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I had the dslr with me today and managed to take a better photo of the freaky bee! I've added a photo of the KBS italian queen I successfully introduced to this failing colony, she is a beauty.

A caste swarm arrived at my home bait box today :) that is 2 now in as many weeks!

I was chuffed to bits today when I found brood and eggs in a colony I had more or less given up on (very long story), but I spotted 2 bees which I can only describe as albino. I've attached the extremely poor photos that I took with my phone. I'll take the dslr with me next time! One of them can...

Looks like a small caste swarm has arrived in my bait box, they look a bit lost in there, so will put them in a nuc tomorrow.

I've just had my first swarm arrive at a bait box on top of my garage. It is a box I knocked up to national brood box dimensions with three frames of old comb in it. I plan to move them to my apiary site a few miles away and have a spare hive ready, but I'm in no rush, they could stay there...

Cedar is a softwood.

New queen nuc made up on 27/4 Checked in on it 5 days later and the queen had been released. I also removed the DLQ from other colony. The weather has been poor since, but had a quick look today no sign of any eggs or new brood in the nuc but the queen is there still, but not many bees. I,m...

Thanks Tom, I'll give it a go when/if the weather warms up a bit.

Wired frames sounds good, I think I'l give that a go. What do people use as starter strips?

From what I've read so far, it seems the main benefit of top bar is that the bees decide on how big or small to build the cells. Would using an empty frame with some sort of blank starter strip at the top have the same effect?

I did a search but found nothing, so... has anybody tried and succeeded using top bars in national brood box instead of conventional frames? It is something I'd like to try, any tips any one?

Just re read my post, it should read 12mm ply, 25mm cellotex, 6mm ply.

I've just made a very similar brood box as suggested by Muswell Metro. Based on national dimensions, 12mm ply, 25mm and 6mm ply on the frame wall end, 18mm ply on other 2 walls, with 2 x 25mm insulated dummy frames leaving room for 10 self spacing frames. And there was me thinking I'd come up...

There is no harm in introducing a frame of brood with eggs as a test frame as it will also boost numbers, but it sounds like she is waiting to get mated. Down here the weather is good, so I would leave them alone at the moment as this may be her chance to get mated before the weather turns again.

Does anybody have a surplus of honey they would like to sell in Sussex/Kent area?

The vanilla is suggested by the supplier, I guess it masks the scent of the new queen.

just thought I'd put an update on here for anyone who's interested, there does seem to be a few beeks in a similar predicament. I ought to add I'm still quite new to this lark and that some of the more hard core beeks on here will probably say that they aren't worth bothering with, but I can't...

First inspection was one week ago, It was only really a quicky to check for stores, but I did see the queen last week. So couldn't be sure on all stages of brood. Didn't see any queen cells.

There is evidence of the brood nest with a little sealed brood on the outside frames but just polished cells in the middle. I didn't take any photos.

Just checked my two colonies, one has six frames of brood and plenty of stores the other has very little sealed brood left and no eggs. It was looking okay last week, probably 4 frames of brood. So I took a frame of eggs from the q+ colony and placed it in the other. I then heard what I...