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Thanks - I'll have a closer look at them later. I did see one on the landing board doing a bit of a jive on her back, so CBPV could also be it. I'll put the varroa board under to see. Where do you send bees for analysis? NBU I suppose?

I was introducing some new people to beekeeping on Saturday, so took them to look at one of the hives. I told them that looking at the hive entrance is often a good first indication of what's going on in the colony and simultaneously peered around the front, where I spotted a mound of bees about...

http://www.alderneyshipping.com/routes/ Keep an eye out for the buggers every Thursday, then relax for the other six days. :)

Sadly not - I'm going to phone a friend this weekend to see if I can scavange one from him. Hopefully this year's attempt at multiplication of hives will go a bit better than last.

I had no open brood when I did a first inspection of the year at the weekend either - groaning with honey and pollen though. Didn't see the queen though, so might well be queenless yet again - which could explain the sporadic capped drone brood. I seem to have no luck with queens.

Hi, I'm helping run a beekeeping branch of the Garden Society at the University of Surrey and looking for bees relatively locally. Please PM me if you have any spare nucs/swarms/bees for sale nearbyish. :thanks:

I was with a friend doing this (he was running a beginners' course at the time which made it very interesting) and we got a frame from his home a mile or so away. He made sure the bees were off it and then put it under his jacket to give it some body heat.

When I got all the kit for the hives at University, we went for those budget ones and I was very impressed by the quality - just a couple of the frames had serious knots in them, but nothing an extra pin couldn't fix. The ones I use at home aren't so good. I noticed them for sale, assembled for...

If you want to look in a hive at some point, I'm near East Grinstead, so not a million miles away. Otherwise, local associations are best for theory and hands-on courses, though I went to a very good one in Shovelstrode to get started.

It's my understanding that bees can't see red, so if that is correct then they would hardly notice it if you used red LEDs or a filter over the light. If you were going to go IR, I assume you'd be happy with a black and white conversion from the red. A flash is obviously not good if you do long...

That's pretty much what the research is all about. I don't want to hijack the thread with the full details but basically looking at fighting food-bourne diseases, particularly in the 'post-antibiotic era' that the World Health Organisation have warned of.

They looked very much like the emergency cells shown on p.7 of this http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/There-Are-Queen-Cells-In-My-Hive-WBKA-WAG.pdf Short and in the middle of the frame. As I said, I was trying to talk to people at the same time as think through the situation, so...

I'm trying for cut comb this year - I've gone for alternating full sheets of thin with small starter strips as I'd read somewhere that it helps them draw it straight. I'll take a photo if I remember to to show their progress. When I last looked, they were just starting to draw it out and had...

I just saw the word 'Surrey', so thought I'd better say hello, even though I've not been here long. I'm just starting an apiary in the University of Surrey to be run by the students. Some might say that it's a recipe for disaster, but we've got a plan, and the ladies I spoke to from the local...

[edit] I've just noticed that the title is a bit misleading - it should say something more like 'newly hived swarm' I'm sure this is standard knowledge, but I can't find anything that gives an absolute answer. If a queen cell has royal jelly in it, is it definitely going to contain an...

Thanks for the answers - much as I thought really. Great book recommendation too, I found it free online and had a look. Interestingly, the sort of hive he's talking about ther seems to have one frame mounted transversely compared to all of the other frames right in front of the window which is...

I'm not sure where to put this question really, but there's a lot about observation hives in this part of the forum... I'm helping to set up a couple of hives at university and we're thinking of putting some observation windows on a side of each brood box so that we can spread the bee-love...

Thanks for all your replies - in the end, I didn't actually act on them, but it was useful to have it all in mind as I looked at the colony. When I opened the hive at the weekend, there were plenty of bees in there (and the flow of traffic at the entrance was impressive - almost all laden with...

Thanks - your diagnoses all make perfect sense. I'm guilty of at least half of that - I didn't take anything off the hive last winter: as it was my first winter, I didn't know how much they'd need for themselves, so I thought I'd leave it all and see how much they'd used at the beginning of...

Thanks - I'll just wait and see how they get on then. They never seemed to develop at all, still just little white flecks just the same as when I first noticed them just over a month ago. I don't think the bees are interested enough in that side of the box to bother with them - those frames...