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Clover seems pretty robust stuff for us, and grows pretty much anywhere. I'd sow mostly white (good for bees) with a dash of red...because red is prettier and seeing the bumble bombers working it is rather nice.

Hmmm. We really needed a queen in March last year (drone layer) and there were none. Perhaps not "impossible" ...but "hard to get"....

This is important, and why I leave well alone early in the season. If something goes wrong (and it often does), your colony is doomed. No one will have queens for about 3 months if you damage, drop, or cause your queen to be rejected by the hive. You can be far more cavalier when you have...

Yes. Put it on toast.

Ramblers do seem to be some of the most inconsiderate and rude people on planet earth. We have a footpath near the house, and all of the dog walkers say "good morning" if we are at the top of the garden. Large groups of ramblers occasionally go though, faces fixed to the ground, ignoring any...

Hmmmm. State of the art is a many headed beast. I too would love a proper workshop, with a big panel saw, a super heavy Wadkin table saw, a spindle moulder, loads of big tables and a big built in extractor. One day I will win the lottery (unlikely as I don't play it) and buy a massive...

Done this at home....and at work. Gigabit will work fine of Cat5E. Really it will. As long as you stay below 100 meters or so, it will be perfect. Maplin is expensive, generally an electrical factors will be cheaper. If you are doing backups over the network and are hitting 90+ Mbit, then...

Ah, OK, the rebates in the rails. Forgot about the rails! A lot of people seem to make them out of two strips, thus avoiding the rebate problem. I've used a table saw and a router to do these in the past, router is easier and probably safer, especially if in a router table. The same...

Hardly an expert.... What sort of rebates are you cutting in supers? The only rebates I cut are the thin locating slots in the long sides that the short sides locate into. In which case your router bit should be the width of your planks, and the depth should be a few mill - you can make it...

Dead drones is fine. Our have been doing serious housekeeping on warm days, and we have piles of expired bees outside the hives. Some are drones. Flying drones is more of a worry. As a suggestion, put at board under the hive and look at the debris after a week. If it is lots of drone caps...

Our 8 colonies that went into winter as proper strong colonies appear to be absolutely huge already - big clouds of bees outside the hives over the weekend, and early afternoon orientation flights in abundance. Looked more like June than Feb. The crocus and alder are literally humming. Two...

It comes down to the value of your time. I can make a load of 14x12 broods in about 2 hours - time per box averages at about 10 minutes. Worth doing, given that boxes are £50. The time taken to do frames would depend on the kit you have. With a spindle moulder + band saw and the right...

As Oliver90 says, I don't see the economic case. You need some pretty big, quite high quality boards. If you want to do this slowly, you could get away with a router, or table saw, but some of the cuts will be quite precise, and actually quite dangerous - effectively you will doing dado...

Just try it. Pick a hive with 7 frames, and stick a frame of foundation in the middle. At the next inspection you will either see: 1) A full drawn and laid frame in the middle, so the bees are now on 8 frames. 2) A frame of undrawn foundation and a load of pissed off bees glaring at you...

All I can say is it worked well for us. Last year we used this technique to expand the brood area several times, and the bees just got on and expanded the brood area. Clearly towards the end of summer you stop doing it as the bees are trying to load stores in the brood box.

We followed (roughly) PHs instructions last year and it worked very well. In essence, if you have a healthy colony on 7 or 8 frames, there is nothing wrong with taking one of the edge frames (which in many broods is still foundation), and sticking it right in the middle of the box. They very...

I would also leave them alone at the moment, and would not have put the QX in yet. There is plenty of time for more cold weather this winter. The way to deal with the "where is the queen" problem is simple. You don't deal with it. You put the QX in, and then at the next inspection, there...

Second the point on dust extraction - it can really destroy your lungs if you are breathing wood dust on a regular basis. On all my old kit (with pretty flaky extraction ports) I always wear a decent dust mask. The new kit does not leak dust, and I could happily make all those boxes the living...

They will scan and either fry the chip or bin the box. Thieves already have GSM detectors for trackers, this is trivial and cheap in comparison.

Hmmm. I walked a scrub mower past our (normally placid) hives and took 14 stings to the back of the head. I had to abandon the mower (still running) and leg it to the house. The missus suited up and turned off the mower, which was covered in the critters. Don't trust bees and mowers.