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Hi - I made some set honey about a year ago that has been fine until recently when it started going patchy (photos attached) hopefully. The only thing I can think of is that it's started fermenting, although it was below (although close to) 20% moisture content. Is that what it looks like to...

Hi - For personal reasons I need to give up beekeeping. I currently have five colonies, all in National hives. I'm in East Sussex (Lewes) so if anyone in the area would like to buy the equipment and bees I'd really like to move them as quickly as possible. I can sell separately but would prefer...

Hi - For personal reasons I haven't been able to open my two hives up this year until today. One was fine - the other not so much. I found many Queen cells, three capped, many uncapped. However, I also found the Queen, somewhat to my surprise. I've not encountered this situation before, so...

I have two colonies this year, one that has built up very fast and seems very dynamic, and one that started well but only just seems to be holding its own at the moment. The comb isn't that old (couple of years) but is very dark, there is a LOT of chalk brood and the laying doesn't seem very...

Hi - I'm never quite sure when old comb is re-useable, and I've also had problems taking a frame apart to put new comb in. Consequently I frequently end up throwing frames away when I could probably do something with them. I'd appreciate some views on this. I've got two photos of frames...

Excuse the ignorance but what is this?

I'm getting in a bit of a mess with keeping track of my colonies, and wondered if there was a naming/numbering convention that most people used - and if this stayed attached to the hive or to the colony, or some other system? At the moment I'm just using words to name a new colony if I...

I have a queenless (though very full) hive. I'm waiting to either merge or re-queen it. Over the last few days they've been acting very oddly. They are in the garden so I have easy and regular views of them. They act as though they are swarming - very full swarm - crawling all over the hive...

I captured a swarm into a nuc last week, and put some sugar syrup in for them. They've woofed it all down and the frames are still thin in terms of stores. With this unpredictable weather I think they're consuming as fast as they're bringing it in, so I'm going to give them some more. But...

This is a problem I've had at the end of the season (August) over my two or three summers, but I'm having it at the moment as I'd like to take a couple of full supers off (I think the main source has been OSR and I want to extract them before they granulate). The problem is that although the...

Hi - I received three mated Queens in the post this morning (I'm hoping they're ok - despite the 'live bees please handle carefully' label they were shoved through the letterbox with a four foot drop on the other side and are sounding pretty upset at the moment). I haven't re-queened before...

When you recombine two colonies into one after carrying out an artificial swarm, does it matter whether you merge the colonies back into the original hive space or to the temporarily established new one? And using the method of a newspaper between the two colonies, do the flying bees which are...

Could someone help me identify these please? There are two of them - they seem in a slightly odd place for either supercedure or swarm cells (both on the side of the top bar of a frame) and they're quite small, but occupied. cell1.jpg cell2.jpg

I need two queens and am thinking of buying mated queens which I've not done before. Could anyone let me know what the dis/advantages are of (edit - apparently shouldn't have linked to a site with four options, so the options were 'local', 'buckfast cross', 'New Zealand Queen' and 'Apis...

I inspected my two hives yesterday and found that one hive is very busy and has started making Queen cups. No eggs in them so as I understand it they're likely to be just experimenting and considering the possibility of creating proper queen cells. They are pretty full - eight good brood frames...

If there is plenty of honey in the BB but it's crystallised (eg Ivy from previous autumn) is this completely inaccessible to the bees? Is it harder to consume than fondant? I put fondant in last winter and found it completely unused, yet the bees seem very light on stores, although there were...

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good thermometer to keep outside? I've bought a succession of thermometers which either don't seem to work effiectively from the start or stop working soon after.

I am replacing the surface area under where I keep my three hives over the next few days. This should have been done a few weeks ago when it was much colder but a problem occurred and we couldn't do it then. The bees are still fairly quiet atm - although when the temperature rises by only a...

Hi - Totally inexperienced in candlemaking and I was hoping someone could advise. I thought I'd try dipping candles (see photo). All seems to have worked pretty well, but I'm just wondering how it works with the wick and whether I should leave them this shape or if I should do something else to...