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Severe outbreaks on the western North Yorkshire Moors this year too

Serious risk of bringing in disease if you buy drawn comb. Better to use the money to feed the nucs heavily and get them to draw foundation. I have a vested interest as I am in your neck of the woods.

What really scares me is that plate of honey ! Where is the honey from ????? Local beekeepers might want to request a visit from the bee inspector !!!

Good point DanBee. Trying to figure out a pattern to the losses is baffling. My worst two sites are running at 66% losses whilst my best site is still 100% survival (22 colonies).

Losses looking to be in the 40 - 50 % range. Survivors pitifully weak. Hardly any O S R. Just when you think things couldn't get any worse, have any of you seen a heather moor lately. In my area (North Yorkshire moors) , vast areas of heather have turned ginger - similar to heather beetle...

O P is referring to Romanian honey, I think.

I think Murray may have a point with the east coast link. My most easterly site, perhaps 12 miles from the coast had 15 hives - now down to 5. How many of these 5 will survive with a fertile queen ???????

No, the bees will not leave the brood and queen. They will take the honey down in the situation I have illustrated, i.e. with the crown board in place and a small gap left. The problem you are thinking of could happen if you left a queen excluder in place over winter between fully adjoining...

Yes you can do as Graham40 suggests but why not place a queen excluder over the crown board and then the super on that. That way you keep the queen out of your supers and retain heat in the brood chamber. The crown board holes should be covered except for a small gap - perhaps to allow 1 or 2...

I use a rather old gas (propane) powered forklift. It produces an exhaust but I believe propane exhaust is less likely to taint or produce smut and soot than a diesel engine. I do stand to be corrected on this and obviously an electric forklift would be better. To lift the drums I have a "parrot...

I took all my bees (just under 200) onto the moor ( N. Yorks.) Shook out about 40 drone layers whilst they were there and having done 2 rounds of fondant feeding I now have another 18 empty hives. One lot was complete starvation, my fault but possibly genetically unsuitable bees but I still...

OK , maybe it's just my grumpy bees!!!!

If the horses are unrestricted and free to run off AND if the bees have not been recently worked, probably ok.

I have turned down the chance of bee sites because of the close proximity of horses. In my opinion and experience the two don't mix. More than 30 years ago a horse poked it's head over the hedge behind the hives I was working and within seconds it was galloping flat out around the perimeter of...

You may well be right PBee. This is my first foray into poly hives and I intend to get 3 S w i e n t y Langstroth as well by way of comparison. As my user name suggests, I run mainly Smiths along with Langstroths and to now add polys to the equation is no doubt complete madness.

I've just bought 3 poly Lyson Langstroths from A b e l o. I am going to trial them this year. Build quality seems to be ok and they have flat mating surfaces. There is a problem with the floor in that the back inch or so of the brood frames rest on the floor at the back of the hive. I have...

Could be a temperature issue. Warmer weather and the cluster expands. Look in during colder weather and you may see a colony "apparently" half the size.

Hello Irishguy, Hang on to your money and venture into the bee world cautiously. To risk a few hundred pounds on 2-3 hives is one thing, to spend 6 grand on 25 hives is another matter. Get a couple of years experience with a small number of stocks before you do anything rash...

Depending on how prolific your bees are, there is a risk that most of "your" honey will end up in "their" top brood box.

First job might be a soil analysis. Some plants yield vastly different amounts of nectar depending upon the soil they are growing in. Admittedly I only have two first hand experiences of this but they are quite dramatic. In 2006 (my best ever honey year) most of my bees were on borage on chalk...