Search results

We dealt with the psycho colony yesterday, and as ever, I took a lot of stings and had several bees wriggle into the suit. The good news is that the psychos are hopefully merged onto a nice calm queen and everything will calm down. I've decided I need a new bee suit. One that has trousers...

I've made a lot of ply boxes, and they are mostly fine. My first efforts were in shuttering ply, and they have warped. Higher grade WBP has been solid so far. Lovely dovetails, never needed them on a beehive!

Best advice I got to grips with last year was "you don't need to find the queen". As soon as you find vertical eggs, you know the queen is there, or was there less than 24 hours ago. Unless you are looking for swarm cells, stop rummaging around in the hive, and let the bees get on with life...

Could you plumb in a nuc - and once they have got used to it...stick a frame of brood in the nuc? Depending on whether the existing brood nest is a long way back into the header tank, they might merge the nests, once you have the queen in the nuc put some sort of QE in the pipe, and wait for...

Tried that as well. The simply filled it up with honey!

The difference in the two approaches probably depends on how far you have travelled: 1) If you have travelled a long way to this hive, then a cut out is sensible: you don't want to come back again. 2) If it is a few miles away, then it is quicker and easier to stick a good BB on top and wait...

We also cut a "spare" queen cell out of a colony and gave it to a hopeless cast with a failed queen last year. They raised it, got her mated and have made it through the winter.

One thing I can guarantee is that bees do not read maps. They will probably find another water source full quite unpleasant water, and drink from that. Generally anything with horse poo in it ensures that my bees will select that as the preferable water source. So regardless of where you...

Good super, but I'd question the utility. We got a similar brood box from a supplier, and expected many happy hours of watching bees though the perspex. The reality is that nothing interesting happens at the edges, you just see bees wandering about.

Indeed, the obvious question is why you would feed and have a super on? The only time I would do this is going into winter with a standard brood & super, and wanting to fill both with stores.

Hives are smelling of honey at the moment, so apart from the "hospital case", we stopped feeding a while back. They have the wild plum, hawthorn and willow now. The big difference with syrup and fondant: they will store syrup. They will consume fondant. At the moment (if the need...

Two different problems here. Getting them onto 14x12. When it is a bit warmer, stick a 14x12 full of foundation on top of the brood box. Once the bees have started to draw it, make sure the queen is up there (with a queen excluder), and inside 3 weeks all of the original brood will have...

Yes, the video was US hard sell cheesiness, but it provides a good view of how capable a track saw can be. Others have asked for recommendations about portable/storable kit...again the track saw does this. DeWalt will presumably make a cheaper one soon. For all sheet work (ply,mdf etc) I...

The problem with rebate cuts on a table saw is that you normally have to remove the riving knife or splitter that sits behind the blade. The splitter is a handy thing to have as it stops the work binding, and it also stops the work climbing onto the blade and coming back at you at 100+ mph...

The problem with 8x4 is that it is too big to handle. Unless you have a massive table saw (preferably with a sliding table), or a panel saw, the initial cuts are likely to be flaky and inaccurate. Options are: 1) Make the inital cut with lots of room for error (this is what I used to do) 2)...

We always say it is good for children - because it doesn't end up in a sticky mess all over the floor.

Just make sure it doesn't kick out. If if does, then the grinder will end up skating over your nice worksurface. The 1mm disks also have a nasty habit of breaking up, not sure if you can get them for 9" grinders? I would do it with a plasma.

Don’t be frightened of OSR. You need plenty of kit – so spare supers and frames, ready to go when you need them. You need to do regular “shake tests” of uncapped frames to see if you can remove them, or better still get a refractometer. As long as you are on top of the kit and getting the...

If you have a good nuc coming in now, then it will be in pretty much the same state as an overwintered hive. In all likelihood it will need an artificial swarm in May (depending on bee type, weather) and you'll get your 2 or 3 hives....

Don't know. We are not that far from you (Berkshire) and also had very late flying bees. They got heavy in about October, got light in November/December and we've had fondant on them since Jan. We haven't looked inside most of them yet, but judging by the clouds of bees outside all of the...