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Or do they? Support for the stupid question and thanks for your help

Good afternoon everyone. My face is red with embarrassment as I write this email but if really need to get your expert opinions. I started treating my hive with Apivar strips about 6 weeks ago. The weather here in the North of Italy has been 26-30 everyday up until earlier this week. Unusually...

Good morning from Italy... So the weather here has been sunny and hot thought-out September and is due to continue through most of October. 25-26 degrees here in the North. The bees have been unusually quiet despite the good weather... I inspected yesterday and found they had almost completely...

Hi from Italy... So last weekend I removed a couple of supers with a small amount of honey in order to be able to treat for Varroa... I added some 1:1 sugar syrup and cleared them back up. Ross morning they swarmed and all left. What the f...? Any ideas why? Thanks

Good morning to all from Italy 😊. My next door neighbour has been helping me with my bees for a while now and has decided to start keeping bees himself. I would like to get him started by donating a few frames and a queen to him. I have a couple of strong families but would like to know what...

Hi from Italy again. During the routine weekly inspection of my new nuc (old queen on 4 frames) I saw the queen and plenty of fresh brood. Some stores although I had to feed them as it's been raining non stop for the last 10 days here. I did notice however something I've never seen before. I...

Hello again from a very nervous 3rd year beekeeper here in the North of Italy. If you followed my previous threads you'll know that I was watching my one hive very closely determined to avoid swarming this year. Well, the hive went from a bursting population of bees but zero QCs to about 15...

Morning all. Are these queen cell cups? About 5 were found on one frame of stores this morning. They are still empty. Thank you 😊

Hello from Italy again. As advised by you during my last post, I put a super on last Sunday to give them more room and delay potential swarming. I was really surprised today to see the super completely full of bees. Last year was my first crop and the super was frames with just Foundation so...

Hello, as mentioned I want to attempt my first split in a couple of weeks. Question I have is due to space limitations, can I move the queen into a new hive literally next to the original one? I read all sorts of scary advice on the net including the need to move the queen and some stores 3-4...

Hello from Italy again. I will be using supers this year from which I extracted the first crop last year. They are in decent shape, clean and dry but the wax looks and feels very brittle to the touch. Is this ok and they will just get on with rebuilding or could there be a problem? Thank you all

Hi from Italy everyone. I started a couple of threads last year regarding swarm prevention. I only have 1 hive and it's swarmed twice over the last two years. This year I am determined to split them. I've started regular inspections and I must say they are looking good. Brood on 9 frames and the...

Good morning All, I inspected my hive early February and was surprised to see it bursting with bees! I'm planning to spilt this hive as soon possible to avoid swarming for the third year in a row. It's too cold to do a full inspection for queen cells yet and so I'd like to wait until at least...

Hello all, I did an inspection a week ago and all seemed well. Plenty of fresh and capped brood on at least 8 frames. Lots (LOTS) of bees and a good amount of pollen and nectar so all seems well. I put in a couple of strips of Apivar and closed everything up. Over the last couple of days I...

Hi everyone. Does each frame in a super need to be 100% capped before I harvest? I don't have drying equipment although it's very warm and dry weather where I am. I only have one hive and one of the two supers looks ready but out of 9 frames only 5 are 100% capped on both sides and the others...

Hi everyone. They've swarmed again this year... The family was very strong with brood on 8 frames and a good pattern. Plenty of stores and just over the last couple of days they'd started to occupy the supers with lots of bees... Today they swarmed. I've been checking them frame by frame every...

Good morning all, Lots of pollen being brought in over the last week or so. I've noticed some bees with bright yellow dots on their backs. Can you please take a look at the centre of the photo attached and tell me if this is pollen or something else? Only one in 50 or so have this, all other on...

Hello everyone. Do bees sometimes store pollen above the Queen excluder? Thanks

Good morning from Italy. So after my first season of beekeeping with 1 hive(!) in looking to split this family and just wanted your views... - the colony did not get off to a good start. Got them in April last year and May 13th swarmed so lost half plus weeks waiting for the new Queen to mate...

Hi from Italy everyone. Finally winter is ending. Had a quick look at the bottom board after the winter. Before cleaning out I thought I would take the attached pictures... I treated towards the end of November work sublimated ossalic (although I couldn't see any varroa visually but then this is...