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Original queen goes into empty box on the original site. Queen cells in the box are distributed as follows: 1) One and only one into the AS, one for each split if we are doing splits. If one turns out to be a dud, merge the splits. We choose the biggest and best sealed queen cell. Don't get...

Anything you can lay your hands on. I've used roofing battens, and they are just as good as cedar ones!

Squashing bees on frames - as others have said, take one of the edge frames out and set it to one side. You can get a natty frame hanger, but it is a bit of a gadget. Just don't put it down next to your feet, or you will have 1000 bees trying to get into your boots. De-brace as you go. If...

Our bees were very tetchy yesterday. OSR is out, the weather has been terrible, and they are just grumpy. Unfortunately, once stung, you smell "bad", and then you will get set upon by bees that would normally ignore you. Advice for the chickens: keep them well away during an inspection...

We've had hives with perfectly positioned eggs....that once a test frame was put in, immediately started queen cells. So there was unlikely to be a queen in there, yet the eggs were in the right place. We are talking about probabilities here. If you see well placed eggs, you most likely...

If your veil is touching your face, while you are peering into a hive, you will get stung on the nose.

I think it will probably work, there may have been better ways of doing it, but there always are. Our success at resurrecting drone laying colonies is so low, I am tempted to just tip them out in front of our other hives and let the foragers negotiate their way into a new home. The problem...

Sealed queen cell means she has probably gone. We lost one in the most atrocious weather over the easter w/e. Must have been a suicide mission, but they still went. On the flip side, last Saturday we went through a hive with 5 sealed queen cells and the queen all present and correct. The...

Saw a big swarm going past the house, spent half the afternoon up a precarious ladder in a hawthorn hedge. Got them back to the apiary, then inspected the likely hive - the one with the unsealed queen cell that we didn't have time to AS yesterday. But they were all present and correct, cell...

8 sealed queen cells - she's likely to be long gone by now. Above 10C you will be fine if you are quick. At this stage I would simply split the queen cells between the existing hive and the AS target, leaving one, or at most two in each.

Lots of bees, which will tear through the stores very quickly if they are not out foraging. We will need to feed soon if the weather does not sort out some sunshine!

We left several in each split last year and got loads of casts. This year we have split 3 ways leaving one cell in each. If any don't mate, they'll be merged.

Can't say I blame you at all. We've just merged our psycho colony onto a known docile queen, initial signs are that they are a bit calmer, but we'll need to wait for the old bees to die off. Hopefully we've stopped the supply of bad tempered drones in the area. They were on their last...

Is anyone else having a problem with last year’s queens? We have 8 hives, and at first inspection, all made it through winter. One had turned drone layer, but the rest had brood and bees. We were looking forward to an epic OSR crop, and all was good. At the most recent inspection, the...

Where are the queen cells? Centre of frame - likely to be superseding. Bottom of frame, and loads of them - swarm cells. One of our has decided to supercede. No eggs/larvae and a single queen cell slap in the middle of the frame.

Putting a frame of brood in tends to pin them in the box. They are unlikely to abandon brood.

Yup, warmest part of the day. Orientation flights are the first external sign that my hives have properly made it through the winter. If you have orientation flights, then fairly recently you had a proper laying queen in the box....

Hmmm.

Not surprised that the local association doesn't get it: most beekeepers wouldn't get it, and would be thinking "why don't you jump out of an aeroplane or something more sensible!". There will be people who do this at shows and the like, I would suggest tracking some of them down. I certainly...

We started with two queens from a bee supplier in Glos (M the Bee). They were both good queens, one slightly tetchier than the other, but OK. Hardworking, good build up and swarmed in a fairly predictable fashion once a year. We got three Buckfasts in (got the breeders name, forgotten it...