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My learning curve hasn't flattened out yet! Here was yesterday's experience. The Perth and District BA persuaded me to offer a couple of hours of my time as one of the items in their early spring auction. Steve, the winner, arrived at 1pm at my main apiary yesterday.

OK, a cast hanging in a tree as I arrived. It happens, especially as my visits have been hurried and slightly less than weekly in the main. Later we found an opened Q cell as well as a sealed Q cell in a split ...

The queen was disgruntled. Very disgruntled. “Do you really expect me to lay my lovely eggs in this?”, she grumbled. The housebees, like teenagers who'd not quite tidied their rooms to the required standard, replied somewhat grumpily, “We did our best, ma'am.”
“Well, it's not good enough. You'll have to use this one for stores or something.” Queenie flounced off to find a better frame. Hearing the somewhat mutinous, though muted, mutterings from that part of the hive, Mitzzi went to investigate. ...

I am new to beekeeping (2nd yr) (1 hive in good order, 1x NUC didn't survive winter).

I have been watching the BBC 4 Beekeeping prog (good prog) and noted that Martha Carney's WBC hive had a 1x Super with clearer board and porter bee holes open (no Porter Bee escapes in place in the normal seasonal use). She explained the use of the Porter Bee etc; but I noted that the bees have access above the super into the roof space etc; on mine I have gaffer taped the holes prior to use of ...

I ordered 9 cases of 18 Apideas from Swienty.
Not all for me but I do intend to hang on to at least 60.
The rest of them are going to local queen rearing groups.
Carriage from Denmark is 172 Euro so the order needs to be large to be cost effective but they are working out at under £18 each including the carriage and the cut the credit card company takes on the exchange rate.
In a decent season you should average over 2 queens per Apidea so it is an investment which should ...

Checked a colony on Friday which had a queen and brood 3 weeks ago.
All it had was a few capped cells on one frame and on opening a few they had chalk brood mummies inside.
The colony was really calm and had a single opened supersedure cell.
I thought maybe the queen had had a mishap the last time I opened it but if this were the case there would have been multiple emergency queen cells.
I could not find a virgin but the colony was very calm so I suspected there must ...