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Agree with your post. The reason that OSR does not generally need seeding is that pure OSR honey sets finely and so is an excellent seed in its own right. Sometimes OSR comes in with dandelion, though, which granulates coarsely, and you can end up with fine set OSR littered with 'sugar...

Thanks all for your positive comments, it means a lot as I put much effort into trying to make the text thorough but clear and well illustrated... but was never sure if there was a demand for it, or how it would be received. Glad you are all enjoying the book and finding it useful! "How did...

Spring build-up is pollen-limited, certainly here. Thus if there is ample opportunity to get out and good warm weather, colonies get ample pollen and raise good quantities of brood, but if the weather is cool or wet their brood raising is limited or halted. We had exactly this at some sites in...

Just trying to get my head round the logistics! Like so much in colony management, what works with thousands is very different to what works with hundreds or tens.

Thanks BKP. Yes, the Apideas webinar is still available if anyone wants a taster of our approach. In fact there's 20 of them, mostly practical topics like swarm control, double brood, queen raising, reading bees, out apiaries, etc. All require a small payment, but that goes towards paying for...

Where?!

Many factors involved. How were they established, how populous, how were they set out in the apiary, did you 'set up and forget' or go back regularly to check progress, on what day did you add the queen cell, had you tried a 2nd queen cell after the first had failed, etc. We take available...

Hi Ian - yes, another variation, confining the workers before distribution to the mini-nucs. Yup, Northern Bee Books have it now so they'll will have the book on their stall at the Beekeeping Show end of the month and any others they are attending - I'll be seeing Jerry in Somerset on Saturday...

Hi Daboss - moving them to a different site would have helped with the success, assuming the usual distances. Let me know how you get on if you do decide to test both approaches in quantity at the same time and in the same mating apiary. Have just wrapped your book up for postage, looking...

Hi Daboss Thanks for ordering. You describe a shortcut that can work, but success is conditional on a number of factors. When it works, it's great, when it doesn't work, it's not always clear why not, and you've lost a viable virgin queen. I treat just-pulled virgins and ripe queens cells the...

Brian, Buzz - thanks for your kind comments - but most of all glad you enjoyed / are enjoying reading it and have picked up some useful practical tips from it. It does amaze me that the Apidea has been around for some forty years without anything really in the way of guidance.

Can I post this here? I've just published a book on Apideas that I've been working on quietly for some years. It's a practical manual intended to guide people through using these for queen mating. 250 pages, over 280 colour photos and illustrations. More details, page previews and ordering...

Lotus were working on this ten years ago. Clicky.

Anything where you move a box, rather than individual frames. e.g. moving the half of brood and a half under the brood during winter.

OP, it depends if your customer wants any old beeswax (it will always be cheaper from ebay) or your local, known provenance beeswax. Thrones sell generic candlemaking beeswax for £8.40 for 500g, i.e. £16.80 / Kg. I'd suggest £20/Kg for yours if provenance is important to the buyer.

If a single National brood is too small, then go to double brood. 14x12 is a placebo; it feels bigger than standard brood (it is!), but it's still a small box... comparable to a single Commercial brood or Langstroth deep. Yes, 14x12 is better than brood and a half (what isn't?!) but it guides...

There's a chapter in the back of Bailey's earlier Infectious Diseases of the Honeybee, or later Honeybee Pathology (either edition). The earlier editions are easier/cheaper to find than the later ones... many association libraries have (or should!) a copy of one of them. He ascribes the likely...

Well Karol, you want to agree to disagree but leave with a few parting shots? :rolleyes: I think you are treating the issue too simplistically, you keep on about trap efficiency and cannot seem to understand that a robbed hive is an almost totally inefficient trap. You also don't appear to...

I still think you don't understand the wasp robbing hives scenario. In an ideal world, every hive would repel all wasp scouts... but they don't. Remember that each hive holds many kilos of honey, with not all of it sealed. Hives are actively ventilated, honey smells good... HM's 'honey plume'...

Looks like it might be a waterfed window cleaning pole, something like this. Funnily enough I was recently looking for window cleaning poles to give the solar panels a good scrub. Seems there are cheap ones where the water just runs up inside the poles (so they weigh a ton in use, but telescope...