Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I decided at the beginning of my beekeeping adventure to run all mediums. At the time, I thought the advantage of being able to move frames around wherever I wanted was going to be a great advantage. What I've discovered is that my hive inspections and swarm prevention attempts have suffered because...

I'm not an expert in this yet, but I would say that I'm seeing sumac and clover still blooming, and my bees (at least today now that the sun is back out) are purposeful and actively bringing in "something". Yes, they are wash-boarding. And no, I don't have hive weights or anything to back ...

My best colonies here in Greensboro will typically produce a 5 gal bucket of honey (50-60 lbs?). I started out following the "leave one medium super of honey for winter" approach, but have definitely switched over to harvesting all honey, putting a wet super back on after extracting, feede...

So here's what I decided to do. Rather than try to treat chemically at this stage, I instead found the queen and made a split from this hive (and another like it). This achieves four things for me: 1. Allows for a brood break to knock back the mite population 2. Reduces any swarming impulse they mig...

Absolutely! I suggest putting them in some kind of plastic bag though, because they will definitely drip and make a sticky mess if you're not careful.

In the hopes this helps someone else, I'm sharing my complete failure this spring. I have now had 3 of my 20 colonies swarm themselves to death. I made the mistake of assuming that bees would not swarm in the middle of the nectar flow, they would not build queen cells on the very bottom hanging down...

I only have 1 of my 20 hives that did not swarm on me this spring. This is currently my strongest colony putting away the most amount of honey (4, 9-frame mediums drawn out fat and full). I've been popping the lids on all hives every week to check progress and add more supers if needed, and at that ...

Actually, no. I specifically told my friend to leave it off until that super was drawn to try and avoid exactly what happened...

In another sign of an oddly mild winter and early spring... I collected two prime swarms on March 3-4 and set them up for a friend of mine. We gave them two deep drawn frames each, fed them, and they proceeded to draw out two 8-frame deeps each. Everything looked great, and we then added a medium su...

When I uncap, they fall into a 5-gal bucket lined with a paint strainer. I can then pick up the bag, tie a knot, and let it hang for a couple days while the honey drips out into the bucket. I might squeeze it a few times, and then when it's done dripping I'll put it out for the bees to clean up.

3/20: I am here to dispel the myth that it has to be really warm for bees to swarm. I watched two of my hives on Monday send out multiple small afterswarms at the same time. It was only 46 degrees (but sunny) at lunchtime when this occurred! Note the small groups in the holly, on the side of the hou...

Once again, I came home to find a swarm congregating in my yard - this time all over the place on the side of my garage and fence. I did not see where it came from, but probably one of my hives... This one was a little unorganized, and I discovered an additional virgin in one of the separate bunches...

Again, despite all my best efforts at swarm prevention (other than splitting), another one of my home hives swarmed yesterday. Luckily, I happened to be at home for lunch, so was able to mobilize and get it captured in my own back yard this time. This one is going to another buddy of mine who is get...

I got home from Beez Needz at 1:00 today to find two of my home hives in the process of swarming at the exact same time (despite all my efforts). Interestingly enough, the two swarms merged and landed on the neighbor's exact same bush about 6' off the ground. We shook them into a hive, about half fl...

With the flow we've had so far and the amount of stores I've seen in my own hives, I discontinued dry emergency feed a few weeks ago. This was especially true once they started filling the feeding shim space with comb, drone brood, and honey! It's also warm enough now that if you personally feel the...

I'm so confused right now on how to manage my hives that I'd love to hear what others are thinking. I've had to toss my "typical" calendar out the window... Usually I might start making splits in mid-March, then feed 1:1 for a month to get comb drawn before the flow, and then add supers in...

So I totally failed to heed my own advice and chickened out last week when it came to my weak hive... I ended up pulling the 2-3 frames of bees, queen, tiny patch of brood, and a couple honey frames from the hive and putting them in the bottom of a double 5-frame medium setup. I added 2 frames of so...

I had a few of mine with honey up in new comb in the feeding shim also. And I have made the same observations about foragers coming back with purpose without pollen... With temps close to 80 next week, I'm expecting the earliest swarm season we've seen, and I may very well go ahead and add a super f...

How in the world did they survive that week of single digits? And mites? Those are some hardy genetics probably worth fostering. Hopefully someone can collect them!

Personal opinion here, but if you're looking to eventually have 5 hives, a chest freezer would be an invaluable piece of beekeeping equipment... I use mine for storing honey prior to extraction, storing partial honey/nectar frames for later use, and for freezing frames to kill pests.