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We had two relatively healthy hives through most of the winter, both had plenty of stores. During the very cold snap with the snow, one of the hives got water/moisture inside. when we first inspected it, there was the smell of fermenting honey, mold and a lot of dead bees, but we found the queen...

We have not been able to get into the hives to remove the Apivar strips until today, as daytime temps have been far to cold last few weeks and we have had other commitments. Both hives are 12x14 poly. First hive was a little bit feisty as can be expected, but there was a good 3 seams of bees...

Went to look at the hives at 7:30 this morning, and what do i see, a bloody jasper sat on the landing board, balling one of the bees up ready to take. Not sure if it was clearing up one of the dead ones, or had killed it on its way out the hive, either way it got squished. Is it a bit early in...

Hi, we are getting some GM queens delivered soon hopefully, but if they arrive on Thursday, i am working lates so will not have time to do the hive manipulations we need to do until the next afternoon. What's the best way to store them for the day or so? What do we need to give them if...

After having the bees do the swarm control for us last year, by going in to the empty hive next door. this year to try and better beekeepers we thought we would plan ahead. So we have ordered new queens and would split before they arrived, once the hives started showing swarm signs, use the...

Our first time this year trying out a nadired supper, only on our bigger hive to see if it helped them over winter. Both hives are 14 x 12 poly and they both look to have wintered well. But its hard to work out if the nadired supper helped as we have not had any real cold to speak of! When is...

It was our first full year last year, and have read/heard from plenty of more experienced Bk's that last year caught out even the more experienced. There was a lot of discussion/conjecture that the very mild winter followed by the cold snap in spring was a major factor, keeping the bees in the...

Not sure if anyone has seen this, bit sad, but at least they can manage them back to strength unlike the poor Koalas :( quarter-of-kangaroo-islands-ligurian-beehives-lost

When we take of the supers at the end of august, we were thinking that any that is not capped or over 20% will be the bees? But not sure if you can use a miller style feeder for feeding it back to them? and what are the pros & cons of giving them honey back to use over winter? i know honey is...

The swarm with our original Q from earlier in the year started throwing up Queen cells for a few weeks, we knocked them down (yes i know bad practice) but once they had been given another 2 supers they had stopped for 3-4 weeks, there are a few play cups but just the same as the other hive, but...

We have two hives that are only about 2 ft from each other, but have produced two completely different honeys. The yellow hive we took 2 supers off tastes similar to the last batch, with a nice floral taste. normal rich honey colour and about 18% But the green hive we only took one super off is...

A professor has given a colony of honey bees a cello in which to set up their hive. Martin Bencsik, from Nottingham Trent University, is researching the vibrations and sounds made by the bees using the instrument in his West Bridgford garden...

With the currently crap weather and some saying that they are thinking of feeding, just for us beginners that are in our first full year, or don't have any experience of this, would imagine that they are not going to need the same amount as over wintering? but when should we start to think about...

Just wanted to find out what other peoples experiences was of swarms once settled, have they ever swarmed again within 6-8weeks? We had our only hive swarm 16th April, they went next door to our other 14x12 hive, since then they have filled the brood box to 10 frames of BIAS from empty...

We did a small test extraction on a frame over the weekend to test water content and flavour. The honey was only 17% on a brand new calibrated refractometer so that was OK. But the honey was very light in colour, quite runny and only had a very subtle citrus background taste. It came from our...

Just looking for kindest way to deal with a small queenless swarm, it was a second cast that sat in a tree for 3 days, they have been in a national Nuc for 2 weeks now, as a small swarm have only drawn out 2 frames, and that is filled with very clumsy drone cells with 2 very sorry looking...

Quick summery, 14x12 hive, swarmed twice, had piping queen, now no sign of eggs, larvae and could not find queen, think she may have been damaged on last inspection, my bad as think she had made it through QE and got squished when moving suppers. Found queens in other hives. So we have a few...

We had our one and only hive swarm, luckly they went next door into the spare hive, we then went into the old hive took one frame with QC's, One with Caped brood and one of stores into a nuc, then knocked down all but 1 viable QC (so we thought), put in 3 new frames and left them to it = 20th...

Follwoying on from our previous post about the (Green) hive that swarmed on Tuesday 16th, we had a phone call from our neighbour yesterday 19th when we were about 60 miles away "have your bees escaped" apparently they were about 100mtrs down the road in one of his trees, when we got home all...

I am going to own up to some very bad beekeeping. We did our last inspection at the end of March and had not wanted to inspect because of the cold temps/wind, well today the bees gave us a lesson in why its important to do 7/10 days inspection. I was at home today and noticed they were a lot...