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Does anyone know anything about these apart from them being poisonous? This is the second time I have found one tucked away in the roof of one of my hives. I wonder if they kill bees, no dead bees there! Wish they would eat the varroa! I carefully removed it, showed the grandchildren with a...

I did my first honey harvest on Monday and used exactly the same method as last year but the honey is cloudy. I thought I had done the right thing by not harvesting before because of the bad weather and leaving the bees short of stores. It still tastes delicious but doesn't look great - last...

According to the BBC website they will be discussing 'falling bee numbers'! Lets hope they do a comprehensive assessment rather than fall back on the old ' its the decline of wildflower meadows' approach! Louise

A piece on neonics is on this BBC prog - I think it is tomorrow. This has been passed on from our association chair.

My bees were going really well by the end of March and had eight frames of brood but no signs of queen cells or drone brood so I put them onto double brood to provide more space. They have now moved up into the second box with a full frame of brood and drawing out several other frames. However...

I got a nucleus from the local association two years ago and it has always been heavily infested with the chalk brood virus, only just realising that this was a very bad thing to do to a beginner. Of course I didn't realise much at the time being a novice - another colony started last year...

I live in Eastbourne and the temperature has been around 14 to 16 degrees C for several weeks. The bees are very active in the morning. The bee inspector for the south east told us at the Sussex Beekeeping convention a couple of weeks ago that we should be feeding fondant because they are...

I am going to use my new stainless steel electric extractor in the next few days (when the weather cools down!) and thought that I should give it a good clean first because of residues left from the manufacturer. I am concerned about leaving anything behind that could taint the honey. Any...

I suspected last week that one of my colonies was queenless although I was hoping that the queen hadn't laid yet! Today I inspected the hive because the bees were clustering outside last night and this morning which suggested that something was wrong!. There is drone brood and some are...

It is meant to be a bit of a fallow period at the moment and we in the south east are particularly dry with no rain in weeks along the coast. However my bees are bringing in a lot of yellow and cream pollen and bright orange which I think is from Cistus (Rock Rose). They are also starting on...

I noticed that my new nucleus of bees were swarming yesterday morning - I followed them and found that they had gathered underneath a large trampoline two doors up. The people very kindly let me collect them. Getting underneath to collect them was an interesting experience for two reasons...

I was able to check my hives with the help of hubby to do the lifting and take the notes (after my heart attack three weeks ago!). One colony that has been very troublesome and has swarmed several times - nothing I could do about it at the time although it had been checked by a colleague. This...

I noticed a swarm in my privet hedge on Tuesday afternoon- there seemed to be different clumps of bees. Very difficult to remove because of the hedge so cut out as much as possible and hived. A lot more bees than I initially thought. Next day lots more bees at the swarm site in a clump -...

I got this yesterday and was delighted to see that someone else has thought of the branding of hives. I bought a kit on amazon a couple of weeks ago to do my hives - but due to being otherwise engaged having a heart attack I have not yet done any designs on my hives but hope to very soon. I...

I had a heart attack Last Friday night - have just come out of the cardiac care unit -good job I didn't go to the conference but hope those who did had a good time. Jonathan the chair of our association came over to inspect my hives this morning and is coming again nexxt week as I cannot do...

For those of you who get both of these I presume you noticed that there was a lot of information/articles the same in both which seems somewhat daft. :confused: Louise

As a newbie I have a colony, doing well, but the queen has not been marked. I set about finding her today and I did, but I got so excited :hurray: that I fumbled the queen cage and pen and by that time she had ambled off! I marked the frame and came back after inspecting the whole hive but...