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checking a hive today I found 3 capped queen cells all on the same frame, nothing unusual in that, but has anyone had experience in caging the cells with the intention of raising all 3 queens. They're supercedure type cells so on the face not on the frame bottom. Martin

Had a swarm earlier which split into two 'clusters'. One, rather fortunately, went into a bait hive, the other on a branch about 10M away. 2 hours later the bait hive cluster seems to have all gone in, the branch cluster seems to have settled down with few flying bees. Should I expect that they...

What do you suppose are the reasons a colony could become aggressive? I’ve got one that has grown well so far this year, with 2 supers both 90% full of stores and bias (no excluder). For weeks it’s been very aggressive with the bees following me around 20M to my car. It takes about 10 minutes...

On checking the hives yesterday I found one that had over wintered as brood and a half (national brood with a super) and was absolutely pouring out of the hive, I’m sure the colony is bigger now than it was at the end of last season! Both the brood box and the super were full of brood and...

A Bad day: Visited an out apiary which was last checked 10 days ago, during that check there were 3 hives plus a nuc all BIAS, harvested a super from one. Today the nuc was devoid of live bees, with a large number dead on the floor. The 3 hives all had plenty of bees and capped stores but no...

Any ideas on the following: I have 2 nuc's to combine and ultimately want them in a brood box together. I had the idea of taking the frames from one nuc and placing into a brood (on stand etc) paper over then another brood box with the frames from the next nuc in, leave closed for 48 hours...

I’m sure this has been calculated: Minimum size of hive (brood) so that the queen can’t run out of space to lay without going over the top and being to big. The idea seemed easy in my head but as I though about the timescales of bee development and the rate of lay I thought it best to ask! Martin

Yesterdays inspection revealed a supersedure cell (90% sure) It’s got royal jelly but I couldn’t quite see how developed the lave/egg was. There were a couple of other empty cups but nothing which seemed well developed. The existing queen seems to be laying fine with good brood pattern, so the...

Usual weekly check on the bees: I found that in one hive (commercial) some of the brood frames were completely covered in brood with no pollen or stores of any kind. There were three frames like this with the others being a mix as you would expect, but the entire brood box was full of one thing...

Are there any significant external influences which may affect the temperament of a colony? I’ve read that a significant feeding ‘frenzy’ can make them agitated. What about just before swarming, do they become livelier? Perhaps if they were under duress from disease? I’m sure it would...

For sale on a web site were you bid 4 stuff to do with bees: advert reads: By heating Oxalic acid crystals a sublimation takes place covering all the bees and hive parts in a fine mist. Only 3grams of crystals are required to give a 95% mite kill. Anyone tried this? does it work? is it better...

Possibly a silly question, but those who don’t ask and all that…… All the discussion on swarming seems to indicate that the workers leave when there is a queen to accompany them. What happens if a Queen excluder type device was under the brood/over the entrance preventing the queen from...