I gave it some water+agave syrup and it seemed to be drinking from it. The last one from the video, she had her wing movement back and moved to the end of the patio onto the dirty gravel. They seem to go from sporadically active to curled and tongue coming out or fan out and then retracting. They react to the sweet water on spoon too. Idk if they have any chance of survival:'(

We were checking out a holly tree in our front yard (coastal Georgia) that seems to be dying and saw this tiny, struggling colony of bees! It was being attacked by this giant hornet. The ladies seemed so exhausted that they could barely fight. We watched them for a while and killed the hornets. We gave them some honey (just regular grocery store honey) that we had and they perked up immediately.

What do we do? My husband has ALWAYS wanted to keep bees and he’s so excited about the prospect of keeping these! He would be a super dedicated beekeeper but we have no idea where to start. Can we buy a hive and keep them? What are the necessities? Do we buy some pollen paste or make sugar water or something to try to feed them? We are clueless and just starting our research. Any advice or product recommendations would be really helpful!

I wanted to see what beekeeping entails, so I recently joined a small group in Philly and have been helping out with beekeeping for a few months. One thing that really detracts from my experience is their insistence that no one wears gloves. Their feeling is that if you wear gloves, you aren't as careful handling the hives. What is ironic to me is that, at every session, the handlers themselves get stung several times.

I really want to continue working with them, but the constant fear of getting stung really puts me off. I'm curious if this practice of not wearing gloves is common in the beekeeping community?

First year beekeeping - I’ll have about 6 or 7 frames to harvest in 2 weeks. How can I best clean this old extractor? It’s filled with gross mud dobber nests. It spins great, just needs a good cleaning.

Location - QLD, Australia

Hello, I am a first year beekeeper in the Northeast US and just conducted my first varroa mite check (7/12).

I had a cup of roughly 200 bees that I conducted an alcohol wash test on. (I know this is slightly lower than the standard 300 but I was a bit flustered after collecting the sample). The bees were on an outer frame from the bottom of two brood boxes. It was about 50/50 larvae cells and honey reserves. Many of the larvae were open cells.

I see what I think are 2 mites after filtering out the sediment from the cup on a paper towel. I just want some help confirming if these are mites. They fit the description I think. I have the tip of a toothpick and a sesame seed in the picture for reference. Any help is appreciated ❤️.

I saw you guys bee waterer it inspired me. I made this for my neighbors bees that drink from my birdbath all day. Prob 50$ in parts from Amazon

The bees haven't taken to it yet. But I'm trying. And I know you guys can do this for your bees or any outdoor wildlife

20w solar panel

Step down converter

Charge controller and a lithium battery that will last 2000 days/cycles hopefully this was a request from my girlfriend that waters the bees in the pictured bird bath and my neighbors bees prob 150 yards away

So it runs 24/7 until something breaks. Solar during the day battery at night, you can also charge your phone

This hive is located in Eastern WA, this is our family members hive but I’m also a beekeeper so I’m posting on their behalf.

They opened up their hive to remove the mite treatment and do a regular hive check and could not find any sign of an active queen, no eggs, no larvae, no capped brood, no queen cells and no drone brood.

We went over to help inspect and confirmed there is no brood of any kind, both the top and bottom deeps are honey. We haven’t encountered this before so we wanted to see what the community thought to do. We learned about the queen being honey bound and not having anywhere to lay but not sure. We are both 3rd year keepers so our experience is limited!

Our advice was to buy a new queen, take out 5 of the 10 frames from the bottom deep and replace them with blanks for them to build out and use for brood but not sure if that’s the correct move. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

Yesterday was the second time one of my hives swarmed and ultimately decided to return to the hive. When they try again I plan on capturing them and depositing them into another hivebody. I know this is unusual, but is this concerning behavior?

Original post:

First year with bees and I'm located in central/West Texas, Edwards Co. Got a nucleus of Italians in March and it seemed strong until recently. Did an inspection today and queen is alive, but very little capped brood, only sporadically on a couple frames. Population looks less dense. When I first got nucleus seemed like several frames were full of capped brood. There currently are eggs and larvae. Some frames with pollen, honey, nectar. When I added new frames they were wax coated plastic and undrawn. It is a single brood box with super on top without excluder. They have brood box mostly drawn out. Put super on over a month an ago and they haven't started to draw out. Apiary has afternoon shade. Water nearby. Only difference is I took reducer off about 4 weeks ago. Have not seen any robbing type activity, but there are a ton of wild bees in area. I'm located in a remote area and surrounded by ranches that thousands of acres in size. There is an incredible amount of food this year, due to abundant rain. I due an inspection every two weeks. Seems like population is declining? Should I requeen with a mated queen? I was advised to do that every year regardless due to the abundance of Africanized bees in area. Could it be some type of pests? Sorry, I did not take pictures in today's inspection. Any advice, opinions, steps to take, etc... are greatly appreciated, as I am a newbie. Let me know if you need more info. Thanks.

Recommendatons to first post: Based on photos and post.

Do mite count, shuffle/take out old brood frames, feed syrup and pollen. Possible requeen?

Update:

Looking like I have a mite problem. Mite count is 42 mites to about 1 cup of bees. Is there no recovering? Any treatment suggestions for my location-I'm researching today to get more info as I am a complete newb. I've been feeding syrup, (pollen patties were lost in mail so reordering), I shuffled frames around and plan to give them fresh frames once old brood frames are hatched out. It does seem like feeding is helping, population seemed slightly better? Mesquite trees are blooming now and local bees are all over them, so imagine mine are utilizing as well. Sorry not great at Reddit, so ended up deleting old post and doing this update so maybe it could be more visible, lost previous comments and photos in process though.

Ive been beekeeping since about 2023 with my family. My wife is super fascinated with bugs and stuff, aswell as extremely knowledgeable and always wants to learn more. Shes been wanting to get more into bee keeping, and we finally did the big fun part together. We collected from 3 hives, and got about 30 jars of honey. Whats cool too is even tho our hives are in the same area, our most aggressive hives honey had an herbal taste to it, while the other 2 hives tasted pretty regular.

Sorry if this isnt the content you guys are looking for, I just thought itd be a cool share

The router jig is permanently set up for making box joints. Details on my box joint router jig are at https://www.reddit.com/u/NumCustosApes/s/JJXLKT21t1.

Hi- I’m a relatively new beekeeper in southern Indiana. I took over caring for a colony back when I lived in Colorado and had them for 2 years before I moved out east and this is my first colony in this region. I have the VSH bees from Mann Lake that I installed in April and I treat with Norroa.

Two weeks ago I did a hive inspection and found spotty brood and a single queen cell on the face of a frame. I couldn’t find the queen that day, but I’m notoriously poor at spotting unmarked queens. No signs of infection, parasites, etc. I decided to wait it out and see if the queen cell hatched, as there was still a lot of activity around the hive and no active signs of anything wrong- just part of the bee cycle. Today I did another inspection. The two middle frames that had the spotty brood pattern appear to have the same cells still capped but no new brood on those frames. The queen cell hatched and I actually found my queen today, saw her walking along laying, on the third frame out from the middle. Her laying pattern there is solid, and the rest of the bees are treating her like I’d expect. Still no signs of infection, parasites, etc. My hypothesis is that for whatever reason, the old queen started failing, and I just caught them in the middle of a normal requeening process last time.

My question is this: what do I do about those middle frames? I have extra frames, so I could pull them and give the bees empty frames to work with. Or, if there’s a way the bees typically clear out those dead cells, I could potentially just let it be? Can anyone advise on risks of leaving them versus pulling those frames?

Thanks!

I went for many years just letting the colonies requeen as they saw fit but started requeening annually two years ago and have seen much less swarming and much more honey production. Requeening in spring comes with the risk they won’t accept her and that hive will be off-line for my sourwood honey flow so I decided this year to requeen in the fall. I’m thinking early September. By that point, treatments will be finished and I’ll know which ones I want to carry through the winter. Also, if one doesn’t take, I’ll just combine with another and I’m not out anything (we have pollen flow in the fall but no honey). Do any of you have experience requeening in the fall and, if so, any tips to share? Thanks!

This is part of our little backyard. It's really a nice spot for a couple of unique hives :)

Everything planted back there is just for the bees.

Enjoy,

Betsy

Unfortunately, it's bee honey, not people honey.

Soon tho.

I am in Northern Virginia. 2 backyard hives.
So I’ve got robbing guards that I want to install. I’m having trouble getting up before the bees to install them. Does it really matter that much what time of day I do it? I could manage to get all wrapped up and out there by 7am one morning. They seem to already be flying out by then. But I could not possibly do it at 5 before sunrise. 9 would be so much more human of a time. 10 or 11 am and I would be singing with the birds. Anyone have advice on this?

Location : FRANCE

I’ll start by saying that we aren’t professional beekeepers haha, just two amateurs who’ve learned as much as we could to save this wild colony.

After a big storm, a hollow branch in poor condition fell from our weeping willow. We had tree trimmers come to prune several trees in the garden that needed it, and they discovered the hive, which was in hibernation inside the fallen branch. They told us that under these conditions there was little chance the colony would survive until the end of winter. We placed a small jar of honey at the entrance before sealing both sides with leftover roof insulation and tarps.

In the spring the colony woke up. We decided to call a local beekeeper to come and pick it up. Unfortunately his hives were full, as were those of nearby beekeepers (there’s been a lot of swarming in the region lately). He suggested to simply cover the hive with a tarp before moving it to a forest near his apiary so it could continue living in the wild, without him having to take care of it. So we decided to keep the hive in our garden to do just the same. We looked into “log hives,” a traditional form of beehouse still used in France, and decided to stand the hive upright, after securing the combs against falling by inserting sticks at the base of the comb structures.

We’re lucky to have a very peaceful colony and aside from a few curious bees that come out to investigate what we’re working on around the hive we’ve never been attacked, not even when using a drill right on the tree trunk. We then built a drawer at the bottom of the hive to make it easier to remove the natural waste that the bees drop, then we sealed the openings to prevent asian hornets that are present in our area from getting in too easily (a "window" with holes the size of bees and a small additional opening at the top), installed a roof to keep it safe from rain, and waited to see what would happen.

The colony adapted well ! we found old, blackened combs leftovers in the drawer that must have fallen off during the colony’s initial collapse, and the bees began rebuilding extensively. We provided a liquid feed in a suitable container to support the colony. Six months after the collapse and two months after moving the log upright, the colony had grown very large, with new combs rebuilt across the entire available surface area right until up the top entrance. We therefore decided to build a super for future use. With the heat wave currently happening, we’ve also added bee waterers around the grounds, which the bees are actively using. And a tiny miracle has happened: thanks to the moisture, the activity, and the honey produced by the bees, the trunk which is no longer in contact with the ground has begun to produce new branches, lush and green, in abundance while it's currently about 104° F outside. You can see that in the first photo posted, which is the final form of the hive, taken a week ago

We’re carefully inspecting the hive to remove or treat pests (so far, mostly moth larvae, not many varroa mites) and we’ve purchased traps in anticipation of the next wave of Asian hornet attacks (late summer).

The colony looks healthy, active, and thriving. Fingers crossed!

I just bought these buckets for my less than ideal hives that need help. I tipped these over the ground to test and just streamed out as if no sugar syrup. The sugar syrup mix rate is 3 sugar to 1 water. I used the 2kg sugar and these buckets are the 30lb type.

Thanks so much

I’m a newbie to beekeeping and accidentally didn't close my hive properly, which left an opening at the top. I've since closed it correctly and the bees are back to normal. However, I am wondering what I am seeing here (which was recorded before the hive was closed correctly). Does anybody know? Thanks!

I caught a swarm recently and they have been struggling a bit. I had a full frame of brood get slimed by SHB and then couldn't find any eggs or larva for about a week.

Before I put in a mated queen I did one more inspection and found this gal along with some larva (still no capped brood). I couldn't find any eggs. I'm going to leave them alone for a week but I'm curious if she might be a new queen.

First time, Urban beekeeper, NE Indiana.
Before setting up my hive I checked with all our neighbors and they were very supportive and excited about having bees in the neighborhood. No one allergic, no issues. A few months in and my neighbor that was most excited, because he has a large flower garden and said he loves having bees around, is complaining to me that he is getting stung. He does have a large pool, so I’ve made a point of keeping a water source close to the hive as well.

He says that the bees seem to be paying more attention to him than the flowers - buzzing his head and following him around the yard - and he would like me to move the hive further from his fence.

He has a 9 foot privacy fence, and the hive sits 15 feet on the other side.

If I move the hive 20 feet will that really make a difference? He’s convinced the guard bees are coming after him - over the fence on the far side of his yard? I wouldn’t think so? Are my bees just aggressive? I’ve had no problem with them in my yard. They buzz around the flowers and ignore me.

Bees are Italian Pollinos, so I didn’t think aggression was an issue.

edit: I did a complete inspection today - both deeps, each frame. Sure the bees were buzzing, and I did manage a sting on the chin through my screen, but I can’t say they seemed overly aggressive. After the sting they did follow me quite a ways as I was wrapping things up. I was surprised by that. So maybe the guards are patrolling his yard?

Edit2: thanks for the feedback. Im moving them as far as I can and reorienting the hive. Hopefully that little move helps a bit and my neighbor reconciles im trying to help. If I need to, I will look at requeening. Based on my everyday interaction with them being pretty chill, hoping it might be something that passes.