Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I made a 5 frame nuc from Wally's bee tree bees on July 12th. It consisted of a frame of eggs, 2 frames of capped brood, 1 frame of honey and 1 frame of pollen. I put an entrance reducer on at the 1 inch opening. Robbing began immediately. There were few defenders and it did not take long for the ho...

I am willing to do it but I don't want to hog all of the fun. If anyone else wants to give this talk, please make contact and then post here so that we will know who is covering this opportunity. Diane, If noone contacts you by Monday (I will be out of my office until then) please call me at (336) 2...

A friend told me about a solution Michael Bush suggested. Feed the heck out of your strongest hives. Let them put up sugar water honey and then take those frames out and give them to your light hives. This is less likely to trigger robbing than direct feeding. I have not tried it yet, but have been ...

On July 4th the queen excluder and sandwich frames came out of the deep on this hive. The excluder did its job and there was no brood in the deep. The bees had stored a significant amount of pollen in the deep, but almost no nectar or honey. The sandwich frames were replaced with 3 frames of drawn c...

I really don't think they took over the hive. It was a relatively small number of bees and all appears normal at the front of all hives now. It is more like the small swarm that wound up under one of my hives last year except this years did not just start dropping dead a few minutes after landing. I...

At around 5:00p.m. today bees were in the air in a swarm type flight, banging into walls and windows (unlike during orientation flights). Only one of my hives was showing some increased activity, but not bees pouring out of it. The airborne bees were agitated (my fat upper lip is evidence of this) a...

How many folks are planning to attend the State beekeepers meeting in Wilksboro next week (July 9-11th)? The presentations look interesting. You can get details from the link on our home page to the State beekeepers page. I'm looking forward to it.

I decided to watch things progress this morning. At 5:00 a.m., I could see the bees but it was too dark for them to fly. At about 5:30 a.m. the strongest hive began sending out bees, and about 5 minutes later the other 2 stronger hives began sending out bees. At about 5:40 a.m., bees were returning ...

I guess you folks were too polite to suggest it, but it did occur to me that I was seeing all of the frenzy of a robbing event without the entrance defense and attempts to enter at other spaces. Were my bees out doing the robbing? If so, at least they had the good grace not to be attacking my other ...

As of 9:30 a.m. things are much calmer with some crowding at stronger hive entrances and the bees trying to figure out the new entrance pattern. I have reopened the hive that was being robbed to about 3 inches of opening. I have watched out for it for about 45 minutes and activity seems normal with ...

It does appear that some robbing is going on. I stepped out at 5:45 a.m. this morning to see a huge amount of incoming activity on my strongest hive. All other hives within a few feet of it were calm with normal activity. I did not see wrestling or dead bees out front. It looked like defenses may ha...

Do you have freezer space for the capped frames and frames to replace them with? You may want to take the frames now if you do. This season you run the risk of the bees opening and consuming the honey if they do not have access to nectar. If I am going to extract this year it will be by doing this. ...

Last Sunday I began the process of removing the sandwich frames from the bee tree hive. Marc helped me search for and locate the queen. She is a fat golden beautiful brood pattern producer. In addition to laying in the deep, she was laying in two mediums and has begun laying in a third. We found her...

I have a swarm lure hive with some drawn comb, a little capped honey, and a piece of cloth with lemon grass oil stapled to the back of a frame. This is about 40 feet from my hives. Yesterday afternoon I noticed about 50-70 bees hovering around the front and going in the hive. It is the first interes...

I would go ahead and start feeding. If they find something they like better they will not take the feed. I have been feeding my Italian nucs since I got them and they take the 1:1 syrup at various rates, but they have been emptying the feeders.

Heavy syrup (2 parts sugar, 1 part water) is usually a Fall feed to help the bees put up stores of food. Spring is usually the time for 1 part sugar to 1 part water to supplement nectar and stimulate brood rearing. I'm feeding 1:1 to my package and nucs.

I am going to bring a couple of political signs and some scissors to the field day tomorrow. If you want to cut some for beetle traps, you are welcome to it. This goes for anyone else who needs the plastic for beetle traps.

That's what I meant, make SHBcicles.

Looks like SHB larvae to me. Did you try brushing or knocking them off that frame? Wax moth larvae usually make tunnels through the comb from pollen stores to pollen stores. I have been killing a fairly large number of adult SHB in the feeders above the nucs, but did not see larvae like that on my f...

I have new medium frames (wood) with the plastic foundation(wax coated). If these are good for you that is more than fair.