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Too damn cold to open them up so just weighed them. The weight gains have stalled. Don't need that extra super.

Didn't want to let them run into another hive as there may be an unmated queen from a QC which emerged in late October/November. She'd be very difficult to spot. ? Concerned there may be a chance she could kill my laying queen. She must have killed or deposed my bought-in marked queen. My...

Photo, today , five days after being shaken out and then climbing up into nuc, as I felt sorry for them. A good number of bees have flown off and hopefully found one of the other hives but the remainder just died together after DLQ removed. Once before I've shaken out a DLW colony onto a sheet...

18degC here yesterday and windy. If I hadn't put a box over them they would be a soggy clump of bees after the rain. Expected them to thin out after I removed the queen yesterday. I suppose she could have laid an egg which would give them hope.

Two of the four colonies at home have become drone layers over winter so I shook them out into the long grass 10m in front of one of the other hives on Saturday (2 days ago). Having not found and dispatched the queens they clumped together in the weeds looking miserable. I took pity on them...

Drones flying from a couple of hives. I expect to be shaking them out on first inspection at the weekend.

Haven't done first full inspection yet, just checked a couple of frames in the top super of brood and a half. Checked varroa drop over last 4 days. The busiest colony dropping 14 varroa/day. Floor slide running with condensation so they've found some nectar. The drone layers (I have 2 I think)...

Took on a hive with plastic spacers. I use all Hoffman frames. Awkward to run the two together. Thorne have stopped selling Hoffman convertor clips so I looked around the workshop and discovered these push pins, if pushed right in, give something close to the right spacing and can be mixed with...

I'd be looking for multiple eggs per cell to say laying workers? Can't see any eggs even on the full size image. What are you seeing?

Quick stores check having been freaked out by posts here and on social media. Lifted a couple of frames in top box. No worries about stores but 2 of 4 look like drone layers. drat! This will therefore be my worst winter survival rate.

Melted some blocks of wax with some water to clean them up. Output from the solar wax melter last year. As it cooled off outside the faint smell of honey must have attracted this bumblebee queen. Only 8degC and overcast.

I'm just impatient, I guess.

Had a talk by a member of Jersey AH team at my BBKA association meeting. (Think he was lost in the wilds of Lincolnshire. :D) He has 6? 10? traps which he checks daily on his rounds. It means he can monitor a bigger area. If you are using bait stations a hornet could come and go before or...

Uggh! Got to do my frames too.

Not a great landowner who doesn't tell you that your hives have been damaged OR tell you when they are going to clear up. And a couple of new stumps and a load of chainsaw chips would be pretty obvious. Click bait. Disappointing.

Most reports of trees falling in apiaries more often show how the hives had a close escape. The thorough level of destruction suggests vandalism.

Drone cappings dropping out of the one hive I was hoping to breed from. Bit early. Is she failing? Have to wait and see.

My snarky dumb response. #edit to the original post (just to make it clear (good grief)) #edit Shouldn't the advice here be, very little you can do and doing something is unlikely to save them if they are that small and how do you even know this sort of detail about the size of the cluster at...

#not helpful#