First year beekeeper here, but I'm not certain if I should intervene or not... just finished my inspection, trying to get the hive ready for winter (I live in South Carolina, so not a harsh winter). I have 2 deep brood boxes and a super. The top brood box is exceptional. Excellent laying...

Hello! I'm an aspiring queen breeder / producer that's been keeping bees for about 7 years now, starting in 2014. For the past several years I've been hovering at the 20 hive limit that allows me a farm direct sales exemption from licensing in Oregon, which includes being able to sell jars of...

hey! a new video on acquiring grafting materials an easier way! https://youtu.be/A7DMxZvakHk

I'm new to raising queens (aside from walkaway splits) so please forgive me if this is a typical question but I just can't find anything specific with any of my search terms. Background: I have about 8 overwintered healthy hives that are already pretty strong in Feb. I like the genetics of...

I was reading about buckfast queens and they sound like they may be a pretty good breed to try out. Does anyone have any experience with them, good or bad? If experiences have been good, where do you buy them or where is a good place to try to get them from? Thanks in advance for any input!

Wondering if anyone has an all-American or other suitable Texas-adapted queen they want to sell me. My best hive is now mysteriously queen-less. No eggs or uncapped brood, only a few remaining capped brood to be hatched. All the bee suppliers in the area that I know are sold out. Can anyone...

Hi, Castleton, VT zone 4b Newish to beekeeping and I, though under-informed, think that feeding is not good for the long term success of bees and want to try to take over-wintering nucs to the next level and see if I can get them to survive without any feeding. I'll admit I'm way in over my...

Hi, I'm in my second year of beekeeping. I used the cloake board method to get 6 queen cells from my favorite queen. I took the cells and made up some NUCS. The queens hatched out a couple days ago. I went into one of the NUCS this morning and observed a queen that had tattered edges on the...

I am wondering if anyone knows of any honey bee breeders breeding lines which are heavy propolizers? I am also interested in finding out about honey bee breeders breeding lines which readily and quickly draw lots of comb? Thanks, Kyle

Earlier this year I found one of my hives to be queenless, and I moved a frame of new brood into the hive in hopes that they would raise their own queen. They did, and she was making lots of brood. This hive had been grumpy during its queenless episode, but OK. We are now over the big Tallow...

Hi all. I haven't had this opportunity yet, but feel like it's possible given these options. I'm interested to know what others' options and suggestion might be for how to handle this situation. I got 2 new packages this year, and 1 nuc. The packages were hived 3/31. about 3 weeks later, 4...

I am a first-year beek. I have two top bar hives from packages installed 4/14 and one was booming (24 drawn bars) so I decided to do a walk away split on it a day and a half ago (6/25). I made an 8-bar TBH nuc and put a robber screen on it before doing the split...hoping the screen would cause...

Hello everyone, I would like some input from those of you with experience with queens being "balled." I believe this is the term used to describe when a queen bee is targeted and killed by the workers when she is still a successful layer/queen. Over the last year, or so, I have experienced this...