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Yes, hadn't thought of the wax as an issue. Could start to be expensive...

Just been phoned by a beekeeping friend who was called to a car with bees swarmed into the ventilation system. They can see wax, so it looks like they have started building comb and making themselves comfortable. All I could think of was: Wait until it warms up and the bees are flying, drive...

Excellent, just what I needed to know. Thanks

Thanks, useful. When you say patty needs 20% pollen, do you mean at least 20% or no more than 20%?

I've started using a pollen trap on one of my hives for an hour a week, just to give me a good idea of what they are collecting. I've been amazed at how much you can collect in just an hour (yes, I know they are raising loads of brood at the moment and need pollen, but until you see an hours...

Ah, OK. Many apologies - you must have gone to the one they were referring to as giving the day before. Mine was the same chap - beyond the nucleus method.

I went to the same lecture and, to be fair, they did start by saying that the reason they weren't including the nucleus method was because they had already covered it in a talk the previous day and that this was intended as an intermediate class, which covered alternative methods for those who...

I was responding to Karol's post where he said you don't need to worry if you are not in the south and you don't have Crabro. I meet both criteria.

But I do live in the south and we do have crabro. Hence my question.

Can anyone advise on a question about what happens when AH appears in your area. We believe the NBU will ask our AHAT team to deploy traps around the area of sightings. Is there an approved trap or monitoring station? Do we provide these or the NBU? Grateful for any insights.

According to Andrew Durham, the rural areas are exactly the problem - nobody lives there to report nests and because they are not destroyed they produce lots of queens to replace colonies destroyed in urban areas.

The OSR in the field next to our Assn apiary has started flowering. We might have to add supers sooner than expected

I watched this lecture too - highly recommend it. Further, Dr Nicholas has gathered $1million in funding to try and commercialise a fungi that kills varroa - exciting stuff!

I always find the first sting of the season the worst. Better after that. (Although I also try my best to 'feel' the bees and not get stung at all)

I use the same system - in Winter if the bees move even a little away from the sensor it often reads close to ambient. The first time this happened to me I was quite surprised as I'd assumed there would be a bit of heat in the box, even away from the cluster, but it seems not. In the summer...

So what did they do in France when AH appeared? Trap or monitor or nothing? Whatever approach they took clearly failed to stop AH getting established. Should be some good lessons to prevent us ending up in the same boat. Everything I read seems to be about what they are doing now

Richard Noel raised an interesting point on facebook last night along the lines that they don't worry too much about a bit of bycatch. Every queen you don't trap can form a colony that will consume 11kg of insects a year. Any bycatch is insignificant compared to this.

So, I can 3d print the ends for about 60p an end. I can use a tupperware box (or similar) for <£10 or make one free from correx instead of what looks like a shrunken nuc and have the same thing.. If it doubled as a nuc, then it might be worth £35? But then I don't have the overheads of a...

Just seen the post about taking out European hornets and thus reducing competition for ah. Is that it?

If the advice is not to try Spring queen trapping, can anyone explain the perceived disadvantages? If you use a trap designed to release most bycatch, I can't see any bad side