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Is anybody following up the avenue of trying to select for the mechanism used by Apis cerana to deal with varroa, as this has obviously proven to be very successful? Basically, individual worker larvae simply die if their cell is occupied by a varroa mite. Should we be looking for this...

My hives were getting an awful pasting from wasps. I placed several traps around the hives and last week i found the wasps nest, in the ground about 20m away. I disposed of the nest and later dug it up. I had thought, like you, that it would have been empty ... but all the comb that I found...

Think of freeports more as bonded warehouses rather then a pirate haven. Nobody will be allowed bring in bees or other animals there. UK had them up to a few years ago.

Afer Brexit the UK can set out its own import conditions for animals and incorporate requirements for checks at origin, certification etc. There are international standards for this. How they would be enforced in the case of queen bees is another matter entirely.

How long should it take bees to release a queen when introduced in one of these boxes? I had thought it would take several days but... I introduced one 6 days ago in a similar box as the first video with the entrances filled with fondant. I checked today and found she had been released and...

Epipens are designed to be used by laypeople, and have saved many lives. I am aware of a case where a child died on the street from anaphylaxis because a pharmacist refused to give an EpiPen to its mother without a prescription. Epipens should be available in public places, just like...

I can't find the answer to this in any of the books; In the case of a secondary swarm, and assuming ideal weather conditions, does the virgin queen leave with the swarm immediately on emergence or does she also wait 4 days to mature (as is the case before the nuptual fights start)? Thanks :)

Sorry, I wasnt clear. I have a frame with capped queen cells that I could add (but only in the next 2/3 days as i need to get them out of the parent hive). My query is if this is likely to cause the swarm to part swarm again (if so, bad idea).... or if bees would tear down the added QC if they...

Thanks. My problem is that in another week I wont have any more queen cells as the ones in the 'parent' hive will have emerged. And if i wait for those emerged virgins to mate and lay in order to produce a frame of eggs to give to the swarm hive, it will be maybe another three weeks, by which...

Final report on this for completeness in case somebody else has a similar issue. The queen was obviously not performing. When I examined the hive in May (first opportunity) the brood nest was tiny and most of the cells were drones, although there were a few capped worker cells. It seems the...

I hived a swarm 5 days ago but I think its very likely to be without a queen as the queen in the hive it came from was clipped, though its possible she was superceded. No eggs or queen seen so far. I am thinking of adding a frame of brood with one or two capped queen cells from the hive they...

Look for one with three scales when you look through it. These are the honey ones.

"after making the first transaction on that card in months" This is what happened; Their software had signalled your card as a card that is never or very rarely used online, and suddenly there are two unrelated online transactions in one day. They logged that as suspicious. Correctly.

I had a hive like that last winter, plenty of fat drones right through until february. It worried me as everybody I asked suggested that I had queen problems. Actually it turned out to be the opposite, a very strong colony. Because of the long winter, I didn't get to open them until the third...

Just a litttle update. It was very mild here two days ago, and bees were orienteering at this hive. So I guess that reduces the likelyhood that the eggs on the bottom board were the result of drone layers. :)

No. Its over a month since this hive got fed. It did surprise me how much feed it took, compared to my other hive.. So i guess they were well stocked. There is a lot of ivy here too. What you see as sugar crystals might be dropped new wax plates?

I did a varroa drop count last week. On examining the floor, I noticed several eggs under the brood area, which look like bee eggs to me. What might this mean? Drone layers? I attach two photos, one with a varroa for comparison.

Thats roughly what I use. I find that 600ml is just enough to dissolve 1kg easily.

If I can follow on from this query; One of my hives went queenless around 4 August, judging by the ages of the brood and emergency queen cells at the time. Queen cells hatched out ok, I think. Concerned by no signs of eggs, i added a frame of brood on 11 Sept and another which definitely...

It's down to how the Local Authority interpret what are very general rules. If you're a hobbyist, selling at 'farmgate' or using somebody to sell on your behalf, then the rules are very light... no HACCP, for example. However if you have too many hives to count and are selling commercially...