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14x12 National colony for sale 6 frames with brood at all stages. Productive, gentle Buckfast-cross bees. Overwintered 2023 marked clipped Queen. Treated for Varroa in winter. Collection Bosham W. Sussex. Can deliver at reasonable distance at cost. Frames transferred into your own hive or buyer...

www.apicultural.co.uk/do-managed-honey-bees-compete-with-wild-bees-for-floral-resources Don't think this hs been posted before, but what do people think? The author's conclusion is that "I’m now convinced that managed Honey Bees are contributing to wild bee declines." The local conservancy...

I gave a hive away to someone who is very distant. Question is about the returning flying bees that couldn't be kept with it: in order not to lose them should I collect them in a new empty hive on the old site then reunite with a neighbouring queenright hive, or just leave them to find a new...

With runny honey (not crystallised) I've had several super combs collapse during extraction, even with the extractor running at low speed. It was hot so the wax was soft, but there was no collapse with my foundationless frames which have a vertical central wooden stick. The problem is that the...

2 days ago I made a split from a strong hive to create another queen by taking a couple of frames of eggs and brood with food etc. into a nucleus. I carefully inspected these frames to ensure the queen wasn't there. Today I inspected the nucleus only to see the old queen there! Given that I...

3 of my 5 hives have died during the recent cold spell, as I discovered today. 2 are poly, the other wood all with plenty of insulation above the crown boards. There were no signs of life at the entrances so looked in at the transparent crown boards to find them dead. Plenty of stores on the...

Something I've never seen mentioned here or elsewhere is the problem of bee poo raining down on a wide area around the hives. My hives are 50m away from the house but the windows (and anything around)are continually dotted with orange waxy blobs that are difficult for the window cleaner to...

I split a hive 2 weeks ago and left initially 2 QCs in the original hive while removing the queen to a nucleus. A week later I removed other QCs and left one capped one. Today the QC has not hatched so seems to have failed. I could reunite the colonies, but to be sure the original hive is...

One hive I inspected today had many small queen cells, almost like play cups, but contained royal jelly only and no larvae that I could find. Never seen this before: has anyone else seen this? There were 2 or 3 more developed queen cells with larvae.

Updated 14/10/22: 1 6-frame nucleus on 14x12 National frames. 2022 queen marked. Gentle cross stock. Brood in all stages and good amount of stores. Treated for varroa. Collect near Bosham (W.Sussex/Hants border). Can deliver 20 mile radius of Bosham (at cost). £230 (£20 in advance £210 on...

A month ago one hive was quickly filling a 4th super placed underneath the others, even though the top 3 were not capped and the top 2 only partially capped. Now the top 2 have become lighter while the bottom 2 are heaviest. Seems the bad weather made them eat stores at the top and now they may...

I've 2 weak hives as a result of a lost queen and a split, but both have newly laying queens from a few weeks ago. To have a chance of a honey crop from them this year is it best to unite now or leave them until they've built up a bit stronger before doing it?

After uniting a couple of hives, I find I'm the lucky owner of 7 or 8 14x12 frames partially filled with stores, capped and uncapped. There's no room for these in the hives so what's the best thing to use them for? Just store them for possible later use?

2 weeks ago a hive had no signs of eggs or uncapped brood so I added a frame with eggs/young brood. 2 days ago still no sign of eggs or young brood and no Q cells produced either. That should indicate a Q present but seems very unlikely. Should I add a queen or what?

My 14x12 hives are so packed with bees, even with 2 supers on in some cases, that they look short of space and inspection means clearing so many bees from surfaces and squashing many which doesn't help their temper, that I wonder if it's wise to add a super as another brood box, though I'd...

In the last week lots of bees have been flying despite the cold weather. But every day there have been dead and dying bees around the hives, now probably amounting to hundreds. Never seen this sort of thing before. Behind the hives is paved and there are couple of dozen bees lying dead each day...

The oilseed rape in front of my house is starting to flower but I've not inspected yet due to low temperatures. But the hives are getting busy so, despite people saying no need to open hives yet, I guess I ought wait no longer to see if there's enough brood and space, especially in the nucleus...

My only wooden hive has strong colony but I noticed today that it seems to be starving with few stores and, despite having put a rapid feeder on a week ago, the bees haven't gone near it. The other hives have stores and yet greedily take any feed I give. This hive is also very damp inside with...

My bees are collecting huge quantities of this at present but the usual sources don't say much except field scabious which I doubt. No obvious garden flowers for this here. Any ideas?

I want to unite 2 hives located at either end of 4 hives in a row, all close together. What would happen to the flying bees of the moved hive? Would they try to enter any of the 3 remaining hives rather than the united one?