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  1. mintmoth

    National honey monitoring scheme

    Mine was a July sample, no OSR at all around here last year except the odd roadside weed. The honey came out as mostly bramble and white clover, plus various wild and garden flowers/tree flowers, but also with, intriguingly, a dash of Java plum or jambolan, and also caylusea abyssinica, a native...
  2. mintmoth

    Art or Firewood ? Be honest ...

    Apologies if you are a wood purist, Pargyle, but that would have looked even more stunning if the holes had been filled with coloured resin before turning. And I agree the finial is mismatched. A wonderful chunky box like that should have a good chunky lid handle.
  3. mintmoth

    Bramble jam

    I don't eat a huge amount of jam because of the processed sugar, so I like the fact I can make jam that's low GI. Plus it cost me nothing but the heat from the stove - free jam!
  4. mintmoth

    Bramble jam

    I simmered the blackberries and the apples separately, the apples with enough water to cover, until they were soft then rubbed both lots through a sieve as I hate the blackberry pips in the jam. Then I used equal weights of honey and sieved purée (900g of each) and simmered it all gently for...
  5. mintmoth

    Bramble jam

    I foraged 2lbs of blackberries from the hedgerows today, so as an experiment, I turned them into jam using honey instead of sugar, and using a dozen little unripe crab apples for the pectin. Rather to my surprise it has set beautifully and tastes wonderful.
  6. mintmoth

    What's flowering as forage in your area

    As the OSR failed around here there are about 30 acres of mixed cover crop about a mile from my bees, flax, buckwheat, and phacelia, with a dribble of some mustardy looking plant too.
  7. mintmoth

    What is happening to our queens

    I've only kept bees for five years, but in that time have often wondered how I could improve the drones my virgin queens may mate with. I can find very little information, even on this site, as to how it is done. Do you keep hives purely for drone production, and how do you decide which queens...
  8. mintmoth

    Do you provide drinking water for your bees?

    There are two fishing lakes plus the brook that feeds them less than 200 yards away. Though when the ditch at the back of the hives is boggy they use that.
  9. mintmoth

    Cover board blocks

    I have a polyhive next to a cedar hive, both with 2019 bought in Buckfast Q's. Both went into the winter on double brood with the top box of each having 10 frames of sealed stores, plus whatever they had in the bottom boxes. They had pretty much identical numbers of bees in October. By December...
  10. mintmoth

    Less OSR?

    From the top of my local hill here in the East Midlands I can't see any agricultural land that looks to be OSR this year, where normally there would be plenty of fields growing it. Has anyone else noticed less land put to OSR? Found this table on the AHDB site which would indicate the whole...
  11. mintmoth

    Honey marmalade

    I made lemon marmalade today, using a half an opened can of lemon mamade that has been sitting in the freezer for over a year. Bit of an experiment. The instructions were to add 4lbs sugar and a pint of water to the whole can, so I added 2 and a half lbs runny honey and no water to the half can...
  12. mintmoth

    Bees dead on QE

    I had this happen too, but the QE was quite dry and the dead bees dry - they were small drones.The colony was on double brood, but stuffed the top BB with honey, plus 3 supers above. I saw when I removed the supers that brood had been raised in some of the combs then later filled with honey. So...
  13. mintmoth

    What tree is this?

    Just googling around, is it lemon aspen? https://aromaticingredients.com.au/products/lemon-aspen-extract
  14. mintmoth

    Best wishes to all

    Sorry to hear your father's not well, Mark, but well done you for going home to support him and the farm. Not an easy decision to make when you have your own life organised elsewhere. I want to thank you for asking all the questions on the forum that I also wanted answers to, I've learned a lot...
  15. mintmoth

    Slow release cage.

    I used push in cages to give new queens to 2 nucs - one bought, one homemade that pushed in much better. In both cases the queen had got out, but fortunately both had been accepted and were unharmed. I made the homemade one with very deep sides and pushed it in so far that I worried the square...
  16. mintmoth

    What's flowering as forage in your area

    A week's rain has worked wonders. Today the brambles were thick with open flowers in all the hedgerows.
  17. mintmoth

    What's flowering as forage in your area

    Thanks Enrico. Good to know and be ready for. No brambles in flower here yet.
  18. mintmoth

    What's flowering as forage in your area

    There are two fields of field beans flowering right next to my hives. Am I right in thinking the bees can't get nectar from these as the flowers are too deep for their tongues, like runner beans are? Or is there a chance they can get some nectar from them?
  19. mintmoth

    Combining a Hive with a Small Nuc

    I united a nuc with a larger colony today over newspaper, and when I got home I realised I 'd forgotten to put any slits in the paper for the bees too start chewing away at it. Will they still chew through it anyway, or do I need to go back tomorrow and put some slits in it? The nuc colony...
  20. mintmoth

    Slow release cage.

    So true. I used push ins for the first time this year. As I can park fairly close to the hives I took the precaution of shaking all the bees off the comb then retiring to the car to transfer the queens. Both times the queens got away from me (partly because I'm not used to handling queens so was...
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