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i have tried a few times with zero success. Yes, it would be nice to use honey producing setups as mating nucs. in my experience it wont work this way tho. two queen hives are successful if they...

i would advise not to wrap. you may see moisture issues with our humid air. soon after the new year i tack some landscaping fabric to the front of my hives. the boxes warm up a bit better on the...

what about when a bee with a mite on it dies? ever have a colony abscond due to mite load? those mites are not gone forever.

TRUTH

"there" is "here":
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/12/devastating-mites-jump-nimbly-flowers-honeybees

if you get a 2-3 days stretch of rainy no-fly weather OAV them before and after. your drop count after can give you an idea what sort of mite drift you may be dealing with.

i would say it is too late for manipulations and i would leave them as is, which is fine BTW. one year i overwintered two 4f mediums, one made it.

yeah. 25 or 30 bucks per, i dont remember exactly. i keep track of how much i spent, but not how much i bought. i should change that i guess. i had calculated the sugar content at one point to...

pro-sweet is a lot cheaper (like half) if you bring your own container for them to fill. it actually ends up being only a bit more expensive than mixing you own 2:1. but, as astro pointed out,...

i wouldnt think so. can you transport 20 nucs without fail across 1300 miles for $2k? perhaps, but not much left for profit.

H E double hockey sticks, if the two supers are full of honey (not sugar syrup) you can buy a package in the spring and still have doubled your money.

i will add that as a new beekeeper you will not want to be responsible for moving that hive. if fed up properly for winter it likely weight over 200 pounds, and it should be at this point. if i...

drummer, have you ever tried leaving the sugar in the bag and just placing the bag over the inner cover? wonder if that might work well with a slit or a few pinholes in the bag where the inner cover...

that radical cure is quite labor intensive.
other way: formic stops the queens from laying for a few days. same imbalance of population. i do MAQS treatment when drones start emerging. no swarms...

^^^

ifixoldhouses comment about (the only real ones) is misunderstood by many. saskatraz queens are breeder queens from canada. saskatraz hybrids are grafted directly from these breeder queens that...

apivar is 50% additional cost to maqs. not arguing, i use apivar after i pull honey when i have also used maqs on same hives when i put honey supers on.

i wouldnt say it stop swarming. there is a blip in their growth. the queen ceases laying for ~3 days. this cuts the amount of OPEN brood in half or more. open brood is claimed by some to be a...

i have used maqs the past two springs and will continue to use a formic product every spring. i apply two pads to singles when its time to put first honey super on. entrances are half width. no...

good points here. i will add that i typically see an influx of mites starting in september right after i pull my treatment strips. dont be so sure that there are no other hives within flying...

i think if you are going to treat this late you are correct to use something fast acting like formic rather than something slow like apivar. but i would be very cautious with a 2 pad application. ...

^ i think this is key! healthy robust colony that has not been disturbed in the fall such that they can properly organize their winter nest. i started using reflectix last year with no upper...

you are looking for a guarantee in beekeeping?!?
i bet our southern friends would argue that swarms wont emit this time of year.
what if bees swarm now due to high mite loads or unfavorable housing...

yes, last year was a bust. we had the soil moisture but nights didnt get cool until the second half of october.

early goldenrod does not produce nectar. this can start blooming the end of july. there will also be japanese knotweed blooming at this time if you have areas with loamy wet soil. goldenrod flow...