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Great stories. Inspirational. Bring on 2013. Thanks to those that voted. Some more would be great.

Hmmm. Beekeeping did not help in 2012. Nor did building flat pack beehives. And I have just had a baby ... I am hopeful about foraging. The sloe gin looks to be coming on alright!

Me too. It's complex. The hive is like a black box in which I can not be 100% confident I know what's going on.

Hmmm. I'm a softy ... it doesn't seem to have sorted me out yet! ;-)

Hello, What is your attitude to beekeeping? I took up beekeeping to try and regain my sanity, so I was surprised when I discovered, how many beekeepers were frustrated and fed up with it. So, with this in mind I thought it would be interesting to run a Beekeeper Attitude Survey to see how...

i have rephrased the original post. hope it is self-explanatory now?

There are no eggs or larvae now.

I might need a Queen and would really appreciate your advice. 3.5 weeks ago, I had a bee inspector come to my apiary as part of the EU honeybee colony collapse study. Then the Strong Hive had plenty of brood, larvae and eggs, but we did not see a Queen. 2 weeks ago, I combined hives, using...

What are your thoughts on the programme? [PS. I did a search to try and find if anyone was involved on here.]

OK. Sorry, had not read the rules in detail.

You are right. I'm not sure why. I will email the site administrator.

My apirary was one of the 200 apiaries selected in England & Wales to participate in the EU Pilot Surveillance Programme for Honey Bee Health. The inspector came last week and I have written a bit about the experience. I will write some more when I get the results and when they inspect the...

Thanks for your replies. I left the bees to cap the honey ... but actually they just ate it. I harvested some unripe honey and scraped the capped honey into a jar as it was granulated. Apiguard now been on for 2 weeks and another dose will go on Sunday. I'll let you know the count at the end...

Checked my hives last weekend. One hive has a super which is 30% capped, it also has a varroa mite drop of 15/day (which means there are about 500 varroa in there). Should I: (A) Leave the super on for the bees to cap the honey (Will they even cap the honey? Or will they eat it?) (B) Remove...

I didn't use smoke last weekend and it was all fine.

Back To Square One. After my reading the barefoot beekeeper and reading forum posts, there is some stuff I like about "natural beekeeping". But when it comes to Varroa, I plan to stick to the advice given in the FERA Varroa Guide ... Integrated Pest Management. And there is no mention of icing...

Loving this hive! Looks like it should be easy to smoke the bees with this ... I presume you create the smoke on top and suck it down through the hive using the pipe at the bottom.

Thanks Oliver. Just to be clear I did not see the following as facts, science or evidence at all: "In the book the author says things like “... I have read, [Varroa mite] cannot reproduce above about 92F (33C)” (p. 17) and “according to the observations of a several long-time top bar...

I read The Barefoot Beekeeper a few weeks ago. In the book the author says things like “... I have read, [Varroa mite] cannot reproduce above about 92F (33C)” (p. 17) and “according to the observations of a several long-time top bar beekeepers, these smaller cells [built on wild comb]...