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I read on here that you should allow the bees to fill one super before putting on another .... what is wrong with just piling on two or three? Surely they are more use on the hives than waiting in the store room? Is it simply that it is difficult to lift more than one?

Inspected a really bad tempered colony today. Newly mated queen, laying where she can - but so much of the brood box (14x12 in a WBC) is filled with honey & pollen. I have 3 supers on - none of which are full - and I am sure the bad temper of the bees was because of the above ...... Does anyone...

Two questions: I have a colony I think is Queenless - and a nuc with a laying newly mated Queen. So this morning I put a frame of eggs and brood from the nuc into the suspected Queenless colony to see if they start to make Q cells ..... How long will this take? If they do, I plan to combine the...

Two questions: I have a colony I think is Queenless - and a nuc with a laying newly mated Queen. So this morning I put a frame of eggs and brood from the nuc into the suspected Queenless colony to see if they start to make Q cells ..... How long will this take? If they do, I plan to combine the...

Can anyone advise me how to get rid of this? I'm sure it cant be good for the colony. I was wondering if there is any anti-fungal powder that I could puff onto it rather than adding moisture. Obviously it needs to be a product that is harmless to the girls!

I have two hives, both with this years queens. During inspection today, one hive had no eggs, larvae or brood. There was plenty of pollen and uncapped 'honey' and plenty of empty cells. I saw the Queen and the the colony was calm. By contrast, the other hive had plenty of eggs and BIAS. Queen...

I have just two hives both on 14x12. Both with newly mated Queens - eggs are being laid. However, despite having two supers on each - most with undrawn comb - admittedly - the bees are filling up the brood boxes with honey and there is now no space down there for the Queens to lay. Any advice...

I found that one of my two colonies was dead yesterday. I had suspected that something was amiss because they had not been flying - but I knew that they had a full super of stores going into winter and I had also given them fondant. This colony had a 14x12 brood box - and for some reason, I...

A couple of weeks ago both of my colonies were looking good. I had topped up their fondant supply and treated with OA early in January. A couple of days ago on a very sunny day - with snow on the ground - there were hundreds of bees flying in and out of one hive - but not a single bee emerging...

Has anyone got a simple recipe for beeswax polish? The ones I have found use turps - surely you wouldn't rub turps into your favourite antique table?

I put Apiguard on both my colonies last Tuesday - and removed the one remaining super on each one, so as not to taint the honey with thymol, with the intention of replacing after the treatment. Today - half the bees in one of the colonies are dead from starvation. I had assumed that they would...

I was given a little book on Honey and Preserves - published by Fortnum & Mason - it waxes lyrically about the majestic oak hives on the roof of the London store and how superior their 'precious golden elixir' (honey) is.... made from nectar gathered from St James Park and Buckingham Palace etc...

I would like to turn some of my honey into 'soft set' honey after some requests for it. I have watched the demo video on here - but my question is, where do you get the soft set honey used to 'seed' the process? Surely I don't have to buy some mass produced supermarket honey? :smash:

Went into my WBC today hoping to find evidence that the new queen has been out, mated and laying eggs.... To my surprise, when I removed the lifts, ( the wooden surrounds - for those unfamiliar with WBCs) - there was the queen on the outside of the brood box - alone. It was the fact that she was...

I have a strong colony which has just replaced the queen - supercedure - and she emerged about 10 days ago. About 3-4 days after she would have emerged, there was a huge swarm out of that hive - which eventually settled down and returned to the hive, clustering over the front for an hour or two...

Just wondered if I could gather some feedback from a few of you experts... At the Nat Bee Convention I got the impression that most of the speakers considered clipping the Queen as their usual practice. I feel uncomfortable about doing it to my Queens - it seems rather cruel - but can see that...

After my rather premature killing of the old queen last week - I looked into the hive today to check that they hadn't made a rash of emergency cells alongside the supercedure queen cell. They hadn't - well - there were a couple of play cups.... However, the queen cell is really huge - and...

One of my colonies has been determined to replace their Queen it seems... I panicked and tore out a sealed queen cell on my last inspection - but today there was another beauty -and although the Queen was there - her egg laying was hardly prolific... My plan was to make a nuc with her as...

OK - bit of a daft question. Wish I could post it anonymously. After doing a shook swarm, I put a Q excluder underneath and on top of the brood box as per instruction. The drones are therefore trapped in there too.... They cant go out for a fly around, they can't even get up to and into the...

On Saturday - a sunny afternoon - I did a 'shook swarm' on a very strong colony in order to give them some lovely clean combs and hopefully wipe out a generation of varroa mites. It was the first time I had ever done this but all went to plan. The colony had two pretty heavy supers on...