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Bees, Booze and the chooks released from Henitentiary 🐝 🍺 ⏳

Bees on the Holly. Forage and weather looking epic!

Checked the hive where we released the @Black Mountain Honey queen last Wednesday and all looking good with eggs being laid already. We’ll be able to spot her easily with that big yellow spot! There were plenty of QCs in the top BB of the Demaree we did last weekend but resisted the temptation...

Thanks. I'm just a bit concerned about them making swam preps regardless. Small risk I guess but we do keep the bees in the suburbs so trying to be extra careful. Tempted to make a nuc even though we were trying to keep it to 3 hives.

I’m doing it as well for the first time. Set it up last Sunday with three supers between the two BBs but plan to move the empty one we inserted last Sunday up above the top BB as brood will be emerging from there now and don’t want it to be backfilled as far as possible. Seeing on how they have...

I still got beaten by my wife in our BKA photography competition 😢

Checked whether introduced queen was ok and she still hadn’t made it out the cage after we removed the plastic tabs last Saturday. Took one side off the cage and out she trotted down into the hive. They seem to be excited and pleased to see her 🤞. First queen from Black Mountain Honey. Hope it’s...

When I started about 3 years ago I found the Wally Shaw booklets to be great, practical reading especially around swarm prevention and control. https://wbka.com/wbka-publications/

Did a Demaree on Greater London Mongrel Hive. They were on double brood so put all the empty frames + emerging looking brood + queen in bottom BB and all the rest of the brood in top BB. The two supers were heavy so added a third. Need to read up on next actions again for swapping frames Etc.

Took plastic tabs off a queen cage I put between 2 frames last Wednesday after removing the old queen at the same time. No EQC's on the couple of frames of eggs/small larvae but did spot a single small unsealed QC at the bottom of a sealed frame of brood a few frames away from the cage. Bit of a...

https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wbka-booklet-english-PDF.pdf Have a read of the relevant sections of this first. You seem to be at Step 6

Do you check if they are making EQC’s before taking the tab off or just take it off if the bees are not being aggressive towards her?

It’s double brood already so that won't increase space unless I add a 3rd box which seems excessive. I could put the empty frames and emerging brood in the bottom box and everything else in the top one.

Today I replaced a queen in a poorly performing hive with a Buckfast received a couple of hours ago from Black Mountain Honey. Didn't wait for them to be hopelessly queenless but just took the old queen out and straight in with the new one in the cage with tab left on. Will check in 2 or 3 days...

No honey arc in our top box and very limited stores in the brood area. They’re on 2 supers already and are nicely filling them. The top BB is mainly capped and emerging brood which will give her space to move up in over the next week or so. Just need to ensure they don't start filling the...

What’s your criteria for reversing double brood? I've got one hive on double brood. The top box is pretty much full of sealed brood now and the queen is now expanding into what was a fairly empty bottom box. If I were to have reversed, would the best time have been before she started laying...

Checked the 3 hives yesterday. Shook out a nuc with a Drone laying queen last Wednesday and all the bees seemed to go into the closest hive (a weaker one) after a couple of hours. No fighting and all looked good on inspection. Planning to requeen it this Wednesday. Took out a couple of frames...

Horse Chestnut is out on Ealing Common now. Different stages of flowering for different trees.

Yep. No obvious disease just weak. Have a new queen being delivered next week and will requeen the strongest probably with an extra frame of emerging brood from mongrel hive.

Added a 2nd super to mongrel hive as the first one is filing nicely and plenty of bees to fill both. About 11 frames of brood with plenty of space for the queen to lay in the bottom box. The others 2 hives are relatively weak with one about to fail completely. Need to figure out what the issue is.