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I've seen similar things in the past. On more than one occasion we had a mature queen and a small virgin queen in the same hive in early spring, well before the virgin could mate. This year, we had...

I always add the empties on top of the brood box and under the full super and stagger them for rapid entry. Hilreal is right about moving outer frames in. It also helps to rotate supers 180...

Ya Wcubed, that's what I'm getting at. Over the last few years, we've noticed in our early spring examinations two queen situations: One a plump "normal" queen, and a smaller "virgin?" queen. And...

I have a surviving colony, weaker than the others but still alive. On inspection today I found no evidence of brood, the bees looked to be breaking down a queen cell, and a small queen (unmated?). ...

This wasn't a starting out mistake, but a mistake none the less: We run about a dozen hives and have never experienced robbing. We heard about it, but never have had it occur. UNTIL...One night in...

Move up north! Ticks happen, but not so much you worry about it. Also no hive beetles, little foul brood, lots of alfalfa. Only drawback is that winter thingy...

I dunno. We've gone to making splits from our strongest colonies each spring. We let them raise their own queens. It hasn't really cut back the production of the mother colonies, and we haven't...

I know beginners that have gone with both. The langstroth set up is much more conducive to actually learning bee keeping. The frames and bees are so much more accessible, which is important in the...

I don't worry about the opening size that much, but I also have top entrances. The big worry is whether the bees can get outside. Do you have a top entrance? What I would recommend is that some...

Gee, not to rain on your parade or anything...But in one year you really haven't experienced a fraction of what can and will go wrong. You're about to shell out a ton of cash without really...

Too complicated. I take an overwintered colony. I take one frame sealed brood, one frame eggs, one frame pollen, one frame honey, one open frame. Take a fair amount of nurse bees. Put them in a...

Science IS art!!!

I'm close to Tom B. in Madison and have to agree: Despite the drought, we had our best crop ever. We had new packages and splits with surplus honey that we've never seen before. Early alfalfa,...

Golden rod's blooming here in S. WI, but the hay farmers are letting their alfalfa bloom big time. You can literally smell the sweetness. They are loading supers fast.

Wierd one here. Had drought and high heat through mid-July, and expected the worst, but they put up a lot of honey. Have gotten rain since, and alfalfa is in full bloom and few farmers are cutting...

My understanding is that commercial carrots are actually considered fly pollinated. I've seen breeding labs that raise flys and then put them in bags that confine the two parent carrot flowers. ...

I tell new beekeepers to keep one thought in mind: In the first few years, you are not harvesting honey. You are harvesting knowledge.

OK, I may have screwed up and this may appear twice. I tried the dry sugar approach and went back to using fondant cakes. I had problems with the dry sugar being stored in cells and then...

I use half blind dovetail joints. That's mostly because I have the jig and love to use a router. That aside, if you're a hobbiest and not moving hives cross country on a regular basis, than how you...

For the second year in a row, our initial spring inspection has detected a hive with two queens. One is a large, mature looking queen, and the second is a much shorter youngster. Although its very...

Having done both, I prefer the fondant. I could see if you were running a lot of hives how it might be a bit of a pain. The drawbacks of the MC method when I used it was: 1) The newspaper ends up...

I got it by the foot at a local hardware store. I called around a lot looking for it, and generally no one carries it because its pretty darn useless at keeping mosquitoes and gnats out. The store...

For the last few years, the quality and availability of nucs and packages has been decreasing (quality in particular). That alone should answer the question.

Here's another aspect to consider. If you're going to make your own equipment, it's a lot easier to get quality lumber for smaller boxes than the 1x12s you need for deeps. The 1x12s that are out...

Why bother with bike rims. We tried them and just ended up constructing frames out of channel aluminum that works just fine (better). As an example, check out...