Neils

Well, I think my Nuc has gone from virgin queen to swarmed in about 6 days.

I will admit to placing a test frame in it last thursday, I'm also absolutely adamant that this frame had no queen cells on it as it came out of the 14x12 and was on standby in case the 14x12 was showing signs of trying to swarm again so I could get the queen out into another Nuc (my Nucs are standard National at the moment) so it'd already been checked once to ensure it had no queen cells on it and I checked ...

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 ...

Well the Basic Assessment started and then we had to stop for reasons outside our control.

Just being on another apiary was useful, that's pretty much doubled the number of hives I've seen now and seeing how other people deal with their hives is always interesting. I do think I was perhaps a little hasty removing queen cells when I did the AS, going to two teaching apiaries and watching queens going back and forth and being swapped around has made me think that mayde I should have ...

It would appear that I'm now the new education.... something (secretary? Member? Lord of the universe of) for our association. Education is my "thing" at the moment, I'm still a new beekeeper and the lack of access to our association for people like me has been a big part of why I'm now doing what I am. I now have another problem; what do I do for people who are several years down the line from where I am?

If I have any useful advice to dish out at this point it's that ...