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Whether you use a coarse filter first depends to some extent on how viscous your honey is (and how hot the kitchen). Just don't try using both together, or you'll risk a vacuum lock where the honey glues both together and nothing passes. Coarse filter into a tub, then repeat with the fine.

The other reason to put an empty super under the brood box is to cut out draughts while keeping the ventilation and allowing condensation to drop out the bottom.

This is going to be a close-run thing, building them up before winter. Get a couple of supers for the nuk, one with comb in (just to see if they can build some stores for winter) and one without (to take some kind of feeder because you'll need it anyway). Think insulation straight away, it...

I presume you've taken the crop? If you've still got spare workers kicking around after that, you might as well use them to invert sugar syrup for you, and store it in a super (or two). It's not real honey, and you'll dispose of any left in the spring by uncapping it once the spring runs start...

The cell caps are white because there's a thin layer of air beneath, in an ideal world you're removing the cappings by cutting through the air spaces and not touching the honey below. You'll feel the difference... The problem lies in the certainty the bees won't have drawn the comb to a constant...

BTW the reason you don't want a single zip is because you can't see if it's closed completely at the back: you need two shorter zips starting at the back and finishng at the front, so you can see if they're closed before doing the velcro covering the gap, stopping anyine getting in. And you do...

You don't just need to match zip size and length, but type as well (metal to plastic, nono, for example, but it goes further than that - coil or toothed, airtight, you name it). What you need are "open" toothed. As far as the size is concerned, it's the width of the "chain" - the teeth when done...

Could you be looking at the wrong thing? The current generation of workers won't make it to winter, what you need to watch is the size of the brood. It might even be that you could do well to tap the surplus workers into a super of empty frames overnight, remove it with them still in it in the...

Two thousand girls in a hot tub and not a bikini among them...and that's the sting in the tale.

You could knock a couple of nails in to replace the lug, or if you still have it, glue it back and use a thin metal strap to reinforce it. Any preference for glue beyond the ubiquitous white wood glue?

Might be worth leaving the crown board from the old colony out. We had a load of strays on the floor, they preferred to move onto the board than stay there, even though it led nowhere. If their colony's on top of the merge, you could probably just shake them onto the top of the box. As I presume...

Sure, but happy bees are productive bees, and happy productive bees makes an unhappy beekeeper from the work needed to clear that lot. What concerns me if anything is that with an early start to the year, we're also seeing an early end, so the winter could be long and we must think ahead now to...

Which left me gloveless putting cleared supers back on a stroppy hive this afternoon. An interesting experience to say the least, I'd not noticed how many bees actually come into contact with our gloves, maybe half a dozen at any time. None stung, they must have been as surprised as I was. Don't...

It's not shade now which matters, it's shade in winter you don't want, as you need every bit of warmth you can get into the brood to support it.

Results just coming in, it looks as though a couple with 8 supers on may have produced 170-180lb each. One super gave over 30lb (weighed in at 42). Others we got wrong gave less, predictably - 30 each on average. The difference lay in successful swarm management, in half the cases. The others...

Yes, back the dummy board with 2" Celotex, as you've only 7 frames. Anyone join me in thinking they should be fed from here on in? Sugar syrup.

True, the puffins would probably wipe the bees out on Lundy.

A queen doesn't know it's a super, she'll lay wherever she can, Mikeh. That's why you use a QE to keep brood out of the honey. But if you get big, don't forget her sperm store is limited, she'll burn bright but fast.

One reason for a beginner not to go for deep brood solutions is that you skate on thin ice when it comes to swarm management. OK, you have plenty of workers for the peak honey flow - unless half defect because they start to feel the pressure of sheer number. Ya pays ya mpney and ya takes ya...

Blow into the nitrile before putting it on, they won't tear then, until they are dunked in soda.