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I went entirely natural cell with many colonies for several years and it simply didn't work for me, I just can't imagine a radical improvement by me going with small cell now instead of natural cell,...

Yeah, the bigger they are the harder they fall, I found out last year how true that is, hives that produced 175-200 lbs. were the first to collapse. The big hives never even made it to winter, only...

We are behind in swarming this year simply because the last couple years we had a very early spring, this year we had a late spring comparatively speaking. My overwintered hives came through pretty...

What do the pro-treatment guys have to say about a 30% annual loss of bees? Lets have the opinion of those running over 100 hives only. John

I got 8 virgins out of one hive the other day, they all were about to emerge so I opened up the cells and collected them all up into queen cages and water bottles(didn't have enough cages with me)....

There may be a couple early swarms any day now, but the bulk of the swarming I think is about a couple weeks off yet in my area of southeast Michigan. John

keeper, I don't know where you are getting the 50%-60% loss of package colonies the first winter? Are you figuring in losses related to mites or other diseases to get that percentage? I would say...

Just an idea on the mini mating nuc frames, you can always cut out drawn comb from regular frames to fit into the mini frames instead of trying to get them drawn out. John

That's the way I have always interpreted it. Some bees will gather water and propolis but for the most part bees coming back with no pollen are carrying nectar. John

kamazon, if the hive is in multiple boxes, reduce them down to one box with the most bees in it and the queen of course, also make sure the box has at least a couple frames of honey/pollen also. Bees...

If they were installed on foundation they need to have somewhere to store the pollen, so they may not immediately bring it in, but surely after a few days they will once they get some comb drawn, and...

I use 1/8" hardware cloth and roll it into the shape of a cone, its pretty stiff so it keeps its shape easily. I get about the smallest zip ties they make which fits through the holes in the cloth to...

Sometimes you have to readjust your goals for the season depending on how the year shakes out. Seeing as how your weather has not been very good so far this spring, I would feed sugar syrup for food...

beepro, I wish I had too many queens right now. John

I would put the old queen in the nuc box and let the bigger original hive raise the queen, you will get a better queen raised with more bees to care for the developing larvae. John

At this point they are not using the syrup as fast as it is coming in, not enough brood yet to feed, but they will use it up as the queen lays more. Giving them another box of comb now is the thing...

They need bee space of 1/4" to 3/8" under the inner cover, so you need to put a strip of wood around the perimeter of the inner cover to get that space. John

I think it would be unusual for only one queen cell in a supercedure, are you sure its a queen cell? John

I wouldn't be dequeening a nuc to make it a mating nuc. I would just start out with only bees in the mating nuc and giving them a queen cell within a day of setting them up. John

If any of those frames of honey were on the hive when you were feeding in the fall, they could contain syrup so extracting them wouldn't be a good idea. I would leave them on the hive, 3 frames of...

I do them about 2-3 weeks before the main flow begins, that gives all the emerged bees time enough to mature into foragers. John

I would address things by getting rid of those combs with 50% drone cells in them and get them to draw out some new worker combs, do this as soon as all the brood hatches out of them. John

I'll have to check on the drill size I used, seems like it was ?/64's, will let you know when I find out. John

I'm getting away from the traditional bottom board with the landing area sticking out, all the ones I'm building from now on will be without a landing area, easier to stack hives closer together when...

I purchased a Sundance top mounted pollen trap a couple years ago and was not happy with it, so I tossed it up on the shelf and built my own which works much, much better. I found the Sundance trap...