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Nice to see a flourescent jacket OVER a bee suit in one of the pictures. You would think that someone walking around a city in just a white beesuit is completely invisible to passers-by!

Queens should start laying a few days after mating, so have a look. I have never been concerned about checking whether a queen is laying - or present - provided it's not when the queen might be out mating.

It could easily be supercedure at this time of year and sometimes queens don't get well mated or have a problem so the bees will replace her. It's worth seeing if they try the queencell thing again and if it's just one, I would be inclined to leave them to it. You could see mum and daughter...

I inspect until the dawn to dusk outside light comes on if I have to. At this time you don't have to be worried about disturbing virgins on mating flights - so it's especially a good time to have a peek at them if you need to. I have a small torch that I use to help with seeing eggs.

I used to have a cheapie bee suit and the thumb elastic failed (so did everything else for that matter!) so I used some black elastic to replace the broken bit. That's what the bees went for. With sweating my bits off recently in the warm weather, I would not go for anything other than white.

A cedar WBC is expensive and over the top when a second hand one could be used. And they are pretty well already white, so just need a tart-up. In any case a good WBC might get nicked!

I can't open the video. However I have seen a couple of mating swarms, so would definitely say they are "a thing." The clue is that there was a known virgin in the hive and a few days after the swarm, there are eggs as well as a plumped up queen. My guess is that the bees push the queen out and...

In my notes, I generally write how many supers I have taken off so I don't have to take my socks off to count them. The early part of this year was rubbish with the weather being too cold for the OSR to yield and too cold for the bees to fly for a month or more and colonies were small...

"Till end of October one can feed or later if mild" Maybe in the south, but not all over the country. Should plan to complete feeding by the end of September in most parts; no need to leave it any later.

I've had 20 frame colonies work quite happily with a reduced entrance (some of my floors are made like that). The only time I move an entrance block is to close up the entrance.

Yep, I could wring out my beekeeping socks on Saturday.

"We had a game we’re you threw a knife as close as you could to your opponents foot, they then had to do the splits to where the knife stuck in the ground." That's the one! I managed to chuck a pen-knife into my ankle; a damaged sock and a scar that was there for a few years. Matron was not...

To eliminate the queen pheromone entirely, you can use a cloake baord until the cells have been started.

If a colony is packed with bees, an extra super or more space of some kind would not go amiss either.

And now - go to casualty for a broken nail after a playstation controller incident! Did you used to play splits (or split the kipper)?

I would usually demaree with 2 or 3 supers between the queen (below) and most of the brood in the top box to get a good level of separation. Sometimes bees don't get it and fail to raise queencells (especially early in the season). But if a queenless colony is around at the right time, then it's...

My best is that some of the cages that are sent to York will be checked even if not all of them, so they will do some at the very least. Maybe if they have time at the end of the day or they put a post-grad student on it.

So the answer to the original question is "sometimes yes, sometimes no" We do hear of strories of nasty, veil-pinging, wrist-burrowing bees that greet you >50 yards away from the hive. Thankfully these are very rare. We do hear of beekeepers who can't understand that a new nuc starts to get...

Yes, but doesn't always work. (Like most things in beekeeping)!

No harm in checking that the queens have emerged from their queencells - and a look for the virgin queen (although they can be difficult to spot). After a couple of weeks you can check again to see if she has mated. Polished cells where the queen would be expected to lay is a good indication...