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It's even been warm enough here for the wasps to be out and about this week. They are stripping the wood off the outside of my chicken houses.

Hey Darren, Great weather we've been having and by the forcast it is going to last a while yet. It sounds as if your queen has not made it through the winter. Best option may be to unite with another colony. I would think that the chances of rearing and mating a queen this early would be slim...

It looks a bit like Alcea Setosa, a member of the Hollyhock family (closely related to Malva, or Mallow). Anyway, it's pretty and the bees like it - definitely worth cultivating! :)

Lovely photo ZZ.not worthy I don't know what the flower is, but it's not Rosebay Willowherb.

No problems - bee received today in the post safe and sound. Thank you.

Errrrrr, you've lost me Rab (not difficult I know :))

Hi Rockdoc, Here is my take on your situation, but please bear in mind that I am still very much a newbee and do not have the wealth of experience that others have.....so much of what I say may be total bo**ocks :) Your nuc has 3 frames of brood and 2 frames of stores. I would say your...

I've been feeding mine using rapid feeders which only hold 2 litres and when I started feeding the bees last week they were emptying the feeders overnight, but I always try and feed the bees in the late afternoon as this is less likely cause problems with robbing. They've slowed down a bit now...

Can I please have the other queen and I'll gladly make a donation to the forum. I assume that you're happy to post her. Will send you a PM now....

Eken????? Sounds more German than English! I thought that the term "eke" came from the expression "to eke something out"

If your roof is vented then you'd lose a fair bit of vapour out the vents. It's easy enough to make a small eke out of a length of timber. I've used 32 x 12 mm planed timber from my local DIY shop. A screw or a nail or two at each corner is all you need.

Ben is right - if you need more space than a national brood box then go for 14 x 12 (or one of the other larger formats) instead of brood and a half. Simpler and neater solution and easier to inspect. Yes, under certain circumstances you need the extra space for the brood nest - for the queen...

Hi ksjs, I would not think you should be considering or needing extra brood space this time of year. Queen should be slowing down laying and brood nest should be getting smaller. You should be able to overwinter the colony on a single brood box. There is a Jumbo size national brood box that...

If you search for "honey refractometer" you should get more meaningful results. I ordered one from HK, but it hasn't arrived yet...

Sounds like a recipe for disaster! Maybe the firms are trying to deter smokers going outside for a "crafty fag"!

Is it a puff ball?

As I understand it, if you put the wet super above the crown board and open up the feed hole the bees consider it to be outside their hive and will clean up the super and bring any honey they find down into the brood box. Having said that, when I put my wet super on above the crown board the...

First of all DON'T PANIC! I think maybe you need to be careful here! If it's 2 weeks since you saw charged queen cells then you may well have one or more virgin queens in the colony which will be trying to mate. If you introduce a bought in mated queen, the bees may not accept her. Virgin...

There must be a randy ram on the loose! Or maybe your ewe is from Australia - it's spring time down under. :)

My first year.... Did a course in the early spring, read all the books I could get my hands on and bought 2 nucs in early May. One of them has yielded 30+ pounds of the best honey I have ever tasted :). I lost the queen out of the other one a couple of weeks after I bought it. They reared a...