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Took some more supers off & prepared the samples for the honey monitoring scheme.

Good colour. I mark all my Q’s neon green. Pop up very easily amongst the bees. Many times I can spot her on a frame still in the box…

I bought the Abelo 50L heating & creaming machine. Will try it out first time later this year. Glad to see you back! Been a while. Hope you’re well.

Extracted first 4 supers taken from one colony. 50kg at 17%. Good start. First 2 supers very light honey (summer), older 2 supers darker honey (spring)

Slowed down here also. Weather is also not as good, back to ~16c daytime high. Will be removing the supers in the next couple weeks.

Those normally come calibrated, so check before you start adjusting.

Another misconception is the no. of bees in the hive. People look at their hives in Aug/Sep and think I should leave lots of food for them, when in reality the no. of bees in the hive during winter is lower.

There is, definitely.

Enjoy the new toy. Looking good 😎

Didn’t know him, never spoken to him, sad to hear of his passing. My condolences to his family and everyone who knew him. Seems the beekeeping world lost a big character 🙁

One of the beekeepers around me isn’t cooperating with the BI’s. BI’s mentioned they’re likely to take the enforcement route with them now. They can’t tell me who that is due to GDPR, but I think I know…

Another over commercialised American YouTube channel. They are absolutely clueless when it comes to bees.

Same here. A week ago, ~50% capped, now - ~80% capped.

Took first 4 supers off a colony over the weekend, 80-90% is capped. Tested the uncapped cells across several frames, highest I got is 18.5%, most are 17-18%. Left in a small room (with a dehumidifier) to reduce this a bit further before extraction, but pleasantly surprised.

The non obvious colonies are the biggest challenge. one of the 3 positive EFB diagnosis I had 2 weeks ago is my biggest colony, 10-11 frames of brood, 5 supers (80-90% full) above. BI’s picked a couple of larvae across all 10-11 brood frames… EFB clearly didn’t affect this specific colony much...

Not at all late to build up. Feed them as needed and good Q’s will build up absolutely fine before winter.

Bramble towards the end, clover and willowherb still going strong. No sign of HB yet.

18kg for £19.85 or 6kg for £7.78 on Amazon, delivered.

You touched on two issues I most dislike about the Paynes nucs - no runners and side feeder. Yes, you can add runner but as mentioned above, change the space above. I prefer feeding using a top jar, allows for slow, continuous feeding & easy to see how they take it and when it needs filling…

I believe it should be flowering at the same time as bramble. Excellent resource for bees. I planted a couple ~3yr ago, still waiting for flowers… (those are about 10-12ft high now)