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Hi This year is turning out to be pretty good, I have 2 hives, one on Brood + half and the other on double brood. I have inspected both top brood boxes and have been wondering what's happening below, now I won't even think or worry about the bottom brood boxes. Thanks for that. Steven

I think swarms prefer them, I have had open hives and 2 swarms have moved into the solid floor hives. Handy to have around.

Hi I united 2 small hives with good queens, took out the queen (to make up nuc) from the first hive and left for a 2 days, brought in the other Q+ hive (from around 800yds away) after blocking up the night before and placed on top of the Q- hive over newspaper, the Q- hive couldn't be moved as...

Not many swarms in Sheffield area, plenty of bumbles though. Have learnt a lot about the life cycle of the bumble bee. I was wondering with the hive losses over the winter whether beekeepers have less hives to look after and are doing a better job?

Any piece of cloth, that's not towelling that you can cover up part of the open hive, keeps the bees down and not flying at you. Gone out of fashion now. But is handy as you only need to work one half of the hive at one time, I usually put an the end frames (first frame you take out from the...

I see someone has put about cover boards, but the good old manipulation cloth could be handy to cover up the bees that you have already inspected. You can always hear and almost feel when the bees have had enough, so make sure you have inspected the centre of the hive and the outside frames if...

If you got the nuc from a seller ( or anyone for that matter )you should have a laying queen, when you rehouse a nuc all you want to do is get into the hive as quickly as possible with as little fuss as possible, not looking for queens etc. (mind you, you shouldn't of had queen cell unless you...

Last year was bad anyway, the best equipment saver if you don't have enough roofs, floors etc is the division/shelgove board. You can stack hives and only use the one roof floor etc, great if you have to make up a queen cell colony and a queen right colony on the same footing. This has been...

Lime out in the centre of Sheffield, not sure about the outskirts where my bees are, Blackberries out in full, but the stranger early plant out now is the HB! That is my late honey harvest, or should be.

I have used both, first veil was a round hat type thing, trouble is that on a windy day the hat blows off your head and the veil touches you face, and it's a bloody nuisance, even happened with a cap on. Fencing veil much better for me.

With the swarm that won't go up into a box, have you try a little smoke to start them moving, bit like a 'cattle drive'. I have done this a few times with bees swarms that needed that extra push.

Who says they come a short distance, my raiders come from about half mile away at least. So they must waggle dance like crazy! ;)

Leave well alone until she is laying good eggs and producing brood. She may not get mated well anyway and you would be wasting your time, the bees may reject her if newly painted having a foreign smell on her. Newly hatched queens should be left well alone, don't open up for at least a couple of...

Work outside cleaning frames and you will soon see honeybees coming around to see what's going on, they know where old hives, honey, wax is by smell I believe. Correct me if I am wrong, but I left the shed door open the other day with old frames in it and had around 50 bees coming in, had to...

:yeahthat:

If you are thinking of an entrance under a super rather than a hole then your hive maybe open to robbers. If you have a separate entrance where would that be? if you are thinking of another entrance above the brood box then you have to think about bee space.

You can do beekeeping without a QE, but as I said it would have to be treated as a warre hive, where you would have to keep putting the supers under the whole hive (you would need to read up on the whole subject of the warre hive and how it works) gives the queen lots of space to lay, but hard...

Without a QE you would have a rose hive or a Warre, the holes in supers only work with the queen below the QE.

The reason for holes in the super is so the bees don't have to travel the full height of the hive to store, stores. If you make holes in the super make sure the entrance holes are the same way as the main entrance.

You can open up okay, depends if the hive is in the sun, which would make it warmer. Have a look on the outside first, is there any pollen going in which could be a good sign that you have a laying queen. Be quick, as long as you see eggs then do you treatment and close up. It could be a good...