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Mine are mostly in a very exposed windy site, they do fine overwintering with omf and top insulation (all poly), the only other thing i’d recommend adding is an underfloor entrance which they all have, that encloses the bottom and prevents the worst weather getting in. Like your profile pic btw...

I had a spare queen in one of my nucs so I added her in the wee yellow plastic one but i’ll go back on Thursday I think and see how they are treating her and use a push in cage. I agree, I far prefer those, I do have a metal one I made. I’m hoping they’ll be a bit calmer as well.

Just had to deal with a colony like this at our teaching apiary. The hive started as a swarm like yours but temperament wasn’t great so was eventually united with a nice hive but had killed the nice queen and raised their own. They were at us as soon as we were near their hive and worse than...

This is my first year using double brood. I’ve dummied them down to 8/8 for weight. Most i’ve reduced now to single but I still have one i’ll overwinter on double brood, it really depends on the strength of the colony when preparing for winter. I use poly hives but my dummies are also...

I see, I treat and feed around now when all supers are off so any additional heather goes in the brood box for the bees. All my bees are near the heather so I always have a mix but the weather can suddenly change here.

I do this but why with no heather near?

I made a rather horrible honey fudge from an old Good Housekeeping book. I did consider feeding it to the bees until I remembered i’d heated the sugar too much for them.

I have one of your queens, she’s 2 years old now and they are constantly packing out two brood boxes, beautifully behaved as well and good producers. Never tried to swarm. I’ve bred from her this year!

Mine are the opposite. Especially one hive I used for queen rearing. So in addition to a brood break and treatment over winter, I spotted bees out the front of the hive last week with DWV and mites. So got the supers off and treated the other day. Day one this was the board!

It’s been a lean few weeks for all but my home apiary who are near lime and phacelia which is only just flowering now. Both the bell and ling starting to flower at my other apiaries and plenty of willow herb so not looking to take supers off for a few weeks at least.

pretty sure they are just to maintain spacing.

One of my nicest and strongest hives has produced loads of drones this year, second year queen and never shown any signs of swarming.

And so it goes round, if the majority of beekeepers were trying to improve their bees and only breeding from the best, the drones would also improve. I realise it’s an idealistic view!

if honey is your thing then surely select from your best producers.

I’ve purchased queens in the past from breeders without bother in the post but can see how all these issues could come about. I’ve purchased wonderful queens from a small scale keeper in Scotland all but one of the others have either been superseded or not up to par. So i’m sure my next...

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1991/2825/regulation/2/made Regulation 2 ⬆️ However it has been pointed out above that this has now been updated / changed to exclude certain products, including honey. That is if I am reading it all correctly… so effectively you can ignore my last post...

RM Special Delivery, which is the only one that guarantees by 1pm the next day is automatically covered up to £750.

Just make sure you’re not doing it too often…

Hi i’m just South of you!

Went to the apiary to simply collect a nuc and discovered i’d left the door closed on an apidea after taking them up on Friday, checked inside and all all ok so opened them up, only noticed by chance as they are in a wooded area not the main apiary. I then discovered one of my apideas has...