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No its not drone foundation, and a couple of frames are covered with normal worker brood!

Hi There I shook swarmed my hive three weeks ago, and the bees have done well building up all but one frame of foundation, the queen is laying well, but in my last inspection I noticed a large amount of drone cells and brood, I would say possible over a quarter of brood was drone. It has been...

Thanks for the replies. I was intending to wait till the end of the month to perform the operation but the bees were on brood and a half and the queen was already running out of space, in the last inspection I also found several queen cells, so decieded to go ahead, with warm weather set here...

Hi There I performed a shook swarm for the first time on one of my hives at the weekend. The colony was doing well with the queen laying and the bees have been bringing in plenty of pollen and nectar. The main reasons for shooking were to change from standard to 12x14 frames and to help...

Hi There Have got an open mesh floor but have put collection board in as advised on apiguard instructions to keep the thymol vapours in hive. Made attempt to count drop in last 24 hours and got bored after 150 so it does seem to be working.Thanks for advice Russ

Thanks admin thats reassuring. Have not done a count since starting treatment as the mites are falling thick and fast. Have been scraping off the board every 3 days into bin. At a rough guess would say 3 days is yielding about 70 mites. I did not think it was worth counting till the treatment...

Hi There Since starting my apiguard treatment last week I have noticed lots of bees congrigating on the outside of the hive almost as if they plan to swarm. Is this a usual reaction to the treatment? Also today I have seen bees leaving the hive carrying dead pupa away could this be as a result...

Hi There Would appreciate some advice. A couple of weeks ago I tried to change my Queen. I followed the advice I had been given to the letter, removing my old queen about five hours before hand,then putting my new queen in a bickerstaffes introduction cage placed on sealed brood, leaving it...

They do say in their blurb that bee keeping is fun!!

The queen was last years and is marked with a red spot but think this is a personal preference rather than recognised year colour coding

Thanks for replies, I think they are supercedure as they appeared in a row about two inches from the top of the frame. Is this the right logic? The nuc was from a very reliable source and definitly not a swarm.

Hi There I got my first nucleus of bees two weeks ago and am really pleased with them. They came on five frames and have already built up 3 frames of foundation from scratch, leaving two empty frames in the brood box. I have not added a super! The queen is present and laying with a very good...

While sadly missing this forum when it went down I did some reading else where and came across reference to small cell foundation in relation to potentially reducing varroa mite infestation in hives. While understanding the principle I could not find out whether you can actually buy smaller cell...

Thanks fo replies currently I am running WBC hives but plan to get a national next and was wondering whether a top space would make it easier to avoid squashing bees!

Hi There am fairly new to bee keeping and am just about to get my third hive ,my previous two have both had bottom bee space and i was wondering what people think are the merits of top bee space and what they would go for out of choice. Any advice very welcome thanks Russ