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British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Under supering rapeseed honey alternative to harvesting

  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #5699  by NigelP
 08 Feb 2020, 21:02
Been doing air freshener unites for many years.without one vet going wrong....yet strangely when it's a really expensive queen (in nuc) unite to hive I always default to newspaper. Illogical...i know.
 #5702  by Chrisbarlow
 09 Feb 2020, 08:18
Patrick wrote:
08 Feb 2020, 22:58
And sensible.

Never tried the air freshener idea. Is it a particular brand or do several work?
Im a Morrison's lavender Beekeeper myself :D
 #5705  by NigelP
 09 Feb 2020, 16:09
Patrick wrote:
08 Feb 2020, 22:58
And sensible.

Never tried the air freshener idea. Is it a particular brand or do several work?
They all seem to work.
It's quick and fast, just liberally spray the top of the bottom box and the bottom of what will be the top box. Stick together and job done. Never had a failure or fighting to date....Not say there won't be a first time, but it's my go to method. Depending on what you are uniting it stops you needing to check for queen cells in the half of the unite that was queenless.
 #5738  by Justabeekeeper
 18 Feb 2020, 00:44
Osr honey isn't a problem for the bees. Nothing sets as hard or as fast as Ivy honey which they have dealt with for many thousands of years as their winter stores.

I don't like the idea of spraying air freshners into hives regardless if it works or not.
The hives produce food for human consumption, you wouldn't buy cheese sprayed with air freshner would you !
 #5742  by NigelP
 18 Feb 2020, 09:06
Justabeekeeper wrote:
18 Feb 2020, 00:44

I don't like the idea of spraying air freshners into hives regardless if it works or not.
The hives produce food for human consumption, you wouldn't buy cheese sprayed with air freshner would you !
Yet you are happy to smoke your bees around every 7 days in the summer????
Look at what I said I was doing, it's a unite of 2 colonies, no supers involved.
Smoked cheese is fine :)
 #5743  by AdamD
 18 Feb 2020, 11:20
I do wonder what 'stuff' gets into a hive when we smoke the bees. If we are, say, using shredded cardboard and there's some plastic labels that were stuck to the cardboard and get burned as well, is that very good for us when we puff it over food?
In reality, a few puffs across the top bars of a brood box is not the same as kippering uncapped honey. We can leave that to youtubers! :lol: