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Thanks for sharing; that’s very comforting to know

Thanks -soon after I realised my mistake I remembered that I had possibly read/heard something about one of the sides having to be shorter than the other to interfere with the queen’s flight balance otherwise they’d be able to fly anyway but now it looks like I got it wrong. As for the friend...

Hope you’re right - been trying to get a mated queen in that colony since April and the weather really messed with their mating and the virgins either became drone layers or workers became drone layers. And when a virgin finally has success with mating then I make a mistake with the clipping...

You gave me some hope now as my friend seemed adamant that they will completely reject her. Can’t wait for my next inspection next week

New to this business of clipping and happy with the success I’ve had with my previous clipping, I accidentally clipped both sides of my queen’s wings. Believing (maybe wrongly) that to achieve the end result of wining a couple of days in the swarm prevention process, one pair of wings must be...

Due to emergency circumstances, I had to introduced a mated queen using a push in cage to a handful of bees (less than 50 bees) made queenless for about 5 hours, with plenty of stores & drawn combs, in a poly nuc. The following day (yesterday) I made queenless for 9.5 hours 2 capped brood frames...

Update: the queen disappeared and bees didn’t make any emergency queen cells, so I added another frame of young larvae/eggs and one of capped brood, moved the hive to the spot of a stronger colony to get the foragers as the nuc didn’t seem to have enough bees to tend the young brood. A beekeeper...

Thanks, John; that’s very comforting to know

Went in today to replace a green twig that was holding the cage with a skewer (all I had at the time was a soft thin twig) but didn’t see her properly as it had to be a very quick visit. Bees seemed ok with her. Will have a proper look hopefully on Thursday or Friday, when I will manually...

So did she manage to lay ok even though she was blind? Did the paint come off?

So as I was marking a donated oldish mated queen to introduce her into a 3 frame “nuc”, which is actually a 14x12 hive as I had run out of nucs, made up on the spot on a bid to save that queen, the marker pen spilled and not only did the paint cover her thorax but also her eyes and a bit of her...

Wasn’t aware of that. Hopefully they died/absconded before EFB. I did get rid of the combs & sterilise frames and hive. No EFB in my area according to the NBU website though.

I think so, as far as I can remember. At the first spring inspection there were lots of dead bees on the floor - more than there were at the other bigger colonies at the same teaching apiary. Some brood died with their proboscis rolled out, even though there were stores but not enough nurse bees...

Thanks; I now need to decide whether I try the sugar shake or alcohol wash method first. What about sprinkling icing sugar on brood weekly? Read about the method on a BBKA book last year when I first started beekeeping but was told not to do it as is can dry the brood and it isn’t efficient...

Curiously, Randy Oliver says he uses more than one type of treatment but oxalic acid is his favourite

Treated in August, they managed to overwinter but were very weak and died after second spring inspection. Same happened to someone else’s colony at the same teaching apiary and they all colonies there were treated the same way at the same time

Interesting answers. I’ve recently watched Randy Oliver’s Varroa Management video and he seems to keep a very close eye on varroa count - he uses the alcohol wash method. If I remember it correctly I think he tends to treat his colonies about 3 times a year. He then culls queens whose colonies...

Thank you al Thank you all for your input. The reasoning I was given to justify the method was that varroa particular likes drone larvae specially because one of both their life cycles coincided. So can I now ask what you guys do to keep your varroa count down? I lost my colony due to varroa...

Beginner here, but could you please tell me why? I was told at the teaching apiary I go to that that’s what we should be doing to help keep the mite counts down, on top of the MAQS or any other treatment the teaching apiary elects each year when we are to take out supers off by October. Thanks...

Thanks. So say a catch a swarm, not aware if queen is virgin or not. I hive the swarm. When shall I do the first inspection?