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Love the landing boards for bee watching whilst chilling in the garden. I reckon they assist on chilly early spring days when if the bee misses the entrance and lands on the ground, they often get chilled quickly and die. Sadly notice quite a few at that time of year.

This has overtaken the councils local wildflower meadow and my iPhone tells me it’s Knapweed which seems to be great for nectar. Saw plenty of bees on it. The lime is pretty much over and not much sweet chestnut and so no large single species of forage around but a good mix of lots of...

First time for LEL myself although I did PBP in 2019. Any top tips? Not expecting the same warm welcome in every town and village that the French gave us 😬. I will get further afield next year especially to some of the Welsh ones although shed loads of steep climbing is not really my thing.

Are you going to do it? I‘ve been sticking to ones that start relatively close to home this year so Kingston Wheelers events, Ruislip or Chalfont St Peter. Ramping up to LEL in August.

You’re fairly close to the ones organised by Audax Club Bristol. Don’t get over that way much except when Chepstow is half way stop.

If any sort of cycling goes with beekeeping, it’s definitely Audax. Nothing my cycling buddies like better than being stuck with me for a few hundred km’s with nowhere to escape from my tales of beekeeping 😀

Inspected our 3 hives and stuck another super on one. Great flow at the minute and I have now run out of supers with 11 on 3 hives. Reckon the next one will get a brood box full of foundation which will be dead handy assuming it all gets drawn. Also nuc’d a small swarm that had gone into a...

@JonnyPicklechin I‘m not far from you and if my hives are anything to go by, the bees have been filling supers at a massive rate for about 10 days now so would not have been uncapping for that period. Did have about a 2 week gap before that when I had to give one hive a frame of stores to tide...

Stuck a super each on all three hives as the supers were feeling very heavy when the two of us were lifting them off and there’s a massive flow on the minute. Hopefully the Lime. One who had a new queen less than 2 months ago have pretty much filled 2 supers in a week! Hive 3, where I had...

The Cotoneaster right above one of the hives is flowering and the variety of bees and hoverflies on it is just amazing. That’s deffo one of my hive 3 mongrels.

We put ours through a double sieve and it’s always a bit cloudy but not as a result of crystals. Pollen I guess. We have explained to people in the past that it is not fine filtered.

Would you requeen at the same time as removing the floor then? This hive definitely had CBPV last year and this year it’s not shiny or shaking bees but more ones who just can’t fly and are walking in front of the hive generally with open wings, but not k wing and some have swollen abdomens...

Thanks Eric. I’ll be out cycling about 6am tomorrow and will have a look then. Gonna be warm mornings this week and so the bees will be out first thing.

Checked a couple of trees with loads of flowers nearby about an hour ago and spotted one bumble on them 😢. Is there a better time of day for Lime? I know that hot and humid favours nectar production.

Same here in the Queen of the Suburbs 🧔‍♀️. Hoping for favourable conditions and a good flow.

It’s not at the stage that they cannot clear bees out and need an open floor but a brand new queen is worth a try given anecdotal evidence. Not sure what the science behind a new queen is though

Late write up as was yesterday. The two hives we expanded to 16 frames double brood about 10 days ago have been drawing and laying in the new frames. Added a super to one and looking forward to a week of hot weather and lime forage 🤞🙌. Found another two QC‘s in double brood + 3 supers hive 3...

I did that to two hives recently but didn’t want to add another 11 frames and so added another 5 and so they are 8 frames over 8. Made some 50mm ‘dummy boards‘ with insulation and reassembled the hive and so the capped brood was underneath the eggs and larvae). Put some of the foundation...

Option 3 seems to be to move 14x12 if the original poster wants to stick to one brood box.