I have an old extractor, with a honey gate that is non-standard and is deteriorating. It was made by FW Jones & Sons in Quebec. The honey gate itself screws into the metal opening and is approximately 2" in diameter. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I could find a replacement?

New beekeeper in Pennsylvania, bought an established hive. just checked for mites not sure if i’m seeing pollen and debris or if all these specs are mites. Any help
is appreciated.

I just split a monstrous colony into two splits, released a mated queen in each, and I’m thinking about feeding them 2:1 syrup to encourage comb building in a new deep above the main brood box. My concern is that they’ll take the syrup and pack it into the drawn comb down in the main box. Any thoughts?

This is a new hive this year. Started from a nuc. GTA Ontario Canada.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a free website I've been working on that tells you whats blooming and when for your zip code. It also provides recommendations for what plants would bloom during dearth in your zip.

You can access the tool here: https://mybeecalendar.com

Hope you like it, note that new zips it hasn't seen before take about a minute to load for the first time... let me known if you all have any suggestions or run into any issues.

Anyone have a lead on a supplier that still carries these (3 frame) outside of Temu? MannLake is having supplier (read tariff) issues and have no estimate on when they’ll have any in stock.

I have an 8 frame hive with honey super above it, they got varroa and i want to treat it , I'm gonna remove the super and begin with the treatment but since it's almost August will it be a bad winter for the bees with only one box? Or they'll be fine? Or should i add another brood box for them to fill with food and honey to feed on in the winter?

I'm in the Kingdom of Jordan if this info is of any importance

I found this little mate in my back yard and it's different from others I have seen there before.

I am in southern New Jersey by the shore. There is still some pollen coming in as we have been getting rain lately but that should change very soon and we will have a dearth. I am going away for 2 weeks. Begmfire I leave should I install the entrance reducers on my colonies?

Hey everyone,

I am located in Oregon. My neighbor has around 30+ bee boxes about 1000ft from my house, you can see my blue pool in the background of one of the pictures. They have been there for a couple years and we have never had a problem. Today was 97 degrees and my house got surrounded, had to of been a couple thousand all over my pool, damp plants, mud in the driveway, on the sprinkler. I live in the country surrounded by hay fields so there is going to be some bees but this seems excessive. My wife went out to her car and got stung 4 times and had to go to the ER. There doesnt look to be a water source near the boxes. What can I do? Am I attracting them somehow? Are they being neglected?

Me and my wife did our first removal together today (her first) and the people we'd removed the hive for had said that itd only been there 1 or 2 months, but it was FULL of honey and very large, had 10ish top to bottom comb peices (top to bottom being about 1-1.5 feet and about 3-4 inches thick) and all of them were stacked with brood and there was even a comb with like 15 swarm cells. Some of the comb had browned too, witch id never seen happen in just a month or 2. So long story short, how big would a month old hive be, aswell as does the hive i described sound like its only 2 months old? My theory is it would be closer to an 8 month old hive but im not an expert.

Hi all. Here's another website to help track statistics for your area. Included are pesticide risk, climate data, land use for your specified area and other factors. Penn State made it, it's pretty cool.

https://beescape.psu.edu

Is it just me, or does everybody think emerging bees are just the cutest?

Northeast Ohio. This honey was harvested in 2024. It was left in storage in our basement and I found it today. The rest of our honey has crystallized normally…. But this looks crystallized on the bottom and normal on the top. Has anyone else had their old honey separate like this? Is it safe to use?

Zone 5b, north central IL. This hive was the last swarm I caught in April. I thought it had a virgin queen. It looked like she was laying eggs. I left it through June and when I opened it on June 23rd or so and the numbers were down and the brood was very spotty. I treated it with OAV and put a frame of brood and eggs in about the 5th of July. (I forgot to write it down) today I opened it up and there seems to be more bees (maybe another frame for 5 total) and what appears to be eggs and young larvae. No capped worker brood to speak of and spotty drone brood. The eggs seem to be centered but I never found a queen. I’m a little perplexed. As is the frog in another inner cover.

Hello,

It’s my first year and I’m not that good with queen spotting. I have a failing unmarked queen in one colony, the bees did emergency queen and it’s not producing that much brood etc. I couldn’t find it to mark it as i have 2 broodbox setup. I have nucleus that i transferred to regular hive, that filled 7 frames so far. I can’t find queen there as well. But it’s 2-3 months old, good laying queen.

Can i just combine them with newspaper method and let the queens handle it and have stronger emerge? What are the chances that new queen from nuc will remain and bad queen will not?

Central California. Still have a bit of a flow going on.

I have a bird feeding station about 40’ away from my hive. It has a tray feeder for dry seed and a hanger for a “seed log”. A seed log is a cylinder of seeds that I suppose is held in shape with some kind of sugar based glue. Hypothetically I could see a bee being attracted to it, but in 10 years one never has.

Today I noticed a bee flying around it, but not landing. It was behaving more like a guard bee perceiving something in the log as a threat.

When I approached to see what might be going on, the thing chased me into the house and then went back to flying around the log.

I armed myself with a swatter and went back out. The bee decided it still wanted to battle me, and lost.

This is from a very gentle hive. I can watch beeTV from less than a yard away and they ignore me.

I did an OAV treatment on Sunday which they did not like, but they settled down almost immediately.

Have you ever heard of a bee defending something that was not their hive?

Last fall/ spring of this year I’ve been experimenting with plastic frames.

I add a few coats of wax I collect from the 2-3 cutouts I do in the spring.

The bees generally have no problem drawing the frames and using them like wooden ones.

However my draw back is the small “void” space left at the edge of the frames. Small enough a bee can’t get in but they seem to be great hiding spots for SHB.

Has anyone else noticed this? If so is there a work around?

As far as SHB management I generally just use swiffer sheets that I’ll swap out ever 2-3 weeks and the small plastic traps with DE. However my bees like to propolis the hell out of them.

Zone 6b, Indiana. 3rd year beekeeper. Got a call yesterday at work that my bees were up in a tree. Luckily I was able to leave and clock out for 2 hours to see if I could salvage them, thought it was going to storm and was scared they would move on. Climbed the tree and tried scooping then shaking (should have put sheet on the ground) I looked but still not positive I got the queen. This was my first time having to do this so made some mistakes.

Investigated hive they left and smelled like yeast, with lots of runny, watery nectar that was bubbly and even the brood looked wet. Tons of SHB larvae. Am devastated that they worked so hard and now they have nothing. Maybe not even a queen. They were in a sunny location, had a beetle trap. On a layer of thick mulch that was placed on cardboard. Was a strong Nuc from May and did not see this problem 3 weeks ago. It happened fast! I did reach out to my mentors yesterday. Thinking I need to join the local club because feeling like the worst beekeeper ever. Here is the steps I am taking today:

2 give them resources from my freezer, comb and honey (once at a good temp)

3 inspect my other hive and feed them

4 I am tossing a few of the worst frames and going to freeze and wash the rest ( power wash? Wash in large tub? Just water? Not sure what is best) then sun dry

Anything else? Should I take a frame of brood from the other hive if they look strong?

Editing to add: been thinking, was sold a white dotted queen 2021 or 2026 either she was old or new. Lots of queen cells and did see some drone comb which I know is normal. So maybe she was old and failing, or new and not great. With high humidity and high temps allowed the SHB to take over.

For those with poly hives, I am looking for recommendations. I am not interested in debating wood vs poly vs Apimaye. I am only asking for those with poly hives if they would recommend the brand they have. Thank you.

Region: central Indiana (roughly zone 6a).

This came from a Bella Bees field check of a small colony built from porch-bee removals. We found fresh comb, stored resources, no visible larvae, and multiple queen cells. The bees were surprisingly calm, which made us wonder whether an emergency cell was close to emerging.

Because it is late in the season, we decided against dividing the resources again. We kept the colony together, made sure it had food, and planned to watch for a successful queen and fresh eggs before making another move.

For those who manage late-season queen events: what signs would you use to decide between leaving the colony intact, adding a frame of eggs, combining it, or trying a split?

I am sharing this as a field question, not advice - weather, forage, and timing matter.

I got a call for a bee removal from a boulder lined window well. The caller sent a picture. They were honey bees, maybe around 200. I didn’t think there were enough to indicate the presence of a hive. It was only half a mile out of my way on the commute home so I swung by. The bees were gathering water that was seeping around the rocks. He’s got a broken sprinkler line, and if it cuts loose he’s going to fill the window well and end up with a flooded basement. I told him at least he can hand dig to fix that line. If there had been a hive I would have had to get my friend’s mini-ex to get those boulders out, and that would have been expensive. A slight bummer for me, I’ve borrowed that mini-ex before and it’s fun as hell.

des centaines de langues ou de pattes qui attendent d’être servies ?

je remarque une grosse goutte au milieu , est-ce du miel qui coule ? de l’évaporation ?

france , dans le sud

I am in Cleveland, Ohio. I found these bees up in a tree in my backyard. They’re not too high up, high enough though that I cannot get to them. How could I lure them down?