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I decided to mark my queens this year. First one went OK and the second one flew off and did not come back. I am now thinking I will not mark them from now on. Eggs and brood are the main signs you need most of the time and I will get better at spotting her with experience. My youngest son...

Perhaps it is a can of worms? Visually when I put the QE parallel there looks significantly more room for the bees to get through than at 90 degrees. But then the eye can be deceived, so I may be wrong. (the lines are parallel)

No can of worms here, I think. I believe that the frames running the same way as the slots creates more openings. If they are diagonal to each other there is less room. The diagrams are exaggerated but I think illustrates the point.

Did you line the QE up the same way as the frames. If they are 90 degrees there may be places at the end of the slots where they meet the frames where a worker could get stuck.

My bees are in the garden and they have started doing what you describe. All last year they were as good as gold. I am going to put a thin mesh screen in front of the hives to make them go up before flying and also stop the guard bees from coming straight out of the hive and going into defence...

Hi Toekneetwo I think you are getting some stick here but you have left yourself open to it. “Didnt have the time to manage the hives prior to swarming.” Perhaps is the reason why. You cannot expect the bees to behave because you didn’t have the time to manage them. I have found they don’t...

If you look at the hologram on a current £10 note one of the images is of Britannia and to her left is a bee hive and bees. This is an image from older £10 notes when the image was printed. Bees represent industry and thier stores represent wealth. How did I know this? Last week at a skep...

Well a week later and I did the inspection. Two nice queen cells there so she did not make it back.

Hi Milfoil That is interesting. If you are interested in skeps the take a look at martinatnewton . com (take out the spaces if you past into your browser.) I was on a skep making course on Sunday that was run by Martin and he brought along a lot of different types of skeps and explained how...

I did a search on large nitrile gloves and there are a lot of suppliers. First on list is Just Gloves and they do a box of 100 XL for around £4 but the charge nearly £6 for deliver and then add VAT so very costly. Tried Amazon searching Extra large Nitrile and a number of cheaper options. At...

My eldest son is doing A level biology and for his first year course work he did varroa control. For his second year he is looking into varroa in more detail. Today he and two college colleagues extracted all the brood in one of the above pieces of comb and examined them under a suitable...

I have two colonies in my back garden close to the house. It is fine when they are happy and they just get on with things. If they did turn nasty I would shift them and I have somewhere where they could go. The big issue when they are close to the house is when you have to do a major...

Phil If this an OMF I assume the "floor" you are talking about it the one that slides under. This in fact is not a floor but a monitoring board. It should only be in place when you monitor for varroa (a few days to a week). All the rest of the time is is out to let the OMF do the work. Even...

Hi SB I am not sure what your point is, I never mentioned suicide. They all came out of the nuc and settle on the grass in ten or so clumps and stayed there even when it started raining. They made no attempt to go back into the nuc nor did they fly and settle on a tree to shelter. They just...

Hi Mike Today I had to cut out two sections of wild comb with drone brood from the space in a brood box between the dummy board and the wall. The comb is very soft and very warm to the touch so I am not surprised that the comb flopped over in your photo. Unlike a normal hive inspection...

What do you call it?

Silly Bee I promise you these bees did. They had been collected by the person who used a homemade vacuum device. When I collected them he told me they keep leaving the hive and going back to the bush (where I think he left the queen). They day after I brought them home (and they were very...

Thanks Susan. If is cracking the flags we will be at the seaside. If it rains then Bushmills it is. Incidentally Admin mentioned the Albums. If you look on the tool bar below USER CP FAQ etc there is a tab there for albums you may want to try. I uploaded a swarms collection album yesterday...

Hi Vince You may want to update your profile as it states that you don't have any bees.

HI Badger. Commiserations. I was given a swarm in earky May and it died. I thought when I got it there was no queen by their behaviour and I was right. It was very small and they all just gave up. I have collected two swarms since and i am of view not to do any treatments or monitoring for...