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I just lost two colonies to SHBs -- put an oil trap under the screen on my remaining hive and will put one under my brother's soon. From now on they all get oil traps, every hive.

I've left the...

Sticker it for a year so it's more or less equilibrated with the outside air. If you make boxes with green lumber, they WILL shrink, warp, twist, and cup.

Since you are not moving the wood...

I will repeat -- the bees will NOT draw comb unless they need it for storage or brood. A new hive is busy raising all the brood it can manage, and has limited resources for making and storing...

Move the frames over and shake out any bees that want to stay in the old box. If you are moving it 200 yards and they have oriented on the original position (which they do as soon as they accept the...

Someone is missing the point here. Bees absolutely heat the cluster and not the hive, because they are indeed in a tight cluster, packed into the empty cells in the comb and between the combs. And...

Hives with honey and large numbers of bees are more defensive than hives without those two things, so probably normal. Quite often they get cranky for a couple days after inspections, too, I've...

Nice!

Transfer them to their new permanent location and into a standard hive and let 'em rip -- they should fill out lots of foundation and get to work right away!

Peter

If there are larvae in the cells, you have a fine queen. After all, the bees have to emerge for there to be anywhere for the queen to lay!

Check for the following: larvae graduated in size from...

Add the extra super, it surely won't hurt. Our "main flow" is over, but the clover is coming on and soybeans are less than a month away for the early ones, so while our flow is less, it's not none,...

Honey from a package is problematic here because we almost always have a serious pollen and nectar dearth from mid to late July through mid September -- usually no rain and hotter than blazes (at...

I would shake more bees into the split from the parent hive to get the numbers back up and move it a couple miles. I've lost all the splits I've tried when I left them near the parent hive, better...

Two things:

Make sure you have all the frames pushed tightly together -- they make a mess if you have too much space between them. Makes for easier inspections if you aren't fighting burr comb...

At this point, you are better off leaving them to their own devices. Do the split, but don't buy queens and attempt to introduce them -- the likelyhood of missing a queen cell is just too high, and...

You won't prevent swarms by crushing queen cells, they go anyway as a rule. What you should do is read up on swarm prevention and figure out which method you wish to use (checkerboarding, box...

There are several reasons for overwintering nucs, which I'm going to try this year. First, you have a working hive to replace winter losses (none for me this year, although I just had a hive fail...

Mike:

I was thinking that. I made a robber screen and installed it this afternoon, and things have quieted down. It's also going to rain tonight, so that should dampen the robbers down a bit and...

Yup. You want the space available when that crop of brood emerges.

If you have drawn comb you can add both mediums at once, if not, add one box of empty foundation at a time. Unless other beeks...

My brother and I extract ours, filter it from the extractor through a nylon paint filter and bottle in plastic honey containers. Glass is better, I think, but heavier, much more expensive, and...

Was greeting this morning by a robbing event on my weak hive. I'd left the entrance reducer in place due to fairly low numbers of bees, and this morning there was quite a bit of wax crumbs and some...

Could be robbers looking for a way in, but it can also be girls patching up cracks between boxes. I've got a few that look different than mine (more golden) sniffing around the cracks between full...

I would suspect your hive swarmed. Check carefully for open queen cells (nice round hole in the end, not ripped or torn on the side). If you find one, you have a queen, she will be getting mated...

Either they are not bringing anything in or they've decided the foundation isn't someplace to put honey.

Pull a couple capped frames out of the other boxes and put them into the super of...

Unless they flatten it out pronto, get it out of there. It will only get worse!

Typically the bees draw out oval or heart shaped free comb or work an oval or circular part of the foundation near...

You don't want to use ozone. If you make enough to do anything, you will probably badly oxidize the honey, that much ozone is REALLY bad for your lungs (unless you want to carry an oxygen bottle the...

Went out to check my hives tonight and was greeted by the sight of a dozen or so drones staggering around on the ground in front of the one that was grouchy yestereday. Both hives have superceded...