Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I harvest my honey around the 4th of July depending on weather. After that I should have some for you. Gary

I use queen excluders. After having one year when she started laying in my super, that was enough for me. They'll go above the QE once the flow starts coming in stronger. It doesn't really start going good until around mid May for me in Summerfield. I also take a couple frames that were filled with ...

My two hives, are fairly strong and unfortunately they don't have any nectar in the supers at this point, even though I have 2 supers of drawn comb on each hive. According to my last year spreadsheet, I started seeing really heavy nectar coming in the last week of May/1st week of June. I'm a little ...

I agree with Wally. I'm in the same situation. I made multiple dumb decisions this year -- a. not getting supers on soon enough to provide room for her to lay and then b: thinking I was doing the right thing and cutting out all the swarm cells (I'll show those bees not to swarm). Now I think I may h...

I went in one of my hives and it was very strong with both boxes full of bees. This hive is screaming for a split as well. Everything I read talks about buying a queen for the splitted hive to give it a head start. Do you do that, or just a walk away split and hope they raise a queen? Do you know wh...

Hi --

I've treated with OA a couple times this year and I've never had any bearding issues.

When I've put menthol in the hives for tracheal mites then I've had heavy bearding. See photo

I still have a jar of sugar syrup out in my yard and bees were definitely interested drinking it today so that tells me the flow is probably just starting. Looking up in my poplar trees the buds are still closed but beginning to open. I think within the next week or two things will really start pick...

I had a similar thing happen as well. Had two new packages all drawing new comb this year. Both hives got pretty strong with two double deeps. I didn't try to collect any honey this year as I wanted them to build up. I treated for Varroa, although I didn't think I would need to being new packages, b...

Not sure what everyone else is seeing, but I'm seeing nothing coming in my supers. One hive I have has a pretty good population and still nothing. Another hive I have, I had to shrink back to a single deep from two deeps, as there's just not much laying going on from the queen. I started two other h...

I was wondering what the state of supering is for everyone. Have people already "supered up," or do you typically wait until Apr? In the past I put supers on the 1st of April and it seemed to work pretty well, although I may miss a little bit of Maple or Holly. I typically want to leave my...

I too have read George's pink pages and bought a couple Imirie shims for future use. This is my first year and I don't need them yet as I am working off foundation in my supers. Why do you think your bees swarmed? George says during a honey flow like we're in now, they only swarm because of lack of ...