Search results

Patches of ivy in full flower in Oxfordshire, earlier than last few years. Mixed blessings.. good for the bees... not so good for those hoping to take more honey. Covered in hundreds of wasps, bees and hoverflies, even quite a few hornet-hoverflies (hoverfly mimic) pic attached.

Found this quite interesting, thought I would share... Noticed honeybees on blackberries quite often, I always thought they were collecting water/ dew from between fruits ... watching them closely today they are collecting juice from the largest juiciest fruits that I guess have been chewed by...

I run on commercials. 4 of my hives have been really strong this year, a few weeks ago I extracted all that was available and stripped these hives down to 1 super only and gave them a bit of a feed. I left the 1 super on these as they really need the room. The bb are full and all frames in the...

Wondered if anyone could advise on one of my hives that has very patchy brood and is struggling this year. Photos attached. Below is a summary of the main points. . Bought-in Buckfast Q, introduced 9/4/14 . Running on commercials . 2014 excellent results, prolific & successful in all ways ...

Last autumn all my hives filled their supers with Ivy. I nadired what I could and hoped they would consume any remainder in the spring. I still have lots of supers full of ivy, the bees are very slowly consuming it, but at this rate it will take a couple of years to complete! ... And more ivy...

My 1st full year bee keeping... my 1st ivy experience.... .. the 1st time I have come across this lovely warm, rich & heady aroma of ivy blanketing the apiary... mmmm... love that fragrance so much... ... today I removed some brace comb that was full of ivy honey... I know its supposed to...

My bees are still packing away stores and I am still adding supers which I never expected this late in the year. They have been on a lot of HB and now also a lot of ivy. I have already stripped out most of their honey leaving only one super on each. I now have hives that are back up to 4 & 5...

Did my 1st unite last night, 2 colonies using newspaper method. Today I have around 100 bees circling the old site where there is no longer a hive. This is about 10m from the new site. It is raining pretty heavy so not many bees out yet. There is lots of chewed up newspaper under the united...

This afternoon I spotted a hover fly trying for around 15 minutes to gain access into one of my beehives. I have never witnessed this before. Just found its a type of Hover fly called volucella pellucens which apparently lays its eggs in wasp nests. I was just wondering if that was what it was...

Yesterday was a beautifully hot sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky. So I took advantage of the good weather to do all my inspections, 9 hives, as I am away all weekend. The first hive, usually a very calm colony, were exceptionally pissy & angry! Very aggressive and I got a number of...

Following a little experiment, I now have 2 Apidea with queens. 1 has been laying for 2 days now, the other just hatched yesterday. I am quite full of bees and need a little time to work out who / if I am going to re-queen. I cant even transfer to a Nuc as mine are now all now in use. Any...

I have a tiny 3 frame mini poly nuc which I recently acquired purely out of curiosity. On finding a QC a few weeks ago I popped it in the mini nuc with a cup full of bees and left them to get on with things, kind of assuming nothing much would happen. 7 days ago I had a peek inside and was...

Yesterday I introduced a bought in AMM mated queen to a recently put together Nuc. After a night getting to know each other today I popped the clip of the cage to allow the bees in to chew at the candy and release her. (as a side note all her attendant bees had been killed, but she was fine...

I have one real bugger of a colony that appears determined to remain Queenless. They became queenless quite a few months back when their Queen just seemed to disappear without trace. Strangely they didn't prepare any queen cells. Looking back I should have been more suspicious at the time...

I have a hive of bees with a queen that is still in her 1st season. She is laying really well the colony is growing a high rate and thriving. Currently 8 out of 11 frames are stuffed with brood. They have shown no signs of swarming, their are no Q cups, not many drones, they have plenty of...

I have a 5 frame Nuc, bursting with bees with a young laying queen that I wish to use to re-queen one of my colonies. The one I want to re-queen is a strong large colony, but the queen is quite old now and she has definitely started to slow down on her laying. Currently this colony consists of...

Wondered if anyone can help explain some unusual activity I have spotted on 2 occasions at the hive: I am new to bees, have a new hive which I have only had for 3 weeks. I have a polycarb crown board and a camera in the top so I can watch what is going on without disturbing. On 2 occasions...