BBKA Forum

Keep having a Looksee Mark.. this is a nice place with nobody constantly trying to put your spirits down.

curly green finger's wrote: ↑

11 May 2020, 18:58

How's your spring going nigel?

Usual, some honey, some swarming, a couple of very aggressive colonies to sort out, plus lots of other strange things going on. Fairly normal for this time of year.
How's your season going?

Not to bad I'm on my third demaree.
Im using the third for breeding.. Using a Miller frame in the top box.
No honey as yet.
I've one colony with three supers though these are pure blacks.
I've had one Italian colony that needed splitting as they were on 11frames of solid brood nasty buggers these are the 6 frame nuc had a capped qc from one of my black colonys hopefully alls good with them.
I've found some decent Heather at last
The site is part of the wild life Trust no pesticides on any of the local smallholdings or the common.
I could go on nigel.

curly green finger's wrote: ↑

11 May 2020, 19:39

I could go on nigel.

Please do........the more posts the more vibrant this place becomes
Where are your "black bees" coming from?

Hi Curly

Welcome to the forum and yes, very interested in how you get on with your black bees. Sounds like they are doing well. What’s the temperament like?

My own stock nigel, I've been collecting stock from a few places last year.
Over wintered and now full colonys.
My first year for having ago at Queen rearing properly.
I've mongrels that are good tempered.
So Im also increasing this stock.

Patrick wrote: ↑

11 May 2020, 21:05

Hi Curly

Welcome to the forum and yes, very interested in how you get on with your black bees. Sounds like they are doing well. What’s the temperament like?

In comparison to my mongrels they are like pussy cats. They're very stable on the frame.
I've also buckfast/ Italians and there very aggressive hence me not trying to just requeen them. but I've nucs which will be united back to the parent colonys hopefully.

Made my two push in queen intro cages last night. Two new buckfast queens arrived today (with a fair few attendants).

Not the warmest day but I've thought my plan through so will make it as swift as possible.

Queenless nuc will get a queen. Not sure they're definitely queenless so need to make sure beforehand. Might have to filter the bees through a queen excluder into a new nuc to make sure this introduction is good.

Big colony with new virgin of unknown status will be donating frames of brood to a new nuc for the second queen. Will shake bees in from supers.

Japey Edge wrote: ↑

12 May 2020, 12:22

Big colony with new virgin of unknown status will be donating frames of brood to a new nuc for the second queen. Will shake bees in from supers.

Make sure not to shake the virgin queen if there is one, can be hard to spot VQ being smaller

Yeah good shout - really hoping she's not small enough to get through a QE. Would be typical for it to happen to me though