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Hi all. This is a question regarding hard plastic moulds. Some of my moulds, classic uprights and one round, sometimes the candles come out lovely, smooth and shiny and other times, matt, smudged and jumpy (vertical lines). I can't work out what causes that. Advise please!

Hi all. We did a successful split swarm back in mid April and a new queen emerged first week of May. Hive was doing really well and numbers building. This morning the hive swarmed into the tree next door. Too high to catch so we've put a box with lure and fingers crossed. The question is how is...

Just when you think you've seen everything. On expecting one of the hives today, we noticed while removing the 3 supers that there were, what looked like drone capped cells in the bottom of the bottom super and on the top side of the Q Excluder. A lot damaged from lifting off the supers. We...

Hi. We normally have loads of wasps around the hives but this year there a tons more! Just wondering what most of you do about wasps? We have traps and they were doing a good job in early summer but nothing seems to be working now and they seem to have multiplied. I read that this time of year...

Hi all. Just wondering when was the latest harvest anyone has done after July? Particularly in the Surrey region. We harvested some 2 weeks ago, (26 July). We found there was loads more honey but it wasn't completely capped. We didn't do the trick of holding horizontal and one shake because...

Hi all. Been using a solar wax melter. Loving it. I'm getting a very fine light film at the bottom of the wax. See attached image. This is after I have filtered it. I filter it with a sheet of kitchen paper, I pour it into a foil container and pour boiled water and let it set. It can be scraped...

Hi all. We found a swarm hovering around the hives but very odd. They were collecting in 3 places, on the bush, and on 2 fence posts behind the row of hives. But small. Also we've had showers of rain all day and it's very cold. Don't know which hive they've come out of yet. We have 2 hives...

Hi. This may be a stupid question but on a sunny day, in Surrey, what temperature would the weather have to be for wax to melt in a solar wax melter ? We're in Marcn and its a beautiful sunny day. Is it way too early?

Hi I suggested to the administrators that it would be great to have a section on this forum site dedicated to Candle Making but never got a response. I have SO many questions, its a minefield out there with wick types and sizes and temperatures etc and mostly american sites. I do a search here...

Hi all We always over-winter 4 hives and then in the summer, through splits and swarms, we have 8, then unite hives back to 4 in late autumn. We keep the 4 best tempered and best laying queens/hives. Since we began beekeeping 6 years ago we have always had calm and non aggressive bees. Very...

Hi All Our honey this year is not clear as in previous years. We did the same as always, extracted in a 4 frame manual extractor. Then filtered through a muslin. I've attached a picture comparing it to previous. Any ideas why and is it possible to get the honey back to clear?

Hi. Just wondering what people do with all the cappings collected (in the sieve) when harvesting the honey. Is it a good idea to put it out near the hives for them to clean the remaining honey? Or do you wash the honey off before storing wax to melt at later time. Ta

Hi All. Last year I made Set Honey for the first time, a small amount of 50 oz and seed and I was really pleased. Have now made more set honey out of 5 ltr, one week after extraction and filtering. (building up to bigger amounts once more confident) In most of the instructions I've read, they...

Hi all In May we did a Split on a hive with a 2016 queen and added a 2nd Brood box and a 2nd Super. This has been a very good hive. Queen continued doing really well. Busy hive lots of brood, good pattern. Lots of stores. In June added a 3rd Super. Then in the begging of July suddenly she's...

We have about 20 jars that crystallised so we thought we'd make soft set honey from them. Tried to find info here but all the posts I found are referring to rape seed. We are nowhere near any rape seed fields. On the net it is suggested you just liquidise the crystalised honey. To experiment...

Hi folks We have 4 hives. It's very annoying that when we are doing inspections, by the time we get to the 3rd hive the smoke has run out and we have to refill and relight. Would an electric smoker work? How do they work? I understand they have a fan to keep the smoke going but do you still...

Hi there. This afternoon we noticed bees gathering on the front of one hive above the entrance. The bees are not flying around. They are all calm and just bunched together and the group is getting bigger and bigger. at the moment its a triangle shape pointing up about the size of a sheet of A4...

Hi all So 2 weeks ago during an inspection of one of our 3 hives, found a queen emerging from her cell!! Didn't realise the resident queen was gone/failing or whatever. It was amazing but she didn't look too good and then we saw another one walking about. Looked very well. Not sure if she was...

Hi. On inspecting our 2 hives yesterday, we are really worried about one of them. 1. Very little uncapped brood, 2. a frame full of what looked like drone (capped). 3. 5 uncapped queen cells 4. 2 capped queen cells and worse we couldn't find the queen. She's a new queen, less than 2...

Hello Saturday I was stung on my foot (exactly the same spot I was stung 14 years ago!) Anyhow as expected, big swelling but no pain. But unlike the other 2 times I've ever been stung, my palms started to itch like mad and were puffy within minutes. Sunday the swelling on foot was worse, hard...