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Thanks for the tips Tom. I'll try them out if I ever get another one. They were in there for nearly a week so I though I was home free. Having the comb not centered on the bars would have been a real...

Well, I checked on my captured swarm hive today and it's empty. Ok, not technically empty as there were two bees in there and they left three small combs that weren't quite centered on the bars and...

He was answering my question of what an afterswarm was. The reply wasn't directed at you.

I thought the newspaper headline was appropriate (but accidental), "Remembering Your Mother". That's not...

Well, they all joined up in one big cluster the next day so I hope all is well. Here is a shot up through the screened bottom (my hives are on legs).
...

Nice vid! What species are these?

I was lucky to have our security office call me about a swarm at work today just after lunch. The weather was wonderful and I was caught up on work so I told them I would take care of it. It was of...

It was a very cold day :)

@ berkshire, My above statement is wrong, bumble bees are a social bee.

I had no idea bee flies parasitize on bees! Fascinating. I'll have to look into this a little more. We have tons of bee flies come out in early spring in the woods around my office.

As for...

At one of the bee schools I went to over the winter there was a class on SHB. The presenter used small squares, around 5"x5" or so, of corrugated plastic sign board. The "political yard sign" type....

The guy I bought my nucs from also recommends sumac bobs. I seen them in action and they seem to work very well! I'll grab some this winter. I currently use pellet stove fuel but don't fire the...

Exactly why I put one in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps4mzDqSzxQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka-EaRcmr58

Video of my first full hive inspection of hive #1. I also placed the first top bar between two frames to begin the transition process to all top bars from the nuc frames. I think this method will...

Some more video looking through my observation window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps4mzDqSzxQ

Video is a little boring. Nothing exciting happened. Didn't go running through the yard stripping my clothes off as predicted by some.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3BjECcY9dw

My digital camera has a nice "super macro" mode on it plus I handheld a 10x triplet loupe (like this one) in front of it. It took a lot of shots to get the focus just right. The subject was very...

I found two more in my screened-in back porch. One was long dead, but the other was on the screen. I scooped it up and took it to the nest block. It crawled right in a hole. Are these adults at the...

Right now each piece is glued to form one big block and then a hole is drilled through the leg and through the block with a 2' piece of rebar (with a 90 deg bend at one end to from a tent stake like...

It is a universal truth that you can NEVER have enough clamps. ;)

The comment may have been a bit over the top Shapleigh's Bees. But I know where you are coming from. One gets tired of constantly having to defend the TBH. This sub forum should be a refuge. The...

I put up two Blue Orchard Bees boxes this year but I've not seen any activity in them yet. I'll also be a first time honey bee keepers in a few days. I'm using some homemade top bars hives for this. ...

Well... this is how I clamped mine. :) Clamp Pic

I'm so close to the hive builder to bee keeper transition, I can taste it. I can pick my bees up Tuesday at the earliest.

So this weekend I put the legs on the hives and leveled them. I made some...

This post on my blog shows the construction of my board feeders. You can use melted beeswax to seal them. I'm going to use Camcote. It's the stuff they paint on old extractors to seal the metal. It's...

I'm building four hives this spring and I put a window in one. I think it will be a great opportunity to observe the bees as these are my first hives.

My main entrances are on the long side of...

Ditto.

My hives are also just about done. I poured some wax on my saw kerf bars today and made a nice mess. I figured out pretty quick that all you have to do is run something down the length to...