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I guess I’m coming to the end of my autumn sugar syrup feeding, as 12kgs have been readily taken up so far and also judging by the weight of my hive when hefted (although I must admit to not having much experience of hefting hives!). :blush5: I suppose now is the time to start thinking about...

Venting the crownboard I read recently somewhere that it's a good idea in winter to raise the crown board a quarter-of-an-inch by placing small squares of wood at the corners, thereby creating four vents the length and breadth of the hive. IS THIS THEN A BAD IDEA ?:confused:

This is my first beek winter. Temperatures here in Burgundy, France can drop well below minus 20°C. Until I came here, I hadn’t ever heard of the idea of providing colonies with extra winter protection by wrapping them. Recently I read that wrapping may in fact be detrimental to the bees...

Closing the gap Thanks for this good advice; I'll follow it up. not worthy

They had progressed into the main reservoir -- the gap under the divider between their access box and the main reservoir is big enough to allow bees into the latter. This was sometimes a problem when pouring in the syrup, because I would often find bees already there and I didn't want to immerse...

This is my first season and I now only have one hive. I started feeding my bees on 18th September, at the rate of 1kg of sugar to 1 pint of water per feed, in a Miller-type feeder. All seemed to go very smoothly as the bees took up their feed at an astonishing rate. I regularly found the...

This is my first season and so I have lots to learn! Having removed the second hive body from my two colonies, I have ended up with a couple of leftover deep frames of honey. I have no extractor and it doesn't seem worth the trouble anyway extracting so few. My feeling is that I may as well...

Many thanks, Dan Bee, for steering me to the FERA "Bee Base" website. What a terrific resource of information, which I'm sure I'll be using a good deal from now on. I completely understand your points about varying resistance across different treatment products and also the concept of a gap in...

Thanks again, itma, for all the very helpful info. No, I haven't spotted any sealed brood cells torn open, but I'll have a closer look and report back if I see any. I'll certainly be going the Varroa floor route right away. I had no idea that Varroa was such a major problem -- but now I know...

A supplementary question for you: how do I tell that it's not Acarine disease, please? Thank you and kind regards. Graham.

Thanks Chris -- much obliged to you for the link to Apiguard, which I have bookmarked for future reference. With kind regards. Graham.

Thanks Luminos -- great to hear from another Expat in France! More to the point, great to have the benefit of your kind advice, which is much appreciated. With kind regards. Graham.

Thanks, itma. No, I haven't been treating for Varroa YET; and no, I haven't got a mesh floor, but a solid wooden one. I should explain: I'm very new to this beekeeping game -- this is my first season and so I have lots to learn! Thanks for the website link for the PDF document, which I will...

Thanks Doc! I'll have to find out what products are available here in France... I expect they'll be under different names, but someone here will know, I hope. Thanks again. Graham.

I have a question: today, I noticed some of my bees rather stumbling about outside the front of their hive and, on closer inspection, I noticed that their wings were deformed and that as a consequence they couldn't fly. Unquestionably a disease of some kind, but which one of the many? Any ideas...