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This bee caper can take up a lot of your time. 8 solid hours today and a good few yesterday as well.
I made a correx nuc box in the morning and then headed up to the bees.
I have queen cells due to hatch on Tuesday and I have just split a colony into four parts to take four of them. I have 7 apideas but I reckon there is always a better chance of getting a queen mated in a nuc than an apidea.
I was going to bring apideas to a Bibba member's apiary to get mated but I had an e-mail ...

They're playing with me I tell you, I can hear them sniggering when I pack up to leave.

The brood half (national) of my artificial swarm has a nice, new laying queen. Very new, there was maybe half a frame of eggs when I took a look this afternoon to pilfer a couple of frames of stores for the new Nuc as I'd managed to scrounge a spare Nuc box. Opening up the difference in temperament was immediately noticeable, so while I was in there I thought I'd confirm that what I thought was ...

I think I've finally managed to get my basic assessment sorted out on the second attempt. The first attempt had to be abandoned when it turned out the colony we were inspecting had EFB! I'm glad I spotted a problem but had to be honest after the event and admit that if it were my own hive I probably wouldn't have called the bee inspector at that point. Fortunately my assessor is also an SBI so the problem was spotted immediately. It has made me re-think how I approach inspections and what I'm ...

There was a change of plans re. the grafting as our local BIBBA rep. advised against using a cell starter box and suggested something like the Ben Harden method of queen rearing instead.

This is less disruptive to the bees as it is a queenright method of rearing queens and doesn't involve setting up a roaring queenless starter box.

TT called for me on Thursday around 5 o clock and we headed up to the allotments where I keep my bees.
I have one huge colony on ...

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Well I wasn't planning on seeing Tim until tomorrow but he called me on the mobile today about 6.00 when I was up at my allotment. A friend of his who is a pest controller had been called out to a swarm in Derryvolgie Avenue which is just about the poshest address in Belfast. He didn't want to touch it so called Tim who then called me.
I gathered together the swarm gear, skep, sheets, etc and we headed off to BT9 which is the post code one aspires to in Belfast
The swarm was 25 feet ...