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I was putting 2nd Apiguard treatment on 2 hives today. At 1 hive I saw 3 completely black bees outside the hive on a block at the base of the entrance which concerned me. So inspected the hive, I saw several bees inside that looked the same but seemed to be behaving normally, if a bit slow. I...

A few days ago I united a q- nuc with a q+ nuc. Q- nuc was added to the top of the Q+ nuc, using 3 sheets of newspaper. The Q- nuc has a feeder with syrup. Today I noticed around 20 dead bees on the landing board. So have I made a mistake in leaving the feeder on? Can this lead to...

I have an old futon mattress, was thinking of repurposing to use as insulation above crown boards. Seems to be made of layers of cotton, wool and some foam. No real info on a label so I can only guess at the treatment the material had (reference is to some fire regulations from 1998.) I am...

Would love to hear the thoughts of experience on how best to overwinter polynucs with mesh floors. I am interested if people see a difference in the height off the ground, e.g. using a typical wooden hive stand, leaving them low down, e.g. a pallet, blocking mesh floors, or whether it makes no...

I have a hive that for the last 3 weeks, has turned in to complete monsters. Before that they were very easy to inspect. Hive was on x 2 national brood chambers, QE & x 2 commercial supers, both have x 3 undrawn frames, the rest is capped. 3 weeks ago they swarmed, I went in to knock down...

I have 3 weak hives: 1 commercial nuc, a cast swarm I found in a field, I assume the queen didn't return from a mating flight, they were given a virgin queen but no sign of her, so gave a test frame and they have 1 capped QC, due to emerge in 1 week. Small amount of bees. 1 national nuc, their...

So today I was with the bees at my father in law's. I was putting a nuc in to a hive. I also checked a few other hives. When I went to go inside to change my mother in law stopped me and said I had lots of bees on my back, and she had been watching and they had been there for 20 minutes...

So I ended up with a hive on brood and a half.. A national hive that was strong coming out of winter, I had no spare brood boxes but ideally would have moved to double brood. So they got a super to give extra space about 1 month ago. Inspected yesterday, in the brood box 7 frames of BIAS...

Today I went to perform the second step in the Wally shaw method. I can find no eggs and no sign of the queen in the original hive. The a/s side had produced 4 small sealed qc's which I had already destroyed before moving to the original hive to find the queen. So I assume that I lost the...

I have a 3 hives in commercial, 3 hives in national and a recently hived swarm in a national brood box. Apart from the swarm and 1 national hive all the rest have 1 super of foundation each, in various states of being drawn, or ignored in the case of the strongest hive which is on a commercial...

I have 2 polynucs with double brood boxes. Inspected yesterday and in the stronger of the two the queen is using 5 1/2 frames for laying, all in the top brood box. The bees haven't even cleaned up the frames in the bottom box, e.g. 1 still has old pollen in it, so they dont seem to be using...

I inspected 2 double brood Polynucs for the first time this year Both have frames of brood and eggs in the top box, in the lower boxes both have frames with some stores and empty frames. From both I removed 1 old black frame that came with them when they were purchased as nucs last year. In...

It was a very mild day today, very warm in the sun, all the hives were busy. One of my father in laws hives had 4 drones among the bees bringing back pollen. Should I be worried about a drone laying queen? Seems a bit early for drones but I guess some can survive the winter and maybe a sign of...

Lidl were selling rolls of the foil backed epe insulation for €4. Its about 5mm thick. I have cut out and stuck together x 5 squares to fit over a crown board as insulation, so that end up about about 2.5 cm thick. Now I doubt the foil backing will do anything to reflect heat back in to the...

I came across this article https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181004100044.htm Interesting potential or the latest snake oil?

I have 2 bs honey bees poly nucs. I was wondering what other people do to reduce the entrance over winter. They come with a fairly standard circular entrance disc that can be moved in to open, QE, ventilation etc. If its left in the open position then the size of the entrance hole in to the...

So I have two nucs created at the end of June. They were given queen cells and both have a laying queen, they had just started laying last weekend or just before that. I had used borrowed 5 frame nucs and since then I got hold of some 6 frame poly nucs. one has been moved in to a poly nuc...

So maybe a difficult question to answer but could make for an interesting discussion If you wanted to ensure a nuc with queen cells is put in the best location to allow the emerging queen to be mated, what would you look for in a site? Near someone else who has hives? Within another apiary...

Last Sunday a swarm moved in to a commercial brood box with 4 frames of drawn comb. On Sunday evening I filled up the box with frames of foundation. I plan to do an inspection at some point this week/weekend, to get a better understanding of the size of the swarm, whether there is a lying...

A friend of mine had been given a brood box with 5 frames of comb by someone he works for. He set it up at the bottom of his garden/meadow. He hadn't really checked it since he put it in in late spring. When he finally checked it this week he noticed bees. So he went back to the women who...