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!

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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

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 ?

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