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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 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?

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...

Hi everyone, at this time of the season I'm a bit puzzled on what to do with my big hives. All 4 of them have two supers, in which the frames are 90-100% full. What should I do? Buy an extra super for each hive or simply remove the frames that are fully capped and place new ones (I have...

Hello everyone, I inspected my hive this morning, in which I introduced a new queen about two weeks ago. After the first few days in which she wasn't laying at all, I finally found a lot of eggs on about 3-4 frames (and a lot of queen cells with eggs in them which I destroyed). This was last...

Hello everyone, I'm not sure of what's going on in my apiary. Yesterday evening one of my nucs has been attacked by yellow bees (thousands, must have been 3/4 frames of bees to give you an idea). Now today I've noticed a few bees flying around my other 3 main hives. There's something suspicious...

Hopefully managed to save my nuc, yellow bees where trying to rob the nuc I have in my backgarden. I'm changing my mind about yellow bees!

Hello everyone, for those of you who remember my problem: http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=25304 I can now confirm that the queen (new or old, well we'll see with the new bees) is now finally laying! I have found eggs on about 3/4 frames. One big problem now, the bees have...

HI everyone, last friday we introduced a new queen (bought from a UK supplier) in a queenless hive, after destrying all the existing queen cells. She was an italian marked (tiny red spots) queen. Today we inspected the hive and found: - no eggs - a yellow, unmarked queen. The queen was...

Hello everone, we have a problem with one colony. It swarmed friday morning for the first time, thank god I was home and I've been able to catch it and place it in box. Then around 6pm they swarmed away from the box towards another tree (oppositive way). Same story: caught them and boxed them...

Hi everyone, two days ago I managed to catch a swarm, a VERY VERY small swarm. I put them in a nuc box and fed them with syrup, but they haven't even tried a bit. What's wrong? The bees are standing on the first two and half frames and the syrup hole is between the 4th and 5th frame. Is it too...

Hi everyone, last year I bought a cheap hive on ebay (got an entire new hive for 60£) but the queen excluder that was included is entirely made of wood. At first glance it doesn't look great as the wood is not perfectly smooth, could this be a problem? I'm thinking about their wings getting...

Opened the hive and found a wasp, dead, on the queen excluder! I tried to kill her for 2 days now, I think the bees took care of her! And also, what is this tiny insect? I found it on a frame a left in the garden to be cleaned by bees. It first started eating wax and then moved to the...

Hello everyone, we inspected the hive today for the first time after several winter moths and in one of the 3 we found a lot of dead bees at the bottom of the hive (on the mesh floor). The colony looks ok, we have seen the queen and open/close cells. Could it be starvation? The colony had still...

Hello everyone, I check today, 7 days after the oxalic acid treatment on my 3 hives and got the following results: - hive 1, medium size colony, 351 mites - hive 2, medium/big colony, 420 mites - hive 3 medium size, 54 mites. So, first of all, why are they so different? Have I done something...

I was about to place an order from the Thxxxe, taking advantage of the winter sales when I realized they don't sell oxalic acid in the liquid form as others do. I never used cristals before, they say: readily soluble in water for use in syringes if practising the trickling method. . It...

For those of you that do not know stackexchange, it is an enthusiast powered website where people ask and answer questions. Both answers and questions can be rated by other users, which gain "reputation points" accordingly. It is different from a forum in that one can only submit questions, and...

Hi everyone, I was thinking about buying some fondant for winter, especially considering the warm weather we still have.. Just checked on Pay**s website and they sell both Ambrosia fondant and Fondabee: same size (2.5 kg) but different prices, the second one almost 1/3 cheaper than the other...

Hi everyone, I have a small colony, now on 4 frames, with brood, some eggs and some honey stored. It's doing quite well but hasn't really grown that much (it was a swarm I caught in july) and since they're very gentle bees I don't really want to reunite them with one of my other hives. What...