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Hehehe!! :) Sorry Kaz!! I'm no expert so I could be wrong! I am just speculating on the basis of what I could see. I saw my bees do something similar on one of my hives when I had to use and old super temporarily. The bottom edge of one side was damaged and left a large crack between it and...

With regard to the second video... The clue perhaps is where the bees are - i.e. over a crack between two supers. They're systematically moving and fanning to draw hot air and moisture evaporated from the honey out of the hive. The lady says that she has offset the super for ventilation and...

Sorry, I'd just got back from the hive and I should have added a bit of detail... There is a super that is just about ready to come off (honey is about all capped) The supers below it are filling so they may well need another empty super in the next 2 weeks as well. I usually go through the...

I went to see one of my colonies today (one that I have artificially swarmed back in early April) and found a dreaded sealed queen cup :( I suspect that I was not thorough enough in destroying a queen cell that I found when I last checked them 4 days ago. Will adding/removing supers before the...

I know that bees hybridise easily, but recall reading ages ago about projects on Anglesey (and Isle of Man?) where they had older varieties of bee that were less hybridised and they were trying them out to see if they were more resistant to whatever turns out to be causing bee decline in GB...

I was recently asked if there were any wild bees (i.e. native black bee type rather than a swarm that has gone feral) still living in places like rural Leicestershire. I have absolutely no idea. I have read about wild native bees in places like Angelsey and other wildernesses. Does anyone...

Well the mystery deepens... I went today and there appeared to be nothing now in the queen cup. there was a small grub in there yesterday. The bees seem totally happy generally. Perhaps they changed their mind. I don't know. I have no idea what they're about at the moment!!!

Thanks. Yes, I will go back and check again today and see what I find. I have done several inspections so far this year, with increased frequency in the last week or so with it being so warm here - I have already had several calls about swarms from members of the public. It is indeed a...

Why just one cell though? Why not create several to spread the risk? The queen seemed to be doing fine. And at one year of age she can't be running out of eggs yet, can she?

I inspected one of my colonies today. I expected to see queen cells, as it's swarm time, but there was just one, in the middle of frame 6, almost the dead centre, hanging down. It was not hanging off the bottom of the frame. I last inspected them early on Friday and there was no queen cell...

thanks for the info. I open drone cells often to check for varroa. There are several colonies around here (at least 3 in the village) so I don't think that there will be a shortage of mating drones unless we all decided to go on a cull! Thanks once again for the help. Cheers Simon

Eight months after my post on this and I have had another call about it!!!

I have just been reading the thread about drone culling as a chemical-free method of controlling varroa. Rather than putting in special frames to attract drone brood how about just picking capped drone brood off of the frame with the hive tool when doing and inspection? Does this technique...

no signs that the colony has swarmed recently? queen cells etc. if there is a virgin queen in there then there won't be any eggs. If there are eggs 3 days old or less, and your queen has gone, then the workers will try and make emergency queen cells. if you have another hive, you can take a...

It sounds like that quite a few colonies are "ahead" of mine this year... been keeping a really close eye on mine and they are showing no signs of queen cups yet!!

Are the bees in the attached pics miner bees? They look like honey bees superficially but there was almost no buzz and they were living in the ground. I thought that miner bees were solitary but I have just read that they will share a good site. There were plenty of them around - I counted 10...

Last year I took out some queen cells in a similar panic and, unfortunately, the new queen that emerged from the single queen cell I left behind cell was not very fertile and I had to replace her. It is a danger with just leaving one queen cell. Of course if you leave more than one then you...

DOn't worry. I have only been keeping bees for 2 years and am still learning!! I am just grateful for the advice! :) Point taken. Ok. I will check it out today. SO I guess that Plan A would be to bruise the brood box stores so they will eat the honey and remove the super for the time...

Thanks for the advice. The colonies had got 6 frames with lots of brood on but none was really full. I suppose I asked the question as the remaining frames in the brood box are full of capped honey left over from winter that didn't get eaten and I wasn't really sure where the queen could go...

I had a problem last year with a queen who was present, but dud so there was little/no egg laying and the hive fell into chaos with a greatly diminished population while I fumbled and fretted as to what to do about it. In the end I got a very experienced bee keeper to come look at the colony...