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Thoughts please: I was kindly given a nuke by a friend but on transferring it to a hive today I found an unsealed queen cell almost full-length, amongst very few eggs. Some cells had two in. There were also a few larvae and a good amount of sealed brood. I saw the queen. Should I leave them to...

I'm quite successful in making my OSR honey creamy by adding 10% set-but-warmish honey to a bucket of warmed OSR honey that's all but lost its granulation. Hoever my last batch, after jarring it, soon set again, not quite as solid as its original state, but certainly not creamy. I think I'd...

Q number 2: I'm giving my bees Apilife Var at the moment but they're a bit thin on stores. I don't want to feed them syrup yet as there are still three/four supers on them because they still need the space. I don't want them filling them all up so 1. I have to dismantle a lot of heavy supers...

Encouraged to ask stupid questions under my own name rather than hide behind the beautiful alias I'd dreamed up, here's number one: Why are WBC bo,xes not square? I'm told that national boxes won't fit inside, probably because their external measurements are too big. My colonies would really...

Can someone tell me how to do this please? I want to ask a couple of questions so idiotic that I don't want to be identified. Cheers,ummm, Me.

Has anyone tried beeswax / turpentine polish on an unsealed brick (ie pamment) floor? The surface isn't as smooth as quarry tiles. I don't want to put a plastic-type sealant on as it's laid on sand so needs to breathe.

Is there any reason, apart from cost, not to make fondant from icing sugar? I've got two bags here and notie that one says the ingredients are sugar and maize flour (3%), the other has sugar and tricalcium phosphate ( 1.5%).

How late does the queen lay before swarming? I have seen 2 day old eggs in a hive I thought had swarmed - there was a lovely sealed q/c which I destroyed thinking that with eggs that young, the queen was still in there and they hadn't swarmed. There weren't any other signs - eg plenty of bees...

Rather than use a blowtorch, which can't do the wood any good, would a couple of days in my kitchen chest freezer kill off all the invisible nasties on my empty supers, frames and brood boxes?

The little conical ventilation grilles at the gable ends of my hives have been destroyed and I'm 99% sure that mice have done this and are therefore inside. Should I try to quickly dismantle a hive and take a look in the hope that it/they will run off, then block the holes with mouseguard or...

One of my four colonies, in a WBC with ventilated floor, has decided to collect under the hive, clinging to the underside of the floor. They did this with / without the varroa board in place. During the day, until 6 p.m. or so, they almost completely cover the area and even cluster. They're not...