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I am rather concerned about one of my colonies. The queen (born 2011) is present and correct. The bees are in good humour. There are plenty of stores and some nextar and pollen. No obvious sign of varroa (deformed wings etc.) and couldn't see any when I examined bees through a magnifying...

The bees generally, are secure. They are out of site, down a lonely lane with very limited access. The land belongs to a lady who lives in a house next to the field. The land around, which is a patchwork of small fields, is not owned by any particular farmer but more a variety of individuals so...

Damned animals... they escaped from their field into the one where the bees live and one of them totally upended a hive. Got a call from a lady who lives nearby so they were only overturned for an hour or so. Glad it was a warm day and I found out before dark. Found the queen and she was ok...

:rofl:

This answers another question I was going to post. I have been making candles successfully from paraffin wax for years but when I tried with bees' wax recently all of the candles cracked and split. At least now I know why. Thank you!!!

It's amazing to read that bees can recognise faces. Regarding my original question about if bees use smell to distinguish humans from each other (and other animals) it seems that they can be trained to recognise certain smells (e.g. drugs, explosives) as described here...

I was talking about honeybees to my 12 year-old nephew (he wants to be an entomologist when he grows up) and discussing their keen sense of smell and he asked if they are able to identify their keeper by smell and whether, over time, they will recognise the keeper as "friendly" and be more...

Yes, I think that cycling, allotmenting and beekeeping all make a person more in tune with nature and more observant meteorologists. Point taken about cycling gear. I ride a fair distance (8 miles each way) to work and can work up a big sweat when clad from head to toe in Goretex. The worst is...

I have been in touch with the local council. They're all old Tories who aren't into "green" things. Even when offered 100s of free trees, flowers and bulbs, the response was more or less total apathy. There is no real interest within the community either I put an article in the paper asking who...

Sounds like mine. I hope the weather is better and I can go see them tomorrow or at least over the bank holiday.

Yes we do need the rain... water butts at the allotment were almost empty. They should be full to overflowing at this time of year! It's just not very convenient when it rains when I'm out on my bike or when I want to go do bee stuff. Our girls dislike this weather even more than we do I think! :(

I saw some rape in full flower on my way to Yorkshire at the weekend. The fields I ride by on my way home are still just starting to turn yellow. In the midlands we've not had it as wet as my friends in the west country have... but we've had more rain than East Anglia. When we were in Norfolk...

That's a lot of forest Finnman!! I assume that the trees are pine trees (or relatives). I remember someone telling me that pine trees are not great sources of food for bees so if that is the case, then I suppose you have no choice but to move your hives each year to where there is pasture. And...

Yes, I can understand why. The heart of the talk was based around PCA which, given the quantity of data coming in, could only usefully be performed by a computer. The human ear is unlikely to hear anything of value beyond the basics. The use of PCA is an established and proven technique in...

It sounds like we both value good quality forage above quantity for our bees Finnman. Sadly, most of the land around where I live is intensively farmed and there is little wild forage. Three hives live near a large village where there are lots of gardens with flowers and mature trees which...

I went to a talk on this in February presented by scientist Dr Martin Bencsik of Nottingham Trent University. It was very interesting and the spectral output from hives showed clear patterns that varied depending on time of day, season, swarming and also when the bees were fed in autumn...

Blimey! That's early! When I inspected last week, one of my queens hadn't even started laying. The other other three had small patches of brood on a couple of frames... It feels like a slower start than last year...

Have you considered the quality of honey rather than just quantity? None of my hives were particularly near (though there was some within a 3 mile radius) to OSR fields last year and it's looking like the same will happen this year. For sure there was less honey, but it meant that the bees...

It's barely started yet around here (East Midlands). This stop-go weather seems to be mucking things around a bit. Stuff on my allotment doesn't seem to know if it's spring or not...

I'll give surgical lint a go. The muslin just isn't fine enough. I shouldn't have any problem finding rain water after the downpours here of the last 24 hours. I could simply wring out my soggy cycling clothes from my ride to work this morning...