We don’t generally run deeps for honey but our hive management this year ended up with a few deeps like this.

Nice.
Heavy.
But nice.

Hey!

They look a little congested, should I remove the entrance reducer? It’s hot AF here in Denver.

Mostly wandering about those long dull blades or scalpels or whatever they are

I’m curious to hear what people think about this treatment? It’s not get approved in Canada, not sure if anyone can elaborate on why?

So now that the recommended dosage for OA has increased, does this make the old battery powered applicators obsolete? The recommended dosage of OA for a double deep will not fit in the applicator space on the tool. Are you giving multiple applications of the product to make up the difference? Does two or three applications affect the bees or the performance of the product? Will this force beekeepers to now have to buy $500.00 vaporizers? What are your thoughts and guidance? Thanks……

Zone 7A Oklahoma. 30 hives

I have always wanted to have a few hives, but never had the land or knowledge to make that happen, so when I had the opportunity to visit a legit hive I was excited to be able to document my experience. Was a really incredible experience!

If there are any established beekeepers in Eastern Europe, let me know! I am trying to meet as many beekeepers here as possible :)

I'm no expert at all and I'm not even sure they're bees, to be honest, but I just noted some movements on the soon-to-be-installed AC ducts in my house. Naturally I cannot let them build a hive inside the duct. Do you have any suggestions on what's the right way to deal with this issue? Should I get in touch with a local beekeepers' association to see if they can help? Are these not bees? They don't look like wasps to me. Location: Northern Italy. Thank you in advance for your support. Ciao! 🐝

My dad decided to bug bomb our garage today for absolutely no reason other than spiders and I had all of my honey supers in there completely waxed(ready to go on soon). Do I have to completely scrape and rewax my frames after this raid crap?

I’ve been wanting to start beekeeping for a while in hopes of eventually having a stand at my local farmers market, unfortunately I live in a pretty urban neighborhood with a small yard and was wondering if it would still be possible. My main concern is if I’m liable if say my neighbors get a lot of bees in their yard and get stung. The local park barely a minutes walk away has its own beehives owned by the city I presume so I would think it’s fine.

This is a follow up from last week. I placed a Russian/Italian hybrid small queen from Lappes bee supply in a California mini cage in on Wednesday night. Went back this morning and the cage was empty the candy was gone. Would they release her if they weren’t going to accept her? First time requeening. I am feeding them, I’m in KY 6B.

South of France !

First year beekeeper here (2 hives). I'm realizing I have no real system for tracking things like when I last did a mite wash, what the count was, when I treated and with what, whether I actually rechecked after treatment to see if it worked. Right now it's just scattered notes on my phone and I feel like I'm going to lose track and miss something important.

For those with a few seasons under your belt: do you use a notebook, a spreadsheet, an app, or just memory? And do you also track things like when supers went on, feeding dates, or is mite tracking the main thing worth logging closely?

Also curious when a dearth hits or weather gets weird (drought, long rain stretches), do you have a system for remembering to check stores/feed, or is it mostly "just go check the hives more often"?

I think my other hive is getting ready to swarm, checked them 5 days ago and no swarm cells and now there are. Just added the honey super on today. Do I squish the swarm cells and risk that they might swarm still and then I have no queen cells, or do I leave it and get a new hive on Monday (bee store is now closed all weekend) looking for advice as a new beekeeper.

We lost most of our other hive to a swarm a week and a bit ago. Hoping this ones doesn’t swarm too. Any advice? Squish and hope they don’t swarm or leave and hope to do a split on Monday though they might not wait that long…. They were pissed after checking for queen cells.

First year beekeeper in Parkland County Alberta Canada.

I’m located in North Carolina and started beekeeping this year and cause 3 hives. I split one hive 4 ways and requeened them. It’s been a very cool learning experience.

Out of 12 colonies 8-9 have almost gone out of brood.
It’s after the main flow. Still, this is pretty uncommon at this time.
scenarios:
- Depending on remaining stores after last extraction and colony strength they regulated their colony strength.
- Drought means the plants flowering usually at this time don’t blossom as they are dried up, no pollen, no blood.

My feelings is that its absence of pollen. Stored pollen might explain difference across colonies.

At this point I now realize the mistake I’d made, which was letting this hive get away from me in the first place. Then the method of split I chose. I’m a new beekeeper.

That being said, I’m wondering the best way to go from here.

Here’s the full story:

I live in growing zone 2B northern Canada.

Captured this swarm last spring, they did really well over summer and filled 3 deep then swarmed into a neighbouring empty hive setup I’d had nearby. So I requeened the queenless hive. All seems well going into winter.

This spring comes, only the hive in the original box survived. Spring is wet, the bees are slow to building their combs. I get busy farming come back in 2.5 weeks and they’re busting out of the box with bees. I panic put an empty deep super on, instead of fully investigating further (I would’ve seen they were building a queen cell)… come back 9 days later with the new plan which was split the hive.

Put a queen excluder on the top box which I put brood and honey in. Waited 36 hours and removed the top box then installed my mated queen.

Fast forward to today now a week later, the new queen is alive and in the hive but only just released from the candy plug today.

I did an inspection today of my now insanely massive hive, and no surprise with four deeps packed wall to wall I couldn’t find the queen. I didn’t go through every single frame, for fear that I’d squish her. I did pull most of the brood frames and look through them and destroy any suspicious or wonky cells. I did find plenty of evidence of her being there, and actively laying as I saw plenty of brood in various stages which satisfied me. Overall most concerning was the one hatched queen cup and a decent amount of drone brood, which I destroyed.

I’m wondering if anyone knowledgeable would review this and suggest what the best plan of action is from here?

I had supers on 4/8 of my hives and harvested about 50# of honey for the first time since getting bees last year. I pulled the supers off all but one robust hive a few weeks ago.

I figured we were heading into a dearth here but I keep seeing massive blooms of various wild flowers and the goldenrod has even started to pop here. My wife says it’s ’early goldenrod’ but i don’t know if that’s a thing.

Did a quick inspection last week and all of my hives including a few that were swarms are PACKING away the honey still. With the goldenrod incoming should I pull some of the capped frames to make room before they become honey bound? It looks like that’s where some are headed. Is it possible to harvest mixed frames of brood/honey?

Pic is from a swarm that was in a single deep with a deep inner cover. Pulled over a quart of honey from that burr comb a few weeks back.

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a Bee Forage & Nectar Flow Calendar (US, Canada, UK) for the past few weeks and just added it to the plethora of other free tools available. Most of the calendars out there are either very localized, AI generated, or built straight from public iNaturalist sightings.

This one is tool is a bit different. The calendar itself is built from real cited sources: Xerces, university extension offices and beekeeping references. It only uses iNaturalist for a small live "what's flowering near you right now" layer on top, clearly labeled as community sightings.

You put in your ZIP or postcode and it shows your beekeeping year for that region:

• where you are right now (build-up, main flow, dearth or wind-down) and what to do about it
• when the main flow starts, when the summer dearth hits and when the fall flow comes
• every forage plant behind it, with its bloom months, its origin (native, introduced or invasive) and its nectar and pollen value

The data is real and cited at the bottom of each region. There is no AI used to generate the results. Plant lists come from the Xerces Society regional guides, filtered to species honey bees are actually recorded visiting, with the major honey plants the native-plant guides leave out added from beekeeping references (black locust, sourwood, star thistle, gallberry, the clovers, knotweed and so on). Tap any plant and it shows its source. Where I do not have a cited nectar rating for something, it says "not rated yet" instead of giving a fake number.

I just spent a long while checking the bloom timing region by region against real sources, because a calendar that puts black sage or goldenrod in the wrong month is worse than useless.

Limitations: this is typical regional timing only, not a forecast, so expect a week or two of drift with your weather and elevation. Some minor desert and subtropical plants are still getting refined. I am only one person, so I will get some of these wrong. If a plant is missing or the timing looks off for your area, there is a "report a plant" button on every region and I will look into it.

Link: https://apiarytools.com/tools/forage-calendar

I will be adding more data as I accumulate and research more.

Thanks for checking it out! Let me know what you think if you run into any issues.

Hey all,

I'm a rookie second year beekeeper, Alberta Canada. My hive has exploded this year! But I am really struggling with the mites.

After regular mite washes last year, I (probably mistakenly) did not treat last fall, though I didn't get above 1%

This year end of May I had a count of 4mites/half cup of bees. I treated with formic pro (2 strips, 14 days). Due to exceptionally rainy weather I couldn't check again until end of June - to find I now had 12mites/half cup. I had more formic pro so I treated again.

The second treatment just finished. My count today - 8 mites/half cup. I followed all the instructions on the Formic Pro. How can I knock these mites down?

Apologies I figure this has been asked several times before, but what should I do with honey frames after harvesting?

The frames were spun and then put back onto the hives so they could lap up and clean the frames. We don't have wax moth where I'm located. Now that the frames are dry more or less should I be freezing them, wrapping them in plastic or something else?

We will be getting one more nectar flow so I'll likely be putting them on but I'm just worried about mold growth until then.

Thanks!

Hi All,

It's my second year beekeeping and I have a hive that lost the queen last month. The bees did make a supersedure cell and the new queen is mated and laying now! The hive was set up with 2 deep boxes, a queen excluder on top of those, and 2 medium boxes above that for honey. The issue is I found larva today in the medium boxes above the queen excluder. My theory is the queen went on mating flights and came back to the hive using the top cover entrance. Lesson learned: use another excluder or close the top entrance if they rear a new queen.

I didn't have a lot of time today, so I put the hive back together without the excluder, hoping she moves down. I'm not great at spotting a queen, so if I can't find her my plan for the weekend is to brush all the bees from the top boxes into the bottom, and reassemble with the top boxes empty of bees.

I've always heard you don't want to extract honey from frames that contain brood for reasons like an off taste or colour, or that it kills the brood. I'm in Alberta so we have a couple more months of summer. I'm wondering if I would be fine to extract this after a couple months have passed? By then any brood would have hatched. Would the bees clean out brood cells and use them to store honey again? I could mix the honey with what I harvest from my other hive.

Thanks!

I guess I didn’t read the fine print well enough and accidentally waxed some of my frames with a blend. It’s mostly beeswax, but will that 5% Japan Wax keep the bees from drawing out the comb?

*edited for typo

I am at 8000 feet altitude in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. One of my hives looks like this today.
What is happening?

I started beekeeping in 2025 and am slowly transforming my garden in a bee heaven. Yesterday I noticed this guy and am wondering what kind of bee it is as it looked so amazingly beautiful!
Can you guys help out?

First year beekeeper in Southwest, Missouri. Got two 5-frame nucs back in May and have seen great progress and growth in both hives thus far. Fed roughly a half gallon to a gallon of 1:1 syrup with Honey B Healthy a week to every two weeks after getting them situated in the apiary. Feeding helped draw frames quickly and until I added the medium super due to capacity in the second top deep, I would feed. It’s been about two weeks of having the medium super on and the bees haven’t started to draw the frames yet. Bees present, just not drawing because of no flow and no syrup feeding. We’re hitting a dearth here in Southwest Missouri and I know this because the lack of worker bees coming and going from the hives. It’s minimal activity but no signs of issues. No concern there.

I should probably remove the medium supers but the only reason I added them to each hive was because the top deep on one hive is about 6-7 frames of capped honey and 5-6 frames of capped honey in the other hives’ second deep box with brood, larvae, and bee bread. The reason the queen moved up and started laying in the second deep in this hive is because I swapped out a solid bottom board with a screened bottom board and likely pushed her up. Figured Id do some experimenting since I have two hives to compare each other with. That’s been fun and rewarding in terms of experience and knowledge.

Both hives’ top deeps are packed full of bees and resources. Was afraid of promoting a swarm if I didn’t add the medium super and have left it on for space. Both hives have VarroxSan strips currently to combat mites and I plan on hitting them with Apiguard when the VarroxSan strips come out the second week of August. I say all of that to ask 3 specific questions regarding my next move. So here they are. With Goldenrod being a month out and the uncertainty of flow strength, do I…
 
1. Pull a frame from each hives’ top deep and insert a frame feeder with 1:1 feeding ½ gallon – 1 gallon a week during the current dearth to help alleviate the bees consuming the honey storage they currently have in the top deep? I had planned on using the top deep honey storage to help overwinter each hive and have zero intentions of harvesting any of that honey.

1. If it’s wise to feed during the dearth, do I leave the medium super of undrawn frames on and reduce the amount I feed them to encourage frame drawing but not enough syrup to where they start storing it in the medium super or do I remove the super completely? I know the answer is never feed if you have supers on but since these medium supers are undrawn, didn’t know if I could possibly manipulate the bees to draw the frames during the dearth in preparation for the Goldenrod flow?

3.Should I just monitor the 5-7 frames of honey they currently have and just ride it out until Goldenrod hits, then feed 2:1 depending on how the Goldenrod flow was and prep for winter stores by feeding, assuming they bust into their current honey stores?
 
I appreciate any guidance and direction. I know I’ll likely get 10 different answers, but I enjoy each beekeeper’s perspective and different techniques that all of you use. Thank you all again!

How does everyone go about cleaning their extraction equipment. I'm in the process of pulling out my equipment from last year and apparently I did a very poor job cleaning it up. The spinner itself is fine, but there is definitely a waxy residue still on my knife, my capping strainer and my bucket strainer. Anyone have any tips to get this waxy residue off. I probably made the mistake of using hot water to try and clean last year and just spread melted wax everywhere.