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Queen cages for introduction invariably have a candy plug. Is it necessary? A lot of people advise removing the workers from the cage before introduction, so the queen isn't being fed the candy by workers while she's in there. When the bees look at though they're behaving with the new queen, the...

Lovely sunny afternoon here. 5pm inspection of a hive that I split 3 weeks ago when swarm cells appeared. Caught a nice video of a virgin queen piping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ReVRrTPKE

One of my colonies decided to supercede despite doing well. I'd put some foundationless frames in one super (with a queen excluder), which they were drawing out nicely in drone-sized cells, as they do. Four weeks later, and there is drone brood in the foundationless frames in the super - but...

I'd be grateful for your expert opinions: I've got a hive on double brood that has done really well in Spring and early summer. About 6 weeks ago they decided to supercede the queen and, although I spotted a virgin queen 4 weeks ago, she's no longer there - presumably either taken during a...

One of my hives took off and expanded quickly in April, to the extent I had to split to prevent swarming. It was on double brood and bursting with bees, so I made up some nucs with uncapped swarm cells. All nucs made up with 1 frame brood, 1 frame food and bees from 4 shaken frames. Three weeks...

We had some lovely warm weather last weekend so I went up to the hives to see how they were doing. There were loads of bees flying from both hives and all seemed well. In the autumn I'd put a super on the stronger of the two hives to give them the option of going up into the super as a...

Hi all. Your advice would be appreciated. I got a new colony in early June which was a bit slow to get started. suspect is was being robbed to start with, so reduced the entrance and gave them a feed. The colony expanded brilliantly - and a few weeks ago the brood box nearly full. I added a...

Hi all. After going to a series of local beekeeping classes I got my first hive in July. The colony is doing really well and the queen is laying very nicely. Good to join you here!