Search results

I always thought that Charlock is an arable weed which is closely related to oil seed rape but is not grown deliberately, that is what I was told when I worked one summer at the Plant Breeding Institute (before it was sold off to Monsanto...) so a whole field of it seems unlikely.

Just realised that if the QE has been on for 5 days and I find eggs in the 14 x 12 box I can safely assume she is in there, if not and eggs are down in the brood and a half boxes she must be in there and we really need to find her. So that probably helps to simplify things. But when we do get...

Well I've got another 14 x 12 box waiting in the wings maybe I should pop that on too ;-)

The queen is quite young and vigourous, a result of an artificial swarm last year. So I don't think it is supercedure. I was doing the bailey comb change partly to deal with the older comb, partly to smooth the transition to 14 x 12 and to alleviate congestion. The end game was to replace the...

We started a bailey comb change two weeks ago. Previously we were running on brood and a half and the colony was very strong. I wonder if perhaps we should have performed a shook swarm. Anyway I digress, we wanted to change to 14 x 12 and I thought we could manage this change most easily using a...

We have two colonies on brood and half both of which seem to be thriving although I haven't looked inside yet. However, we have the supers above the brood box, so if I removed the lower brood box wouldn't this be a problem? I have got one 14 x 12 and was thinking of doing a shook swarm into it...

Thanks everyone, we did treat them both, and left all the residue in. We hefted them and were amazed at how light they were, it seems the stores which were in there already have been consumed in the last bout of crap weather. So I'm making preparations to start feeding by the end of the week.

We put treated our 2 hives with apiguard 2 weeks ago today, I checked them last week and quite a lot had gone, plus there was a heavy mite drop. We are now due to put on the second treatment and although there will be a window of dry weather this afternoon and tomorrow am, afterwards the weather...

Is it too early to treat with apiguard? We have taken a reasonable crop off so any tainted honey would be left on for the bees anyway.

If the pollen is any indicator (probably isn't I suppose) then their forage is quite diverse. I would be interested in finding out how to determine the source of the nectar. I have a colour chart for the pollen which I didn't find very easy to use.

Thanks for the tip. I feel quite embarrassed at my lack of local knowledge. The honey they have made is quite dark, I had thought the main forage was honeydew from all the trees in the colleges. But I have seen the occasional yellow face, which I think is from rape. There are a lot of sources of...

Hmmm, well, good job we are extracting it then, let's hope it's not crystallised.

They are hived in the centre of a city miles away from OSR, so crystallisation is not such an issue. I have tried the shake test, there is some nectar running out but very little. Looks like we are going ahead with the extraction anyway. Sorry if my question is daft, I am a beginner and...

We have two apparently strong healthy hives, the stronger of the two has 3 nearly full capped supers on. Circumstances dictate that if we are to extract any honey we have a period between 17 July and 10 August when it will be very difficult. My last varroa inspection showed high level of...

Well they seemed OK this morning and no posh girls in big frocks got stung so I guess I was worrying about nothing!

They are accessible in theory, but pretty out of the way. My only experience of May Balls was flogging them vast amounts of booze many years ago. They aren't next to the speakers or in a very likely location for anyone to go to so I'm sure it will be fine but best to cover ourselves like you...

We have kept our bees in a college which so far has worked really well - they are in a secure site with good access, lots of forage over most of the year in their grounds, water readily available and the college have been very supportive. However my beekeeping partner who works at the college...

They hadn't swarmed and they are now down to a single cell - I was amazed how quickly they had grown!

Yes that sounds about right! Cheers for the backup tip. Chris

Right lesson learned! I assume then that the sealed cell (if still there!) should be removed and all but one of the unsealed. I was planning on moving the colony to the other side which I thought was the standard method. I'll have to go in tomorrow, children's parties today! Hope they haven't...