Questions and answers from the Beekeeping Community app — beekeepers helping beekeepers, worldwide.
Winter project here in Minas Gerais while the colonies are quiet: I've been scraping propolis all year off frames and traps and finally have about 200 g of the good green…
September in Provence means the yellow-legged hornets have found my apiary again. The secondary nests are at full strength now and the hawking has started — hornets hover…
Every spring this forum fills with dead-out posts, and most were decided in September. So here's my list from 22 years and a lot of scraped bottom boards, in order: 1. Va…
Confession thread. I've been nursing two struggling colonies all August — one with a queen laying a patchy dinner-plate of brood, one that never built past five frames af…
Annual tradition, third year running: the end-of-season wash thread. Post your pre-treatment count, what you treated with, and your post-treatment verification wash so we…
Third year in Uppsala and I've been caught out before — two Septembers ago I was still feeding in October and the syrup just sat in the feeder going mouldy. This year I w…
All six of my hives in Drenthe have had robbing screens on since late July when the wasp pressure started. They've done their job — zero robbing this year, first season I…
Second year in Ontario and everyone at my club keeps saying "your colonies are raising winter bees right now, protect them from mites." I get the concept — the bees emerg…
Fourth year, eight hives now in central Texas, and I've never registered with the state apiary inspection service. Partly laziness, partly the classic worry — why invite …
Fourteen years in Tuscany, and after watching fluvalinate and coumaphos become expensive placebos across much of Europe, I treat rotation as non-negotiable. My current lo…
Fifth year, Małopolskie. I have a colony that's queenright and healthy but just small — maybe four frames of bees after a poor season, not combine material in my view bec…
Perthshire, seven years in, and every autumn I re-litigate moisture strategy with myself. The traditional camp: quilt boxes of wood shavings or a moisture board under the…
Quebec, five hives, well, four now. Found a dead-out this week — colony had been dwindling since July and finally gave out, and by the time I opened it yellowjackets had …
Galway, second year, three hives on a rural site. Arrived yesterday evening to find one hive shoved clean off its stand — boxes separated, four frames pulled out and scat…
Uppsala, third year, five hives. One colony has a queen I've been unhappy with all season — patchy pattern, colony never took off, wash numbers fine so it's not mites. I …
Devon, four hives. Nights are dipping under 10°C so this week is entrance week: reducers in, mouse guards on. Mice move into hives once clusters form and stop patrolling …
Southern hemisphere check-in. We finally got a calm 16°C afternoon in Wellington yesterday so I did my first proper frame-by-frame inspection since autumn, all six hives.…
Extraction done here in Provence and today I finally rendered the cappings from all eight hives: two passes through the solar melter, then a final water-bath melt and fil…
First year, two hives (single deep + medium each) in central Minnesota, and everyone says 'feed to weight' like the math is obvious. It is not obvious to me. What I have:…
First year in Yorkshire, started with two nucs, and neither has done brilliantly. One's covering about four frames of bees with a laying queen and a mediocre pattern. The…
Join 12,000+ beekeepers logging hives, asking questions, and mapping forage.
Get the Beekeeping Community app