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Many thanks Many thanks for your replies, really useful information and much appreciated I have a 1lb jar to seed so first 9lb's have been warmed and stirred. Shall be mixing in the seed in a couple of days Kind regards Jack

Ive made a honey warming cabinet, bought an STC1000 and have my 25b bucket of crystallised honey ready to turn into soft set What temperature should I heat it to and for how long to turn it into runny honey so I can add the seed Thanks

Pattesons I've used Pattesons; service is prompt and efficient and jars are well packaged. Following the same theme - where is the best place for labels?

Thanks again Thanks for you attention, it is appreciated Drip feeding information was not my intention, sorry if it came across that way The set up from bottom up was a National cedar hive with mesh floor, brood box, super, solid glass crown board, insulated eke, roof. I went through this...

Tens of hundreds Sorry, didn't mean hundreds to be taken literally, haven't counted but there was the equivalent of a small colony on the floor, say 5,000. They are carnolians and by their nature have small number overwinter They did supersede late and so you may well be right that there were...

Thanks Thanks everyone for your comments Having gone back and looked again in the 'cold light of day' I realise I had overlooked quite a lot of fecal staining inside the hive. ITMA and others are right, it seems that my colony were weakened by nosema or perhaps dysentery and did not survive the...

Had a nice strong colony of carnolians going into winter. Had approx 40lb of stores in brood box and super, much of this was ivy. Opened them up for a few seconds in late Dec and trickled OA, they were quite active when I had them open. Hefted them every couple of weeks and still quite heavy...

A coffee tin To work around a hot smoker I take along a metal coffee tin and at the end of the beekeeping session I empty the contents of the smoker into the tin and put the lid on. The tin has a slightly smaller diameter than my smoker and so I then sit the sealed tin in the smoker. By the...

Commercial basis Father Fox In order to be registered for VAT or IT the beekeeping needs to be run on a commercial basis. There are technical tests for this but common sense is as good a measure as any. Would an independent individual looking at the business and its trading results consider...

I have a brood and two supers which are full of stores and the bees are still very active. The striped back they arrive with tells me that they are on Him Balsan and the ivy bushes near the hive are full of activity. I took a super off and brought it home and have put the other under the brood...

Even more so when yesterday I found that one colony with a shallow underneath had joined the bottom of all the frames in the bb with the frames in the shallow box underneath. I couldn't lift the box without also taking the shallow frames as well, I couldn't lift the bb frames out individually...

One for me I bought a mated Carnolian in late May 14. Although they are in a OSR area this had finished by the time she was installed. In late August 14 she was laying well, lot of frames full of sealed brood plus plenty of unsealed larvae and eggs. The queen was marked and was clearly visible...

Many thanks Thanks for your replies. I have four colonies all on Nationals, I'm going to go with a super under a brood box with each of them. It looks like at least one is going to need a second super shortly which I shall take off and introduce back to them in the spring

I was intending to over-winter on a national brood box only and had the set up bb/cb/empty bb/cb/almost empty super (a couple of frames of uncapped stores last week) with the intention that they would empty the super of stores and move them down into the hive. I then planned to feed for winter...

Propolis? Hot water will melt the wax but I wonder whether much of the smears are traces of propolis. If so you could try baby wipes and a fair amount of rubbing

Perspex or gauze I have a small piece of Perspex at the top of the feed area which physically stops the bees from reaching (and drowning) in the reservoir. I have also seen mesh being used for the same purpose Are you feeding and treating with Apiguard? The instructions suggest avoiding...

There seems to be a mixture of opinions but I am unsure whether some are urban myths I appreciate that Apiguard taints stores and makes them unfit for human consumption indefinitely, but could anyone tell me, from an informed position, whether Apiguard also taints the wax and wood of the super...

I bought a new Carnolian queen and introduced her into a small nuc of bees on 29 May 2014. She started laying and a good brood pattern was established. On 24 June 2014 there was a severe varroa infestation in a neighbouring hive and a natural daily drop of 2 over 7 days from this colony, as...

Hive looks great but... I think that your hive looks great, however as you have already heard it is not sufficiently practical to be successful. I am sure that we all applaud you for the effort and imagination you have put into this project and hope that you are not too disheartened with the...