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My best (so far) this year involved climbing onto the roof of our house fully suited to spray a wasp net under our tiles. I let loose a huge jet of the deadly insecticide foam... which the wind promptly blew straight back at me, covering my bee suit and gloves with one of the fews things on the...

margob99 was looking for one just a week or so ago.

The oracle (wiki) suggests that wood conducts heat about 3 times better than expanded polystyrene. So, replacing a wooden crown board with an equal thickness of EPS should (all other things being equal) reduce the heat loss by a factor of 3. Replacing a wooden CB with, say, triple the...

Now I understand ;)

I think that's right - but there are some who say that if you buy good quality cedar hives then you don't need to treat them at all.

There's quite a lot of discussion about painting / protecting hives and what to use - search the forum and you'll see what I mean. For an example, see here: http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5817

We use WBC & Nats with 14x12 BBs. The WBC do take a bit longer to get into, but with only a few hives, I cannot get too fussed about it. We could only get Nucs on BS frames, and have just worked them on to 14x12s over the season, moving the BS frames outwards and removing them when empty. We...

Apis mellifera mellifera: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dark_bee There's a usefull sticky post with lots of abbreviations here: http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=272.

Not marked, but she has cost a fortune so far! (and worth every penny, of course...)

Yup - last year I went through with about 12 litres of cheapest gin, 9 toilet rolls and a two-year old in the trolley. I thought they were going to call the police again.

There are several copies of the Ladybird book on abe: http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=Sinclair&bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&recentlyadded=all&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=Life+of+the+Honey+Bee&x=0&y=0

It worked fine with linux (ubuntu 10.4) and cheese image capture. So, here are a bee's leg, a varroa mite close up and a close up of a bee's "toes". Quality isn't great, but it's great for showing the children revolting things close up, and it was only £40.

Update: My version has two focus settings at which it is in focus. The first gave the photos above. The second is much closer up. The photo below is of the top half of the "I" of "I promise to pay..." written on the Queen's head side of the £5 note. The field of view is about 1mm side to side.

Here's the picture of the eye of the Queen on a £5 note, together with one of a ruler. So, probably OK for looking at things in the 4-10mm range, but probably less useful for things in the 1-4mm range (like the varroa I got it to look at). It has LED lights that illuminate the object and a...

Ha! I've been fiddling with the same thing from Maplin for about 30 minutes. http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=286566 It was plug & play with vista (lord only know what'll happen when I plug it into a linux box at home). You need webcam image capture software (either supplied or...

If they are on the decline it might be because they've all come to my garden. In prior years we'd get one or two around the apple trees - this year I've seen (and killed - sorry) at least 12-15 in the last three weeks. I have tried finding their nest, which I assume cannot be that far away...

Sorry, my fault PH - I read your post as "with bottom ventilation it is normal to give top ventilation" rather than insulation! Having re-read it (concentrating hard on the words...) I'm now much happier! I was wondering how the whole hive didn't just become a chimney, flushing the whole brood...

Thanks RAB and PH - from your comments, it sounds like a sheet of plystyrene insulation would be a sensible idea, even in a WBC (as an alternative to sacking / quilts). I have been wondering about top ventilation, and had seen the "matchstick under each corner" suggestion before - I think I'll...

Indeed - and the VAT you pay doesn't have to be apportioned between non-Vatable supplies (unrecoverable) and vatable supplies (recoverable)

Here comes a daft one... by "no top ventilation" do you mean none whatsover - in particular, no holes left in the crown board (with bee escapes or otherwise)? I was thinking of putting a 2" slab of low density polystyrene insulation over the crown board. My worries are that they are in WBCs...