Southwestern PA. We have 5 hives in the same bee yard. Surrounded by acres of woods. Only one of them made this color honey. First time in 5 years we’ve seen this color. Any thoughts on what the nectar source might be? Thinking maybe Japanese Knotweed but again, it’s just so red. BEAUTIFUL. Not complaining. Just confused.

Sometimes a simple box change can start movements in other hives as well. Does this happen with other as well?

#ritamicbees #beeritamic #BeekeepingExperience #beekeeper #bees #boxchange #apismellifera

Not a bee keeper. Just saw this happen, what is happening in the video?

N.Oxfordshire

One of our colonies swarmed and landed ridiculously high up a tree. Naturally..

We strapped a nuc to a long pole, with one of us holding it underneath the swarm whilst I climbed a ladder and brushed them into the box.

It wasn't pretty, but a couple of hours later and they're all in!

We've left the nuc up the tree overnight. I'll go back up tomorrow so we can bring them back into the apiary.

They'd become honeybound, which we've now sorted, so the plan is to try the newspaper method to reunite them with the colony they came from tomorrow.

Anyone done this successfully? Anything we should be mindful of before trying?

Location: North West, UK. Three hives.

I am obviously not a beekeeper. I was scrolling social media earlier and saw a post on a beekeeping page from a non-beekeeper who put sugar water out in a bowl in the yard to try to lure the bees away from a hummingbird feeder. The post basically asked if this is okay to do, and most of the responses to this person's question were generally, "No, please don't do this; if beekeepers wanted their bees fed, they'd do it themselves," and, "Sugar water ruins the honey/makes something that isn't technically honey".

My bee related knowledge is minimal, but I want to learn. From what I was able to understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), honey comes from nectar only. So my question is, if bees find an alternate food source such as sugar water or maybe a discarded soda, how much of that would it take to ruin their honey? How does it ruin it? Would one bee bringing it back to the hive be enough to ruin the entire hive's honey? Ten bees? A hundred bees? And what about pesticides or other chemicals? Surely these get brought back to a hive, too, so what effect does this have on honey?

Thanks! I'm genuinely curious.

Last afternoon a BIG swarm bivouacked into a tree above my fence, I grabbed one of my swarm traps, baited it and put it below the swarm. This morning, it looks like a swarm is moving in, but the big swarm is STILL in the tree, looks like I may have attracted a different one and might end up with 2 if I can also get the tree swarm down. We had some storms come through after a long dry spell in central TX and it seems to have triggered a fair bit of swarming activity.

i recently bought a house (western Massachusetts) that had a beehive on the edge of the property. The previous owner said that on a cold night soon, they would have a beekeeper come and remove them. Well, they came, and the guy said “be careful near that area, we lost a lot of bees“

it’s been two days and we can’t be in our backyard at all. This is like 1/2 an acre that Has angry bees flying all around. We can see them flying all over. my kid got stung on the lip yesterday.

do we have to do something? Or should we call someone? I don’t want them to post up in my walls or something….

I'm just getting started out beekeeping after being interested for quite a while and decided I preferred the look of layens hives and built one in July. In early August I bought a nuc from a local guy (northern NV), and built a hive within a hive conversion box that would hold the langstroth frames perpendicular to the layens frames, and had a hole with one of those entrance disks so the bees could move over to the layens frames. So I set them up with a feeder and a couple empty layens frames and pretty quickly realized that they were clogging up the existing frames with syrup and not exiting the box to build onto the layens frames.

Chaotic intervention 1: I talked to the guy I bought the nuc from and decided to move the queen over to the new frames manually and put the entrance disk on the queen excluder setting to keep her on the layens side. I then went through all the langstroth frames twice and was unable to find the queen, and eventually decided to just shake all the frames off onto the layens side and hope for the best. Astoundingly I came back a few days later and found that it had actually worked and they had built comb and I actually saw the queen and eggs on the correct side. Over the next 3 weeks I continued to feed and add new frames and got them up to 5 built out frames.

Chaotic intervention 2: Once all the brood was hatched out of the langstroth frames I went in to remove them and the hive within a hive, and do a mite wash. This involved a lot of moving frames around and shaking off bees but I saw zero mites, added two more frames of foundation, never saw the queen but saw eggs and was feeling good about where I was at.

Finally, yesterday I went for another check about a week later to make sure everything was good after the chaos and unfortunately found no eggs and emergency queen cells. I'm not sure if she got mite washed or squished or the chaos of moving the frames just upset the hive but now I need to decide how to proceed. The guy I bought the nuc from thinks there is still time to raise a new queen, but I also really don't want the colony to fail and have to do this conversion nonsense again next year, so I'm tempted to buy a mated queen.

Years ago I watched a documentary of a old man that kept bees somewhere in the European alps. It showed everything from finding colonies to him harvesting. I cant for the life of remember what it was called. It might have been part of multi part documentary. I think it was on pbs or something like that.

A few colonies that got a super because they were filling their brood nests with nectar and a decent flow is happening.

Location: Denver CO.
Last week’s inspection showed very little brood, no eggs and only a few cells of capped larva. We expected our queen had been killed but saw no signs of queen cells or a laying worker and opted to wait one week before making any decisions. This week we returned and sure enough she has bulked up the brood production and we saw brood of all stages, but the queen behavior seemed odd? Normally I spot the queen because of her little posse, but today I spotted her because she was entirely alone. Is it possible this hive has 2 queens? This queen appears to be mated but I still have things I could learn so correct me if I’m wrong! Is it normal for a queen to be alone like this? Or am I overthinking? Second year beekeeper, last year’s colonies did not survive winter but this colony is so strong - I’m terrified of making a misstep and losing them.

Are there any pest control sprays that aren't toxic to bees?

We have a 5-acre property and will be hosting our wedding here in October 2027. We have a medium-sized clearing on the back of our property, around an acre away from our two beehives.

We've been working on natural pest control methods around our home and field since we got the bees, but unfortunately, in the woods of central Virginia, we have a lot of bugs. It is the height of summer now, so the biting bugs are going to be at their peak, but we won't see a good, hard frost until at least November. Mosquitoes, no-see-ums, ticks, and all their fun friends.

I have heard that there are no safe pest control sprays for bees. However, I can't have 100 friends, family, and vendors walking away covered in itchy red bites. Nor do I want to spend my whole wedding day clawing under a dress to scratch. But I also don't really want to commit mass murder on our poor bees.

Is an acre far enough away from our hives to keep them from being deeply affected by the general sprays? Especially in October, when they're not so active?

Location: Central Virginia

One of my colonies decided to get rid of a queen during one of my rounds of apiguard. They had a really high mite load at the start of treatment 17 iirc at the start. I have another new queen that they got combined with. I avoid much fighting even in September by dumping some syrup on them and popping the queenless hive on top.

I know the picture sucks but I found two of these small larva in the deritus on my bottom board. Can anyone tell me if this is a SHB or wax moth larva? And what do I do to help my hive now? Only found two. One got away. This one squished super easy

How do you keep bees from dying in the frame feeder. I have tired a cork, still dead bees. MS

Near Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Found on my gazebo. Planning on releasing in the woods.

Lowcountry of SC, first hive—

Hey guys, after a long journey, I lost my hive to a combination of failing to properly requeen and yellow legged hornets. I don’t know what to do with the hive itself now, the comb etc.

How do I deal with this?

Thanks

Hi there, I’m not a beekeeper but i have some questions about real honey tests. I just bought a few jars of honey from a friend of a friend who raises bees. I admit I looked on the internet for honey tests I can do at home for authenticity. But they are all so contradictory. For example, one came from a doctor saying real honey wont light when lit from a flame. And others say real honey WILL light. Ugh, so may tiktoks and shorts with all these tests. So I’m coming to the Beekeepers on Reddit. Are there any true tests? Some of the online suggestions my honey have passed but others not. Like the dissolving in water. It didn’t stay together and spread out. I want to support home grown farmers of all professions in my area. But I also don’t want to be duped. lol

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. ☺️

I tried 21st Bee frames for the first time. There is definitely some pros and cons about these frames. Whether you use them or don’t is up to you, I’m just telling you my experience.

Let’s start with the good. The frames are sturdy. Like violently so. I think I could run them over with a truck and not break them. The foundation and frame are one whole piece. I have had issues with plastic foundation warping and causing the comb draw to be a bit off. This is impossible with the 21st bee frames. The whole thing is one solid piece. The stamping is a nice add on if you run frames in different yards or just like to know what’s yours.

The not so great.

The company makes the claim that you don’t need to wax coat these frames. I put in 60, and ended with less than half being drawn out right. Lots of wonky comb issues. I’d say not as bad as the Amazon specials I have used, but not nearly as good as Premier or Pierco that I have used. If I was to buy these again, I would prewax them. Like most companies who claim “prewaxed” I find this claim dubious at best.

The sturdiness also comes with weight. I don’t think it would matter too much if you were going through a couple hives, but if you were managing 100 hives, I think it would wear on your fingers. A drawn out frame can already be heavy, this makes them considerably more so.

The price is another thing. For what I paid for these, I could get near double the amount of standard frames at the same price point. I sell nucs and split so I won’t make the money back in the longevity because most will likely ship out with nucs.

Conclusion for me

Though I think these frames will outlast my wood frames, they are cost prohibitive. They, also, really aren’t saving me any work as I have to wax roll them same as my cheapies. I have a lot of hives so the extra weight I think will add up to muscle fatigue.

I am very new to beekeeping (first summer), in SW Ohio. Had / have 2 hives. Inspected today and both queens are gone and there is no bread or larva. Almost no resources. It’s been very hot here. There are still tons of workers and drawn comb. I did see a couple adult hive beetles, no larva and put some traps on the hives. I’m at a loss regarding what happened and what to do. Should I try to requeen this late in the season? Give up and try again next year. They were extra grumpy but seemed strong a couple weeks ago

ETA no swarm cells anywhere

Hi community,

Can you help me figure out what’s going on?

Context: I had a swarm in my backyard, had it relocated to a proper box considering to start yard bee keeping. 2 weeks later, we checked up on them to find the queen, Larva or any eggs on 2-3 occasions and didn’t find any, So we decided to get a new queen.

Yesterday: Before getting the new queen, we thought it’d be reasonable to relocated the hive box about 20 feet away from the original location at night time for city ordinance before new queen arrives. We did place several tree branches at the entry to disorientate the bees.

Fast forward to Today mid-day: I got a new queen been in the cage and put the cage in the box. The bees were able to be brushed off the cage easily, so we believe they are not attacking the new queen.

2 hours later after queen placement: there’s bunch of bees circling around the hive at its new location( been here since last night)

Question:

What do you all think is going on? An attack from other colony? Confused bee returning home? Triggered some responses from the 10 nursing bees that came home with the new queen?

Zone: 9A

Beim heutigen Einfüttern habe beobachtet, wie ein großes Insekt frontal in der Einflugschneise meiner beiden Bienenvölker schwebte. Nach kurzer Zeit griff es sich eine Biene und flog mit dieser in die nahe gelegenen Bäume.

Tendenziell tippe ich hier auf eine heimische Hornisse, aber in der Nähe (Dechsendorf) wurde bereits eine Asiatische Hornisse gesichtet. Daher die Frage an das Schwarmwissen: Was erkennt ihr auf dem Schnappschuss?

TLDR: I live in a cool Australian climate. I have some experience, partner has none. Should I go for an Italian queen or Carniolan?

I did some beekeeping with Dad from around 2020-2023. Neither of us had done any beekeeping before, and Dad did all the research so I only really have on-the-job knowledge. My partner wants to get into it, but has no experience.

Accordingly, I don't really know the more finite details between queen choices, but I do understand the importance of the queen.

The local queen bee breeder is able to supply an Italian queen or a Carniolan queen.

We live in Milthorpe, NSW, (Australia) which is:

• 960m/3,200 ft elevation
• Summer max mean temp of 27^oC (80F)
• Winter min mean temp of 1^oC (34F)
• Wet and misty in late autumn, winter and early spring

From some research I can see that the Italian queen is a great all rounder, but Carniolans cope better in the cold and will forage on cool or cloudy days though tend to swarm more easily.

What would would you recommend between the two?

South central Kansas and the naive sunflowers are buzzin for this first year beekeeper

A local vegetable farm (Upstate NY) has asked if I would be willing to bring hives in for pollination. Their former supplier can't do it any longer (and was always VERY late getting them there) and they have been hard pressed to find anyone. As they grow multiple varieties of veggies, bees would be there for the whole season. I am a Master Beekeeper so the logistics and set up are not a big concern.

Good news is that it is only a couple miles away. The downside is I know caring for remote apiaries can be a fair bit of extra work. I have a fair bit of acreage and have three yards on my property that are easy to access and even then it seems you always have something unexpected you have to go back to the barn for. I am not looking to expand but would like to help him out if I can as long as it doesn't end up being a time suck.

Anyway, he is looking for about 4-6 hives and we may be able to do some bartering for produce if I can provide a cost per hive for the season. Any one currently do this and what is going rate per hive? Many thanks.