Queenright queen rearing using the ‘Ben Harden system’ is an ideal way to produce queens without the need for huge cell raising colonies, or compromising honey production. A ‘little and often’ approach helps mitigate adverse conditions, and mistakes made when learning. Try it!
A beeswax Jenter system
Here’s something that caught my eye last week … a Jenter-like system made entirely from beeswax that avoids the need to graft day-old larvae. The authors report it produces larger queen cells, and bigger, more ‘queen-like’ queens, than larvae grafted from the same source. Tempting, very tempting 😄. The majority…
Good, better, best … swarm control
In Swarm-ready? last week, I made the comment that it was “baloney” when the naysayers claimed that swarm control was detrimental to the colony because it was ‘unnatural’. I knew when I made the comment that it wasn’t entirely true. Since this is beekeeping, every statement needs to be qualified.…
Here’s something I made earlier
I’m aware that beekeepers in the south of England are already wrangling swarms and starting their queen rearing. However, up here in the Scottish Borders, the season starts at a more sedate pace. As the spring warms up, there’s a period when it’s still too cold to open hives, but…
Spring medley
We’re still in that ‘frame-building’ part of the season I referred to last week. A bit too cold to open the hives for long, but still very pleasant to be outside working in the sunshine. I have opened my hives, but as the afternoon cooled the foragers returned en masse…
Swarm-ready?
Well, are you? It seemed that no sooner than I’d pressed the ‘Submit’ button on the post last week, that regular reader Frazer commented that there were already swarm cells in Kent. By the end of the month there were reports of swarms lost in Hampshire. By the time this…