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Time for an update. The four at the heather came back heavy, and provided three full supers of cut comb honey. Yum yum. And many thanks to my helper, couldn't have done the heavy lifting without you. They have had Apiguard, one round only, which I hope will hold any Varroa problem at bay until the December oxalic treatment. The other three stayed put in the orchard and endured a wet August and most of September, and one of them went totally broodless for a while. However feeding has wakened ...

There are four supers sat, bee tight in the back room waiting for me to get around to extract them over the next couple of days. The Mrs had the back door open to put some washing out and noticed a lone been inside when she got back, having shooed the thing outside, the penny dropped and a quick run round the house shutting all the windows commenced. Sure enough within half an hour or so there was a big cloud of bees at the back door trying to get and nick my honey. Close call,but cookie for 'er ...

Browse the BBC Highlands and Islands news page from time to time and came across an article about AFB in Inverness, for those interested.[ It is dated yesterday .

I have a big colony at the bottom of the garden which was on double brood and 4 supers at one point over the summer. The top brood box was almost completely full of capped honey with just a couple of small patches of brood at the bottom of 3 of the centre frames. I extracted the supers a couple of weeks ago and decided to remove the top brood box with the honey before starting Apiguard treatment. On the spur of the moment I decided to make up a nuc with the 3 frames which had a little brood. I added ...

I thought I'd move it here, but without further ado.

1. The best laid plans...
   It's well and good making lots of grand plans in advance but sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
   This year I was going to expand up to 6 hives, have more honey than I knew what to do with and maybe experiment with queen rearing so I ordered loads of kit well in advance. 3 new complete hives, 10 more supers, frames and all the other bits and bobs I thought I'd need.
   
   

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