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I understand the sentiment. Last year my kit was rubbish, I used to get bees in the veil, bees up my legs, all sorts. I now have an all in one suit (from Sheriff) and those sort of incidents are history. As a result, I'm a better beekeeper - no more panics when I think a bee is on the wrong...

They don't much like leather, so it may be your shoes. I have a pair of rigger boots with loops at the top that are split grain (i.e rough leather, not smooth) - when I was dealing with an unpleasant hive, this was the area they went for first.

Just been through this. It takes 8 weeks from "new queen" to "a perceptible improvement in behaviour". Your queen cell came from good stock, she may have mated with a nightmare drone, she may not. Either: 1) Leave them for another month to get on with it or 2) If you have a spare...

They will sort it out if you don't! Virgins can get through excluders. So she may be in the bottom and dead already. I would move the supers, stick them on a different hive stand with a roof and wait 2 hours. All of the workers will have cleared off, the queen (if present) will remain...

This only works if you get rid of the flying bees by moving the hive across the original (Q+) hive. If you don't do this, then you are pretty much guaranteed to get casts.

Generally if they march in, the queen is in there. You can normally see the movement very clearly. A load of bees at the entrance, bums in the air and fanning, and bees piling in all around them. Significant clusters elsewhere could be bees thinking the swarm is still where it was, or it...

I made up some 14 x 12 sized bait boxes out of a load of ply that was dumped at the bottom of the lane. They were baited with old national brood comb. I left one in the garden, and last saturday, we were invaded by a vast cloud that went straight in. Quite a sight, and the easiest swarm...

Well I never thought I'd see it. Two yellow marked queens laying up the same side of a frame, not more than 4 inches from each other. The first one emerged in the brief period of warm weather in April, the second one in the last few weeks. No idea which is which, but presumably the first...

220 lb off 6 hives. A mixture of OSR and Hawthorne. Considering that a month ago we had fondant on, with no supers, this is pretty impressive work by the bees. Inspections in May were mostly "supering" exercises.

Ours were "yes to all of the above, apart from the last one". If you walked across the front of the hive, despite being 30 yards away, they would pile out. As long as they couldn't see you, they were OK. Anyway, good news. I pulled the super off, and got a big cloud of bees in my face...

That is what we have just done with a load of ours. People seem to like solid honey just as much as runny. People with children like solid more as it doesn't get everywhere...

When we tore down the queen cells after killing her maj, we went though the whole thing twice and destroyed everything that looked remotely like a queen cell. We took out over 20. After the merge with the nuc (a week after tear down), the queen was not immediately killed off - she laid up a...

Yes. Hadn't thought of that. So in the case of no queen at all, soapy water will be the best bet. I will probably move them to the other side of the field in order to drain off the flyers.

Google turns up no relevant hits. Any data to support the idea? We have OSR in the area, but the weather was so awful that they hardly got on to it. I know the farmer well, and will ask him about see treatments. I'm more inclined to believe it is due to the erratic weather leading to poor...

Starting in reverse order.... When we killed the old queen, we look out a frame of drones (which was nearly all of them). So we hopefully have minimised this. Same reason as one might not want to kill off an irrational dog. If we can avoid killing lots of bees, that would be good. It...

Does the bait hive have some manky old brood comb in it? Lemon grass is another attractant. Sometimes they just behave very irrationally.

I have occasionally mentioned the hive of super-aggressive bees that we were given last year. A quick recap: - A local beek gave up last year, and give us his WBCs, one of which was occupied. - We went and inspected it using our "normal" gear, only to be met with the most ridiculous onslaught...

Where was the cell? Swarm cells tend to be at the bottom, supercedure in the middle. We are getting a lot of supercedure, especially in swarms. Swarm is hived, starts laying and drawing comb, then 2 weeks later, queen cell. Could be the awful weather means that mating has been poor.

It also depends on the conditions near you. If you have 6 frames of brood, good weather and 100 acres of field beans next door ... put the super on. From my experience of the area near you, it will probably be wet and cool. Not sure about the local forage!

The Thornes pre-assembled ones are very nicely done. We have two of them. Not the cheapest option, but would fit the bill.