Paul Beer

Phil Chandler on YouTube suggested a light spray of water instead of smoke. I will try this next weekend. Maybe it only suits calm bees or small operations? Will let you know what happens

You're welcome to have some of our honey, we have too much, although it's just not the same as from your own bees I know. I don't use insecticide. Heaps of our bees were hanging outside this afternoon too. Riccarton area. Gosh it was hot. I will be adding OA strips next week I think.

I'll cast my vote, as a rather new bee haver. I think it's quite ok that you left the honey for them. Just as I did recently. I like to try all sorts of experiments. But I'm sure that in certain circumstances bees from other hives will discover the honey and the situation turns bad. So it's normally regarded as a bad practice.

Whatever was wrong I got an explosion of activity in that hive, many frames of beautiful worker brood, several frames drone brood (can i just cull them out?) plus plenty honey. Bees sure build up a level in their second season! It is the first time I have been able to see eggs. Still have not seen the Queen. As for the other hive it merged nicely.

Right thanks Alastair that's what I was planning to do. Will do.

The swarm is housed in a nuc box, I don't really want a third hive. The other hive has been queenless for ages, at least 2 months. Only dawned on me 2 weeks ago. So I think we have waited long enough My own bee keeping (having) is being learned in chunks which can only be fitted together later. So a few weeks back i could sense this hive was going to swarm so went through it removing quite a few swarm cells and supercedure cells, in a newbeek way, then the swarmed anyway. So now I'm in a corner learning how to make a queen from this situation. Moving the nuc box across the section in daily hops. People say a swarm should only be in a nuc box for a few days. Well it's been 3 weeks now shrug.

Thanks Phil. Plenty of nectar in other frames, wet and bees are bringing plenty. . But these are half-filled and dry. Does the nectar dry out? I will poke and investigate tomorrow or when I make the merge

This hive swarmed 3 weeks ago and still has no new queen. Existing brood looks like this. What are the sunken silvery cells? I have the swarm captured and plan to merge it with my other also queenless hive.

Oh dear. Apologies also, if I seem completely jaded, negative and disoriented. Yesbut should be along shortly to provide expert incisive succinct remarks..

It was supposed to be mainly my son's interest, he clearly wanted bees over a period of 2 years, me being very slow to get used to the idea and no spare money to start off, so by the time I bought nucs he was reaching the end of his curiosity of course and I just wanted to follow through and show him a lesson about choosing and sticking to something. The only aspect that interests him about it now is making lip balm. Once I learnt about it I had thought maybe we could sell the honey/nucs/propolis/comb honey but those are all dead ends now. In fact the surplus honey just becomes a bit of a nuisance. I have a free small bag of propolis scrapings if anyone wants it. The only good aspect I can think of now is that it is an activity to get my mind off my job.

This is a helpful bunch of info, as one of my hives is bearding today in the rain and cold. I will remove the entrance reducer completely then I suppose they will sort themselves out in a few days.

Oh i just knew you would come along yesbut, and wouldn't be able to resist making a short provocative reaction. Which I will react to. But not now, later.

This topic caught my interest. We suddenly shifted house, having had 2 hives on a roomy quarter acre for our first year of beekeeping and I was barely able to plan the hive move to the new place. Anyway it has been touch and go, as to whether I would keep the bees or not, this new place has far less room. I've got them inside the road boundary fence, facing East. Busy road /footpath (Middleton Rd). A pedestrian would not notice them normally but I'm a bit concerned someone could get stung if the bees become aggravated when I work them so I'm being more careful now. I put a shade cloth barrier to help us and any visitors feel more comfortable. I am keeping a step ahead of them swarming this spring as i well remember the sudden increase last season. Quite apart from all that I have been wondering what is the point of keeping them anyway... I feel disillusioned . One really good thing though..our closest new neighbours noticed the hives of course... and it turned out they were delighted as they had been discussing getting their own but now they don't have to.....

Good info coming to the surface here people. I'm on the brink of spring treatment and inspection, maybe today because it's going to be warm. Was going to put 5 narrow strips in through the middle but now will try a bit more thoughtful approach.

Ah yes! Childhood beach memories of Northland