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Thanks all. So when I cut the PIR, should it sit on top of the crown board leaving a small bee space or within the raised edges of the crown board leaving no bee space? Thanks!

and push it into the hole made in the PIR board?

Thanks for all the advice. What do people use for tubs for fondant? I've been using the standard bags that fondant comes in like Fondabee...

Could I sit the board just on top of the fondant bag? Also, I guess you buy the board and cut to size? thanks a lot LD

Thanks for the advice. I keep the super on top of the brood box and fondant over the super. Normally I overwinter in polynucs but this year most of my colonies are in wood, since they were very strong going into winter. Hence my query about insulting the crown board. I was considering the...

Dear All Last year, a few of my colonies suffered from a mouldy crown board (on top and underneath) - the bees were all ok though - it didn't spread to the super I leave on for them. So the question is how best to ventilate crown boards over winter? 1. Standard crown board: One escape has...

Thanks for the advice. My 7 other hives are on standard frames and we rear queens in standard sized nucs, so having one that is 14 x 12 is a pain for swapping brood around. That is what I am looking to switch this nuc.

I have an overwintered nuc on 14 x 12 frames and want to move and expand onto standard national frames in a standard national brood box. Is this best way a shook swarm and to feed them heavily? Thanks

Would you put an empty super above or below the full one at this time of the season?

Not sure I understand. Our overwintered nucs our basically our queen rearing nucs from last season. We requeened them to overwinter. Just wondering whether we should let them expand into colonies and split off new queen rearing nucs.

On this theme, my first inspection has revealed that two of my hives are very strong and have 8-9 frames of capped brood and full supers. In contrast, two others are weak. I'm tempted to split some bees off to boost these two weaker hives...or should I keep the two strong hives as they are and...

May be an odd question but for overwintered nucs, is it best to expand them into colonies and then split back off a queenless nuc....rather than removing the queen from the overwintered nuc and using it for queen rearing directly?

OK, maye I put in Apivar then. I know you are meant to remove supers, but can I leave supers on if they are just there for the bees rather than there to be harvested?

Done my final vape of this cycle and still over 100 mites dropping after 24 hours. So I’ve now vaped 1 complete cycle with GasVap and another with a sublimox. 8 treatments now. I guess I keep going??! Or do I treat again when brood less later in Wilmer?

So I should do my 4th sublimox on the 4th day not the 5th?

This is why I was asking whether I should now switch after 9 vapes…

Maybe the issue is so much capped brood because of the mild weather and a 5 day gap between vapes is missing a lot?

What I’m not clear on is if agter vaoing I get a note drop of 100 after 24 hours BUT then <10 until the next vape 5 days later, is that OK to leave them??

After counting the mite drop 24 hours after vaping, should I continue to count the mite drop for the 5 days up until the next treatment?

So I am not doing the mite count correctly to see if I need to carry on?