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  1. General Bee Forum Discussions
    I visited my hives for the first time in a while yesterday and the news is not good. Queens have shut down, I saw almost no brood and there were beetles everywhere. Fortunately, nothing was slimed yet. I took off a bunch of boxes and tried to give them as little space as possible. I also put on...
  2. Beekeeping 101
    Hello, First overwinter and this winter has been unseasonably warm in spots. Central Indiana has seen many warm days in February and i witnessed the colony taking in pollen recently, so i fear an early population build. My hive is strong, and i was planning to split, but i know the wisdom is...
  3. General Bee Forum Discussions
    I have a double nuc that overwintered as 4x4 and will be taking each side and installing in a reg size hive body. I have heard these things take off in their second year, Exactly how fast do they build up and how quickly will I need to add boxes and supers? Thanks!
  4. General Bee Forum Discussions
    What are the minimum requirements to do a double nuc at this time of year? I am located in Pennsylvania and was given 2 swarms that were very healthy and I set them up in a double nuc 4x4, with 8 total frames on each side. I like the idea of hedging your bets by having multiple nucleus colonies...
  5. Splits/Combines
    I need some advice. I lost my queen in one colony in September, so I combined with another hive. Both colonies were big an healthy. After the combine was successful, I removed the third box from the hive to overwinter in two deeps. They have 90lbs of honey to overwinter with, but now I'm...
  6. All other areas
    Hello all, I'm looking at keeping a honey super on my double deep hive bodies, which I did last year for the first time and it worked well. But would like advice on procedure for feeding 2-1 sugar syrup to help pack the hives with the super on? or if I should remove it during feeding. I'd...
  7. Texas
    We are in SE Texas. New to beekeeping, have had 3 hives for a little over a 1/2 year now. We have not harvested yet, but have some full deeps and then some. Can you tell us... is there a formula, if you will, for knowing how much honey to leave for the hive overwinter so we don't need to feed Is...
  8. Swarms, Trap-outs, and Cut-outs
    All: I will apologize in advance if this question has been asked before- I couldn’t find anything in the archives quite like it, so here goes: Have you all observed any correlation between relative Spring swarm date and subsequent long-term overwintering success assuming one does not...
  9. General Bee Forum Discussions
    Can someone walk me through an overwintering protocol for nucs? I have 2 in 8-frame mediums and one in a 5-frame deep, new queens just beginning laying. Do I feed them up and try to expand them into 2 boxes? Or hold back and keep them small? We are at the end of the main nectar season here in...
  10. New Member Introductions
    I am from Iowa (zone 5a). For about 3 years we (wife and I) have been considering getting a hive or 2 for our backyard. I also know several farmers in our area who would let me keep hives on property corners near ditches with lots of flowers and clover etc. We decided to take the plunge when I...
  11. General Bee Forum Discussions
    I am in the midst of a beekeeping challenge: it’s September and the honeybees aren’t building in the honey super. For around the last month, I find small groups exploring the frames in the super but never a sign of building comb. I know that the honeybees will not move into the super until the...
  12. General Bee Forum Discussions
    Hi all, This is my second year in beekeeping. I think I made some mistakes last year, and I'd like to avoid them if possible this year :). I've a hive with 2 supers full of honey, and I'm not sure what is the best way to proceed at this point (please bear in mind that I live in Colorado so my...
  13. General Bee Forum Discussions
    I often see posts or articles suggesting a hive needs anywhere between 40 and 90 lbs of honey to make it thru the winter. Often these sources don't address the colony size. It wasn't until today I learned of a better metric, the Brood to Honey Ratio. The ratio was expressed in number of brood...
  14. General Bee Forum Discussions
    Hi! I'd love some advice on this: I bought a 5 frame (Langstroth) nuc two weeks ago. I moved the colony to a 2' long x 1' tall box and mixed in some top bars. The colony seems to be doing fairly well. As of last weekend the colony had 3+ brood frames and two drawn frames with some honey. I...
  15. General Bee Forum Discussions
    Hello, all. I'm a first year beekeeper in southeast Iowa. I bought a Russian pkg this year, installed it and took a mere 6 gal. I also recieved a swarm from a friend. Right in the middle between mean and dosile. Anyway, I was wondering if I missed anything. I've got ventilation holes in the...
  16. General Bee Forum Discussions
    The temp dropped from 70 to 52 in Brooklyn this week. I am a first year bee keeper, and I have been feeding syrup and just insulted the outside of the hive last week. My plan has been to leave the hive top feeder on over the winder and fill it with cedar chips or something similar and to put a...
  17. Treatment-Free Beekeeping
    I am going to switch to TF and one of the steps is to leave them honey, stop feeding sugar. I am from Czech Republic (middle Europe). But I am also reading a lot of warnings about dysentery (diarrhea) from dark (fall) honey. I tried to Google first and I have found few topics where people...
  18. General Bee Forum Discussions
    I built a couple nucs using the plan on the "build yourself" section of beesource. See pic below. My question is for anyone overwintering Nucs. I've seen a couple videos and listened to a lecture by both the Fat Bee Man and Larry Connor on this topic. My question is about ventilation. What are...
  19. General Bee Forum Discussions
    hey y'all. I've been at this now three years and I have had a routine problem with hives that I have queened with Carniolans. Simply put I have had only 1 out of 4 over winter and that 1 just died out in the early winter. I had another freeze over this last week. It seems to me that the...
  20. Swarms, Trap-outs, and Cut-outs
    I have witnessed two primary swarms during my first season (recaptured one). Yesterday evening I arrived home after work to find Hive #1 had again drained a quart of 1:1 sugar water. They have been pulling in a quart a day for about a week. An hour later I walked by to see and hear a small...
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