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There's not much I make myself WRT my hives, but there's a lot of robber activity going on now, so I thought I could take a stab at making a simple robber screen. Nothing more than some old...

The only situation I have found where bees reliably draw comb in the fall is with nucs. They essentially act like little swarms and build up for the winter. If you set up a nuc or two, you could...

If your flow hasn't started yet, there's no harm in putting a super on to see what happens. You might get lucky.

Bill

Like NS, I let them get a good band of capped honey. I run three deeps, and the queen rarely lays more than halfway up the third deep. I never use a queen excluder and can only remember a couple of...

As I understood the problem, it was to try to make the colonies in the bee yard more gentle in general, so that if and when those colonies swarm and escape into the wild, the resulting feral colonies...

If you catch a big orientation session, yes, it can look like a swarm, especially if the bees have been cooped up inside for a few days, due to rain or whatever. Then, you get several 'squads' at...

To me, AFB definitely smells like something rotting/rotten. Since I know my bees have been working the goldenrod, and since I know right now it smells really sweet, like, well, honey (teh scent...

My guess is that there are at least a couple of factors at work.

One is the psychological effect on the beek. Acting as if you are not afraid implies, at least to me, that you DON'T move jerkily...

Ken, we have/had at least four varieties of goldenrod here, ranging from less than three feet to over eight feet tall. IN GENERAL the bees seemed to prefer the later blooming, taller varieties, at...

Agreed. I was just pointing out why the numbers might seem so high. When it's a business, economics drive many/most decisions. For someone with just a couple of hives in the back yard, that's a...

Some folks use an empty super, some, like me, use a shim (see the other active thread here on moisture control) and I've read that some put it on top of the inner cover.

If by problems you mean...

I only use them in the winter and take them off in the spring. So, I don't have any issues with burr comb. My guess is that the bees would build up some comb on top of the frames, if there was that...

Shucks, I didn't take it that way.

Bill

All of the above. And, when you do go into a hive, always have a purpose and a plan. Move smoothly and steadily. Don't breath on the hive. Keep your shadow off of the frames. Keep an eye out for...

Commercial beeks have more practical knowledge than hobbyists, just from the sheer number of hives they work. But, from what I have read here and elsewhere, they are also more inclined to 'let' the...

MC method. Also, if you have vent boxes over the inner cover, the moist air will rise out of the hive. Or, use a shim with a top entrance, like the one BetterBee sells.
...

The idea is that the bees tend to stay up around your head, zeroing in on, among other things, the CO2 your breath gives off. By ducking and going under the branches they lose you. The bigger the...

Yes. If you follow the Russian Breeders' program, you surround the mating yard in a pattern at a certain distance with drone-heavy hives to saturate the area as much as possible so that, no matter...

well, my goal is to have as little impact on the bees as possible, whenever I work them. I don't think I handle them any rougher than I would, if I were not wearing a suit. In fact, just the...

Okay, that's what I would expect. Some of the photos I've seen posted here and elsewhere looked pretty basic, like I said, plywood or maybe the inside of a barn. I think they were smaller...

Yes, exactly.



So, then the requirements for honey production are different than those for a commercial food processing facility, at least in Maine? I've seen pics of honey houses with plywood...

I have an UltraBreeze suit that I wear whenever I do more than feed the hives. As the number of hives grows, the chances that one is going to be in a bad mood increases. Five years ago I had three...

I could be very wrong, but my guess is that the laws about not spraying certain pesticides when bees are on the bloom and/or notifying beekeepers of upcoming spraying were probably created to protect...

I've seen it in the past. This year the Russians that made the surplus did not touch it. Each year is different.

Just dug down into a couple of hives yesterday (originally MH), one has...

I posted earlier that mine always come USPS, but I just had several arrive yesterday that were sent overnight by Fed Ex from John at Old Sol. They looked great. For a few extra bucks, they were in...