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Thanks will do. Had similar last year where they were hammering the oil see rape and I managed to get it all off and extracted without it crystallising. Will use your proposed timing method as last time found it difficult to judge.

Went for a walk yesterday in the field near where I keep my bees to investigate the bright yellow flowers. Plenty of honeybees foraging on them. I took a photo on ObsIdentify app and it came back with turnip where as I thought it was OSR. Is this correct and if so is it as good for the bees as OSR?

Put my ear to each hive late last night and a reassuring hum heard from each one.

Good idea. I’ll check later tonight.

13deg here today. Watched the bees for a little bit. Good to see plenty of activity as there was a couple of them I was worried about as not seen many bees coming and going over winter.

Thanks all. Not found any before so wanted to confirm they weren’t workers that were half dead 🤣💦

Hi. I recently moved some wood and found these in between the planks. Not dead as they were moving very slowly. Are these queen wasps as not come across queen wasps before ?

Thanks.

The general consensus after I posted these photos a few weeks agon was that the dark cylindrical items are wax moth poo but in the same pictures you can see the wax cappings. These photos were taken on the 24th dec after the boards has been in for around 7 days across 2 oxalic acid treatments 5...

I’ll have another look and see.

Was wondering whether the cappings were stores or brood. Is there any easy way to tell ?

I did 2 oxalic acid vape treatments 5 days apart on days around 10degc in the afternoon just before Christmas with inspection boards in on 3 colonies. Good evidence of cappings dropped so bees in there but only spotted 1 mite on one of the boards. Either I’m not doing the treatment right, the...

Thanks. Really appreciate you having a look yourself and sending the photos. They look the same so must be wax moth as you said. I’m coming to realise that a big part of beekeeping is that you learn so much about other things as part of the process of looking after bees.

Thanks all. I might have a Quick look through the front entrance to see if anything large is on the omf rodent wise and if not leave till spring as assume there is no benefit now in opening in up etc ?

Hi Recently put all my boards in under the omf to do oxalic acid vape. Left them in a week as did a 2 treatments 5 days apart. When I took them out after 7 days after the first vape which was today I noticed the usual odd varroa mite and wax cappings but on one out the 3 hives boards I...

Thanks. Have found someone to supply me now thanks.

Did a spring crop this year for the first time and had a lot of uncapped frames in supers but did the shake test and only extracted the ones that didn’t shake out. The ones that failed the shake test were put back on the hive. Ended up with around 19% water content in all 3 of the buckets which...

thanks. My brood boxes are filling up too with more and more being capped although I’ve noticed that each time I do a demaree they clear out the bottom box of nectar as long as it’s not capped to give room to the queen to lay. Have you stopped doing demarees now / intending to stop ?

It’s my first year doing demarees for swarm control this year as I didn’t want to increase my colony numbers and it’s been succcessful so far as none have swarmed. I’ve been doing a demaree on 14x12 on 5 hives every 3 weeks since spring and I’m wondering when do I stop ? Just finishing another...

I noticed the same yesterday. Tell tale signs of balsam being collected for the first time.