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First warm day and swarm of 2024! FFS Edit: doesn’t look to be one of mine. All queens seen but still FFS

Too late I’m afraid. Went to get boxes on the 4th to combine. All 3 had just gone laying workers. Eggs and some small brood but eggs all over the place so just shook them out - they were in a separate, now empty, apiary. Do you think at a certain point in the season any queenless colonies just...

I have 10 full colonies and after this one is sorted, 12 nucs. All the others are in good shape going into winter and I’d like to put everything to bed for the season now so I must deal with these. I’ve done a couple of very thorough check overs for queens in the queenless nucs and no sign at...

I have 4 nucs, 3 are queenless and now broodless - it’s been about 5 weeks since capped queen cells were spotted and I let them get on with it. It’s been a bad year for queen mating. The nuc with the queen is about 2 frames and was collected as part of a chimney extraction 2 weeks ago. Should...

I did a removal about a month ago from the same location with a cherry picker and it was very useful for getting exactly where I needed to be. However, the site is extremely sloping and access would require the destruction of an old stone wall which while I had suggested it, the homeowner isn’t...

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve advised a chimney sweep will be required after as will a builder to bee proof the chimney. I’m not so concerned about the comb so can leave that part out and they can have the chimney sweep deal with that. The key goal is to remove the bees alive if possible. That’s...

A bit of a pickle. I’ve been asked to remove a colony of bees which have set up shop about halfway down a chimney 18 months ago. There is no easy way to get to the comb to easily cut it out and breaking down the chimney is not an option. Also, there is no easy access to the chimney outside of a...

Thanks for the advice, I gave it a go on Saturday so I imagine queens will be emerging today/tomorrow, just in time for a week of good weather hopefully. No harm in giving it a go and seeing how they get on.

I have an existing nuc which I split 11 days ago. I checked on them today and they have built 3 lovely looking queen cells. The genetics of the original queen are very good in my opinion so I’m wondering, rather than squishing the excess cells, could I cut the cells out and make a couple of 3...

I’ve had great success with that method though, small sample size to date but those are the first 2 that didn’t take.

Yes, I knew I was going in a bit early. My reasoning behind that was due to the cages being far to big to fit in the gap between frames (first time I’ve seen that) and I wanted to remove them before any burr comb got built. I have queen introduction cages, I wonder if I put them in one of those...

A story as old as time. I had two very expensive queens (in my book anyway) arrive the other day about a week later than initially thought. I had made up 2 nucs exactly 14 days before and checked for queen cells at day 7 and removed any. Based on the assumption they were now hopelessly queenless...

I had the same. Sealed queen cell on the 5th of May. First half frame of eggs spotted on Tuesday.

Yes I fully intend to have some kind of valve, a simple one though, a bit of ice cream tub plastic secured over a hole by a pin which will allow me to open and close to the required amount to ensure everything is vacuumed up gently. Good idea on the foam padding. Might be worth having 2 brood...

I’ve been asked to remove some bees from a roof this weekend. Doing a bit of prep and decided to bodge a bee vac just in case. I’ve an old Henry hoover that I will use and I’m thinking I might use this old clearer board as the ‘unit’ basically. I’m planning on using the central hole for the bee...

I need to move 2 small 3/4 frame nucs back to the home apiary and transfer them into their new nucs. Typically one would just place the nucs with bees in the new apiary location, leave them a couple of days to orientate and then move them over to the new box. However, the new nuc boxes are part...

We only just have the hawthorn coming to bloom here. 2 days of warm rainy weather today and tomorrow should help bring more into flower before what looks to be another week of great sunny weather. Hopefully I can get a spring crop this year!

Found what I assumed was a capped supersedure cell on the weekend but also saw eggs so assumed the existing queen was still present. Took the opportunity to do a couple of splits as I had been planning some expansion this year. Didn’t worry about where the original queen ended up as I left...

I made up 10 a couple of days ago. Shed felt on top with a good helping of sheep’s wool to act as insulation.

That is interesting. I am on solid UFE’s but I might experiment with half the hives to see if there are any noticeable differences. Does anyone currently use a snuggle board?