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https://www.ilkleygazette.co.uk/news/national/24158641.simple-test-check-whether-beehive-healthy-according-scientists/ I could have saved so much time.

Looking for your thoughts. I have some Amazon vouchers and I'm considering this bottling machine. Looks pretty much identical to the one Thorne sell and others I've seen on eBay with the exception of the pump which appears to be made of brass? The description states that it is food safe but I...

Spun out 10l of honey last night, the first from a new apiary this year. I'm not sure what the bees have been on but they have produced a thick dark amber honey with a strong almost burnt bouquet. My official tasting team have decided that the honey tasted almost like caramel. It's very...

Hi all I had a successful queen mating in a couple of mini nucs. One nuc built out comb in the frames perfectly and I moved those bees and the queen to a poly nuc of drawn comb and she's laying away like a trooper. The other managed to get the other side of the feeder excluder and I only...

Hi all. I want to try grafting next year and I have a dartington hive that I don't plan to use for honey production. I was wondering if I make a solid central divider and a divider with a Queen excluder the cloake method would work using the entrances on either side of the hive. I thought...

Just wondering if anyone knows if this could be used for screen boards, travel screens etc or would the bees be able to chew through? https://shop.vitcas.com/glass-fibre-mesh-fabric.html

One of my new apiaries is surrounded by Holly. Last year May was a washout so i didn't get to see what the flow was like. So I was wondering if you guys know if Holly produces a regular flow, or is it a bit hit and miss like some other plants?

Quick question. If you sell a five frame nuc in a correx box is vat applicable? I'm believe livestock is vat exempt but wasn't sure if the frames count?

Hi all I've been making floors, crown boards and roofs from pallet wood for a while now and with the incredible increase in the cost of boxes I'm thinking of building my own from pallets as well. I use commercial kit currently and measuring a box I have in the garage give a wall thickness of...

Anyone have experience of both for grafting? What are the pros and cons of each type if any?

Noticed this in front of one of my poly nucs today. They had a trickle treatment 19/12/21 and a slab of fondant popped on. Colony was a good size going into winter with a fresh queen, (Northumberland virgin locally mated in June). Is this anything to be worried about?

Hi all, Could anyone who has experience of importing products to sell on, give me an idea of what the process is? Looking through the internet can be a bit confusing at times and I was hoping someone here would be able to break the process down a bit? From what I can see it's a case of...

Have been working on an old Dartington to modify it to my needs. My plan is to use this one for creating nucs. So first thing I did was to raise the floor to convert it from 14 X 12 to DN4. I then packed the floor with celotex Next up was replacing the rotten roof. Also took the...

Started a couple of brews yesterday. A spiced mead and a tea wine both using the recipes from city steading on YouTube. Both of those are bubbling away nicely in my wardrobe. Tonight I have and brew coffee to start another wine with and the final brew for the year will be five gallons of a...

Just got back from the main apiary. All the colonies bar one are taking the syrup down well. The last colony have not touched theirs annoyingly when I heft them I can tell that they need more stores but they just won't go up into the feeder. When I look down the feed hole I can see a circle...

Just jarring this year's honey. First harvest from a new site on the edge of an ancient woodland and it's the thinnest clearest honey I've ever seen! It's all summer stuff as we didn't get a spring crop with the cold May. I fed in May for two weeks when the girls were desperate but didn't...

These girls have been doing this for a couple of days now. Are they trying to chew through?

Looking for the above. Thinking of going to all deep boxes and also end up with deep boxes full of honey after demarees. Found to my cost that they don't fit in my current extractor so will go back to the bees this winter.

Have identified a line of queen's we have that are a bit chalky so will be sorting those out next year. This led me to wondering about the genetics of it. Do we know if the susceptibility for chalk brood is solely passed down along the queen line or are there chalky drones out there that will...

I'm looking to start producing a few nucs for sale next year and I'm just wondering about he timings involved. When would you experienced hands at nuc production start nucs off with a view to build up to overwinter? And when is the main demand for nucs? Early spring or during the summer...