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Yesterday I was doing some fibreglass repairs on an old Lotus in my workshop and put the heaters on to get the temperature up to help the 'glass cure. Quite often when I do this at this time of year it wakes up one or two butterflies or wasps who fly around thinking the spring has arrived only...

Hi all, A swarm I collected in June and placed in a 14x12 Poly nuc has settled in really well and has what seems to be a highly productive queen laying healthy, productive and calm workers. They are currently piling pollen and nectar into the hive, I think the source must be both Ivy and...

So, it's cold and grey up here in Norfolk, the Suduko book in the loo is finished and I started doing some simple sums on the back page instead. My 14x12 Maisemore poly hives weigh in at give or take 13kg filled with 11 empty drawn frames and with a miller feeder on the top. If I take a...

Just in case it's of use to any of you.... The bearings inside the motor of the Lyson 12 frame "classic" extractor I borrow from a friend failed the last time I used it. Abelo didn't even respond to my requests for a price and leadtime on a new motor, but a quick search on eBay found the...

Hi, I did a quick inspection of the hives this morning, all in very good shape with good amounts of BIAS, queens present and correct etc but one hive was making a growling sound before I went inside?? Sounds a bit like a Dove with laryngitis. I have a recording with a M4a extension but cannot...

Just popped out to gaze at the hives as the sun went down at the end of the garden and noticed that the three at the North end all had a tongue of bees on the right hand side of the landing boards, even though they don't all face the same way. They often seem to crowd towards the right hand...

Hi, I just collected a good sized swarm with what would seem to be a virgin queen. I would like to OA vape them but would like your views on whether this is advisable before the queen is known to have mated.

Question 4: A week ago I found a lovely big not quite capped supercedure cell in the middle of a brood frame from a hive with a 3 year old queen. There were no other cells anywhere in the hive. The queen is still fairly productive and it's a nice colony but it must be coming to a point where...

Question 3: If you have to do a Pagden (or other) Artifical Swarm and have a nice mated queen sitting in a nuc waiting for something to do is it OK to put her (in an introduction cage) straight into the new nurse bee and brood only hive after getting rid of all the queen cells? Presumably by...

Question 2: I am trying to keep the area taken up by my garden apiary under control. A couple of days ago I had to do an artificial swarm on a nice strong colony when queen cells appeared. I had to place the box with brood and queen cell further away from the apiary than I wanted to, (about 30...

Sitting watching the rain lash down over the last few days I came up with a few potentially daft questions that I have not been able to find answers to in books on on the interweb and would value your guidance. I thought I would post them in seperate threads to avoid confusion. Question 1: Once...

Hi, I'm based just to the West of Norwich, Norfolk and having on your advice stopped worrying about Varroa I'm now fretting about starvation.... We haven't had any significant rain here for weeks and what little nectar flow we had here a few weeks back has pretty much stopped judging by the...

Hi, the year before last I treated for varroa over the Xmas/New Year break and then did nothing until the autumn when I found I had suffered horrible infestations on all three hives, which I was fortunate to get under control with MAQS in the autumn and a then a series of oxalic acid vapes over...

Hi, found this on the board when I pulled it out after 24 hours to check for natural varroa drop. No varroa but some largish black or dark brown lumps amongst the wax at the corner of the board. Can anyone suggest what it is? The very faint squares on the first picture are 2" as a scale. Thanks

Hi , I just put MAQS in each of my three hives for the first time after I had my first visit from the RBI last week. She said everything looked fine in the colonies but that it was time to get the MAQS in as a precaution. The mite drop from the three hives in the first 24 hours was hive 1...

One if my hives looked quite busy this afternoon, I thought it looked like it was being robbed so went to close the entrance down but on closer inspection the fighting was all workers going for drones. Isn't this rather early in the season for that or is it telling me something? This particular...

Hi, I was chatting with a friend recently and he suggested flashing the capping off full super frames using a hot airgun instead of using a knife. I tried it on one frame and it seemed to work brilliantly, just the quickest of waves with the gun and the wax pretty much vanished. Has anyone...

My medium sized colony of quite aggressive Norfolk Mongrels have requeened after their old queen stopped laying and I removed her and introduced a frame with a queen cell on from a colony with a much nicer disposition. She has hatched and mated with whoever she could find and is now laying with...