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Personally, I haven’t. Not sure how prevalent it is.

I always leave grass a certain height in front of the hives. It’s easier to see if/when bees are affected by Acarine, with them crawling up the blades one of the signs.

Other than apibioxal trickling around new year, I haven’t needed to treat my hives the last 2 years.

Yeah about 15 degrees here for next week

One colony is light. Have had fondant on during winter. Just wondered if it’s warm enough to replace fondant with syrup?

Is it too early yet for feeding syrup?

But I will need some to go in for pollination purposes. I suppose they would find their way in, even with netting?

Hmm, good point. But I suppose there would still be a few bees inside, even if I moved the poly tunnel 10-20 yards away?

Have plans to site a polytunnel 2-3 metres from my apiary. To the south-west side, so it might block the sun from my hives in the later part of the day. Would this hinder the bees in any way? Flight path, lack of sun etc? (To be honest, I was thinking maybe my apiary was getting too much sun...

One hive needing painting, and hope to do so come the better weather. Is it safe to paint while the colony is using it? Would the paint do the bees any harm while they are to-ing and fro-ing?

The OMF came along with a colony I bought, so it’s not one i bought myself. It’s in good condition, bar the split on one side. Might have wood glue lying about somewhere, maybe that’s worth a try.

Are there any places where you can buy individual hive parts, without having to buy the whole item? I have an open mesh floor, still in good condition, but one of the wooden (cedar) sides is split. Seems a waste to have to buy the whole open mesh floor package, when all I need is one wooden side.

I have a poly nuc overwintering. I have the feeder on top, as I have fondant on. Each time I check fondant, there’s a number of slugs up inside the feeder tray. Even though I have the hive entrance reduced to small, I assume that’s where they’re getting in. Anyway, are slugs (or their trails)...

Ahh, very interesting! It might pay off then, to have some rotting wood/tree stumps left nearby.

I’ve seen my bees quite a few times taking water from sphagnum moss growing around the banks of drains. Seen another bee on a fungus which was growing on a tree trunk. Didn’t know if it was taking in water from it, or taking in some sort of sustenance from the fungus itself. Is there...

Can you explain the sting dust thing? I remember coming across the term before, but can’t recall much

And there should be no damage to the veil, even when you put on the spin wash?

What method do you advise for cleaning your bee suit? (Top half) I don’t want to put the veil part in the washing machine in case it’s damaged.

Would the amount of fondant intake depend on how cold it is, or the amount of stores? In other years, my colonies didn’t seem to take much fondant, until around new year. Which I assumed was due to them not wanting to leave the cluster in cold temperatures and/or having enough stores. This...

Yeah good point re: dead bees. I have a few pins to keep the disc in place. But yeah, as JBM said, using a smaller entrance is probably the best idea