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Hi, I think I've made a bit of a mess here. Basically, I lost 2 hives completely during late spring. The bee inspector came recently on his routine visit and reckoned that Nosema c, rather than apis was was primarily responsible. The remaining hive had survived, just, and was starting to...

I have been sorting out spare frames stored in the garage and there are a number which have cells filled with stored pollen, otherwise empty with no honey or syrup visible and no evidence of mould. I was thinking of feeding these back to the bees before putting them away for winter. They came...

Saw this. It may be of interest, although not necessarily new. http://www.rickackerman.com/2011/04/bee-die-off-threatens-global-food-calamity/

OK it's only August - but you wouldn't know it. I was wondering about winter hive heating, especially after last years dose of global warming. There is some opinion amongst serious forecasters that we may get similar this year. Anyway, I have a couple of low power (7 and 11 watt) terrarium...

One of my splits, mentioned in other posts, has been slow to take off. I put in 2 frames of capped, with due to hatch, brood last week. Had a look yesterday and the numbers have increased visibly with more to come. However, because the hive was queenless for several weeks, the numbers of bees...

We've been dismantling one of the kid's large old wardrobes this afternoon. It's made mainly of 16mm / 5/8ths chipboard with a smooth melamine (or similar) covering. I was given a load of WBC outer casings a while back which are unused. It occurred to me that this would be an easy and cheap! way...

In the nuc, started 2 weeks ago, i put 1 frame of brood with QCs. Just had a look today as they are due to pop. there are a number of these, 2 being obvious larger than the others. I've seen the description "scrub queen" used on the forum, which i take to mean small or undersized queen cells and...

I introduced a new queen +attendants on Thursday. I did a thread on this and received some kindly replies. I left things till this am - 7 days queenless - and found a qc that I may have missed or has been formed since I squished all I could find on Wed/Thurs. The intro cage is still being the...

I ordered a Buckfast queen last week, to increase stock (turn 1 hive into 2). In anticipation, I separated a "nuc" into the spare - 2.5 frames brood capped and uncapped + (minimal) eggs on Sunday. Anyway, queen arrived yesterday, I think maybe I jumped the gun, and there were a few queen cells...

There is a lot being written about nursing "weak" (ie low number count and ?not too many stores) colonies through winter at the moment. Being the possessor of one such, albeit with a good queen seemingly making up for lost time I am wondering what are the main lethal factors Obviously, food...

I put this in as a reply first but , hope no-one minds (apologies if they do) I thought it might work as a thread. I'll post this as the latest episode in a saga related to this subject. I gave a small nucleus to a friend with an empty hive about 6 weeks ago. The queen in this disappeared.(...

Last week I posted re dead queen. Following Heather's advice I left them alone. Sunday morning, on schedule, there was a new queen skittering about and a second just breaking out of its cell. I've had another look this morning and the queen is still there and seems lively enough...

Big problem. The queen has been missing about 10 days now- I think this maybe my fault as I marked her with a blob of non toxic children's paint. Since then no further brood or eggs. Last of the previous grubs are hatching out now and all cells are empty. I just noticed a capped queen cell...

Hi, I was given 2 frames of bees, with an active queen, and capped queen cells about 5 weeks ago whilst attending a local intro course. I'm new to this and its my first time out, so to speak. They seem to be doing well and the original 2 frames have now expanded to 4 with mainly sugar/honey in...