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Hello All. Was going to do first inspection tomorrow but feels a little too chilly still. Forecast says temp won’t get above 12 tomorrow. Shall I hold on a little longer do you think? Rain has stopped at least. OSR is out! Getting earlier and earlier - something to do with cabbage beetles I...

Hi. Did a demaree for swarm prevention and at 7 days no q cells in the top brood box. We put 3 supers between the 2 brood boxes. Any idea why this would happen?

2 colonies preparing to swarm recently so did AS on both. One went anyway 3 days later. The other (old q and flying bees half) seemed fine at first, building up and laying well but today saw a couple of sealed q cells and no eggs and so they must have gone too - this one just over 2 weeks after...

Hello everyone We have a couple of colonies with some honey in supers. We are thinking of skipping extraction this year. Partly this is because some of the honey is OSR and likely difficult to extract at this point anyway. How can we best encourage the bees to take this honey down into their...

Hi Everyone We have a colony that had some early queen cells 6 days ago. We removed them all and inspected again today only to find some sealed queen cells (and some unsealed), no eggs and no queen. Presume they have already swarmed. But did we definitely miss some queen cells last week? Is...

We’ve ended up this year with more colonies than we wish to continue with. We have 4 strong colonies. Ideally we want to have 3 to leave sufficient space for swarm control next year. Is it better to unite before winter or overwinter all four and unite early spring if necessary?

Hello all. It's looking seriously autumnal out there. We took honey off last week. Plan was to treat with apilife var (takes 4 weeks I think) then feed but just wondering if that's all going to be a late in the season. Is there any reason why we can't treat and feed at the same time? Where is...

Am I too late to extract OSR do you think? What's the best method if only a few frames?

Can a nuc be put in a national brood box using a dummy board to make the utilised space smaller? I'm considering making up a nuc from a colony I have done a Demeree on but I don't have a nuc box.

Hello everyone. We need to close off our hive entrances for a few days to get some building work done. How long is it ok to close them off for at this time of year do you think? They have OMF. Thanks.

I have one colony that I did a demaree on. The brood in the top box has now all gone. In the bottom box there is nice brood and eggs and still plenty of space but they seem to have gone into swarm mode - there are a few early q cells with royal jelly in today. Any ideas why this might have...

After a successful demaree what do you do with the top ex brood box? I've read various suggestions but interested to hear from you guys. I'm finding that before the brood has all gone, they are filling up the space with honey and pretty much ignoring the supers below.

We are just watching our bees swarm unfortunately. We think they already swarmed before inspection a week ago. There are currently 3 separate clumps in a tree and 1 clump at the hive entrance. Is it possible that there are 4 separate swarms with queens each or is it more likely they will...

We did a demaree on all 3 of our colonies 8 days ago to try and prevent swarming. One colony I think we were too late as there were already early charged q cells. Today it looks like they have swarmed leaving lots of q cells behind in both brood boxes. The other 2 colonies look much better -...

I've been using a mixture of wooden and plastic frames in my supers (all with wax foundation) and the bees seem less inclined to build out and use the plastic ones. Anyone else had the same issue? Anyone using plastic frames successfully? We originally got them because we have a lot if OSR about...

Just done demaree on 3 colonies. It's the first time I've tried this so feeling a bit nervous. Had a lot of problems with swarming last year so decided to try and prevent it this year. All colonies were pretty full in the BB and one had started building / filling early queen cells which I...

I use single national brood boxes but have had a pretty swarmy time this year. My bees were from swarms collected last year so in part they may be a swarmy variety but I know I have not managed them as well as I could have. Lets just say its been a steep learning curve. I'm planning to be much...

Our bees have seemed a bit on the angry side of late. They definitely have a laying queen and all seems well otherwise. The change in temprament seemed to coincide with us putting out some refurbished hives in the apiary a couple of weeks ago - one of which we set up as a bait hive with some...

Some of our bees are coming back with what looks like a yellow dusting of pollen on their backs - much like with the Himalayan Balsam but more yellow in colour. Is this oil seed rape? We have quite a bit of OSR nearby. BK :nature-smiley-016:

I think we have a doomed colony but I am trying to piece together the events that may have led to this. Please let me know what you think has happened. Also, is it definitely doomed and either way, how would you advise we proceed?? We went on holiday for 2 1/2 weeks and came back last week. In...