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You missed off the, "FFS!" ;)

I can see how it would be preferable to have a set of dimensions that have already been converted to metric; it's not about laziness or difficulty in conversion. This is a link to a page that gives some idea in metric; I'm unable to verify the accuracy...

Why "appalling"? Are they diseased?

UPDATE: Yesterday, I removed the eke that had been filled with comb and honey; I expected to find it capped and less populated with bees and to be able to clear it and grab a nice bit of natural comb honey. However, it was teeming with nice young bees and almost emptied of honey. The bees are...

Slightly plagiarising the title of another recent thread. I live in an area where some of my bees will easily and inevitably access ling heather. Last year I experienced a minor beginner-beekeeper trauma in trying to remove a smallish amount of some very viscous (but very tasty) honey. I had...

They're piling them up outside one of my hives.....very aggressively removing and keeping them out. It takes their attention from harassing me....the biggest and greediest drone they are forced to support. ;)

My OMFs are all permanently blocked off with insulation. However, because of my imperfect cutting "technique" a few small gaps still exist. Yesterday, whilst the workers were engrossed at the front door in throwing out the drones, a few of the smarter blokes (if not a contradiction in terms ;)...

Absolutely correct...especially about the bees needing to be given "good and natural conditions". Do beekeepers there use oxalic acid? In the UK, many people think it is a "magic bullet" and that the bees are not affected by it. But I agree with you that "the colony is a very complicated thing"...

I know where my local wasp nest is......it's above my garage. They move along a bit each year and I've never found a need to remove even the old nests. Their futile raids give my guard-bees something to do. ;)

I would think that at this time of year your bees will find plenty of forage anywhere in Cumbria. That will include heather and Himalayan balsam and there should also be swathes of rosebay willowherb. I have a couple of small swarms in full-sized boxes that don't yet need any additional room...

They sometimes get hypothermia doing that, which is a bit ironic.

Wise words.

@Martin Godet ....what a brilliantly engineered device that is. Do you think it could be adapted with spiky rollers to jiggle the cells of frames with heather honey?

Why not sacrifice just one side by scraping back to the foundation and if required, straining through a sieve or a reusable Sainsbury veggie bag.

Unfortunately, you'll have to spend a lot of money to get the experience of "how much effort goes into controlling swarming." ;)

Internally, it is three boxes so far at the original Warre internal dimension 0f 300x300mm and a 225mm height that fits with cutting a standard, car-boot sized, 1200x450 sheet of 50mm PIR. Therefore the total, internal dimensions are 725x300x300, with an accidentally left-on eke of 50x300x300...

I know.

That's a good, open question and one that I'm investigating. My Warre lacks the quilt-box and is made from PIR, so my observations maybe lack some validity. 1. Rather than behaving as if constricted by the limited space, they seem to be happy to function within slightly less than the space they...

I rarely look in the bottom box if double brood or brood and a half. A few frames of the top box usually reassures me of all that I need to know.

At the point of extraction the honey may come out of pure, virgin wax, but upto that point it could have been in almost any and several cells in the hive.