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Very nice! How did you get started keeping bumble bees, did you just create the nestbox and a bee found it or?

Hey Dodgerdoob, did you try other emulcifiers? What did you find?

I don't know about grape juice, but adding a bit of essential oils to their feed makes everything smell wonderful, and is good for them according to some studies. When I have to feed them to survive...

I wouldn't. Everything I have read indicates keeping bees inside is tricky. If it gets too warm they will fly out and generally die if the hive was moved into a garage or indoors. Also, they will...

Wildflower doesn't sound quite right for honey from veggies... I assume you have multiple different types of veggies? So how about polyculture honey? Or maybe polyflower honey ;)

Robbing can result in a dead colony or nuc pretty quickly. Michael Bush has some good notes on what to do: http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrobbing.htm

why not put together a bee vac and 'encourage' them into your own brood box? Here are some plans for a simple bee vac in case you are wondering what it is about:...

looks like some plain ol' sideways comb. I've seen it a few times in my colonies. Scrape it off and they will often rebuild correctly. They seem to build it more often on plastic foundation:...

Dish soap works for me, but you have to let it work for a little while. Don't rinse it off right away. Also keep in mind dish soap dissolves wax and oils and is not good on all parts of a...

I use toothpaste.

congratulations! the baby looks wonderful.

the video's activity looks normal to me, for a newer colony. Activity gets much heavier than that for some of my colonies. The humming gets very loud, loud enough to scare the cats. Here is what a...

I would remove all contaminated wax from the frames then do a bleach wash (heavy rinse, spray on 10% bleach solution, wait 20-30 minutes, rinse again) on it all. As always, be careful with bleach.

ooo! More folks from BC, eh? Welcome! :)

I bought mine at essential oils university http://essentialoils.org ... been quite happy with the results.

Oooo, another BC'er eh? Welcome! :)

I bought a roll of aluminium flashing for mine, the hardware stores around here carry it for roofing work. Easy to work with. You can score it with a utility knife for clean cuts, and it's easy to...

very sad to see them starve like that... I wonder if a low-level heater would work. Something to let them break cluster but not warm enough to make them leave the hive.

Not sure what you're trying to show us frozen "north" folks... here's my bees from way back in mid January (Jan 16). :P

http://aprici.com/drupal/sites/default/files/IMG_0347.MOV

I think the interest comes from trying to treat bees in the least intrusive way that appears effective. There have been studies using essential oils, like this one, and this one, and this... there...

Might be referring to the Wintergreen essential oil grease patties? These seem to work and smell great. Here are some observations on the essential oil stuff I've tried so far.

The label indicates 4tsp per quart for drenches and 1tsp per quart for regular feeding. Here is the label for HBH.

Note that this is probably not the exact same recipe as the essential oils...

That looks like the essential oils recipe, it is not clear if it is the same as the product called Honey-B-Healthy. If (big IF) it is the same then they indicate 4tsp. (teaspoons, adds up to 20ml)...

The bees don't generally bother the feeders unless it gets windy and the syrup tilts out a bit, or the feeders are leaking. This happened on a windy day:
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bees love many veggie plants, like broccoli. The alfalfa should be very good as well. Wikipedia provides some nice info on forage for bees.