Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Arrival number 7 came between 2 & 4 pm today. I have 1 more bait hive that is unoccupied. It has a few bees looking. I'm not sure if they are leftover scouts from the swarm that came in or potential occupants.

Tough situation that can be made easier if you have another hive that has brood. I would take a frame with eggs and put it in the questionable hive. Check it in 4 days. If the bees are making queen cells, the hive is likely queenless and it would be a reasonable gamble to buy a queen, knock down the...

So far, I have had 6 arrivals at the house and some scouts are evaluating one of my bait hives now.

I set up 3 almost identical bait hives on my driveway pad about 2 weeks ago. 2 of the 3 had heavy activity for the last 5 days or so. I was beginning to think I had put frames in the boxes that had some feed and that bees were taking advantage of the food. When I put a feed frame out in front of the...

Our May monthly meeting will be a picnic/field day held at the Old Prison Farm. The date is May 7th. We will eat between 1:30 and 2:00 pm (or as soon as it is ready). The address is 7315 Howerton Rd., Gibsonville, NC 27249. Families are welcome and there is no charge for this event. Board members wi...

I knocked down and killed the first European Hornet I have seen this season. Hopefully, this means one less colony to develop and feed on my bees.

I set up another bait hive at the house a little before 10:30 am today and went to my cousin's to help get mulch for them in my truck. When I returned about 12:30 pm, a swarm had moved in. I set up another bait hive. As of 1:30 pm, there are no scouts at it yet.

I set up another bait hive after the first one was occupied. Scouting began immediately and at around 5:10pm today, bees moved in. I'll set up a third bait hive in the morning.

A fairly large swarm moved into my bait hive this afternoon. There was heavy scouting yesterday afternoon just after I put a small squirt of Swarm Commander in the bait hive. I got another ratty deep and set up another bait hive. Some scouting began almost immediately. I will be curious to see if sc...

I got a text yesterday afternoon from the folks at the Arboretum that there was a swarm on the rose arbor about 12 feet up. From the location, I am almost positive that one of my hives there swarmed. I vacuumed up about 5lbs of bees and brought them home. I'll keep them working drawing comb if they ...

I got my answers. A fair number of bees remained in the hive with the small swarm, but the queen in the clip was killed. I took the bees from that hive and started a newspaper combination into a small swarm nuc that has a laying queen. The very small swarm with the marked queen that I put in a nuc t...

My thinking is that even starting with nucs, you would want to get as much comb drawn as you can and wait until next year to try and make a honey crop. This means continuing to keep 1:1 sugar water in a top feeder and adding supers as 8 of 10 frames are drawn. Move the undrawn or least drawn frames ...

Early this afternoon, the over wintered nuc swarmed again. I got them to go to the same stack of supers as yesterday's swarm, got the queen in a clip and left the receiving nuc on the stack. Later this afternoon, one of my strong hive swarmed. Swarm commander and tanging had no effect. They went hig...

Both hives did poorly over winter. It was my fault. With my limited physical abilities last summer, I did not do everything I could to make sure there were good queens in the hives. I have now re-populated both hives with 2 swarms that came out of a nuc that I over wintered at the house. The first s...

The over wintered nuc threw another swarm this afternoon. I sprayed swarm commander on a stack of supers about 5 feet away from the nuc and the bees clustered there. I got the queen in a clip and packed the bees up. They are now in the other hive at the Cooperative Extension. I plan on checking them...

I have 2-3 stainless steel screened strainers and stainless bowls. I let the cappings drip through for several days, then run that honey through the plastic strainers in a jarring bucket. I tend to keep this honey separate from the main crop and use it for personal consumption and for giving to fami...

I had one of my over wintered nucs attempt a swarm a couple of days ago. The queen did not go and the bees returned. I searched and did not find the queen at that time. I shuffled frames around and gave the bees more space. This may have been the reason for the delay in trying again. They came out t...

I don't know of anyone who has been able to keep the bees in their hives this season--no matter what steps they take.

I got a call around 6:30 pm yesterday about a swarm near the Grimsley High area. It was about 5 feet up in a bush and I would estimate it as around 5lbs. When I shook it into my swarm bucket, I could see a decent amount of new comb on bush branches. It may be that the swarm was there awhile before p...

These hard freezes have significantly damaged buds and blooms from the holly type bushes. I'm trying to look at the potential "bright side"--if the buds from the tulip poplars have not been damaged too badly, the holly bloom will be out of the way at tulip poplar bloom time. These usually ...