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We have an abelo box as well, the smoker stays lit if you don't have too large a distance between apiaries. We leave a bucket of washing soda at each apiary, do you need to add bleach as well Apple?

It is a lot, but better than spreading efb to all your apiaries. We got efb at a new apiary several years ago and if SWMBO had not been so hygiene conscious we could have spread it to all our apiaries.

That is a lovely looking patch Dani. I have seen celandine and some early primroses this week in south facing sites and the snowdrops and winter flowering honeysuckle are still flowering well.

It is also all over the bbc, you can read an article online. When I first read the headline I had a vision of load of wriggling larvae, but it is bee packages I think.

What a load of crap!

Michael, you must have spent a a fair bit of time practising Ave Maria to play it like that. I cant' thank you enough for your humour in these very strange times, and to every one else who has been posting on this thread, it has given us all a good laugh. Merry Christmas to you.

Merry Christmas everyone! A healthy and happy new year to all.

I will only sell nucs that I have overwintered, that way I can be sure that the colony is healthy with a good queen. I don't go out of my way to catch swarms (other than my own) because I don't want to bring in any problems. When I first started keeping bees I had been given a swarm by the...

I once had a queen balled by a colony when I was manipulating the hive next door, I could hear the noise that the bees were making and when I opened them up there was a large ball of bees with the queen dead in the middle. I have noticed that some colonies are more likely to ball a queen than...

I have a load of enricos tunnel entrances fitted to hives at the home apiary and it looks like a few wasps have learnt to get in. I am really hoping the cold temps for the last few days will help with the problem or I might have to move some hives to another apiary.

I had to fit tunnel entrances to hives in the home apiary yesterday that had been free of wasp troubles until now; tunnel entrances still on at 2 more apiaries. The Winter flowering honeysuckle is flowering already and the sun is out today, it certainly beats the gloomy wet weather we have been...

Love European hornets. There is an owl box above the hives at one of my out apiaries which has a hornets nest in and if you stand in the right place you can see the beautiful nest structure inside. The hornets are paying no attention whatsoever to our bees but SWMBO says she has seen butterfly...

We have not finished extracting so don't know the final tally, but it won't be great. Most of the honey was left on for the bees because it wasn't finished but because the weather has been so bad we have been having to feed, feed, feed! There is a lot of ivy around here but we have had 4" of...

Pembroke that is good advice. A couple of years ago we sent our son a food parcel of treats because he could not come back for Christmas, and put 2 jars of honey in the middle. We thought the parcel was well wrapped but when our son opened it everything was covered in honey from 1 jar breaking...

I am retired from the police, my wife and I have a small honey business around the Devon/Cornwall border. My wife does most of the work with the bees as I am waiting for my hip replacement op which was supposed to be this September. I do the farmer's markets and honey and we have 2 children...

I met a beekeeper the other day that collected 2 swarms the other day and they had blue marked queens; they were both collected in the same area.

I am still having wasp problems at an out apiary but the home apiary is ok so I still have mating nucs in play. The weather is set warm for a week and there are plenty of drones so I am being greedy and will hopefully get a few more mated queens to go into nucs.

We have had quite a few queens off lay recently, even ones that have been mated this year.

I think the bright orange pollen I have here is from purple loosestrife, it grows in profusion around here, and I only have poplars near one apiary.