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That is a kit...and dare I say it, experience problem. 2 years ago I had a line on some ash - great fire wood, in 3 - 4 foot lengths. I got the trailer out and was hauling 2.8 tonnes (honest officer, it is exactly 2.8 tonnes of wood, for an all up weight of 3.5 tonnes...) and it was taking me...

Pallets seem cheap until you wreck a blade or chain on them. The trick with wood is to understand the sheer volume of the stuff that you need if you are going to get serious about it. If you can get it free, fine. If you have to get wood delivered, oil is probably cheaper (and much easier).

Titebond III or Evo Stick PVA - any decent external glue will be fine. I don't find hot glue has any sort of strength at all - good for tacking and indoor projects, but not proper work.

As I've said on other threads, my hospital case has 75mm celotex at the sides, 25 in the front and back recesses, and 25mm in the roof. They are on 5 frames, and should be toasty warm. Probably a lot better than the average nuc box.

Note there is a big difference between Finland and most of the UK! My limited experience of Finland is that -5 is a pretty warm winters day - whereas for us it would have the weather forecasters telling us "you're all going to die". Unless as colony is a true hospital case (i.e. so small that...

Fondant is good for belt and braces. I've built some 1.5" ekes fill with celotex apart from a take away container sized hole in the middle. Easy to take the roof off, check that there is fondant remaining - if not, replace.

A few years ago, a hungry badger smashed though a uPVC door at my mums place. Ripped the catflap out, then ripped a big enough hole to get in. Mother was terrified, called plod, who could hear the carnage over the phone, so sent the armed response unit... Badgers will get into anything...

I have the same problem with one of mine. It is a nuc that we assembled with a new (bought in) queen. We did three of them. Two are are very heavy, have taken down loads of syrup, and look in good shape. The other is flying and foraging well, has taken hardly any syrup, and is light...

What would I want in a hive if materials were no problem? 1) I'd like it to be collapsible. A 14x12 brood should be 4 components, flat pack, lock them together and deploy. At the end of the season you have a dense stack of panels, rather than a shed full of boxes. 2) I'd like it to be...

Great minds think alike...! One of my "weak colonies" is being very slow at taking syrup, so I took advantage of the sunny day to check them. They are Q+, have a small patch of brood, but don't seem to be laying down much in the way of syrup/stores. They do have capped stores, but not enough...

A proper hive body packed out with kingspan will offer greater insulation than a nuc - I would put them in a hive, but only give them an extra frame or two - pack the rest out with insulation.

Burn it. It burns back to the ground, then sprouts nicely in spring. Quite controllable in this way.

They are common in Spain as well. They are bigger than the average bumble bee, but shaped like a honey bee - and iridescent blue. Mean looking critters, but I would love to have a hive full of them....

I can guarantee that we will have a warm winter, and the temperature will not drop below 10C between now and March 2012. How can I be so confident? Easy - I've just taken delivery of a set of winter tyres for the car. Just as an umbrella guarantees a dry day, a set of winter tyres heralds a...

The 1:1 relationship between queen and colony is fine - it is an aspect of the function you want to design. In fact, there are a bunch of edge cases where your 1:1 is a 1 to many - supercedure for example. Also you may have a queenless colony with a 1:0. Queen is not an attribute of...

May well be the flue - our slider can be fully in, and the flappy thing fully open (so minimal draw) and there is no smoke at all. Ours is a 7" stainless lined thingy with insulation - so we get 99% of the tar forming in the cast section between the rayburn and the main chimney, then nothing...

Something's wrong, because our Rayburn happily runs overnight (on tick over) when it is loaded with wood - in fact we haven't used any coal for about the last three years. Is your wood really dry? If you need a bit of air to keep it going early in the night, then by about 3AM it will really...

Yes. Borrow some pigs if you need weed clearance, but permanent pigs will turn your orchard into the Somme in short order. The previous owner of our place kept pigs, and they trashed several 200 year old oaks. Apple trees don't stand a chance against scratchy and rooting pigs.

There is another thread about this - the end solution was to stick them in the freezer and attempt to sort the bees from the queen when they were dopey. So. Do you have another queen to hand? Do you have a weak colony about that could do with a big boost of bees? If you have another queen...

Pinch a frame of brood from your biggest colony, no bees, just capped brood, hopefully brood that is about to emerge. Don't give them a massive frame, they won't be able to keep it warm. This will give them a big boost in a few days. Once there are 600 bees in there, you could give them...