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If it helped to keep my wooden hives dry, which is the main problem in winter, not the cold, then it would be good but much too expensive for me at that price.

Hi Betty, I am not sure about the caterpillar but it could be a leaf cutter bee. She cuts nice round circles from a variety of leaves and uses them to make a nest into which she lays an egg. I had one set up home in a flowerpot but they are partial to the custom made bee houses that are sold...

Sting on the finger, pain and localised swelling but on Saturday I got stung on the fleshy part between the thumb and finger and the swelling went right up the arm and down the fingers - everything so swollen I couldn't bend my fingers - ended up taking antibiotics and it came down quickly. My...

We use Showa gardening gloves which are very fine and fit well and they are also breathable on the back. We then use the disposable close fitting gloves on top. You can feel everything very well but gives confidence if you are nervous. If I want to do very close work then I just remove the...

Our hive was going through a Bailey change so they had loads of space in the lower box plus all the frames in the top box and they still swarmed.

The more senior beeks at our apiary suggest cutting a triangle out of each corner, at the top, when you put the new foundation in. They say it is less likely they make holes elsewhere. A shortcut to save them going all the way round the side or over the top

Thanks, we followed advice from someone who had been keeping bees for years and he said this was the best way

All, I would appreciate your advice on my following problem. We were in the process of moving our bees from a small National BB to a 14 x 12 so we started a Bailey change. Due to bad weather we were only able to check both boxes yesterday. Queen is laying well in the new 14 x 12 and there is old...

Thanks all. It is all very useful information. It was quite cold here this morning but sun is shining now so hopefully will stay warm for the rest of the day. One hive is queenless so we are making up a small nucleus which we will then combine with the first hive via the newspaper method in a...

We hopefully have a mated queen arriving today but the weather has turned quite cold. How long can we keep her in her travelling cage before we have to introduce her. It was meant to be warm if not sunny but the weather is not living up to the forecast and doesn't look too good for the next...

Thanks all for your responses. We only have one other hive, which is a nucleus and she is doing well so we didn't want to risk combining the two and then losing our only hive but it is not large enough to take frames of brood to add to the queenless hive in the hope they might make a queen...

Thanks, this sounds like a plan. Not so stressful to the bees if we just stand the old hive next to the new one but turn the entrance round. Hopefully most of the bees will fly straight back to the new hive as they are all flying bees and the drone laying workers will stay with the old hive...

Thanks Hivemaker. So really there is no point in shaking them all out? Will they accept a new mated Queen or is that a waste of time as well, bearing in mind they have been queenless for so long?

Earlier in the year we performed an artificial swarm. The queen hatched and we left her alone until we thought we had given her enough time to mate and start laying. We checked the hive and everything seemed ok as we saw a few eggs and then a week later we found just a small patch of sealed...

Thanks RAB. We would just be happy to end up with one hive. We would not want them to fail because of our lack of experience. Hopefully at least one will make it through

Thanks Steven, I will ask on Sunday

Thanks RAB. We only have the one hive so I guess will have to hope that one or both of our queen cells survive. We attend the apiary meetings of our local group so might see if we can acquire a sealed queen cell if ours turn out to be duds. We have had them since last June last year and would...

Thanks, yes I appreciate it is a muddle. We did take advice but could not find the queen each time we checked. We tried taking some of the frames out and pairing them up and we had help but still didn't find her, although we did find eggs. We keep our bees in the garden, but are looking for...

Thanks for all your replies, very helpful.

Our bees were making queen cells a few weeks ago. We saw eggs but couldn't find the queen. We decided to break down the queen cells and made a nuc. We hoped that by giving them foundation they would give up until we could find her and carry out an artificial swarm. We checked last week and...