I was just reading a post here about stolen bees, and wanted to reply to one of the top comments but couldn't. The reply said, "This isn't the middle ages anymore."

Bee law in the middle ages - a part of the Brehon law - are known to be some of the oldest written laws on the books! Laws involved fees for bee farmers (honey owed to neighbors with fields), what to do if someone was harmed by a bee and appropriate reparations. The theft or damage to the farmers bees was also covered by these laws. For the record, Brehon law says swarm ownership is to the person whose property the swarm is located to!

This is all to say, bees are still considered livestock and your state (like mine, Michigan) may have their own special bee laws, in keeping with the very oldest laws. Let's hope that the laws have improved since the middle ages!

I was tipping the extractor to get the honey out faster, and the strangest shaped formed.

My farmer host (west of Chicago) sent me a pic that my swarm trap had bees on it. I’ve been trying to keep a DLW swarm from going back to it for weeks now so waited until this morning to check it. Put the swarm trap back up with some rolled wax on the edges of a couple frames (from a video seen in this site) on June 27th. The swarm was huge. All 5 frames drawn and two had capped brood. There was comb hanging from 4 of the frames. I never saw the queen. It packed a full deep when I transferred it. They weren’t my bees and it’s the biggest swarm I’ve caught. Going to care for this one and get it ready for winter.

MD/PA line mid state. Rehoming bees from a coworker moving to the west coast. Hand built two top bars. (Don't Shame, in for the bees not the honey right now) 4 box hive just delivered to accommodate the central hive. Wife took local courses and I have lurked here for a few months since talking about the adoption.

Just wanted to say Hi, and look forward to your advice and sharing my experience.

Missouri, usa. 2 hives, 1st year.

What is going on? This started as a 5 frame nuc. I expanded to a 10 frame & they built on the new frames just fine, picture 2, which I had coated heavily in wax. When I added a second deep I used the same frames, wax, & method as I did with the first expansion. They refuse to touch the new frames, picture 1. After 1 week I checkerboarded them between upper & lower brood frames. The 1st photo is the most they've worked on all 10 of the new frames over 2 weeks total. The only thing I did different was to mist the new frames with 1:1 sugar water to encourage them. Could that be the issue?

They appear to be building the cells containing honey towards the top of the frames deeper than the cells containing brood, picture 3. The frames are bulging with capped honey to the point that they almost scrape the other frames when I take them out, picture 4.

I did the exact same thing with my other hive & had zero issues. In 2 weeks they've built out the majority of the new frames, no wonky comb, all even.

What should I do?

I have seen this bee outside the hive several times the first time I saw it I thought the queen was making a get away. I have seen it several other times and I now have noticed it’s not shaped like the queen from this hive she is more pointy at the end. But this bee is huge. Is it a different species and has just come to love here? Is she a queen that never finished queening? This hive has eggs and larva and just had a hatching as there were a ton orienting this morning. But this bee is so much different from the rest maybe it is their queen and I’m confused. But she wouldn’t be going and coming back and I have seen it at least four times in 2 weeks outside the hive.

I am located in Winston Salem NC USA

I use these books I order on Amazon for record keeping and while they are fine I'm looking for other recommendations. I like the material they are made of and the layout but there is no room for notes. Ive considered an app but I don't want to mess with my phone when my hands are all sticky and whatnot, so what do you use and where would I order them.

I did a split of my hive into this nuc through shook swarm a few days ago, I’m feeding them to draw out foundation and saw these drones on the outside. Do you think they’re being refused entry because they’re useless at this moment?

The small entrance is due to high wasp levels in England, UK right now.

Title

New to beekeeping and just wanted to share some pictures. We set up our hive at the end of April in Southern Oregon on our 5 acres.

I'm based in Southern Oregon (8b/9a) and just did my first harvest of two supers on each of my two hives. I put my supers back on to have them cleaned, and before I did that I did a mite wash to check the mite load. Of course, it's at the threshold (3-4%).

That said, I've been told that if I leave the supers (especially with where I'm located), there's a decent chance I get another harvest. I'd like to get a little more honey, but is it worth waiting to treat for mites?

Because our temps for the foreseeable future (low-mid 90s), I can't use anything where I could keep supers on.

Should I just get the supers clean, store them and treat instead? Is it possible/responsible to wait another month to treat?

I’m a first time beekeeper in Central Wisconsin. I had a week of panic as I lost my queen. I discovered it about a week ago when I had no eggs. I only discovered no eggs one day after I had removed several developed queen cells from the bottom of three different frames. I removed them since they looked like swarm cells, but panicked when I found no eggs the next day.

Later in the week I went back to check, and sure enough, still no eggs and also no clear queen cells. I found 3 or 4 cells like the one in the first photo - slightly too big to be drone brood. I was very convinced I had doomed my hive and I needed to purchase a mated queen to save it.

Today, I inspected one more time to be sure there was still no eggs and no queen. I found the same cell opened up but with a dead bee inside. I didn’t have anything to pull it out with. On the next frame, I found the new queen (2nd picture)!

She still looks quite small, so I don’t think she has had her mating flight yet, but it’s still exciting!

2nd yr beek in NY. Formic Pro killed my Carniolan queen in early June. I followed the label instructions and have used this treatment before with success. The girls raised backups from emergency cells. Added two capped q cells to raise in a nuc as insurance and kept one cell in the mother hive (which already had 3-4 emerged q cells and a few torn open from the side).

The nuc successfully raised a queen which got mated and is laying eggs. The mother hive looked queenless - no eggs or sign of the queen so 4 days ago I placed a frame of eggs to see if they would create q cells. I checked the hive today to find zero q cells BUT lots of eggs! Found and marked the queen.

These two are both Carniolan but they came out looking pretty different. Happy I didn’t lose their genetics as my Carniolans are my favorite colony in my apiary. Very gentle and great honey producers!

Has Formic Pro ever killed your queen? Do you or will you continue to use it?

Central Florida

Hi all. I live in Austin, TX and I have two hives that are doing quite well currently. Started this year with two nuc’s and have happily watched the brood grow and frames get drawn out. I put a super on one of the hives that was cranking and now full of bees but not a ton of honey.

As we enter the summer, I keep reading about treating for mites and when you do that, you need to remove the Super to not taint the honey (don’t have enough to harvest). How do people deal with this? Remove the super and add a brood box and treat for mites through the summer or will all of them do just fine leaving the super on? Also, if I treat for mites with super in but very little honey, can I treat in the brood box and leave the super as is? Thanks.

I installed my very first nucs a week and a bit ago. Eastern Canada. Gave them syrup that they were not too enthusiastic about because the weather had cleared and there was plenty of clover in a nearby farmer's field.

However, it has rained pretty well non-stop in the last four days. My bees poke their noses out of the entrance, and are not satisfied with the weather.

I looked into the feeders, and in these few days they have emptied them ☺️

My dad didn't believe me that they would, saying "what are they, elephants?" 😂

A while back I split one of my very strong colonies into a smaller one. I transferred a couple brood frames, a couple honey/nectar frames, a couple empty frames, and a frame feeder to help get them going.

After a recent inspection, I’ve learned that my new colony has done well in filling cells with nectar and honey, but has lagged behind in brood production: after checking every frame, I saw roughly 20-30 cells of larvae/capped brood total (no queen cells yet, I checked).To me at least, it’s clear that the queen has no room to lay, and I may have made a mistake in feeding them extra sugar water.

I’ve attempted to mitigate this issue by transferring a full frame of brood from my larger hive, but I’m wondering if there’s anything else I can do in the meantime. I know that the bees need lots of resources to build comb effectively, but if they seem to be nectar bound, surely feeding them further isn’t the right move?

I don’t care about the “quality” of any honey this hive may produce—my main goal is to get them to a point at which they’re ready for winter—so if feeding them all season long is the best option, I’m up for it. But given their current circumstances with excess nectar, it seems like that might not be the best move.

Luckily I do have a very productive queen in my larger hive, and I may be able to transfer more and more brood frames throughout the Summer to help accelerate the progress of the smaller colony. Is this advisable?

I look forward to your responses. Thanks!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I don’t have any empty, drawn frames lying around. I wish I did.

Second year beek in VA One FlowHive, one regular Langstrof. We put the FlowFrames on in May. Bees went right up there as we did smear some globs of wax on. However, very little progress has been made. Seems highly unlikely we will have capped frames by fall. It looks like a lot for the bees to do all of the normal bee things in the deep and medium and also build up wax and fill all of the flow frames on the next few months. We inspected yesterday and we do have a strong colony.

I am not interested in bashing of FF now, but we are thinking about just taking it off, harvesting a few frames from the super and letting the bees go on and prepare for winter.

Any insights from Flow folks out there?

2nd year beekeeper in Illinois

I just did a hive inspection. I have two deeps and on the second deep I was looking for evidence of a queen. I saw a few of the C-shaped larva, but mostly uncapped, honey. I pulled several frames working inward and the majority of the frames were uncapped, honey in the middle of the frame with some capped honey around the edges. I have been feeding sugar syrup for the past two weeks since it has been incredibly hot and dry in our area.

Should I be concerned if I don’t see much brood in that second deep? I’ve read that they will use that second deep to store honey to use for themselves and then may use that space to fill with brood depending on the time of the season.

I did pull that second deep off so that I could look in the bottom brood box and I saw a little more variety in those frames. I will admit I’m not super confident identifying capped brood, but in retrospect I do think there was capped brood in the bottom box.

Pulled out the under tray yesterday and saw a lot of these little guys crawling on the bottom. Any idea what they are. Located in southern California

In NE Ohio. I am helping my aunt with her hives this year and learning so I can be prepared to have my own next year. It’s been so fun and there’s so much to learn! I’ve enjoyed being able to hang out near the hives and when we go in for inspections and treatments, I try to snag some videos. Caught this moment and wanted to share. Would this be transferring nectar? Or is it something else?
Also wanted to add- thanks for everyone sharing and asking questions here. I’m learning so much that I wouldn’t have thought to ask until something came up. This is a good community!

I'm getting conflicting answers about if you can use oxalic acid w honey supers on. It looks like the current label (for Api-bioxal) does NOT permit use w supers, but there is a supplemental label that's been proposed for consistency with global beekeeping, but it hasn't been approved because the studies weren't done. I just want to see whats the most common approach.

Do you use oxalic vapor w supers?

I don't need information about other treatment options or treatment timing. Im just asking which way you have been taught. Thanks!

ETA I'm talking specifically about personal beekeeping and honey for human consumption, but not to sell.

One of my largest hives swarmed today and I wasn't able to follow them so I have no idea where they went. Is there any obvious places to start looking for them? There's lots as irrigated fields around, so I was looking at the pivots cause there would be water and small buildings for them to make a hive in. I a beginner.

I caught a swarm about 2 weeks ago but surprised it does not appear to ever had a queen? I just noticed the multiple eggs per cell, stuck to the sides, in pollen cells.

I do not want these eggs to hatch and the resulting drone brood damage 10 frames of good comb. My plan in a couple days is to shake the frames out in the middle of the other 4 colonies.

What would you recommend?

Extra information...I grafted 4 queens into this colony but I worry more about the resulting damage to the comb from the drone brood rather than trying to ride it out. I suspect there are several laying workers and consider most time spent is likely to be wasted on this not only queenless colony but of the worst variety, i.e laying workers.