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Vermont, second year, three hives. Inspected yesterday and my strongest hive shocked me: barely any eggs, a few patches of young larvae, mostly capped brood and emptiness…
Fifth year in Małopolskie, and I've just pulled about 25 drawn supers plus a stack of old brood boxes for storage. Last autumn wax moths turned four of my stored brood co…
Ontario, second year. My July nuc (5 frames, maybe 3 covered in bees) is under siege — yellowjackets patrolling the entrance all day, diving on returning foragers, and to…
Eight years in Skåne, and every summer the same claim resurfaces at our club: regress your bees to 4.9 mm small-cell (or go foundationless for 'natural cell') and varroa …
First year in Yorkshire, one hive from a May nuc. The flow's clearly stopped — hive's lighter than three weeks ago when I heft it, and inspections show them backfilling n…
Extracted 40 kg from my four Devon hives on Sunday (very happy). Now I've got eight wet supers dripping in the shed and conflicting advice from my association. One camp: …
Pulled a test frame from my supers here in Kent yesterday. It's maybe 85-90% capped, and I sampled from several capped cells: readings between 19.2 and 19.8, call it 19.5…
Second year, two hives near İzmir. Every evening around sunset both hives have a thick curtain of bees hanging off the landing board and up the front — last night it was …
Third year in North Carolina, four hives, mite counts creeping up (6-9 per 300) and I need to pick a treatment. Our forecast is 33-35C for the foreseeable. Formic Pro say…
First year, two hives, Minnesota. I put a bucket of syrup out in the yard yesterday because everything looked hungry and the flow is clearly over. Huge mistake apparently…
Washed all six of my hives yesterday here in Oregon and my two biggest ones came back at 14 and 16 per 300 — call it 5%. Way over threshold, I know I need to treat now, n…
22 years in and I still see the same heartbreak every spring, so forgive the soapbox. The colony that dies in January didn't die in January. It died in August. Your winte…
Seven years in Perthshire, six hives. One colony throws chalkbrood mummies every time we get a cool damp spell — and we've just had two solid weeks of it. White and grey …
Six years in Flanders, and this season I'm switching to Apivar after two formic summers. I want to sanity-check my timing math because amitraz strips are a 6-week commitm…
Fifth year in Quebec, seven hives. Summer supers came off last week, and now comes my annual dilemma: the goldenrod (and aster behind it) will start here around late Augu…
Following up my harvest thread — I've got about 140 lbs jarred and a booth booked at our local market next Saturday. North Carolina, so I've read our cottage food / honey…
18 years in Tyrol, and the single biggest upgrade to my operation was learning to overwinter nucs reliably. Every spring loss becomes a shrug instead of a purchase. But t…
Second year in İzmir. I have about 15 kg of this year's honey and some of last year's pine honey that crystallised quite fine and smooth. A customer at work asked if I se…
Third year in Kent, four hives. My gentlest colony — the one I show visitors — has turned genuinely unpleasant in the space of two weeks. Following me across the garden a…
First year in Minnesota, one hive, and I put it somewhere dumb in May — right where the snow slides off the garage roof, which future January me would not forgive. The be…
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