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Willamette Valley, five hives, fifth season. The blackberry flow — basically our whole honey year — finished this past week, right on schedule. Scale hive confirmed it: g…
Eighteen years, Tyrol. Every summer I see the same casual comment at the club and now on this forum: 'flow's over, I'm feeding a bit of syrup but leaving the supers on so…
A view from the Southern Hemisphere while you northerners melt: it's July, our winter, and my scutellata colonies on the Highveld edge are flying every mild midday becaus…
Ontario, second year, going into my first real harvest — maybe three supers between two hives. My club rents a 4-frame extractor for $10 a weekend, which is obviously the…
Vermont, second year, four hives now after a split. Last August I watched a weak nuc get robbed out in an afternoon — silvery frantic bees fighting on the landing board, …
Fourth summer in Devon and a farm shop has asked me for cut comb honey, which apparently sells for silly money here. I've only ever extracted. I've put a super of fresh f…
First year, two hives, Yorkshire. The retired chap two fields over lost his only colony a few weeks back and just told me over the fence that it 'dwindled and stank a bit…
For the data nerds: my scale hive in Skåne gained 1.3–2.1 kg a day for eighteen straight days through the lime and late clover. Then on the night of the 17th the graph ju…
Hi, Should I add sugar to my hive?
One of my three Kent colonies quietly superseded in late June — I found the old marked queen gone, one opened supersedure cell mid-frame, and yesterday, finally, eggs and…
First year, one hive, Minnesota. It hit 34C here today with awful humidity and when I got home from work there was a beard of bees the size of a dinner plate hanging off …
Third year, 6 hives in the NC piedmont. My club teaches sugar roll because 'you don't kill bees', but I've been reading that sugar shakes recover maybe 80–90% of the mite…
Second year keeping bees here in İzmir and I finally feel brave enough to mark my queens. I bought a set of Posca pens but now I'm second-guessing which colour I'm suppos…
Devon, 4th year, 6 hives. Lovely problem to have: most of my supers are capped or nearly, but the club extractor is booked solid until the second week of August and I'm n…
Retrospective thread! Last spring I started with one package and one nuc, side by side in the same Vermont yard, partly as an experiment. Now feels like a fair time to co…
Perthshire, 9 hives, mite loads creeping to where I want formic on before the heather. Deciding between the two label options for Formic Pro: both strips at once for 14 d…
Jalisco highlands, 12 hives on low stands. Three mornings in a row now I've found the same scene at two hives: little scratch marks on the landing boards and around the e…
The basswood (linden/tilleul) around my yard in the Eastern Townships opened about July 3rd and it has been an absolute event — you can HEAR the trees from 20 meters, and…
North Carolina, 3rd year, 5 hives. My best colony is packing nectar into the brood boxes instead of the supers. Two supers on above a queen excluder — top one basically u…
Skåne, 12 hives, and we're mid-way through a decent flow. In a few colonies the brood nest is shrinking as the bees cap honey in the outer brood frames — classic backfill…
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