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My gut feeling is that prolific colonies will fare better with Asian Hornet predation than non-prolific bees, does anyone know any better??

Here is my story. Both the Queens in my colonies had clipped wings and both colonies attempted to swarm at much the same time. Prior to this my landlord gave me 9 hours notice that he was going to do major works next to my hives and inevitably the bees felt very threatened and the builders very...

I have four hives/Nucs which have only 2 to 6 frames of brood (for reasons I will not explain here). I anticipate joining them together to make 2 hives later in the year. Two have a second box on top to help them make stores and one has it's brood in the top box. Should I reduce them all to one...

A couple of my colonies have swarmed recently. I have two questions: Firstly I have been taught that after a colony has swarmed you should leave the mother colony alone for a month and then look in to find the new queen / eggs. But what if they become queenless early on - the QC fails to hatch...

I'm in my second year keeping bees. I am aware that the use of plastic frames tends to cause heated discussion so no condescending or damning remarks please. I think plastic frames are beautiful from the point of view of inspecting the colony. For you who have never used them the eggs and larva...

This is my first year beekeeping. I have a MB Langstroth hive with medium plastic frames and use Marigold gloves and a fair amount of smoke. I find it very difficult to lift the heavier frames, it seems that my pincer grip is not strong enough. I have tried gripping the frame by the upper and...

I have several queries: 1. In the Autumn one of my hives was short of space so I added a box to keep them busy. I continued giving them thick syrup until they took no more as advised "to dilute the ivy nectar". The bees filled some frames with stores but left an area of nectar around the honey...

Firstly I have a problem with "cracking" the boxes without aggravating the bees. I push my hive tool in at one end of the plastic runners and that side loosens a bit. Then I move to the other side (same end of hive) and push my tool in. This usually works fine, but if the boxes are firmly stuck...