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If the brood frames were transferred without bees on them before the brood is capped they will contain minimal varroa and could be finished off by another (varroa-free) colony.

The plastic floor comes out so you can get a bit more headroom if needed - I was thinking of replacing it with a a polystyrene insert that has Nicot cage size depressions it. The plastic rails do work but it is quite tricky to take out an individual cage without disturbing those next to it and...

I think this thread needs to be retitled "My television watching habit's" Nothing in it about Hive Monitors!

Now I am wondering what label I need to put on any nucs I sell? o_O

Yes - I still have the pump in its bag - good to hear it works so well. I figured the fewer moving parts and trailing pipes the more reliable and easier the set up would be but I may have a try with the pump this year.

I have used cells harvested from d8 to d10 and d14-d15. Important to keep a careful record to ensure the virgins have access to food as soon as they emerge.

I think a breeding programme is possible using isolation or AI but as you say to retain the traits requires this to be applied continually

Try 6 apiaries - or maybe they are just an expensive figment of my imagination.

More likely a distribution of resistance across an apiary although one will the best - if you only had one hive and were lucky then one year with a new queen it may show enhanced resistance. Either way I was outlining a sensible strategy to then take.

Of course a queen mates with 10-15 drones and probably only needs to mate with one or two which have the various recessive genes for there to be sufficient specialist workers to lower varroa. Hence, if one luckily obtains a resistant colony the best strategy is probably to use it to produce...

I have been using one of these for about 3 years - I have it sitting in a large picnic cold box in the garage so it doesn't need to work as hard and is much quieter. I control the humidity by placing a small box containing a saturated NaBr solution inside the incubator - this keeps it constant...

A way to test if the bees in a colony have a preference for a particular orientation would be to introduce two undrawn frames into the same box but a few frames apart - one with the foundation oriented according to Housel and the other the "wrong way". If the bees consistently draw out the...

Going back to the OP - the method of drying with a dessicant in a sealed system is sound and calcium chloride can with care be used - however, safe disposal of the wet crystals is problematic. I would suggest using molecular sieves instead - they are quite expensive but they are very safe and...

Citric acid and baking soda react together endothermically at room temperature in solution - they can be used to make a chill compact. When talking about endothermic and exothermic processes it is important to define a system (e.g the chemical reaction mixture) and the surroundings. An...

Saw a field of OSR near Doune last year - too close for comfort

I have been on the same page as you for many years, 1-5 identical. .Recently I have been looking to make more rapid increases with a view to eventually making queens and nucs availble for sale - so far it has gone ok - fingers crossed for the winter.

bazdmoore can now be safely ignored - simple issue with forgotten passwords

Actually the reason we historically have so much heather is that grouse eat the fresh stems and the aristocracy loved to spend their holidays shooting grouse https://www.gwct.org.uk/research/species/birds/red-grouse/ Sheep and deer are the reason we have so few upland trees.

A fairly good one

It is a shame you don't have heather in Aug/Sept like we do