of wood on top of the floor to prevent bottom-comb builddown off the bottom of the frames. Only disadvantage would be blocking off the OMF, unless I got clever with the construction of something similarly...

Yea, that’s kind of why I’m asking. I have 14x12 boxes, but no standard brood, so if it was going to be really problematic I’d put in an order for a standard. However, I can manage a bit of extra comb until next spring, so I’ll just use the 14x12 box I have. Thanks for letting me know though...

Afternoon all, I have come into possession of a commercial nuc of bees. However, all my hives (and spares) are nationals, with 14x12 brood boxes. I understand that with a standard national brood box I can get a Hamilton converter to take the Commercial frames from the nuc (when it's time to...

And yet, when first researching it, as a hobbyist you'd be forgiven for thinking, from the tone of literature, you were number one wanted criminal if you didn't register with EH, get level 2 hygiene (or better), have a written HACCP policy in place, purchase a trade approved set of scales...

Good day: local EHO phoned to say they can’t be bothered to come out and do a hygiene inspection for our extraction and jarring process because “5 hives is too small and off our radar, we trust you to get on with it and be good”. Bad day: email notification of EFB with 3km of apiary.

One of our colonies here has really, really laid back bees. In fact, so laid back that when the inspector once paid a visit she looked at them and called them ‘cappucino bees’, because it was like they’d all stopped for a coffee break rather than getting on with it. When you open the hive...