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I don’t know why people are so fixated on national hives in this country, they are arguably the least well designed, the most likely to rot and the most difficult to construct. conversely a langstroth hive is very easy for any handyman to make and therefore cheap and owing to its easy construct...

Finally got around to motorising my extractor with the help of an electrical engineer neighbour.

Yes had it badly on my left wrist, had the op and it’s fine.

Great swathes of ragwort around here, bees love it and bring in loads of pollen: guess who is very allergic to ragwort so wish it would come to an end.

I use Langstroth because they are so easy to make and they don’t have the stupid planted on side pieces of a national that are an invitation to rot. If I was to start again knowing what I know now I would use nothing but deep langstroth supers for both brood and supers.

I think as others have said your queen will be ok. I am a really old fart beekeeper and do not clip or mark queens at this time of year: spring inspection when there are a few drones about is soon enough. Make a mistake at this time of year and your hive might be in turmoil.

I think CBPV is much more prevalent than is realised: I had 3 colonies that looked healthy enough but were not doing as well as I expected, I requeened them all and put their queens in mini nucs as insurance. Within a couple of weeks those 3 nucs just had black twitchy sick bees and one queen...

There is a very good chance that you will have swarmy bees that will be hard work to keep together to make honey. Not ideal if you are just starting out. What about re queening at least one of your colonies with known queen? I had some swarmy bees and re queened them with Carnies, they have...

I use serif “page plus”, I find it very easy to use and it has templates for all the popular Avery label sizes.

the Cherry fields that surround our fields are regularly sprayed with gunk (technical word), I went out and spoke to the tractor driver who was very caring and he now has my mobile no. And texts me the day before he is going to spray and also does the bit closest to my hives very first thing. He...

I think you are very sensible. I don’t wear gloves at all normally and it’s surprising how little notice bees take of your hands. Vinyl gloves are for stroppy bees and the leather gloves are for Armageddon which I hope never comes.

I have several suits and the one I favour most of all is a jacket with a shield veil that I got from,”Simon the Beekeeper” for £20. Great quality, nice zips and the veil is easy to see through. While you are at it buy some of his lovely soft leather gloves. Haven’t worn mine yet but they are lovely.

Who here is in favour of chucking away and buying new? Surely being environmentally aware the best solution is to boil frames to recycle and send your wax off to someone like Thorne’s to sterilise and provide us with more foundation?

I had a problem with my bees going next door and being a nuisance and even clogging the flue of their condensing boiler. The solution was a plastic trig full of water, some floating wooden blocks and a very cheap solar fountain. This is now the star attraction for the bees, their version of the...

May I tentatively suggest that now would be a good time to cut your losses put this hive down and sterilise the whole lot and look to start again with a new swarm or split. this is what I would be inclined to do as the easiest way to eradicate any potential disease and prevents breeding from...

I have a very good neighbour with cherry orchards who tells me the night before he sprays which is great and I shut them up but his orchards only extend 1/2 a miles; bees fly at least 2 miles: what are all the other farmers doing?

I have made and used both langstroth and national hives. Ease of manufacturing goes to the langstroth by a long way. Ease of use also goes to the Langstroth, i Like the squareness of the national but it is trumped by the top bee space short lugs and the choice of two sizes of super (dadant).

For veracity I left out that the boiler was serviced to remove bees and it’s combustion was checked and there was no effect from the plastic mesh. i created quite a large basket around the flue so there was plenty of room for inlet and outlet gases. The boiler is , of course, a condensing boiler...

I had exactly this issue. You need to do something straight away or the bees will actually block the inside of the boiler. The problem is caused by a condensing boiler putting out plumes of condense which the bees want at this time of year to dilute their honey. First thing to do is put a pond...

Let your honey crystallise, you can get much more on your crumpet and if you eat it quickly it doesn’t drip down your chin.😋