Questions and answers from the Beekeeping Community app — beekeepers helping beekeepers, worldwide.
Six years in and I'm a bit ashamed to admit this: I run two apiaries about 12 km apart here in Flanders, and my hive tool and gloves have been to every single colony with…
Quebec, 5 years. Our club got a booth at the regional fair in August plus two school visits in September, and I've volunteered (been volunteered) to build and run the obs…
Skåne, 8 years, and this winter I finally read Mel Disselkoen's OTS (On The Spot) queen rearing material properly instead of absorbing it via forum osmosis. The core mech…
İzmir, 2nd year. Installed a package in mid-April, queen got going okay — not spectacular, laying was a bit patchy but there was steady brood. Today's inspection: two fat…
Oregon, 5th year, 12 colonies, and after this spring's inspections my lower back has opinions. Currently running double deeps for brood. A full deep of honey is 80-90 lb;…
Perthshire, 7 years. One colony beat me to it this spring — prime swarm left around June 10 (caught it, it's fine), but the parent hive is now throwing cast after cast. T…
While you northerners are drowning in nectar, a dispatch from Brazilian winter — dry season here in Minas Gerais, cool nights, almost no flow, and my Africanized colonies…
Galway, 2nd year, first ever extraction day last weekend. Borrowed the club's 4-frame hand-crank tangential extractor for my grand total of 8 frames. First two frames: un…
Flanders, 6 years in. Every summer the same story: linden finishes early July and then there's a hungry gap until the ivy in September, right when colonies are raising th…
Ontario, 2nd year. My overwintered colony went queenless (confirmed, no eggs 10 days, started a test frame). New mated queen arrived Tuesday, I hung the cage between broo…
Uppsala, 3rd year, two hives at the bottom of a suburban garden. One swarmed last week (my fault, missed cells), and it briefly clustered in the neighbour's apple tree be…
North Carolina, 3rd year, and I caved and bought a Flow Hive 2 last summer after two years of conventional Langstroths. Now that I've run it a full season I keep getting …
Yorkshire, first year, learning bee math the hard way. Everyone says queen: egg day 0, cell capped day 8, emerges day 16 give or take one. So here's my problem. I found c…
Devon, 4th year. We've got a tawny owl box about 3 m up an ash at the bottom of the garden, empty since the winter, and a swarm has moved in — I watched the tail end of t…
Second year, three hives in Vermont. I did mite checks on all three this weekend and on my strongest colony I ran both methods back to back out of curiosity, separate hal…
Got a call about a swarm in a live oak, nice volleyball-size cluster but it's a solid 10 meters up on a limb I can't ladder to safely. I've done the bucket-taped-to-a-pai…
First year, one hive, Minnesota. Every single time I finish an inspection, within a few minutes there's this carpet of bees on the landing board and front of the hive, al…
Blackberry and clover both opened up here in Kent this week and my two production colonies are suddenly whitening comb like mad. Both have one super each that's maybe 60%…
Took the kids to the county fair yesterday and the local association did a bee beard demo. Fascinating and slightly unhinged. For anyone who's wondered how it works: it's…
Happy solstice, Northern colleagues. A teaching moment I give every mentee on this exact week: today your colonies are at or near their annual population peak — 40-50,000…
Join 12,000+ beekeepers logging hives, asking questions, and mapping forage.
Get the Beekeeping Community app