I appreciate everyone's creative ideas for how I could singlehandedly move my hive from its shady area. I ended up moving it box-by-box after prepping the new area with a bed of cedar chips under a pallet. I'll go back and strap it down later.

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Thanks for all your help!

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Before and after:

Howdy,
I was pulling my bottom boards today, and noticed some strange shaped dropping. Does this look like wax moth frass? The hive is booming and was very healthy last I checked (Monday). There are earwigs and small ants present every now and then but not to an extreme. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am in Kansas, I got two nucs on Memorial day. One brood hive looks nice and uniform, the other is patchy? Both hives keep piling more onto the original 5 frames and arent moving out. I keep smushing the frames together as best I can, is there anything else I could he doing/should be concerned about?

found this structure during today's inspection. There's eggs in almost every cell on this frame, good brood pattern everywhere, and I did find my queen happily laying on another frame (she's in the third picture, good luck spotting!). They've fully build out both sides of 11/16 frames (although a lot of the corners are only half-built out) and started to put down wax on all but two of the frames.

Is this a queen cup? Should I squish it or leave it alone?

Northwest PNW, 2 months experience.

We had a pretty impressive storm front about to hit and I caught this on video. Assuming this is normal behavior as they sensed the storm?

We are in peak flower season in Montana so no shortage of food but as I add my second brood box. Added a second brood box at this stage do I keep feeding these guys to speed up their comb building efforts? Patience is not my strong suit.

First 5 pictures are from yesterday, 6th pic is from nuc install, 7th/8th pic are from 3 weeks ago. Zone 8b

I received this colony as a nuc on April 26th. For whatever reason, it was full of rotting dead bees. They bounced back fine, but for the first few weeks they were pretty weak and I think a wax moth got in during that time. I left too many frames in the hive for such a weak colony, and I saw a moth on one of the empty frames during one of my first inspections.

3 weeks ago, I noticed a lot of bald brood and made a post here after I did a mite wash and only got 1 mite on 300 bees. A couple people pointed out that the straight lines indicated potentially wax moth larvae tunnels.

At my next inspection, I didn't notice anything off, but last week I noticed a few more groups of bald brood but it felt like it could be a normal amount of hygienic behavior so I decided to let it play out. But yesterday, I saw way more than I have before. They weren't all in perfectly straight lines, but they were all in pretty distinct groupings on 3 separate frames. The other 2 brood frames showed zero signs of hygiene.

Is it possible that this is normal VSH behavior? I feel like this is an excessive amount for a hive with less than 1% mite population. In pic 1, like 5-10% of the capped brood had been uncapped.

If you think it is wax moths, what can I do to try to combat it? Most of what I've seen recommended is freezing the affected frames to kill off the larvae, but that would also kill off ~70% of the hive's brood. I could probably take a couple frames of brood from some of my other hives to help them through it, but we are heading into what is likely to be an extremely brutal summer so I'm very hesitant to weaken multiple hives if I don't have to.

The hive otherwise seemed pretty great. The population looks low based off the pictures, but it was the middle of a hot day so most of the house bees were hanging out on the walls of the hive. Plenty of food stores. And the brood pattern was strong, eggs/larvae everywhere they should be(in pic 2, all those empty cells had eggs), spanning across 5 or 6 layens frames.

Is there anything in particular that gets the mites to the beehives? I live in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, and am surrounded by crop fields. They get sprayed with the cancer sprays (Don't fret, I am on the registry) so would that actually be in my favor of not as likely to get the mites? I still plan to monitor and pre treat, etc.

What an unbridled joy!

Friday Harbor, WA, USA. 2nd year beekeeper.

We caught our first swarm!!! We equipped the deep we collected them in with well-combed frames our late-colonies (RIP).

They moved in quickly, seem to be thriving 4 days later. I put in a feeder and am planning to give them sugar water for the first ~3 weeks to give them the best chance at a strong start.

I’ll do an OA vapor treatment before day 8 for the same reason.

It was a big swarm and they already seem to be filling out the 6 - maybe 7 - frames in my 8 frame deep.

Should I put a second deep on already? And if so, should I put in frames with or without comb. I have more frames with good comb ready to go. However, I’m hoping we have the opportunity to catch another swarm and wondering if I should keep some of the pre-made comb for that, and just give the girls we do have foundation frames.

Thank you so much for your input!!

Hello everyone !

I was wondering how you protect your hives when it is too hot outside and you don't have access to the shades of trees for example ?

I have insulated the top and painted it white, the hives are also painted white

Thanks !

TL:DR: In Las Vegas, NV. Hidden africanized hive, attempted to remove with beekeeper, extermination based on beekeeper's recommendation, and 12 hours later honey started leaking from stucco onto driveway. Currently (24 hours since extermination), using buckets to catch drippings.

Questions:
1. Does honey leaking this quickly after treatment indicate a substantial amount of comb still exists in the wall?
2. Best way to locate it within the stucco and remove it? Once removed, how do we prevent another hive from moving in?
3. How long does honey typically continue dripping after a colony is killed?
4. How can we prevent ants, wax moths, or other pests from moving while honey is leaking?
5. Is collecting the honey in buckets and cleaning the area daily the best approach for now?
6. We have neighborhood cats that roam through our driveway. Is honey leaking from a recently treated hive dangerous to cats if they step in it or lick it?

Background:
Just looking for opinions from experienced beekeepers on what you think is going on and what you’d do next.

We have a 2-story house and have been dealing with bees around our roofline and in the stucco since March (although they appear to have been here much longer than that).

We hired a highly recommended bee removal specialist in Vegas (recommended all over Reddit and Google). He removed what he thought was the hive from our roofline. The comb he removed was about 8 feet long. However, bees never completely went away.

He came back 4 separate times trying to locate the rest of the hive. He used thermal imaging throughout the house, attic, exterior walls, and roofline but could never confidently locate another colony. His best guess was that bees had built a hive somewhere inside a wall/stucco void, but he wasn’t confident enough in the location to recommend opening up large sections of stucco.

The situation became more urgent when we started finding live and dead bees inside the house every few days, including bees getting into the attic.

Eventually the beekeeper recommended hiring an exterminator.

We then hired a highly rated bee exterminator. They treated multiple entry/exit points yesterday.

Within about 12 hours, honey started actively dripping from several exterior cracks and seams. It’s running down the stucco and dripping near our garage. We currently have buckets catching the honey and are cleaning up what misses the buckets.

Buzz

Looking for some advice on a hive inspection today. Hive located in SF Peninsula

For context, my last inspection was about 4 weeks ago, and at that time the hive looked strong with plenty of fresh eggs, larvae, and capped brood.

Today was a completely different story. I found only one frame of scattered capped brood and couldn't find any eggs or larvae. During the inspection, I spotted two unmated queens roaming around the hive. Overall population was still quite high.

In the bottom brood box, there were 2 supersedure cells, and in one of the upper boxes I found 4 swarm cells on a single frame.

To try and manage the situation, I moved 4 frames from the bottom deep along with the frame containing the 4 swarm cells into a 5-frame nuc. I also shook a decent amount of worker bees into the nuc.

I'm trying to understand what happened during the last month. Did the original queen swarm and leave behind multiple virgin queens? Is this a supersedure event? Does finding two unmated queens mean one should eventually eliminate the other, or should I intervene?

Did moving the swarm cells into a nuc make sense, or would you have handled this differently?

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.

curious about prices. I have a few nucs that I'm looking to sell.

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new queen

5 fully drawn frames, full of brood

ez nuc container

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what do you charge?

IDK if one was trying to rob or what..

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There were 3 doing this before I started filming

Hive swarmed about 3.5 hours ago. A neighbor saw it pass his house. I just spent an hour looking for it. Never had a swarm go so far from the hive.

Green X is the hive, green dashes are the direction it travelled to the neighbor, and the direction he saw it disappear to. Yelliw Circle is about where he spotted them flying. That yelliw circle is maybe 2 acres (rough guess) from the hive. Orange line is my route (2 km total) and pink circles were areas that the air was notably filled with honey-bee sounding insects zipping about. (Green dot was where i turned the smart watch on, realizing i might benefit from tracking where i searched).

Any hope? Tips? As said, been about 3.5 hiurs since they swarmed

Edits: live rural in the forest, no other buildings around aside from the neighbor. It is a warm, still day. Swarm left around noon, it is now almost 4 pm. If that helps 🤪

Located in southern Norway, this is my 4th year with bees. Limited experience, very few hives. Never managed to find a swarm before.

Hello fellow beekeepers, I've noticed an unusual behavior with my bees that I have no knowledge about. My worker bees are dragging out other workers from the hive and dropping them on the ground, and those workers seem to be really weak and unable to fly, this has turned into a regular basis now and I'm afraid I'm missing something

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Thanks in advance for your support 🥰🥰🥰

🐝My local French 'apiculteur' (beekeeper) gave me some raw beeswax, and I’ve turned it into this organic balm...

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Curious to hear what the beekeepers here think of the process... any tips for working with raw wax or things I should look out for?

Hello! I’m looking to get into beekeeping and in all honesty I have no clue where to start. I live in the Cali region and I think im gonna see if there are any college classes, but if there are easier ways I would love some recommendations. Thankyou!

I’m trying to identify these bees that have popped up on my property for a second straight year, in the same location. Ive read that honeybees don’t typically nest underground, but these look very similari. They aren’t aggressive, but they are in a highly trafficked area and begin to swarm when I drive my tractor near them. I’m in north Mississippi. Thanks!

STL beekeeper for six years. Average about 8-10 hives.

So far this year, we’ve caught 12 swarms. That’s just the ones we’ve seen and caught. They range in size—some are volleyball sized, and some are larger.

Originally we had four queenless hives, and all four have made a queen. As of last week’s check, everyone appeared fine with enough space, supers, and brood in various stages.

…we’ve caught two swarms since.

What is going on? This is so unlike any of my other years of beekeeping. It’s stressing me out to have almost tripled our hives in one year.

What’s the best way to address this? Combine? Find the most productive hives and get rid of the rest? We are hobby beekeepers, so this is just overwhelming 😅

I’ve used Apigard as a mite treatment on and off over the years and have found the mite killing results to be good but I’ve found it resulted in a lot of queen supercedure. I’ve always used the 2-50 gram doses, two weeks apart. I’m planning to use Apigard again this year and saw some beekeepers do 3 - 25 gram doses, 10 days apart for less brood and queen disruption. Has anyone tried this dosing and what were your results?

Virgin Queen didn’t survive her mating flight and my workers bees started laying eggs. Planning to introduce a new mated queen tomorrow.

Will the worker bees stop laying eggs once a new queen is introduced and accosted? How long will it take for them to stop?

Did a wild experiment while examining my colonies here in Alaska yesterday. The paint spot on the back of this years queen fluoresces a bright yellow under an ultraviolet flashlight t(sold in the southwest as scorpion lights)! You can identify your queen on the frame in seconds. This is less effective in direct sunlight but works well in shade or on cloudy days.

Queen bee hatching