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They were overwintered on a brood and a half, super on top. We've had trouble going over to double brood here so I thought I'd add supers without a Q ecluder to see how they go. I've added two more supers now, there's some brood in the 2nd and none in the third. I had considered the first super...

They'll just swarm will they not? I've knocked back the Q cells twice now, so if I add a brood box is that going to stop them swarming? As mentioned, they are on a brood box and then three supers with no Q excluder so I had hoped they had room.

My OH bought me a frame holder and it's great when I remember to use it. I've knocked frames over when simply placed at the base of the frame. One downside is it only fits on wooden hives, the sides on the poly hives we have are too wide. I have a strip of aluminium from an old curtain track...

Thank you. Just had another check and there's far more than a couple of QC's, a few cheekily hidden on the middle of a brood frame in the bottom box. Strangely the 'small' queen is noticeably bigger than the last inspection and now looks normal size. I had wondered if there was more than one...

One of my colonies replaced it's queen early on this year. She is small and I worried about how well she mated as it was early for us with few drones flying. The good news is she's laying well with about 8 frames of brood & eggs. The bad news is the colony is starting to produce Q cells. The...

Size isn't a problem, I'm curious if she's mated well as she would have mated when we didn't have many drones flying. I'll see how she goes.

Just went through the hive quickly (it's not ideal weather at the moment). There's a few frames of eggs and brood, so the colony is doing ok. There appears to be just 1 Q, the orangier one. She is small, can anyone advise is she likely to get bigger or is this a sign she hasn't mated that...

One of my hives was last inspected about 3 weeks ago (weather has been poor and very windy since). All was well with a laying queen and I put the first super on. Today there were several broken down or open Q cells. I could not find the original Q (who was about 23 months old). I did find two...

If you look at their buyers guide page https://bee-equipment.co.uk/pages/buyers-guide#anchor-one they link to an illustration: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1787/5055/files/Frame_Drawing_for_website.pdf?17753504397089777086 and provide measurements...

Many experienced beeks round here don't seem to run double brood, I don't think a double brood is the best option everywhere is it? As for the Q, she's less than a year old so I'll give her a chance. Other Qs I've had/got don't seem to want to fill a whole double brood but I'm happy with that...

I know this may be a daft question but... I have a poly hive that has 2 x brood boxes and 2 x supers. I'm not using a double brood so don't need one brood box, but I could do with another super. It currently has a brood box, then a super on top, which was over wintered and has a little brood...

Well, I've fed the hives that need it. As hoped, plenty of activity this week so they are also bringing nectar in. I inspected the hive that had the most stores today as it seemed very busy. Still some winter stores left and loads of capped brood, including capped drone brood and drones in the...

So how come they've used far more stores in a warm winter than they did when it was cold? Purely down to raising brood earlier? I think the colony size was similar on some of the hives this winter as last. Drex, keeping the summer heat off I understand, I'm thinking about doing something if it...

I was under the impression bees cluster tightly to keep warm when it's cold, to conserve heat and thus conserve stores. With build up I'm not sure I want them building up in Jan only to have a cold Feb and/or March. We have a warmer winters here so I've not really worried much about insulation...

Thanks for the replies, it seems I'm not alone. I had thought the supers would suffice as the colonies aren't huge. I also successfully overwintered them without a super last 17/18 winter. It was very cold though. We are in a windy place here and the bees have hardly clustered, they were...

I've just had a quick look through most of our hives and was a bit surprised at the lack of stores. All but one had hardly anything left. I'm surprised as they are not large colonies, just a single brood box, and all had a full super of extra stores left on. They filled up with ivy at the end...

Time of a bit of an update. Firstly, I'm not desperate to produce tons of honey so I can take my time. The hive had a superfull of stores so I thought I'd remove the old queen and add a frame of eggs from another hive. New queen raised (strangely, about 6 frames away from the new frame of...

An update, as it was my OH's original post. The bees seemed to sort themselves out in the end, didn't really nibble through the newspaper and one went through when it was cut. Hive now seems to be doing well with plenty of brood and plenty of bees, although they don't seem to have a huge amount...

I'm looking for some pointers as to what may be up with one of our hives. It was a strong colony housed last year from a large swarm from one of our other hives. Q is about 2. It's a poly hive and it overwintered fine, and had about 8 frames of brood in it's first inspection of the year, about 6...

If it wasn't for the warnings about Ivy from experienced bee keepers I wouldn't have worried. After all, as you say, they've been living together for millennia. We're also more paranoid as it's our first winter with them, hopefully future years we'll leave them to it. The super is mostly nectar...