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! I did not think you could go that far. Thanks.

For the last 6 weeks I've been getting no response to my requests for access to my bees. The last time I visited was just before New Year when I was let in to check stores. After I left sent message, "They both look OK. See you in April". They approached me when I was selling honey at a car...

I'm thinking of commercial bee keepers I follow on Twitter. Perhaps the difference is needing to push the colonies early to get a spring crop. I find mine have eaten their way up into the super by first inspection in April. Tho' I don't feed heavily in the autumn to pack the BB.

There are commercial beeks who overwinter on single National standard BB. They usually need to feed fondant in the new year. I'm not a commercial beekeeper. I overwinter with brood and a half and I don't worry about feeding. Normally. But I have super frames that have been on during treatments...

My go-to is Wally Shaw "There are queen cells in my Hive - what should I do?" in the Welsh BKA library. If the last inspection was 2 weeks ago and they started QCs soon after you could have queens emerging any time. Look at the ones you pinch out to see how old they are. If you do find the...

These bees don't sound to have made a good decision. The spaces under the bonnet or dash are not big enough to make a decent nest. ? I agree. A nightmare for the car owner.

I'm just weighing my 2 hives again this week. Not opening them until it's warmer next week. There's a good bit of flying happening but it's only 8-9degC. No interest in bait hives so thinking no swarming underway. One hive has lost 7lbs in the last week which is probably most of the stores I saw...

Too damn cold to open them up so just weighed them. The weight gains have stalled. Don't need that extra super.

Didn't want to let them run into another hive as there may be an unmated queen from a QC which emerged in late October/November. She'd be very difficult to spot. ? Concerned there may be a chance she could kill my laying queen. She must have killed or deposed my bought-in marked queen. My...

Photo, today , five days after being shaken out and then climbing up into nuc, as I felt sorry for them. A good number of bees have flown off and hopefully found one of the other hives but the remainder just died together after DLQ removed. Once before I've shaken out a DLW colony onto a sheet...

18degC here yesterday and windy. If I hadn't put a box over them they would be a soggy clump of bees after the rain. Expected them to thin out after I removed the queen yesterday. I suppose she could have laid an egg which would give them hope.

Two of the four colonies at home have become drone layers over winter so I shook them out into the long grass 10m in front of one of the other hives on Saturday (2 days ago). Having not found and dispatched the queens they clumped together in the weeds looking miserable. I took pity on them...

Drones flying from a couple of hives. I expect to be shaking them out on first inspection at the weekend.

Haven't done first full inspection yet, just checked a couple of frames in the top super of brood and a half. Checked varroa drop over last 4 days. The busiest colony dropping 14 varroa/day. Floor slide running with condensation so they've found some nectar. The drone layers (I have 2 I think)...

Took on a hive with plastic spacers. I use all Hoffman frames. Awkward to run the two together. Thorne have stopped selling Hoffman convertor clips so I looked around the workshop and discovered these push pins, if pushed right in, give something close to the right spacing and can be mixed with...

I'd be looking for multiple eggs per cell to say laying workers? Can't see any eggs even on the full size image. What are you seeing?

Quick stores check having been freaked out by posts here and on social media. Lifted a couple of frames in top box. No worries about stores but 2 of 4 look like drone layers. drat! This will therefore be my worst winter survival rate.

Melted some blocks of wax with some water to clean them up. Output from the solar wax melter last year. As it cooled off outside the faint smell of honey must have attracted this bumblebee queen. Only 8degC and overcast.

I'm just impatient, I guess.