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It sounds like a lot to me. What colour are they?

It's best if you remain in the dark about its meaning.

This is the problematical bit. How many associations have members not paying enough to cover all their hives? I would guess they all do and yet BDI, sensibly, still pays out. Dil

My understanding is that the way the BDI constitution was initially written every member of an association must be fully paid up for every one of their hives. If just one hive in an association is not covered then non are. Apparently though the rule is not normally enforced so in practice it's...

I know someone with a propolis allergy which meant that she could not risk honey.

Peterbees. I understand the Derbyshire BKA started making monthly videos to show beginners at each meeting what they should be doing in the month ahead. Their meetings shot up from about 20 people to 100. They then had to use 2 rooms and have a meeting for beginners with the video and...

Wowee! It sounds brilliant. I'll be there - can't wait.

Stocking rate in Switzerland is about 4 hives per square kilometre and that includes mountain tops and lakes. Although I suspect their flowers are more plentiful than in the typical British countryside I doubt if the forage is better than the London suburbs.

Where I live anyone would be mad to have anything other than AMM or bees with more AMM in them than anything else because other races all turn nasty after a couple of queen changes. I would have thought though that London would have been a different kettle of fish. Priono, do you have AMMs in...

I agree with both those points but the point I was trying to make was that you can have 2 genetically gentle strains that produce absolute killers when crossed together if they are from different races. Hence importing gentle bees is usually just a temporary fix because if they differ from the...

In my experience bad behaviour is rarely due to genetics but hybridisation instead. Bringing new bees into the area will just make things worse unless they happen to be compatible with what's already there. The answer is for your local association or interested parties to work together at...

I think a lot depends on the bees in your locality and the culture of the local beekeepers. If you live in an area where everyone has his own pet race of bee then many of the queens you produce will be hybrids or will lay hybrid eggs. When this is happening laying rate will mean nothing. You...

There's a bit about it on Dave Cushman's site: http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/wingmeasurement.html http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/morphometry.html You will probably find a lot more stuff that is easier to follow than Tolfilski's report Dilys

Were they ever prone to it?

Mark I don't think your take on the drone problem is a little adrift of the Mark (sorry - couldn't resist than one). If drones can't escape there is a strong likelyhood that they will kill themselves by getting jammed in the bottom queen excluder. It will be difficult for you to see just how...

If it was sold as bee treatment it is probably premixed with sugar. The label often says 6% but they mean that the original solution was at 6% before the sugar had been added for treating bees. By the time it's bottled for sale at bee suppliers the mix has been fully prepared for the hive. I...

I am not surprised you are not convinced because it's patently stupid. There are lots of reasons for favouring near natives but no-one claims they are the only ones that can produce a surplus without being nasty or disease-ridden. Dilys

I seem to have missed out on my copy of BIM again! Dan, could you please let me know what issue number it was and roughly when it came out so that I can moan at them. Thanks Dil

Keith, I think Crg was nitpicking your semantics. All our honey bees are the same species but are different subspecies. Strictly speaking you probably meant that your association teaches about the different subspecies rather than different species. In my experience all hybrids can be...

In most supersedure instances the old queen is killed and replaced by the new one. Queenright spersedure, where the old queen is retained, is quite rare. I don't think you will find many references to my method being proven scientifically - you just have to trust me that it usually works. I...