Third year west of Chicago 14 colonies. It’s been hot and dry this past week with very heavy bearding. Last inspection was three weeks ago with no queen cells. Just finished an OAV treatment based on a very high (20) might count on another hive in the apiary. Solid bottom board inner cover notched with telescoping cover set to ventilate. I decided to put another deep between the two deeps and two medium supers. Today’s bearding is much better but listening to the box it sounds like they are chewing Doritos at a frat kegger. It’s a new sound for me. Any idea what they might be doing? This hive is very aggressive and I’m not keen on opening it up in the heat.

Did people used to keep bees inside their home in cold climates? I just visited Fort Bridger in Wyoming, (it’s a historic site that has a fort and several homes, and a trading post from the 1800s). I took this photo in one of the officer’s homes. This was just a small room upstairs, across the hall from a children’s room. It had a hive, an antique smoker, and a bunch of bright yellow taxidermy bees, all of it right next to a window.

So my question is would this have been normal thing to do? Keep the bees inside the house?

I live in Houston and purchased a a smallish-medium sized nuc of bees last week. I put them in a 10 frame along with an in hive frame feeder. They used half the syrup this week and are drawing the bare frames out nice.

But I found 5 swarm cells toward the bottom and 2 uncharged cups. The queen also laid a ton of brood.

Does it look like they are getting ready to leave? I dont get it, there's plenty of room in there. I can add a super I suppose. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

I think the colony is too small to split. Thanks

I watch this guy livestream first responders in the Bakersfield, CA area all the time, yet he's also a beehive remover! Check out today's live stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTYk6fYS9iU

His channel is @BakersfieldLive on YouTube 👍😉🐝🍯🐻👍

Location: Eastern NC, USA

I killed this hornet near my bees hives. I've killed other hornets before and have never seen this type. Just want to make sure it's not the invasive one

New York, NY. Urban beek 1st year.

We accidentally killed our queen in the nuc we bought. They couldn’t requeen. We had put a test frame with open brood and it was clear the queen was gone/dead but we left the queen supercedure cells there. We combined with our weaker split using the newspaper method and the queen was killed.

I assume leaving the queen cells was the error. I thought I wouldn’t have an issue provided I destroyed them before emerging. Clearly I was wrong.

Can someone confirm my error? The bees were otherwise behaving appropriately.

Thx

Northern New England. Third year, 5 hives. I have a hive (2 deep langstroth) that swarmed early in the season. It came through last winter going gangbusters. It swarmed in June and successfully requeened itself. It seemed to be recovering well with both boxes full of bees and brood BIAS. 0/300 mites all season. There was little to no honey in the supers, as you might expect for a hive that had swarmed. The supers were drawn, but they were pokey in the honey department. I had peaked into the super several weeks ago but didn't go into the brood boxes or screw around with the queen excluder. Fast forward to two weeks ago when we were pulling supers off the other hives to extract. I was shocked to find this hive had a super full of gorgeous brood. I don't know how our highness got past the QE but apparently she did. I could not find the queen so I decided to take off the QE, let the brood hatch out, and hope she finds her way down into the lower boxes.

I went into the super yesterday and found three or four charged supersedure cells on the frames of brood that have not hatched out yet. There is little to no brood in the two lower boxes. It seems really late in the season for a queen to get mated and get busy laying for winter....My drones are already starting to get the ol' heave ho, and I have just started feeding my other hives.

What would you do with this hive? Combine it with another even though I couldn't find the queen? Can I do that while feeding? Say a little prayer and hope for the best? Something else? And advice would be gratefully received! Thanks!

Hello all,

Mid Tennessee zone 7B. Not a new beekeeper but rusty, this is my first season back after many years off.

Ordered a mated Italian queen overnight from Mann Lake. UPS got her here quick, but sadly, we've been in an extreme heat advisory over the last 48 hours (Temps upward of 105F during the day), and all three attendant bees are dead on arrival, queen is alive and moving but not happy.

I've offered a sugar syrup droplet on the cage floor, and plan to replenish that every couple hours as needed and keep her in the garage at least until around 9-10pm when temps drop down to the low 80s.. Planning to do a night install, if possible, as I don't want to risk her overnight getting left to fend for herself with no attendants.

Hive she's going into is a single deep, recently queen less, had OA vape treatment 72 hours ago, small but functional population, entrance reduced, screen bottom board, will have a sugar water feeder added once she's installed as this hive has struggled all summer.

Questions:

1. Any concerns installing with no attendants alive or leaving her by herself for now?
2. Night install in these conditions, anything specific to watch for or do?
3. Anything else I should do before installing to give her best shot?

Thanks for any guidance!

The time has come to finally make this purchase but I'm stuck and can't decide between the ProVap or the InstantVap (Lorabee).

Please help! I need to get this done and I'm paralyzed with indecision b/c it's a big purchase.

Also we have several hives with the type of landing board that has the big angled front. Do you foresee any issues using either of the vaporizers with this kind of set up?

Thank you!
NJ 7A

Hello, I need some community advice here from the pros. First off, it’s my second year in the Midwest region. I’ve got a total of four hives all kicking butt.

Each hive has three deeps plus a super on top. I’m wondering for harvesting what I can feasibly take from them and have them still rocking for winter.

Each hive had a top deep back packed full but each one’s super above that (all drawn comb) with kinda eh, only a few capped frames.

I’d like to steal the third full deep from each, leave them two deeps and a super, and start fall feeding.

Does that sound reasonable? That they’d have enough time yet to top off before winter?

Nesta manhã, 03/09, roubaram meu apiário, levaram 3 colmeias e uma melgueira, deixaram 3 caixas ninhos vazias no local. Estou triste, pois estou começando agora e tava chegando na primeira produção de mel.

Bees have invaded my hummingbird feeders and clean up the grape jelly after the orioles in their feeder. Flowers have all died off as did the flowers for our fruit trees. Seems like the bees have had a hard year, so I'm considering leaving the hummingbird and oriole feeders up after they migrate so the bees have at least something to help them through the winter. Would that be feasible?

My city (Charleston, WV) allows beekeeping, up to six hives based on my property size, I plan to start with two. My planned hive area is within 50 ft of my property line. The 'best management practices' provided by WV is to have a barrier that forces their flight above 6 feet. I also want to keep them physically separated from neighborhood children.

Right now I'm leaning towards a 6ft tall dog kennel with a privacy screen, but that's looking close to another $750.

How are you guys keeping your hives in residential areas?

​

I'm moving to a property next month that has 2 hives that the previous owner will be leaving for us. Im brand new to keeping bees but committed and excited.

Are there any YouTube videos/channels y'all recommend or books?

Anyone else in the Coos County OR area?

I’ve watched videos, read articles, and gone through forum threads, and it seems everyone makes creamed honey a little differently. Some batches are actually whipped, even though they’re labeled as creamed. I made my first batch using the Dyce method. I can whip honey all day long and get a bright white color, but my creamed honey doesn’t turn out that way. My question is: how do you get creamed honey to look more white? Texas Zone 8b.

my location is ohio. im usually a night person and i often go outside to check on my fish or rabbit. last night i fell asleep early and went outside around 6am and bees were swarming my back porch light. i ran in the house thinking thats odd maybe there is a nest under the vinyl of that light. so i got a flashlight and went out my front door to the back again and bees were all over that light in middle of house, and another light far right of my house. and also on all kitchen windows since light was coming out of those (i have 4 windows in a row then a high up window, it was custom made yrs ago for the kitchen). they also started coming at my flashlight even though i was far

im wondering why is this happening today? i am in and out that door all through the day and havent notticed bee activity. i did read they can be confused and go to light, but i havent noticed a hive. this week we did get a 90 degree heat wave so is that something to do with it or do i have a giant hidden nest along my entire house lol. i also did notice last week that along my driveway there is a wall of rocks and i had a bumble bee nest that was really active its like they were insane going in an out. but bumble bees usually dont attack so i just left them alone. these on my house i think are yellowjackets which are more concerning. are they hostile and coming out in groups like this because its almost october? i had also came home at midnight 2 days ago and didnt see activity like this. i dont know what to do if this is going to stop or what. im pretty sure i would of noticed this if it was a nest.

It wont let me add a vid so i took a quick pic of what the setup looks like although u cant see the bees in it

2nd year in Western Washington. I noticed when I went in for mite treatment last week there were a lot of yellow jackets hanging around. Noticed early this morning what looked like live bees being dragged out of the hive! I put the entrance reducer partially back since it's cool today and put a trap out near my hives. Is the trap a good idea or is this just going to lure more to the scene? Anything else I can do?

NW Iowa, second year bee keeper

I began the day checking hives after Formic Pro treatment had ended, first hive went well. I then went to the further hive and found a bounty of mess.

My hive had made countless supercedure queen cells. I destroyed the worst looking and left the better (about 3) I then found 8ish queens in the hive and I marked them all. Hoping this hive can strengthen up before winter but I don’t have high hopes. May have to combine with my original hive. (Is that best course of action?)

I then go to cleanup and find this swarm in the mulberry tree next to my hives, shook them into the nuc box but could not find a queen inside before it got dark out. What is the best course of action for a hive swarm in friggin September???

Doing the first extraction of the year (Queensland, Australia) and have found that my bees have been storing varroa mites in the capped honey cells.
Anyone else seen this?

Edit:
I did see the brood, no I did not take any honey from the frame.
The question was about the mites in the cells… 🤦‍♂️

Location: Central Jersey

Hi all, I wanted to post this in case others might experience something similar.

Two days ago I posted about a possible “wax moth” infestation on a live hive. I messed that up, it was a hive beetle infestation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Beekeeping/s/Hmf1nAgNUk

The whole hive ended up as a total loss. Every frame covered with beetle slime, larvae everywhere, and interestingly, very few bees. Because I don’t have freezer space, I just put them in contractor bags to roast in the sun and hopefully suffocate, then I’ll salvage what I can as the equipment was already pretty ruined. The main goal is to quarantine the SHB from my other two hives.

Here are my notes:

June 28: 2D/3S, 80% bee coverage in bottom 2, 70% in 3, 60% in 4, 40% in 5. 3rd mostly capped, other two partially filled. Brood in all stages, eggs, >1% mite, no queen sited.

July 8: 2D/2S. 95% bee coverage in bottom 2, 90% in 3, 70% in 4, 50% in 5. 3rd removed for extraction, other 2S are partially filled but not capped. Brood in all stages, eggs, no queen sited, no mite check.

July 23: 2D/2S. 95% coverage in bottom 3, 80% in 4. Brood in all stages, Eggs, >1% mites, no queen spotted. 2S are mostly filled but not capped.

August 8: 2D/2S. 95% coverage in bottom 3, 90% in 4. Brood in all stages, eggs, 8.6% mites(!), no queen spotted. 2S are almost completely filled with some capped in 3rd. Needs treatment, but will be out of state.

August 19: 2D/1S 95% coverage on all frames. One super removed for harvest, other left for FP treatment requirements. Did not inspect individual frames. Was out of state for several days

August 31: Noticed lots of junk at hive entrance. Scrapped said junk and posted on Reddit. Was scared about replies. Did not have time for full inspection.

September 2: Full hive inspection. Total loss. Very few bees, SHB everywhere, larvae covered bottom board. Contained in trash bags for future cleaning, avoided scrapping or dropping SHB on ground.

***

So, my guess is that the bees got into something late July that raised their mite count, or I didn’t get an accurate mite count in July, so they were stressed from mites in August.

Then, within a few days of when I applied FP, along with condensing down one super, the bees must have absconded quickly and I wasn’t around to check the entrance for activity to notice.

Shortly after bees absconded, the SHB boomed with free range of all three boxes with lots of resources for up to 13 days.

I hope this account can help others see some signs when things don’t look good, or to know that stuff can change so fast. If I was able to be around to see entrance activity in August I probably would have caught on much earlier, but oh well. I got them through one winter, and I learned a lot along the way. The other two hives are doing great, though, so hopefully they make it through winter and I can split them in the spring.

I heard about "mad" honey long ago; honey harvested by Himalayan bees that gather nectar from the blossoms of the 100' tall rhododendron trees that grow there. As this article, from the newsletter The Conversation, explains when small amounts are ingested by humans the toxins in the honey can produce a mild high or a deadly loss of blood pressure.

This mad honey is now being exported out of Nepal to Asia and the West without an understanding of its halucinigenic properties and danger to the health of humans. Interesting also is that the bee producing this mad honey, Apis Laboriosa Smith (grows to 1.2"/3cm), has no ill effects from the concentrated neurotoxins in the nector or honey. Link;

https://theconversation.com/mad-honey-that-can-stop-your-heart-is-now-being-sold-online-worldwide-290090?utm_medium=article_native_share&utm_source=theconversation.com

So our recycling bin has been taken over with bees. Everything that people have been telling me seems like it will hurt them or kill them, which I don’t want to do. I am very allergic to them and will feel bad if the garbage men get stung. How do I get these guys to move on without hurting them?

Wrapping up my first season of Beekeeping... i have learned alot and will do better next year... I am down to 2 hives in northern CA but the bee company that put 100 hives on property line that immediately attacked and robbed two of my hives is going to give me 3 new NUCs to re-establish my apiary to 5 hives. These will be single deeps that i will start feeding immediately. So i am wondering if i can pull my supers off my two remaining double deep 2 super hives and just start feeding sugar water for a few months along with pollen patties will the hives do well through winter and be ready to go in the spring?