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Yes, she would have been 3 years old in a few weeks and this coming year would have been her 4th, my mistake. Anyway, the reason I'm asking your advice is that I want to know if I've been the cause of the colony death. :-( This way I'll try not to repeat the same mistake next year. Should I...

Exactly what happened! I'm 100% sure she was our queen, we marked her when we got her in 2011 (white). So she was actually 3 years old, this coming season would have been her 4th. And in her long life she swarmed countless times. I know, not a great DNA to breed but what can you do, we were so...

It might have had even 7 frames of brood in August, then probably stopped laying sometimes in October. It was a normal size colony, managed to fill more than 2 supers over the summer (and swarmed once in May). While 3 weeks ago, when we opened the hive they were clustered between 3-4 frames, not...

Thanks everyone for your insight. The colony in autumn was quite strong, plenty of stores including a full super that they didn't use. Moreover, when we treated them with oxalic acid 3 weeks ago they were doing ok and were much more in number (compared to what we found today) and the weather has...

Hello everyone, today we took a look at one of our two colonies because in the past few days we couldn't see anyone flying.. Sadly the colony was gone :-( We treated them at the end of January with Oxalic acid and altought they were not many everything looked quite normal. We treated both...

Hi there! I don't have any specific contacts but if you manage, try to get in touch with them: http://amodeocarlo.com/it/home/ (The website is only in italian but with the help of google you might be able to get an idea of what he does). FYI "ape" means bee! He's a famous beekeeper that...

Glad you're ok. A couple of weeks ago I got stung on my face by a single bee and ended up in the hospital with an awful rush all over my body. With 40 stings I would probably be dead! I'm really glad you're ok!

I might need one! I've sent you a private message, please let me know!

Yes, it's the syrup one. And I have quite a lot, the bottle is almost full (I used it my first year, when I had only 1 hive!). I think Pharmacy is a good solution, thanks!

Hi everyone, I was cleaning around when I found an old bottle of oxalic acid (6%), expired in 2011. What should I do with that? can I just empty it in the sink or should I take it to the tip?

It looks like I might have to buy a dishwasher! :-)

Hot water, soap, steel wool and a lot of patience! I did it last year and this year for about 60 jars. When I realized I needed at least another 50 I gave up and bought new jars. Still washed them but it took me about 1 hour or so (not a day like last week!).

I usually wash them first with soap and hot water and then I put them in the oven at 170° for about 1/2 hour. This way there's no need for them to dry. For the lids instead I boil them for about 10 minutes and then dry them with paper towel. I've never sold any honey, that's why I've always...

Thanks Domino. That's what I was thinking of doing too, but I'll wash them by hand as we don't have a dishwasher! :-) This is my third year but we have always re-used old jam/honey jars. This time we got so much honey that those jars were not enough!

Hi everyone, I just got my new jars from a well known supplier. The package was ok but not sealed. Do you usually wash the new jars and then sterilize them in the oven before filling them with honey?

Hello everyone, I'm going to extract honey this weekend but I have a question, how long do you usually wait before pouring the honey from the big bucket into the jars? A few hours? A few days? Weeks? I guess a lot depends on the filter but I just need an order of magnitude...

OH WOW! :hurray: I guess you're not keeping them in a urban area. I moved one of nucs in a semi-wild area a month ago and in two weeks they filled all 8 frames they had (3-4 with brood and the rest with honey). It was so heavy I couldn't almost lift it! Now that they are back in my garden...

Thanks Veg, you're probably right. I'll add another super on the strongest hive and see how it goes. In the meantime I'll remove the fully capped frames on the other hives and replace them with some empty ones. Who knows, maybe August will be nice and warm! :-D

Veg, my plan is to remove the 100% capped frames and place some brand new/some empty frames. I think for the moment 1-2 new frames would be enough to store the incoming nectar. They still have space in the brood box anyway, wich in a way is a better place to store honey for Winter, right?

Thanks Elaine, that is exactly what I had initially planned. Having another super full of honey would be great but I really doubt the bees will manage to fill it in a 1 month or so. And it feels like Summer is already over! (But it's July!! :banghead:)