Have tried to requeen with a bought mated queen. This photo is last weeks inspection. Go to inspect today and can't see the marked queen. So thinking I missed a qc and I had two queens in the hive? And they disposed my marked one.
Is the bottom right a virgin queen?
UK
Need help identifying bees that have taken up residence in a wall at work.
Pest control think they're mason bees, but I'm not certain.
Every image search I've done comes back as honey bees.
Are they honey bees?
Hi all, I’ve seen a few bees coming in and out of a small hole in my house I don’t think there’s a full colony in there but are they on their way? Is it too drastic to remove the brick work to get to them. Iv wedge a stick and an empty frame on the outside will entice them on to it?
Question- are they gone?
Backstory
Friday 14:30 - swarm arrives and starts settling on the roof
Friday 15:00 - flying swarm seem depleted, but are still clustered on the roof. Look like they’re going in between the gaps of the tiles
Saturday 10:00 - Bee removal man comes to look. Several bees in the loft, but not a full colony. He says they must be building comb between the tiles and the membrane. He says we’ll need to pay around £600 for scaffolding and him £300 for removal and roof repair. I contacted him through the BBKUK and was hoping for a lower cost to be honest.
Saturday 12:00 - pan of soaked citronella cotton wool balls in the loft. Citronella snake smoking on top of a ladder into the loft hatch. Bees still coming and going from the roof tiles at this time. My idea was to discouraging them from settling before they establish.
Saturday 20:00 - observed around 15 bees dead on the windowsill of the roof where the loft hatch is 😭
Sunday 08:00 - the loft is absolutely silent. No buzzing at all. No bees coming or going from the roof outside.
The beekeeper man says we’ll need any comb that they managed to build to be removed.
Is there any chance the bees have just moved on? We will really struggle to shell out a thousand pounds right now.
Okay, so for better or worse, a swarm landed in the garden next to mine while I was installing a window, obviously in my excitement I stopped fitting the window so now I have an open hole in the wall of my garage. I quickly knocked together a dummy nuke out of some planks I had around and went and caught my first swarm.
I’ve left it underneath the tree for now. I found the queen and put her in a queen clip.
I’m gonna move it over to my garden this evening once I’m sure all the bees have come down from the tree as there were still a few buzzing around there after I caught them.
I’ve ordered a new hive that should be here in a couple of days which I’ll transfer me into. It was a relatively small swarm from what I’ve seen.
So I’m sure I’m in for telling off from somebody. So give me your criticism I’m ready.
I filmed a shorter video this week showing how I use checkerboarding as a bit of swarm management when a colony is getting very full.
This hive was absolutely packed... bees building up into the roof, very little spare room, and queen cups starting to appear. So rather than just adding space above and hoping for the best, I went through the brood boxes and tried to break up that “we’re running out of room” pressure.
The basic idea was to alternate fuller frames with emptier/drawn frames so the bees have space to work, rather than leaving the brood nest feeling congested.
A few things I was checking while doing it:
- whether they had eggs and brood
- how much space they actually had
- whether queen cups had eggs in
- how packed the brood boxes were
- whether checkerboarding was enough, or whether they were further along towards swarming
Short video here if anyone wants to see the actual frame layout and thought process
Curious how others use checkerboarding, do you find it works well for swarm management, or do you prefer going straight to splits once they’re this full?