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I'll be planting cuttings from my own trees so I know what they're like. They also flower very quickly, in a year or two. I'm not sure there's any particular disease I need to worry about but they are host to all sorts of caterpillars and other bugs, but that's just another reason to plant...

Looked through two of mine today as they were the ones I was concerned about. One became very low on stores but has plenty of brood and nectar on the frames. The other seemed to go queenless at the end of last year but there is brood and a Q, and an obvious open Q cell so it must have superseded...

This is a woodland setting so I can plant what I like. There's already a good range of trees for later in the year (syc, lime, hawthorn etc). There's good sources of pollen about as there's a lot of gorse around and the bees are on it one sunny days in Jan. I'm mainly after nectar ideas for...

Thanks Goran. I did know that they had male and female flowers on different plants but had forgotten. Now you mention it I've propagated from male plants so most willow around the place is male. I've found one female plant so I'll remember to take cuttings from that. Certainly there's a strong...

I thought I'd start a specific thread as I'm thinking of planting up a large area with goat/grey/***** willow. Anyway, I have a very large goat willow tree that's a mass of bees and I also have been planting it in amongst some new hedgebanks. My bees are one them and bringing in large amounts...

They're not artichokes, the closest I can think of is freesia.

Douglas Fir is described as moderately durable, the same as Larch. I've no experience of Douglas but I've used a fair bit of untreated larch outside and it lasts a fair amount of time. I'd happily use it for brood boxes (I have a few planks for that purpose). It is noticeably heavier though.

Sounds like gorse if you have any about. Same here, our bees have finally been able to get out over the last couple of days. Nice to see them on the gorse and bringing pollen. Saw a drone as well.

We've just spent a few minutes watching a few hundred ivy bees digging out and nesting in our garden. A couple of somewhat poor quality pics as they don't sit still.

Here's a pic of our nest in a hollow at the base of a tree, they currently seem more docile than some of my hives.

We get a lot of hornets around here and don't seem to have much of a problem. I've been watching a nest in our woodland develop this year and it's not that far away from one of my hives. So far I've only seen one hornet near a hive and that was picking up a dead bee to take away. We've got used...

Not that far, further to the north and west (so more windy and foggy). I think our bees are related to yours. It's not all bad, no swarms this year (I hope it's safe to say that). Splits done and all but one hive running with a young queens mated in the distant past early summer when it was...

The taste is fine for me, but we already have loads of honey. It's just a hint of something. Frames were stored dry last winter by the way. Funnily enough, as someone who likes an aged bottle of German Riesling, I'd quite like a sweet petrolly sweet mead. I do have a hive I can feed it to so...

Thank you. I think it might be a whole super though. It's been very, very wet here. Before the last couple of weeks where we've had high winds and rain we had a lot of fog when most of the UK had 30°C temps.

Refractometer is fine as the 17.5% reading matches up with last years harvest and I checked it then. Even ignoring the reading I noticed a slightly fermenting smell and taste. Mead is an option for some of it and I'll happily return most of the rest to the bees if it's not likely to harm them.

I've only just managed to take some supers off, due in part to the stormy weather we've had for the last month. Processing one and it was 17.5% water and tasted fine. 2nd frame was completely capped and as soon as I uncapped it it smelt slightly fermented. Checking with my refractometer and it...

We had a couple of hours of thunder, lightening and heavy rain on Monday morning. One strike was very close and I had wondered if there's any record of a bee hive ever being struck? At least the water butts are all now full.

It's not soya bean and I thought white mustard has yellow flowers. The flowers do look like some form of brassica and I'd suggest a fodder radish of some sort as they can produce very large pods.

Don't suppose you took a photo? We get loads of native hornets here, even have a nest about the place this year. The queens can be surprisingly large at the start of the season. The other photo is what I linked to earlier, no need to kill the poor thing. Looking up the Asian Giant Hornets...

Sure it wasn't something like a harmless giant woodwasp? https://www.naturespot.org.uk/species/giant-woodwasp