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It's not unusual - much depends on the bee-type and 'knowing your bees'. No. Sometimes re-queening with a different type can be a little more difficult - but you just need to be more careful. For example, if I'm re-queening with a valuable (purchased) queen then I wouldn't trust to luck with...

There are no scratch marks evident, and a mouse or rat would be more likely to start gnawing at an edge, and open-up an existing hole (there is some of that at the top - but why not lower down ?). Those indentations are a lot more like punch marks, than teeth marks - especially in the...

Food regs can be crazy sometimes. Honey contains pollen, and pollen contains trace elements, i.e. metals. For example, in each kg of willow pollen, you'll find (typically): 80mg of Zinc; 325mg of Iron; 2000mg Magnesium; 3000mg Calcium; 8500mg Potassium - and maybe the odd touch of lead or...

If that is so - then where's the problem ? If they've survived so well despite introgression, then surely they don't require such a concerted effort now by concerned human beings ... But - as I understand it - you're talking about restoring a species into a changed environment - which is why...

Absolutely agree - so then why do some many people want to revive a strain of bee from the past, and yet others want to preserve another strain at some arbitrary moment in it's evolution. Isn't that what breeders do ? Or engage in some 'improvement' or other, defined not by evolutionary...

35 years unchanged - and with a proven track record - why on earth change anything ? Was there a problem with the existing stock ? If not, then the old saying: "if it ain't broke, then don't fix it" comes to mind. (Speaking as one who thinks that 'improvement' is a very dubious concept.) LJ

Fully agree with that. I guess if you're targetting early OSR than there may be a case for giving the girls a boost - but I'm content enough (say's he, lying through his teeth) to be treading water for now. LJ

I think it might be useful to remember that BA didn't actually 'breed' the first Buckfast bee - it resulted from a chance mating, which he then went on to rear other queens from. At that point he wasn't 'breeding' at all. That came shortly afterwards. Likewise, the widespread belief that he...

All this talk of pollen coming-in in bucketfuls ... Very envious. UK weather is so regional-specific. Heavy hail-storm yesterday - ground was as white as a sheet with pea-sized chunks of ice. Then woke-up this morning only to scrape ice off the windscreen yet again. Roll-on Spring. LJ

It's not just ants and bees which will destroy styrofoam ... this is a picture of cat damage from a recent thread on the Beemaster forum: The best solution given for a 'fix', was to cut off the cat's tail. ... about an inch behind it's ears ... LJ

... and doesn't that sound fantastic ? It's not unlike the recent trend in weather forecasting: "there's a 30% chance of rain". Now that may be of some interest to the statistician, but what of the guy who wants to know whether to take a raincoat out with him or not ? For him, it's either...

Some advice fom the National Bee Unit: Someone on another thread was asking what diseases can be spread by open feeding - this is one. It's not inconceivable that an infected bee could poop on or around the feeder (or on combs, if left out to be cleared), and another bee ingest some of that...

A nice example of flame-bait. Whether people want to kill wasps, or let them be - that's their choice - and it's not for you, or indeed anyone else, to tell people whether they should, or should not kill wasps. Is tolerance such a difficult concept to embrace ? LJ

I don't understand why the mixing-or-not of sperm is of any relevance at all to the beekeeper. It may be an interesting academic point, and perhaps of interest to the breeder (getting several similar queens 'in a row' etc) - but if a queen has got sperm onboard from an undesirable (undefined)...

That looks really good quality. Here's what Mann-Lake were supplying: Knots in the planks haven't caused problems (thanks to D4 glue), but knots in the rails caused them to bent and twist. To be fair, M/L's prices were rock-bottom, so I guess it's simply a case of getting what you pay for...

Perhaps at some point beekeepers will begin to embrace the concept of uncertainty ... All it takes is a couple of bees with 'attitude' to show their true colours, and the whole colony then becomes painted with the same brush. Even if - worst case - those few bees had actually flown in from...

When Mann-Lake were in town I bought some WRC brood boxes from them. Well, more accurately there were patches of Red Cedar between the knots of which there was an elegant sufficiency. So, I knifed D4 glue into the loose knots, and smeared D4 glue over the tighter knots - and then painted the...

If you only want a few jars, then Tesco's Value Marmalade (454g) at 26p - and it's not bad Marmalade either. Value Strawberry Jam at 27-28p ? (I forget). They make good jar feeders too, if a bit on the small side. LJ

I once tried using a wallpaper stripper as a heat source for melting wax during winter - not very successfully. Not only did the timber warp badly, but when run outside, the wax solidified in the delivery trough. When run inside it didn't - but generating large quantities of steam in a...

Exactly - but from this finding (that is, from the results of a single-variable experiment), people are now assuming that setting-out a 40L box is the best method of catching swarms. Seeley himself said that there are other factors regarding bait boxes which could be investigated to advantage...