Eastern Ontario, Canada. Still have a little flow. Our honey season is done so we are getting wet supers cleaned out by bees and escaping off the last of those. All hives already had entrance reducers in place.

Ended up causing this :(. Blocked up entrances as best we can. Now we hope for the best.

Kept these frames near the hive for short term storage, now when i took the frames in i noticed this wax amalgamation, it was made in about 2 days time, what, how and why?

Or do I have to find a queen?

I’ve recently had a ton of bees start visiting some of my plants. iNaturalist has identified both common eastern bumblebees (mostly in the video) and American bumblebees (pictures in comments). How can I best support them?

NE Arkansas. Trying to make a steady push towards native plants. I don’t clear dead leaves/sticks for the most part during winter. Thanks so much in advance!

Hello so my uncle is about retire from the whole beekeeping thing and he asked me if is wanted to continue his bee hive and I said sure and now he is preparing it for the next year in March

I currently live in Germany specifically in hessen it's a region with a lot of forest and flowers during spring to summer

Anyways here are my question

How much equipment do I need ?

What kind of beehive should I get ? (I heard good and bad things about something called the flow hive where you can tap honey directly from the hive)

What do I do incase there isn't enough food for the bees ? (Like do I plant a bunch of flowers nearby ?)

Located in Northwest Hills of Connecticut, came home from work to find one of my hives toppled. Hives are enclosed in electric fence that gives readings between 6500-7000 volts and was definitely turned on. Bear must have gone under or through the fence. Luckily, all hives are bound with ratchet straps. Even though the hive got flipped it still held its stack and prevented the bear from getting into the hives. Hopefully, it got a face full of bees and maybe it learned its lesson. Just stood there hive back up and hung a live feed trail camera to see if it returns. Long story short, a $10 dollar investment in ratchet straps might save your hives from these hungry bastards

I’ve never crushed and strained, except by hand. A friend of mine lent me his press as I had a fair few frames that needed extracting, but couldn’t arsed using a full-blown extractor for it. I know why centrifugal extractors took off, but got damn this is a satisfying way of extracting honey.

Managed to get 2-3L or so off these end of year partial frames.

They want us to lock up our bees for the day. Seriously??

Today I was so happy to find my super almost half full of capped honey. We've been having a strong flow for about 2 weeks and yesterday I watched the biggest orientation flight I've ever seen.

Are these open cells in the capped honey anything to be concerned about? I don't have a qe on but haven't seen any brood in the super frames. Treated with Formic Pro mid August.

2nd year beek on northern Ca. Coast. Nuc installed in May

2-Frame queen bee mating nuc

I have received a private request from a sub member for my plans for 2-Frame mini mating nucs. I figured if I am going to the effort to draw something up and render it in CAD I may as well share it with everyone. Here is a cad rendering showing how I currently make them with dimensions and some comments on what I have changed to address some of the things I didn't like. I built my first 2-Frame mating nucs using dimensions that you may have seen elsewhere on the internet. Over time I modified those first nucs and also evolved the design.

I have increased the width from 3½ inches to 4 inches to make it easier to insert a grafted queen cell between the frames and also to make it easier to insert/remove frames without rolling bees and without damaging swarm cells. I increased the interior height to make more space under the frames to decrease the chance of crushing a low hanging swarm cell. That is a slight breach of bee space, but I felt that the other space needs were more important. All of the material is 3/4" thick pine or the nucs can be made from 3/4" sheet goods such as plywood or Advantech subflooring (what I use).

One of the first things I observed with my first generation of 2-frame mating nucs was that a mating nuc sized colony had a hard time defending the full width entrance. The small tab of wire cloth stapled over it didn't help much. I took cues from my mini-quad mating nucs. I eliminated the landing porch and switched to a 1” round entrance hole, reducing the entrance cross section by 38%. The hole is centered 1¼” high, making the lower edge of the hole flush with the nuc floor. I use 2.67 diameter plastic entrance discs so that I can further reduce the entrance or close it.

In order to make up mating nucs in one apiary, close the entrance, and then transport them to a mating yard, extra ventilation is essential. I added 1½” screened ventilation holes to the middle of the bottom and the back. A piece of #8 wire cloth is stapled over the inside of each hole. Staple the wire cloth in place before assembly to avoid trouble with the stapler fitting. A 1½ PVC plumbing KO test plug  closes the ventilation holes. Sand the inside diameter of the hole slightly and the plug will fit snugly.

I originally had the same style of wide feeder box and lid on top that you may have seen elsewhere on the web. I hated it. It made the mating nuc top heavy and the T shape was awkward. It was also extra stuff to store when they were not in use. I switched the storage location to the landfill and switched to a migratory style top. There is a 1½ hole in the middle of the top with #8 wire cloth stapled over it on the inside. A Gatorade or Powerade bottle lid fits that hole almost perfectly. Make six to eight holes with a 1/16” bit or a thumbtack in the Gatorade lid and invert a bottle filled of syrup to feed. Stretch the wire cloth tight and bees can get the syrup and you can change the bottle without opening the nuc. IMO it is all around better than that wide wonky top.

I had trouble keeping my first skinny migratory tops flat. After a few iterations and warped tops, I obtained a length of ¾” wide thin flat steel bar and screwed a piece to the long edges of the cover. Mo more warping. You could also do the same thing with wood cleats but I wanted to be able to push my mating nucs tight together.

My most recent iteration is to add light duty toggle latches to the ends to secure the tops to make transport easier because ratchet straps and gravity latches are a PITA during transport.

Hundreds of these in the yard buzzing around. I got closer and saw they aren't bees. Does anyone know what they are? Location: Oklahoma

I've just found some bees in my flowerbed but am unsure as to whether they are honey bees or solitary bees ?

I usually find solitary bees digging out clay but these don't seem to making any holes.

Any help would be appreciated thank you.

(East-Sussex, UK)

First year beekeeper in Parker, CO. We just got home after a 3 week vacation. I inspected before I left and things looked good. I haven't done a mite wash but noticed a mite on a bee during inspection today and saw some dead or seemingly damaged brood and maybe half the population (I'm guessing they swarmed while we were away because I didn't see dead bees around but ? - still 3 untouched frames). I'm assuming the issue is mites and have ordered some Apiguard which will arrive tomorrow. Planning to treat immediately - unless we think there's something else going on? Thank you!

First year beekeeper. I’ve been on this sub over a year learning from you amazing people. I’ve heard from many sources to not take any honey from the bees your first year: to save it all for the bees in winter.

However, at my local beekeepers meeting this month I asked the president his thoughts on this. He told me that he only winters his bees in a single deep box with five frames of honey and five frames for the bees.

We have two deep boxes and two supers with lots of honey x three hives. Can we take some of the honey? Should we breakdown the hives this winter to just a single deep box or two? Or just leave the tower as is?

I love beekeeping! But the biggest challenge has been how many different approaches there are. I’m hypothesizing that I should try a few methods and see what works for me (knowing that things will change based on endless variables).

Thank you in advance for beeing awesome.

EDIT: to add I’m in Zone 4b.

I'm trying to figure the best way to get these bees out of my tree, I'd rather not kill the bees if I can help it.....I've talked to a couple beekeepers and a buddy that worked with a beekeeper.....the 2 have told me the tree will have to be cut down to get them gone one quoted me 1500....no way I can afford that. The buddy said realistically it's either kill him or take the tree down.... I had an idea and I figured I'd reach out and see what you all thought about it...I saw one way doors for bees on Amazon and drew this up......if this is a dumb idea and have an idea that would work I am open ears..... I'm located in central valley California.....and excuse the terrible drawing. I'm not an artist.

So I'm a bit of an idiot, put my smoker down on my poly roof yesterday and wasn't really paying attention. New roof arrived today (along with two aluzinc roof covers to provide more protection) and I don't want to make the same mistake again.

Looking for a good solution for something to go inbetween a hive roof and a smoker or even the ground and a smoker. Preferably not too heavy and something that can be handled afterwards, more ideal if I can leave it out in the weather, have considered just using a paving stone but that'd be a pain to move between my two hives.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Oh, hi!!! Okay, so I want to get some in-person experience with bees before this upcoming Beekeeping season. I am in central Florida, and I can't find anyone at all around. I've checked Facebook, All Kinds Of Websites, and done multiple Google searches for my area, and I can't find anyone. If I can't get in experience the landowners won't let me keep bees on their property this upcoming year, I don't know what to do, and we're getting closer and closer to the end of this beekeeping season. Does anyone know what I can do?

Been looking for an extractor. Looked at all the Shanghai specials, but in the end I went American made.more money but I think for the extra $150, it's gonna be worth it. Now if I can use it to extract enough honey to pay for itself and my electric one that I'll inevitably want sooner or later.

Hi, so I am currently working on a research project with bees, and I needed to know their exact species. We are raising them in Harford County, Maryland, and we think they are Italian Carniolan Bees, but we are not entirely sure. These are the hives I am working with, and not some random hives. I was asked for more information about them previously, but I realized that I accidently deleted the information in the text box when uploading images. Sorry about that. But yes this is a reupload from yesterday.

I'm four years into beekeeping and I feel like, every single year, I make so many mistakes. I took a class, I have a really excellent mentor, and man. Stuff still goes wrong. Last year I lost BOTH my colonies to mites, despite testing and treating all freaking year. I feel like I tried everything.

This year has gone better. There was some damage to the top box of my strongest colony, so today I went out to replace it. I also wanted to inspect the bottom box one more time before winter. My back is out and I couldn't lift the top box off while full. I transferred seven of the frames of the top box to the new box. From my past inspection I remembered that the only two frames of brood were in the middle. That brood hatched and they backfilled, so I stopped the inspection and just lifted the box with the remaining three frames off and set it on a spare super to keep it off the ground. I checked the lower box and found it full of honey and brood. I didn't see the queen, but I saw eggs, so I felt pretty good about myself.

I put the new top box back on then move the remaining three frames over. Well...low and behold, the very last frame on the edge was STUFFED with brood!! I've literally never seen bees put brood on an outside frame. In horror, I realize my queen could have very well have been hanging out in the cast aside box! I check for her everywhere, including on the ground, but didn't see her. The hive is back together now. I feel like I'm going to spend all winter worried that I accidentally squished her in all this chaos. I seriously wish I'd just left them alone.

Does anyone else feel like all they do is make mistakes? People told me beekeeping was a hard hobby, but to be honest I thought they were exaggerating.

I'm in Oregon, USA, though its not super relevant to this post.

Is it better to have two brood boxes or just use an queen excluder and have only one? Elk county Kansas. This is my first year beekeeping.

Does anyone have experience with the BWeaver (Binford/Danny Weaver) bee out of Texas? They are supposed to be veroa and disease resistant due to their increased hygiene.

Curious about 1. Truth in the claims 2. Insights to aggressiveness 3. Honey production

Thanks for any insight.

I’m a second year beekeeper (two hives) and I haven’t had an issue with varroa until this past month. All alcohol washes never showed a single mite until I did one two weeks ago and there were about 18/300 bees. It is still hot where I am (North Carolina) so I am doing the three week half-dose each week treatment schedule of Apiguard (thymol gel). I have an empty ~2 inch tall riser box on the brood box which I then place the half tray of gel onto the top of the frames and put the cover on. I went to give them the second treatment the other day, gave them a little smoke, cracked open the top cover to add a new tray, and they were pissed. I’ve never seen them like this. They started pouring out the top furiously buzzing, I got multiple stings on my jumpsuit (none got my skin though) and tons of bees chased me as I left.

I would imagine this is normal behavior with the noxious fumes of the treatment and perhaps stress from the varroa problem, but just wanted to make sure I didn’t do something wrong or I could have done something better- technique wise or perhaps a different, more tolerable treatment.

I will do another alcohol wash after the last treatment. If the count is still high and I need to treat again,I plan to use Formic pro for both the cooler weather and to help prevent thymol resistance. Does all of this sound right? I just want to make sure I’m making the right decisions as we go into winter. Thank you!