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Last week I introduced a sealed QC to a hive, this hive was showing signs of swarming (unsealed QCs). The reason I introduced the QC from another hive is that I liked the parent queen. This was part of an artificial swarm effort (on the hive I introduced the QC to) that clearly hasn't worked...

OK, mid manipulation (quite a stressful one) it dawned on me that my great plan wasn't so great. Essentially I wanted to add a sealed QC to a hive which is producing queen cells in an effort to avoid swarming. Process was as follows: 1. Locate queen in hive 1 and put her, some bees and some...

I've had a brief look on here and my bee book library but couldn't find an answer: I've just hived a swarm and they are happily in a nuc. The frames in the nuc are already drawn and the swarm pretty much fills the nuc (4 seams of bees). I've given them some syrup despite good weather and fact...

My 2nd year (first full year) of keeping bees and I made a potentially bad mistake: I had it in my mind that I fed in October last year when in fact I didn't, I had started in September. Anyway, this year I started feeding in Oct and decided to try a thicker syrup (2:1) to make life easier in...

Hello, Haven't been on here for a while, gone from 1 to 3 hives this year, dealt with my first swarms but they've had a rubbish year as far as honey goes. Hope everyone has had more luck. Anyway, I now have 3 colonies, 1 is very strong, 1 is above average and 1 is small - this was a cast swarm...

My hive swarmed, I left 1 good sealed QC in original colony. Some advice says leave for 2 weeks then inspect while other advice suggests 3 weeks. My understanding is that QC hatches on day 16 and so leaving for 2 weeks after sealed QC gives queen about a week to hatch and a week to mate. 3...

OK, first big bee disappointment since starting but I guess stuff happens and it's all fairly standard. Nonetheless I was trying to do everything right :confused: Basically my bees swarmed and I'd like to know what I did wrong: They're a single colony, national hive on brood and a half, queen...

Hello, Long story which I will explain in a 'what can I learn from this' post later but, despite my best efforts, I am 99.99% sure my bees swarmed earlier today and flew some way away. I've done a walk round and spoken with locals and neighbours but nothing. If anyone sees / hears of anything...

I'm struggling to get definitive / consistent advice on this. Basically I want to make increase this year, this is more of a priority than honey. I believe the sooner I do this the better (assuming of course bees are strong enough). I also want to avoid swarming. All the advice seems to be wait...

OK, maybe a really stupid question but I've looked on here and found nothing and don't think I saw anything in books I've read. My question is based on what I assume is a different inspection regime from when you have single brood i.e. - remove top box, examine lower frames - replace top box...

Did my last inspection on Saturday just gone and ended it feeling very down; the bees seem overflowing, there's maybe a carpet of bees on both sides of 10 of the BB's 11 frames, it feels virtually impossible (despite my very best efforts at being gentle and careful) not to kill more bees than I...

Just removed 2 frames of stores from BB to allow more room for laying. Before this frames were as follows (I have frames parallel to entrance - warm way if I remember correctly): 1-7 brood, 8-11 stores. Frame 1 is at the entrance and 11 at the back of the hive. I removed frames 8 and 9 and...

I'm going to make a hive and supers using ply. Been having a look through posts on here and found this: http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7813&highlight=plywood&page=4 Scroll to the bottom of the page to Muswell's post with diagram. This looks very easy in terms of construction...

Did my first inspection of the year last week and it seems that my single (hopefully soon to be two) colony made it through my first winter as a beekeeper. Well done bees! Loads of larvae at all stages and bubbling with lots downy bees. I haven't fed the bees at all during winter or spring (I...

Apologies for what might sound like a stupid question but 2 things have struck me recently whilst counting varroa (after having not treated with oxalic): 1. Depending on what size you go down to I think you can end up with a very high count - there's a lot of small brown things that appear as...

For whatever reason I seemed to have concluded that OA treatment was excessive and unnecessary if you had used Apiguard in the autumn. This wasn't based on anything other than assumption; not good enough. Anyway, I've recently become aware of the fact that this runs contrary to what most...

Just been messing with mouseguard (had put it in place but on reading here I'm about to remove it): I've secured it with drawing pins but this doesn't seem quite right. What do other people do? On reading other threads about mouseguards when do most people install these (if they actually...

Having done a search on here about this I'm guessing the answer is something along the lines of whatever works best for you / your bees. I am however hoping for something a bit more definitive on the merits of each when de-capping. I really like the apparent simplicity of de-capping Manley...

This is my first winter with bees and I've been thinking quite a bit about the effects of temperature, insulation and feeding for them recently. There's a few points I'd like to clear up: 1. We get some strong westerly winds. I have put up a makeshift windbreak (actually a small coal bunker)...