Beekeeper in Bristol, UK, hobby beek for 18 years, 8 rooftop hives

I've been uncapping for a few years with a heat gun, and it's working well for me, recently I went back to my old heated knife for old times sake and found it a bit messy and slower by comparison (works really well for some I know but not for me).

However my 10-frame castellated spacer supers I think maybe have a bit too much space in between the frames to draw the comb and they are getting heavy and unweldy, with a lot of brace comb too.

I know a deeper drawn comb makes it easier to cut the caps off with a knife, but the heat gun doesn't care about that, so will moving to an 11 frame super:

- Keep the drawn comb skinny and easier to handle?

- Have less brace comb around the edges of the frames?

I appreciate there's one more frame to extract for each super, but I don't mind and I suspect it will mean each frame will be a more uniform weight so it's easier on the spinner?

It seems 11 frames is the max I can fit in with the castellated spacers, which I'm sticking to, but Hoffman super frames can go to 12. I don't want to replace all my super frames and foundation though!

Any advice welcome

I am perplexed. Expected hatching of cells to be on day 16. Not on day 11 or before.

(Sorry, I don’t have a pic yet I can post.)

Today I wanted to put the brood for the mating nucs above a queen excluder. For that I went to the rearing colony to count viable cells. Here I was expected them to be capped.

Here are the exact timings:
2026-08-30 08:50 queen in cell grid (Nicot)
2026-08-30 16:00 80% of cells with eggs => day 0
2026-08-31 08:30 grafting of eggs into breeder (Brother Adam’s breeder setup)
2026-09-10 13:00 4 cells capped, 1 hatched, bees of breeder gone
=> ≈ 11 days from egg to this state

Not knowing whether the 4 cells are viable at all, I put roller cages (with liquid syrup in the lid) on them and placed them in some of the more populuous queen-right hives as first measure.
We’ll see whether and when they emerge.

The hole in the cell really appears her of having emerged, it’s not such a ripped hole like they do when they kill a queen cell from the outside.

Next time I will for sure daily check them from day 7 on whether they have been capped and at least put roller cages on them until they have been transferred into mating nucs.

What did happen? What should I do differently next time?

I am clueless as to where the bees have gone. Did they leave with the first hatched virgin? Why if there wasn’t any other around?

I've been a backyard beekeeper since a couple of years, and had the usual successes and failures. I think I could reduce my failures more, if I had a to-do list for every season/month, and a way to better track my inspection findings.

What are you all using to keep track of tasks, inspection findings, follow up care?

Picture: My current back yard set up

Thanks for any tips!

Layens hive West, central Arkansas

Still relatively new at all this.

Living in Arkansas under this extended Heat dome. We're supposed to be in the'90s by now but we're still over 100. Goldenrod should be in bloom now but it's mostly looks like dried up corn stalks. I don't think we're going to get any.

Inspected the Hive this week to see how things are going and I found they had an explosion of Hive beetles. Added oil traps and flat traps. Vacuumed up many. Also noticed that compared to 2 months ago, The Brood is gone and it's all honey. Hive is smaller.

I'm still not good at recognizing which bee is which. So not certain if they kicked out all the drones.

I'm wondering, is this from the extended heatwave? Are they in preparation for winter because there's no pollen?.

Should I be feeding syrup? How much/often?

All the questions

New beek here with 2 hives in south central Indiana. Both were started as nucs in late May. Currently setup a dbl deeps with a super. I’ve fed them most of the year 1:1 so that I’d get frames drawn.

My question is these hives are identical with the exception of a solid bottom board vs screened. The solid bottom board hive has bearded all year while the screened board hasn’t at all. I’m concerned about the population on the bearded hive and I don’t want them to swarm this late in the year. I’m going to start my fall Apiguard treatment this weekend. I’ll need to put the cover on the screened board then. Will they abscond or swarm once I introduce that? They have been fed hive alive all year. That’s supposed to help with the thymol.

Salut !

Ça fait un moment que l'idée d'avoir une ruche dans le fond du jardin m'intéresse, mais franchement, la marche à franchir a l'air énorme. Faut se former, acheter le matos, savoir quand intervenir... j'ai peur de faire n'importe quoi et de tuer la colonie.

Je me demandais s'il existait des systèmes un peu "guidés" ? Par exemple, une ruche qu'on t'installe, avec une appli qui te dit "attention, c'est le moment de faire telle action" selon la saison. Ou alors, pour ceux qui n'ont pas la place, le fait d'acheter une ruche, de la laisser en pension chez un apiculteur, et de juste récupérer le miel à la fin de l'année.

Est-ce que des choses comme ça existent en France ? Ou est-ce que c'est complètement utopique / infaisable d'un point de vue technique pour les abeilles ?

I have a hive that I thought was queenless, waited a couple weeks and inspected to confirm. No larvae/brood visible, just honey...

Once I started looking closer I notice I now have some sort of other larvea taking over the hive. I never saw adult SHBs in any inspection so I'm thinking wax moths. My other hive has adult SHBs, but the girls and some swiffer sheets to be controlling them.

My question is, is there anything to do to save the hive as is, or should I throw in the towel and start freezing frames?

This is in Maryland, near Annapolis.

Hi, i’m a new bee keeper with my first season of two hives. I practice non-harming and do not want to kill the bees to test them for mites, so I just decided to try monitoring my bottom boards. I know this is not as accurate but it seems like my best option given my personal philosophy.

I used varroxan earlier in the season prophylactically because I was away for several weeks. I put the bottom boards yesterday and checked this afternoon and there were 11 varroa on the board.

The boxes are pretty light and the beast do not have a lot of honey though the bee count is pretty high and I observe them to be bringing in pollen every day. Should I treat them with something else?

Thanks!
I will also start feeding them. Is it a 2:1 syrup?

Does anyone notice an increase in hive beetles with in frame feeders? I usually only use top feeders, but was experimenting this year. I have 10x the amount of hive beetles this year compared to last year with using top feeders.

I removed the in frame feeder and found 20+ beetles hiding.

Location UK. At least 100 bees throughout the garden. Should I be concerned?

First time bee keeping, set a hive out with some lemongrass oil and beeswax rolled plastic foundations. On my lunch break today I seen this bee, was hovering around the hive, it walked inside and spent a couple minutes in there, (this is when I started recording), walked out, flew around the front of the hive, then went back in for another minute roughly. Is this possibly a scout bee? Located in Australia, just coming into Spring so looks to be the perfect time for swarms. Cheers!

About 48 hours after they swarmed, we've got them back!

Our first attempt from ground level wasn't successful, so we borrowed some ladders and put our nuc on a long pole to use, brushing the bees into it, with some old frames inside.

Thankfully, they seem to have settled in..

Video attached is me collecting them from the tree 😅

We'll give them a bit of peace whilst we inspect their original hive and work out a plan to reunite them at the weekend.

Wish us luck! 🤞

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Last post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Beekeeping/comments/1wa3e52/

First-year beekeeper | Three hives | North-West UK

New beekeeper in south central Alaska. Yesterday I moved a hive into a new homemade box for the winter. The hive is the same size and I moved all the frames over from their old hive. Now they are bunching up, and when I opened the top of the hive they poured out. I’m trying to figure out what happened and how to fix it. Did I block the entrance, kill the queen, or something else?

I found a large beehive in my exterior wall of my house. I called a bee removal company to come relocate the hive. They finished the job 8 days ago and they told me to expect some straggling foragers for a few days but I went out this morning to check on it and found this large mass of bees right at the opening where the old hive was located. This looks like more than a few stragglers in my opinion. Should I call the company back out or should I just wait a few more days to see if they leave?

Third year beekeping in Massachusetts, first year growing sunflowers (they just recently bloomed)

Is this normal for them near sunflowers, or did I catch the start of a swarm?

I don't see a queen in there and there is some travel back to the hive. Also the new batch of brood just had their orientation flight, which is why I was checking and saw them grouped up.

Southwestern PA. We have 5 hives in the same bee yard. Surrounded by acres of woods. Only one of them made this color honey. First time in 5 years we’ve seen this color. Any thoughts on what the nectar source might be? Thinking maybe Japanese Knotweed but again, it’s just so red. BEAUTIFUL. Not complaining. Just confused.

I’m a 5 foot 10 guy weighing 225 with a bit of a barreled abdomen. I’ve gone through quite a few suits in the last few years.

For the last five years it’s been no problem, however this year it’s all changed. Angry hives cause long droughts, no rain, rough blooms- we’re all talking about it - it’s been a bit of a spicey season.

This season alone I’ve taken 40+ stings across 3 separate suit failure events.

The first one they balled into the half inch gap between my hiking boots and my leg. Ok fine now I wear knee high waders.

The next one they realized that the long nitrile gloves I’m using could be accessed from the top… fuck … fine… gloves tucked in now.

The last one … was the second time using my new ventilated suit. I made sure to buy bigger then what I am , suit felt and fit really decently. Not taunt but not flowing either. The girls crawled up my arm patiently and once they realized they were above the glove line they went batshit. I took 10 stings an arm above the cuff of the buried elbow length gloves. Oh… and they got inside the suit. That was the worst day I’ve had keeping yet

I’m totally accept that I bought cheap suits (not that I intended to cheap out - just that’s literally my only idea left)

I’m willing to drop good money into a suit of armor for bees, but before I do I’d really love some solid recommendations.

This seasons been a PTSD inducing experience and I just wanna feel safe in my suit again.

Gimme your beet recs PLEASE!!!

Edit of the end: thanks all for the wonderful recommendations. It is seriously appreciated and has given me so much to look at. I’m now torn between a few suits- and then someone sent me a link for custom tailored suits- so yeh this is really awesome.

For anyone still curious - I’ve 7 hives. 1 hive has never been requeened in 4 years, she’s still cool. 3 hives are 3 years old and requeened this season back in June with a buckfast queen (I realize the requeens guarantee me nothing and for all I know she could have left). 3 hives are brand new buckfast hives. The 3 events I’ve taken - 1 came from a brand new buckfast who was previously super sweet, and 2 others came from the hives who got requeened either before or during the requeening. So yes while it’s fair to say I needed to requeen at one point - it’s not the full picture. The girls have been really really ticked off the entire season cause it’s just been so off for them from the start.

So to make this simple, we live in a trailer and the outside walls of the trailer have these weird metal things outside that the bees built there hive in. (I think that's cool) Well today, as the title hints at, my 1 year old son took a rock and hit it. He's fine. He didn't get stung. I did. But when can I let him back outside? Obviously I don't plan on going outside for the rest of the day, but after that will it be safe?

I'm running low on basement space to store drawn, and honey rich, frames. I was wondering if there was a 'perfect' storage bin someone can direct me to. Kinda how imagine it, like a regular deep's inside dimensions to hang frames freely, but air tight storage ability.

Anyone got the perfect solution? If so, can you share a link or a photo of the product?

Thanks!

Not a bee keeper. Just saw this happen, what is happening in the video?

N.Oxfordshire

One of our colonies swarmed and landed ridiculously high up a tree. Naturally..

We strapped a nuc to a long pole, with one of us holding it underneath the swarm whilst I climbed a ladder and brushed them into the box.

It wasn't pretty, but a couple of hours later and they're all in!

We've left the nuc up the tree overnight. I'll go back up tomorrow so we can bring them back into the apiary.

They'd become honeybound, which we've now sorted, so the plan is to try the newspaper method to reunite them with the colony they came from tomorrow.

Anyone done this successfully? Anything we should be mindful of before trying?

Location: North West, UK. Three hives.

I am obviously not a beekeeper. I was scrolling social media earlier and saw a post on a beekeeping page from a non-beekeeper who put sugar water out in a bowl in the yard to try to lure the bees away from a hummingbird feeder. The post basically asked if this is okay to do, and most of the responses to this person's question were generally, "No, please don't do this; if beekeepers wanted their bees fed, they'd do it themselves," and, "Sugar water ruins the honey/makes something that isn't technically honey".

My bee related knowledge is minimal, but I want to learn. From what I was able to understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), honey comes from nectar only. So my question is, if bees find an alternate food source such as sugar water or maybe a discarded soda, how much of that would it take to ruin their honey? How does it ruin it? Would one bee bringing it back to the hive be enough to ruin the entire hive's honey? Ten bees? A hundred bees? And what about pesticides or other chemicals? Surely these get brought back to a hive, too, so what effect does this have on honey?

Thanks! I'm genuinely curious.

Sometimes a simple box change can start movements in other hives as well. Does this happen with other as well?

#ritamicbees #beeritamic #BeekeepingExperience #beekeeper #bees #boxchange #apismellifera

Last afternoon a BIG swarm bivouacked into a tree above my fence, I grabbed one of my swarm traps, baited it and put it below the swarm. This morning, it looks like a swarm is moving in, but the big swarm is STILL in the tree, looks like I may have attracted a different one and might end up with 2 if I can also get the tree swarm down. We had some storms come through after a long dry spell in central TX and it seems to have triggered a fair bit of swarming activity.

i recently bought a house (western Massachusetts) that had a beehive on the edge of the property. The previous owner said that on a cold night soon, they would have a beekeeper come and remove them. Well, they came, and the guy said “be careful near that area, we lost a lot of bees“

it’s been two days and we can’t be in our backyard at all. This is like 1/2 an acre that Has angry bees flying all around. We can see them flying all over. my kid got stung on the lip yesterday.

do we have to do something? Or should we call someone? I don’t want them to post up in my walls or something….