new hive

Help! A couple of years ago, our hives were attacked by some other hive from down the valley (we never could find out where, it's very mountainous and tree'd here). We tried all the tricks: bee doors and sheets (wet and dry), putting stuff in the doorway, closing the hive for a few days, etc...

Howdy, I'm a newbee that feels like I finally got a sign that I should start beekeeping. I have been fascinated with bees for a while and my neighbor (who is also a newbee) and I are trying to get things started together. My neighbor already has a cleaned out hive, and I believe a swarm just...

I set up my first hive this year, started with a package. Queen has been installed for 12 days and is laying, we have capped brood etc. Going well so far. When do I need to start worrying about mites? Thanks.

Hi all, A friend was getting out of the hobby and gave me some hives including one that is active. To complicate things I took them to some property we own that is about an hour away (New Braunfels TX, I'm in Austin) so I don't see them very often. I went recently and noticed that the bees...

Good afternoon! I built a langstroth hive and mounted it on a post about 1 meter or 3 feet in height to lower the risk of my dogs being stung or otherwise disturbing the hive. But now that i'm thinking about it, this course of action limits my ability to add brood boxes/supers as it won't take...

I have had this hive since May 6th. I have a deep (brood box) with one medium box, I thought I might possibly be needing another box so when I went to check the hive for 2nd time since I bought the package I took a medium box with me The medium box really didn't have much in there. There were...

Hey, I am a complete newbie. I built a top bar hive from the plans posted by Michael Bush. I installed a package of bees on Saturday, three days ago. That went mostly okay. The bees seem to like the hive. However, there is a huge clump of them on the right wall, I assume around the queen...

I'm a very very new beekeeper. After two years of wanting bees, I finally got them! But now I feel like an overprotective mother; it's mid-July, I've had them since the end of May, and they haven't expanded beyond four frames! I've been feeding them sugar water and even painted some wax that a...

Did I re-queen my hive too late? Hive history below. Friday, May 13: Received 5 frames from a split with a queen. I was told this nuc supposedly had 4 frames of open brood (eggs) and 1 frame honey Saturday, May 14: Put 5 frames into my medium langstroth. Found the queen but did not see eggs...

Hello! I caught a very small swarm just under a month ago and transferred them to an empty 10-frame deep box. This is my first hive and I've been checking on them weekly. They've built a small amount of comb on three frames which the queen is laying in and an even smaller amount of comb on a...

We have had our hive for 28 days now, and to us, the bees are doing a terrific job. I wanted to post on here to get more professional and experienced opinions on whether or not the bees are on schedule, or possibly behind as of right now...

Queen OK - Huge larva - 1 month old hive during 1st Queen hunt Hi there, When separating 2 frames that were combed together a huge larva appeared in middle, about the size of the queen, it was very, very large apx., 3/4" in length. Just a queen larva? I'm new so have no idea about what I saw...

Hello I have a bit of a problem with frame sizes. I bought 2 hives and copied the frames so I had commonality. I then bought 10 boxes from China hoping they would be the STD frame size - they were not! I then bought 6 hives from a local bee keeper full of bees, brude and honey but again these...

I've got one hive that made it through winter, 7 and a half frames of almost solid brood and 4-6 of honey as of the inspection Saturday (2/27). I want to concentrate on building my number of hives this year. How soon is it a good idea to do splits with what I've got? I'd prefer them to raise...

I just did my first inspection and it did not go that well. I forgot my hive tool and the feeder was hard to pry off the frames from the propolis but once the frames were exposed it looks like combs are being built between the frames (is this cross comb?) I had difficulty removing the first...

Hi- Not sure what to do in my situation... 3 weeks ago I installed a 3 lb package (not knowing when I ordered that I should get more) into a brand new Warre. I studied up and read through multiple keeper's directions on how to install, but they differed. I first placed the lowest box, put in...

We are brand new to beekeeping although we did attend classes hosted by a professional beekeeper. I believe that we installed the bees and the queen correctly and we started feeding them syrup. We had nice weather almost every day since installation and the hive activity has been very strong...

Hi again all! I had hopes of my own swarm being caught, and moving them into a newly purchased top bar hive. I have langstroths, but looking to try something new. I posted about my swarm dilemma that happened 3 days ago, and there has been so much growth on the locust tree they flew up into...

Hi all, I am new to this forum and new to beekeeping. We got our first hive this spring. We went through the summer and fall and all was well we got about a quart of honey in our honey super and had about 10 full frames of honey in the brood boxes. Additionally the queen seemed to be laying...

I grew up with honey bees- my dad was an avid keeper in NH. Now, I've started a new hive of my own in AZ and am trying not to hover and stress about them!!! I got my queen and box of Italians on May, 21st. Three days later I checked to see that the queen was free of the Benton cage (she was)...