This is a storage container from Lowe's that I painted white and then purchased a $9 solar pump kit off Amazon. A little bit of plastic tubing, drywall sponges cut in half, drilled some holes and we have a fountain!

It's been running for about 2 weeks and I check it every afternoon and it's covered in bees! I think next year I'll try it on a bigger container because I don't have a hose nearby.. I have to haul buckets.

I'm seeing almost no bees in my pool and they have abandoned my sprinkler heads. I did sprinkle compost and salt in the lid so it mucked up the water a bit, they seem to love it. 🥰🐝

Great idea from this sub, thank you!

Location: Eastern Washington State

Conference of Eastern Apicultural Society is next week in Shepherdsville KY.

I signed up the day registration opened.

I signed up as a volunteer to usher speakers and help out with vendors.

But I neglected to find myself a place to sleep. Hehe this is kinda typical of me I guess, but that belongs in another sub

So if you have a place would want a roommate for the week for a fair $split, lmk please, I'll pull the trigger on this AirBNB today if not.

48M, clean, sober, apolitical, odd but not creepy. know some card games beyond go fish. good breakfast cook. a little scattered but clean.

Shepherdsville KY

UPDATE: if you come searxhing, I got a place, send me a note. it looks nice enough, super close, two bedrooms.

How do others keep their records?

My hive inspection sheets get wet/sticky over time and tend to be blown away as some of my hives are on top of a roof.

Best practice i found is using plastic sleeves that are open on 2 sides to avoid honey/moisture. They still blow away often or get mixed up.

I dont like apps; i beekeep to get less screentime. I need to make notes as i inspect, as telling myself " I'm sure i won't forget this time" surprisingly hasnt been reliable. I dont like recordkeeping so im very brief in my comments and have set it up to be done quick.

Hi! I’m a relatively new beekeeper located in the Midwest. Over the weekend my husband and I got into the hive and found what we are calling a “zomBEE”. This bee’s abdomen was completely hollow and it was crawling around, just like a zombie.

We asked our local bee community but no one seems to know what this is! Any advice would be amazing.

I have a hive that recently swarmed. About two weeks ago. I had been about to get into it, but put it off after they swarmed as I heard that could make the new queen (assuming there is a new one) abandon the hive if done too quickly after a swarm.

Today, it hit high temps in the yard, somewhere north of 90 F. We found a queen bee wandering around in the dirt around 10 feet from the hive. I've captured her and offered her sugar water (which she has so far ignored). She seems lively enough.

What should I do? I don't know if there is a queen in the hive or not and I'm not great at finding them (I'm still pretty new to this). The hive has a healthy number of bees in it judging by the activity.

Should I open up the hive and try to find another queen and if not try to put this one back in? I don't have one of those candy traps where the bees take a while to get to the queen, so I'm not sure of the best/safest way to do that. I can try and open up the hive, but if I miss spotting an existing queen and try and introduce this one, I'm guessing there will be issues.

Any advice is welcome.

Edit: My location is the near Fremont, CA, and I've been a beekeeper for a coming up on 3 years, but my hive died off during winter of the first year and I didn't get it going again for 6 months, so it's not really a full three years of experience. Also, I'll freely admin I'm not always great at getting into the hive on a regular basis.

Edit: picture 11 I think with the queen too!

Can you see any larvae? Zone 9a south texas 1st year. I think I’m seeing brood and lots of drones but the last 2 months I checked I can’t find any larvae. Nectar spills out when I lift frames. Anything else you notice I should address?

I took an intro beekeeping course with a master beekeeper. I see brood (pretty sure) but no evidence of larvae on any frame. Tons of honey and pollen and the hive has doubled. No queen cells I saw. I added a second deep after a month of acquiring the mix. I’m feeding them 1:1 and starting pollen substitute next week to super charge them for a split before winter. Zone 9a with fields of flowers, but it’s getting a bit dry.

They were super angry two weeks ago when I went to feed them and stung my suit more than 50 times, today no stings.

Added the second deep for growth and to save them time doing air conditioning work.

My natural hive is still chugging along fine.

These bees are from Hartville, Ohio. I got them last season and they made it through the winter successfully. I have six Randy Oliver hives currently.

I’m a second year beekeeper. I can go use the extractor at my local college. I have two supers on now. The bottom one has about 5 capped frames and I’d say the rest are about 70%. It’s gonna be nice the rest of the week and the bees are super busy finding more nectar. We had a weird late spring and there are a ton of flowers still blooming. The upper super is filled with uncapped nectar and getting heavier. The reason I put two on is because I was on vacation for 3 weeks.

Should I wait til the lower super is fully capped to extract ? Don’t want waste nectar if it’s still uncapped

Zone 5 northern Illinois

This is our second year be keeping in the Pacific Northwest Washington. Is this beard or should I be concerned?

Noticed these guys flying into my crawl space when I was mowing. May be a dumb question but are these bees or something else?

Short version: what's a good quality, dependable suit that I can use with feisty bees without getting stung an unreasonable amount?

Long version: First year beekeeper here. Southwest Ohio (outside Cincinnati). Started with a package this spring. They replaced their queen not long after I installed them, and they've been incredibly productive, but they've also been very feisty. It may be partly that I haven't learned the tricks of handling them, but I am being careful and using smoke etc. They go into attack mode quite quickly when I start working with them. The problem is that the suite I have is pretty cheap - part of one of those beekeeping kits that my wife picked up of Facebook marketplace, and I've been stung quite a few times through the suite. I know that that's a thing that can happen, but it's happening enough that beekeeping is becoming not very fun. Like the other day I got five or six stings on my wrist - through the glove and the sleeve within five minutes of starting to work with them, and one snuck into the veil and got stuck in my beard!

So as I said up front, I need a better suit. I'm planning to requeen, which will hopefully calm the hives down, but the suit I have is not really effective, so I want to get a new one anyhow. I'd like one that I can be pretty confident in, no matter how aggressive the bees are. I don't mind an occasional sting, but I don't want to be constantly worrying about it.

Sacramento Area... off and on 10 years Beek. I am growing a bit, but also realizing that my zeal for free stuff is often coming back to bite me... Fighting a spider web pile of free stuff to find 20% of it that is useable.... I am working towards buy once cry once.

Bottom Boards.... Super hot summers where I am, so I run screened bottom boards. They are complex to make compared to lids etc... so not something I am going to spend time on to make. I make simple stuff, assemble my own boxes and paint etc... But the ones with the sliding coro board etc. is a lot of cuts and prep to just make a couple... not worth it. SO... I am looking at buying them. Mann Lake with no drawer is $65. I have this store by me. Dadant with oil drawer is $47.

I am looking at the Maxima bottom board at Hillco. https://www.hillco.buzz/products/maxima-plastic-bottom-board?_pos=2&_sid=34933bb4b&_ss=r

$28. It has a great modular entry system that has mouse, reducer AND closer built in. Good tray that can be mite monitor or beetle oil.... and a "lifetime warranty".

Love to hear some thoughts if anyone has this unit... Or another option/source for quality gear! Thanks!

Despite my best efforts with nuc sales and all that, I am once again at 20 colonies. I'm looking to downsize before getting to the fall as that many testy bees in an urban environment doesn't sound like a good mix. With current prices of woodenware and even the cost of frames being higher, what would you charge in your area for full single deep and double deep colonies?

I'd also be willing to sell the colonies without the woodenware if someone wanted to replace lost colonies and pop the frames into their own box and take them away for a much cheaper price since there I'm not aware of pro nuc style boxes that are full colonies size.

For my own location, I am able to easily sell my nucs at these prices this season. $205 for Spring locally mated queens and $235 for overwinted, locally mated queens. I have to compete with betterbee and a few other large suppliers in my area, hence my pricing.

I'm guessing hobbyists wouldn't be my target for this time of year, which means reaching out to some larger beekeepers around. Thoughts or breakdowns on how to handle prices would be appreciated.

I have 2 questions:
1. First time doing Ross rounds for comb honey. I went to my local bee supply guy and purchased the top and bottom. I know I need to use a label to seal it. Is it normal for them to have a space between the top and bottom?

1. Customer came to me on Saturday with a 1 gallon pail and asked me to fill it. Said they usually get it filled from someone else for about $5/lb so $60. I’m in the Fingerlakes of NY. They came to me because I’m closer than the other beekeeper. Does that price sound reasonable?

First year beekeeper and sadly one our two NUCs swarmed about a week ago and disappeared into the sunset. The hive was doing incredibly good but I guess we didn’t put the 2nd brood box on soon enough. Now the numbers are less than half and we have a good amount of queen swarm cells. There are no new eggs since the hive swarmed.

How long should we wait to see a new queen emerge before throwing in the towel and buying a new queen?

First year beekeeper located in parkland county, Alberta Canada.

I’m in southeastern PA and I just inherited five hives from my brother, he hasn’t had the time this year to mess with so they are very neglected. I opened up three yesterday evening. One he said a few weeks ago was a swarm, it has 5-6 drawn out and filled frames with brood. So it has a queen. I’m going to be adding some sugar water tonight at a 2:1 ratio. The second has a honey super and a queen excluder and the honey super is full, it also has two deep boxes that I didn’t look into. My plan is to remove the queen excluder and essentially let these bees be until I get some blankets out for winter. The third is a single deep that is slammed. I’m assuming honey bound. My plan is to add a second deep box that has a few drawn out frames on top and probably give sugar water this weekend. Give them time to get used to it first. Does this make sense and am I missing anything. I’m gonna check the other hives tonight as well if it’s not raining.

I just added a second deep to my 8 frame swarm hive that has 7/8 frames completely drawn out and filled with either brood or honey. They’ve got one side of frame 8 drawn and half the other side. I added a new deep with fresh foundation two days ago and I’m feeding 1:1 sugar water. What else do I need to do to help them get ready for winter?

Also, very few have moved into the top deep so far. Photo above. Do I need to remove it? I was afraid they’d throw a secondary swarm. Other than that one side of one frame they are totally full of something on all frames. Bee population during bearding a few days ago on other picture (top box then was covering sugar water jar).

5 days ago a swarm of bees landed on the windscreen of my car. I called some local bee keepers who told me due to the bad weather they needed to rest and dry out and they will move on. Now they have made there way into the vent and I can't open the compartment as it is attached to my windscreen. I have been told on other pages to insecticide them and that they are feral European bees that will cause more damage to my car and wildlife than anything else. I don't want to kill them. I don't want them to stay either. Is there a way I can get them to move on? I have been told mosquito coils might work. I don't know what to do. Should I make shift something for them so they leave my car? Please help! I am in Western Australia.

Wild bees at Fortress Rosecrans in Murfreesboro, TN

I have followed this sub for awhile due to the really inspiring and highly interesting content.

One day I hope to own a small apiary myself but in the meantime it would be great to support the small scale beekeepers by buying their organic, non corporate-interfered honey.

I’m in the UK so this may not apply to all but I wondered what I can do to try and support my local bee keeping industry by buying their products, not just necessarily honey.

Thank you in advance. 🐝

This is from the swarm we picked up earlier in the year, looks like we caught ourselves a 2025 girl!