Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Unfortunately, my hollies only bloomed for a few days this year, but today I really noticed the black locust in full bloom! And my neighbor's old tulip poplar tree does have a few open blooms, so I imagine things are going to get exciting very soon.

Yes, this Demaree thing is a lot of work, but so far so good! I just went through all 7 colonies, knocked down a few random queen cells throughout, and moved a frame or two more of brood up to the top in each colony (and replaced those with either foundation or drawn comb down below). So I'll have t...

Nope, no ideas for one that high! Reminds me of all the swarms I've watched issue from my home hives and go straight up 80+ ft into my oak tree. Just sitting up there taunting me... I have had luck with my wire mesh trash can on the extension pole that can get those up to 20 ft or so. I haven't trie...

Oh, wow! Glad you were around to grab them. When you get a chance to explore the parent hive and theorize on what went "wrong", you'll have to tell us your setup and share what you find. I can only assume this is what would happen if you miss a swarm cell in the very beginning of the manip...

I set up Demaree splits on 7 of my colonies, and apparently just in time as ALL were soon to swarm. I had to remind myself to find my marked queens first before knocking down the swarm cells just in case they had already taken off! I'll now go back in 7-8 days to cut out all of the emergency queen c...

Between making splits and collecting swarms these past several days, I am officially out of room for more colonies (so says my wife!). With some of my remaining strong colonies, I'm using the Demaree method for the first time to make vertical splits. Not excited about eventually having a deep honey ...

I am not familiar with this technique at all. Do you guys have a link to the method, instructions, theory? I have two hives at my house that I need to rotate and move about 3', so this might be very useful for me!

In the 2-year process of switching over from running all-medium equipment, I am left with LOTS of old medium capped honey frames (primarily sugar syrup frames that never got eaten during winters). I'm talking about probably ~20 boxes worth in total. What in the world should I do with them? Most are ...

Got a call from one of my insurance agents yesterday about a swarm at her house in the Cardinal area. I was unavailable, so passed it along to an eager friend of mine. It wasn't the biggest swarm ever, but may have been one of the easiest! He found it on the side of a tree trunk about 3' off the gro...

Same here! I found my three strong home hives all in swarm mode yesterday. No capped cells yet, but a few that are very close. Luckily, I caught them just in time, found all three marked queens, and made multiple splits. One of these had already drawn an entire deep this past month, was sitting in t...

Anyone seeing signs yet of colonies preparing to swarm? Of course, this is the first year I had huge plans to split using swarm cells (since I'm always battling swarming every other spring), and here we are on March 11 and absolutely ZERO of my colonies look like they are necessarily close! They are...

I saw my first drones out flying on Tues afternoon returning to my home hives here in Greensboro. Still no obvious swarm preparation inside the colonies other than a handful of new dry queen cups.

I would say you definitely have an issue (no queen or failed queen). Right now, every single one of my colonies has multiple frames of brood in all stages. The two options I would consider would be to combine your two colonies now (to split later when drones are available), or do as Jacobs suggested...

I was able to do thorough inspections on my 15 farm hives yesterday. I did some minor equalizing and a few reversals. I observed drones walking on frames in probably half those colonies, and capped drone brood in all. Like Jacobs, I did not see any signs yet of swarm preparation. What I did see was ...

This topic just came up in another post, so thought I'd start a new thread to discuss directly. My opinion is they are not necessary (in most cases). We typically have abundant and diverse pollen here, and my colonies tend to get "pollen-bound" rather than the reverse. With the SHB issues ...

It looks like today might be the last good inspection weather for a while, so here are some random observations I made on Friday after going through all of my colonies (frame by frame). I imagine everyone else is seeing the same, but thought it could be beneficial for anyone new: 1. I still did not ...

If anyone is over at Cooperative Extension, check on that big old red maple in the front. It was one of the earliest bloomers last year!

Agree with Jacobs. If you're talking about doing walk-away splits, it's best to wait a bit. I experimented last season with several early splits to try and head off swarming, and was 100% UNsuccessful. At the time, I felt there were plenty of drones, but maybe they weren't yet mature enough to be ou...

Turns out my first instinct was correct - there was no way this tiny swarm at the end of August would be able to build up in population to survive the winter. I had them in a 5-frame medium with another 5 medium frames of honey above them, insulation board on under the lid, with the entire setup wra...

I had a chance to do a relatively quick check of all my colonies yesterday. Mine are all in a deep and a medium, but I did not break open the boxes and inspect the lower deep (yet). I only pulled frames from the top to check on their food stores and movement up. Three welcomed observations: all colo...