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I also found allotment beekeeping to be more trouble than it was worth. All but 1 of the people on our site were quite content to have the bees present, but the one was plenty enough trouble. The bees were good natured, screened to raise flight paths and at the perimeter of the allotments, yet...

I've chosen to remove my bees off my allotment pre-emptively this year. There's always one grumpy gut on every allotment site, and this year he has chosen to single out my 2 neighbours and me for his attentions. He will sneak onto allotments and take produce, spread rumours of unalloyed...

AS'd one only for them to swarm about a week later :hairpull:. Luckily I caught them after they settled about a foot off the ground in a blackcurrant bush. Hopefully that's the only one, the other 2 AS have so far gone to plan

Took a quick peak this afternoon, just couldn't resist any longer. 3 good strong colonies with plenty of stores left, 1 with a surprising number of frames of capped brood. 2 small nucs still going with small areas of open brood, and one colony that got decimated by the wasps at the end of the...

Hi Chris, interesting to see a geek that local to me on here (I'm in Toton). I'd also be interested in seeing what set-up you've gone for, I was considering doing something last year but never got round to it in the end

interesting questions. I came out as pretty Left Wing Libertarian (-4.62,-6.56) which feels about right. More interesting personally though was the chart of modern political leaders, and how empty that particular quadrant is, and how saturated the authoritarian right quadrant is. Probably...

It seems that there's never enough no matter what I do. Started the season with 2 hives, currently have 7 brood boxes in use with 9 supers and 3 poly nucs. In many ways I'm quite happy as they seem to bringing in a super a week per hive at the moment, but at this rate I'm going to run out of...

Buttercups sounds very plausible. My hives have all had these vivid orange payloads recently and I hadn't twigged that there are several acres of paddock nearby covered in the things :D

That was basically my line of thought too, just wondered if I should wait a few days or if that's unnecessary. I'll wait and see if any of the more experienced beeks have any thoughts, thanks for the input though :)

Hi all, after a bit of advise on what to do with the queenless part of an AS. Just done the deed on a hive I obviously didn't double brood quickly enough who have built and filled swarm cells since my inspection on Saturday last week :cuss:. The queen and fliers are fine, but I was wondering...

Thanks Galileo, that would make sense, still a few out here too

Some of mine are coming back looking similar to the pic, but with a much more orange coloured pollen, and with it all over their backs as well. I've tried looking for any OSR around but can't find any within foraging distance, so wondered what this could be? Nice picture btw :)

Out of 4 colonies I have about 30 drone cells overall, spread across 3. Not very many but at least they're starting

Sounds like an excellent incredible hulk reference to me not worthy sadly missed by everyone

:yeahthat: Ducks can be a pain in the proverbial for staying out at night, you can't forget about them or they will be fox food. Our chickens put themselves to bed so it's just a case of closing the door after them :)

The chickens should be ok in the same run as the Ducks, provided there is not a significant size discrepancy between the 2. A friend of mine kept smaller chickens with ducks and found the ducks to gang up on the chickens, to the point of drowning one in a bathtub :( Standard hybrid chickens...

Didn't get to watch this on the night but have it queued up to watch on the computer later on. Looks like some interesting telly for a change :D

Carried on making up some new boxes in readiness for spring and to replace some of my more worn boxes. Slapped a bit more fondant on one hive as well as they had emptied what I gave earlier when they were light Can't wait for spring to come, tired of snow and winter now

Had to do an artificial swarm this afternoon, took the chance as the temperature edged up to 13 degrees in the back garden, cracked the brood chamber and lo and behold, queen cells. Found HM on the second frame with nice unsealed brood so transfered her across to the spare, now just the long...

Our hive is currently about 120 feet from our house, screened off so the bees fly up about 10' before heading off to wherever they go to. Luckily they are a very placid colony, but we're looking for out apiary locations for the summer in readiness. The idea is nice, but I'm not sure it's worth...