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Here are a couple of mine from my apideas first round, I’ve another set of grafts just emerged yesterday. These queens are off to local association members this weekend.

I requeened my CBPV colony mid way through the virus last year, which was risky, but the colony headed by her is doing great this year. It’s just one of those (horrible) things.

I was more referring to clothing which they are attracted to, unless she walks around naked a lot, in which case she’s leaving herself vulnerable to insect bites of all sorts!

They apparently don’t like light colours and are attracted to darker colours (like a horse), so if you are being bothered a lot you could try wearing light or bright colours?

I’d pop a frame or two of foundation in there, if there is a flow on they’ll draw it out and the queen will have somewhere to lay. Also make sure they have plenty space above to store honey. Or remove a frame or two of honey from brood box, extract and give back, giving the queen, assuming...

agree, I bought a cheap one for about £20 on ebay, converted it to take 8, did the job fine recently!

apideas?

This colony was awful 3 weeks ago, up at you as soon as the crown board was off. following, pinging, all over my hands… New queen from another hive and the difference is very noticeable:

The Apiarist had just talked about this in his latest blog: Spot the queen - The Apiarist

I’m making up 2 nucs for my local association apiary, i’ll make up 6 nucs and 4 apideas. i’ll keep the 6 nucs going alongside my hives in case I need them, I’ll either requeen some colonies later in the year with them or sell them next year. The apidea queens, i’m not sure yet, i’m sure there...

Not a full house but 12 beautiful queen cells! I didn’t use a finisher, I decided just to leave them in the same colony for finishing so reduced the chances of them all being sealed. TBH as this was my first time grafting I wasn’t expecting so many so i’m very pleased! I’m not a queen breeder...

I’ve had this ongoing in my apiaries since early last year. A lovely queen turned horrible early last year then swarmed, her daughter was equally horrible. Both hives were requeened late last year and I thought by Spring they’d be good. Both had sneakily superseded the new queens and were...

That’s the thing, I have a really good sense of smell. Maybe my brain just blocks this one for some reason. Anyway, I can usually tell in other ways if a colony is getting angry so I suppose it’s no big deal!

So I inserted two drawn combs into the centre of my breeder queen hives then went back on day 4 to graft only to find eggs, the queens obviously started laying in them a day later than I planned. so I took the opportunity to put the grafting cells into the cell builder, painted some sugar syrup...

I usually do this at least once early in the season just as a subconscious reminder to myself not to ever do that again! Still not noticed that smell though!

i’ve got a pretty good sense of smell and have never encountered this smell, even with a previous colony which was always on attack mode.

Thank you, I know what i’m supposed to do but having never tried grafting it might all go pear shaped but only one way to find out! I’m an optimist so i’m sure it’ll work at least to some extent!

First charged swarm cells found today so queen removed and I intend to use this hive for queen rearing as @Swarm suggested, going to try my hand at grafting next week once i’ve removed any further QC’s, queen removed to another hive that I wanted to requeen today🤞 So timing was ideal!

I set one up last Monday and had almost instant interest from a good number of scouts, it’s been freezing since Saturday though so none since.

You could look at out the other way, he’s got a fairly new beekeeper he feels responsible for 2 doors away whose bees might swarm, he may feel he has a responsibility to try and catch them rather than them moving into a neighbours chimney…