Guilfordbeekeepers.org

A pre-school teacher in Greensboro is looking for someone to visit her class of ~5 youngsters to talk about the importance of honeybees (outside, with a mask, while maintaining social distancing). She'd prefer if someone could bring an observation hive to show to the little ones. Specifics can be wo...

I'm a little late to the party on this post, but generally Pints go for anywhere from $9-14, and Quarts go anywhere from $17-25. As for your wax question, yes you can get wax out of those old dark combs, but there's alot of left over "stuff" (called "slumgum" in the industry), so...

The photo clearly depicts a DWV infected honey bee. DWV was present in hives before the introduction of varroa mites. So the presence of DWV doesn't mean, by definition, that varroa are present in high numbers. However varroa are vectors of diseases and viruses, DWV included. Which means high levels...

If you need an extractor, I have a 6 frame Dadant "Ranger" model honey extractor for sale. Can extract 6 medium or shallow honey frames at a time. Optional deep baskets included, so you can extract 3 deep frames at a time as well. I used the extractor for almost 10 years, but recently got ...

Perhaps. I've usually found colonies that have very small clusters this time of year and die as a result were the culprit of large mite counts.

But I requeen frequently, so I don't see fall/early spring queen failures anymore. It may bias my views.

Did you take mite counts after your late August/early September treatments?

So how did they look Jacobs?

I cracked my hives last weekend, and so far I haven't lost a colony. Still a long way to go till spring though

You had mite counts of 150? What method did you use? If you tested 300 bees and got 150 mites from that sample, you had a 50% infestation rate. If you get infestation rates that high, the hive is already dead. They just don't know it yet. Nothing much you can do to save them after that. Many advocat...

Thanks. That sounds fairly consistent with what I remember. Based on my memory, I'd sometimes see some drones flying in the second week in February, but usually not many. Most purple eyed drones I remembered seeing were in the first or second week in February. My current plan is to do my first round...

What's the earliest in the year you graft for your queens?

Trying to do some planning for next season, and I usually don't graft until I see purple eye drones. Depending on how much I feed, I can see purple eye drones in mid February some years. Just looking for some comparisons.

I don't know if I'd go as far as to say tye are used to make more beers than a hive can handle. I use pollen patties, and I don't make nucs or sell packages. I put pollen sub on ~25% of my hives. These end up producing massive populations, and I rob frames of brood from most of these ~25% to "d...

If you don't mind me asking, how much did you charge to do the cutout?

The goal, as was explained to me, was not just to equalize the populations of the various hives. It was to cut back on the population size of all of the hives, and do so in an equal proportion. If you have a hive that has 12 brood frames and another that has 8, you can move brood from the strong to ...

I believe the goal is to cut back on colony's population size post flow. In order to do that, you have to either: 1. Lose a large percentage of the foragers; 2. Remove a good amount of brood; 3. Straight up kill some bees; or 4. Maintain smaller populations to start with. The 4th option will reduce ...

Good point. Didn't think of that.

I've heard of commercial beekeepers doing the same, but I've never heard of them cutting down production colonies to X frames of bees in order to accomplish the same thing.

Past few years I've had some crazy horrible issues with robbing. Strong colonies would overtake weaker ones, which usually resulted in a domino affect, usually happening during our nectar dearth in July. It gets so bad that some years I've lost 60% of my hives in the summer. In my opinion, this was ...

The English rule was that pursuit granted a property interest. The American system has rejected that rule. The common case on point was out of New York in the early 1800's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson_v._Post In the end, if it's a wild animal (which for our purposes it most likely is, but t...

I hope you guys are right in that the Poplars just started mid to late last week. I heard a guy in WS mention that the flow was on for him about two and a half weeks ago. I didn't get a chance to ask him what plants he was talking about, but usually this area that means Tulip Poplar. I don't know ab...

Went out to a few hives to feed some pollen sub, and noticed some pale yellow pollen coming in. Took the opportunity to open a hive and inspect a few combs (probably shouldn't have, but oh well). Had 2 solid frames of eggs, and one frame of mixed brood. Looks like maples are in bloom, and the season...