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Dear folks, I recently enjoyed reading Mating in Miniature by Bernhard Mobus. It is packed full of observations and ideas that I had not considered/encountered before. However, two things particularly intrigued me as I continue my quest for the simplest possible design for a mating nuc made out...

Hi folks, This coming year I will have 7 nucs and probably as many mating nucs in the apiary nearest to my house. I would like to make each nuc as distinctive as possible in order to minimise drift (esp. of queens returning from mating flights). Of course, I will: make full use of the...

I have just read an interesting observational study of what happens when mated queens are introduced to a foreign colony. It described 12 queen introductions. The paper is: Robinson, GE. Worker and queen honey bee behaviour during foreign queen introduction. Insectes Sociaux. 1984; 31...

In his “Sustainable Apiary” lecture at the National Honey Show, Michael Palmer described his search for the oldest literary reference to the storing of a reserve queen bee in an overwintering nuc for subsequent use elsewhere if required. From memory, I think he found one from a Devonshire...

Dear all, This winter's book pile includes "Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey." I was quite surprised by three things I have read in it. They do not seem to reflect mainstream ideas or practice that I have encountered elsewhere (admittedly 42 years later). Just out of interest, do any of you follow...

Hello everyone. Perhaps it is possible to post something on this forum at the moment without getting bashed over the head by any of the usual suspects. Winter is the season for woodwork and reading, they say. I therefore bought myself a table saw in November and made some mating nucs out of...

One of my colonies has been slow to build up this year. A recent comb change didn’t speed things up. Yesterday I found some supersedure cells in the brood box, on the brood area periphery. The workers must want a new queen who should hopefully be a more prolific layer. I thought I would take...

Brand new bucket. No obvious problems. Supposed to hold 12 litres (i.e. good for 12 kg). I put 6kg strong syrup into it and the handle snapped. Every last drop went onto short-pile carpet. What is the best way to clean? Any ideas?

Due to a bee keeping mishap for which I am responsible, I presently have a queenless hive in which some emergency queen cells have formed. These are presently unsealed and the larvae in royal jelly are therefore easy to see. In another hive (which I have split this morning to prevent a swarm) I...

Following my previous post (From starvation-concern to swarm-concern in 1 week!, 2 May) I ended up with two queenright hives following a split of the original hive on the morning of 3 May, in which I kept just one sealed queen cell in each half of the split. There was no egg-laying activity in...

The weather has not been great round these parts recently. I last considered it warm and dry enough to perform a bee inspection on 21 April. The hive looked in good shape at that time, with 7 frames of healthy brood and no queen cups. There was about one solid frame of honey in the brood box...