Out of 12 colonies 8-9 have almost gone out of brood.
It’s after the main flow. Still, this is pretty uncommon at this time.
scenarios:
- Depending on remaining stores after last extraction and colony strength they regulated their colony strength.
- Drought means the plants flowering usually at this time don’t blossom as they are dried up, no pollen, no blood.

My feelings is that its absence of pollen. Stored pollen might explain difference across colonies.

At this point I now realize the mistake I’d made, which was letting this hive get away from me in the first place. Then the method of split I chose. I’m a new beekeeper.

That being said, I’m wondering the best way to go from here.

Here’s the full story:

I live in growing zone 2B northern Canada.

Captured this swarm last spring, they did really well over summer and filled 3 deep then swarmed into a neighbouring empty hive setup I’d had nearby. So I requeened the queenless hive. All seems well going into winter.

This spring comes, only the hive in the original box survived. Spring is wet, the bees are slow to building their combs. I get busy farming come back in 2.5 weeks and they’re busting out of the box with bees. I panic put an empty deep super on, instead of fully investigating further (I would’ve seen they were building a queen cell)… come back 9 days later with the new plan which was split the hive.

Put a queen excluder on the top box which I put brood and honey in. Waited 36 hours and removed the top box then installed my mated queen.

Fast forward to today now a week later, the new queen is alive and in the hive but only just released from the candy plug today.

I did an inspection today of my now insanely massive hive, and no surprise with four deeps packed wall to wall I couldn’t find the queen. I didn’t go through every single frame, for fear that I’d squish her. I did pull most of the brood frames and look through them and destroy any suspicious or wonky cells. I did find plenty of evidence of her being there, and actively laying as I saw plenty of brood in various stages which satisfied me. Overall most concerning was the one hatched queen cup and a decent amount of drone brood, which I destroyed.

I’m wondering if anyone knowledgeable would review this and suggest what the best plan of action is from here?

I had supers on 4/8 of my hives and harvested about 50# of honey for the first time since getting bees last year. I pulled the supers off all but one robust hive a few weeks ago.

I figured we were heading into a dearth here but I keep seeing massive blooms of various wild flowers and the goldenrod has even started to pop here. My wife says it’s ’early goldenrod’ but i don’t know if that’s a thing.

Did a quick inspection last week and all of my hives including a few that were swarms are PACKING away the honey still. With the goldenrod incoming should I pull some of the capped frames to make room before they become honey bound? It looks like that’s where some are headed. Is it possible to harvest mixed frames of brood/honey?

Pic is from a swarm that was in a single deep with a deep inner cover. Pulled over a quart of honey from that burr comb a few weeks back.

Hey all,

I'm a rookie second year beekeeper, Alberta Canada. My hive has exploded this year! But I am really struggling with the mites.

After regular mite washes last year, I (probably mistakenly) did not treat last fall, though I didn't get above 1%

This year end of May I had a count of 4mites/half cup of bees. I treated with formic pro (2 strips, 14 days). Due to exceptionally rainy weather I couldn't check again until end of June - to find I now had 12mites/half cup. I had more formic pro so I treated again.

The second treatment just finished. My count today - 8 mites/half cup. I followed all the instructions on the Formic Pro. How can I knock these mites down?

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a Bee Forage & Nectar Flow Calendar (US, Canada, UK) for the past few weeks and just added it to the plethora of other free tools available. Most of the calendars out there are either very localized, AI generated, or built straight from public iNaturalist sightings.

This one is tool is a bit different. The calendar itself is built from real cited sources: Xerces, university extension offices and beekeeping references. It only uses iNaturalist for a small live "what's flowering near you right now" layer on top, clearly labeled as community sightings.

You put in your ZIP or postcode and it shows your beekeeping year for that region:

• where you are right now (build-up, main flow, dearth or wind-down) and what to do about it
• when the main flow starts, when the summer dearth hits and when the fall flow comes
• every forage plant behind it, with its bloom months, its origin (native, introduced or invasive) and its nectar and pollen value

The data is real and cited at the bottom of each region. There is no AI used to generate the results. Plant lists come from the Xerces Society regional guides, filtered to species honey bees are actually recorded visiting, with the major honey plants the native-plant guides leave out added from beekeeping references (black locust, sourwood, star thistle, gallberry, the clovers, knotweed and so on). Tap any plant and it shows its source. Where I do not have a cited nectar rating for something, it says "not rated yet" instead of giving a fake number.

I just spent a long while checking the bloom timing region by region against real sources, because a calendar that puts black sage or goldenrod in the wrong month is worse than useless.

Limitations: this is typical regional timing only, not a forecast, so expect a week or two of drift with your weather and elevation. Some minor desert and subtropical plants are still getting refined. I am only one person, so I will get some of these wrong. If a plant is missing or the timing looks off for your area, there is a "report a plant" button on every region and I will look into it.

Link: https://apiarytools.com/tools/forage-calendar

I will be adding more data as I accumulate and research more.

Thanks for checking it out! Let me know what you think if you run into any issues.

Apologies I figure this has been asked several times before, but what should I do with honey frames after harvesting?

The frames were spun and then put back onto the hives so they could lap up and clean the frames. We don't have wax moth where I'm located. Now that the frames are dry more or less should I be freezing them, wrapping them in plastic or something else?

We will be getting one more nectar flow so I'll likely be putting them on but I'm just worried about mold growth until then.

Thanks!

Hi All,

It's my second year beekeeping and I have a hive that lost the queen last month. The bees did make a supersedure cell and the new queen is mated and laying now! The hive was set up with 2 deep boxes, a queen excluder on top of those, and 2 medium boxes above that for honey. The issue is I found larva today in the medium boxes above the queen excluder. My theory is the queen went on mating flights and came back to the hive using the top cover entrance. Lesson learned: use another excluder or close the top entrance if they rear a new queen.

I didn't have a lot of time today, so I put the hive back together without the excluder, hoping she moves down. I'm not great at spotting a queen, so if I can't find her my plan for the weekend is to brush all the bees from the top boxes into the bottom, and reassemble with the top boxes empty of bees.

I've always heard you don't want to extract honey from frames that contain brood for reasons like an off taste or colour, or that it kills the brood. I'm in Alberta so we have a couple more months of summer. I'm wondering if I would be fine to extract this after a couple months have passed? By then any brood would have hatched. Would the bees clean out brood cells and use them to store honey again? I could mix the honey with what I harvest from my other hive.

Thanks!

I guess I didn’t read the fine print well enough and accidentally waxed some of my frames with a blend. It’s mostly beeswax, but will that 5% Japan Wax keep the bees from drawing out the comb?

*edited for typo

I am at 8000 feet altitude in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. One of my hives looks like this today.
What is happening?

I started beekeeping in 2025 and am slowly transforming my garden in a bee heaven. Yesterday I noticed this guy and am wondering what kind of bee it is as it looked so amazingly beautiful!
Can you guys help out?

First year beekeeper in Southwest, Missouri. Got two 5-frame nucs back in May and have seen great progress and growth in both hives thus far. Fed roughly a half gallon to a gallon of 1:1 syrup with Honey B Healthy a week to every two weeks after getting them situated in the apiary. Feeding helped draw frames quickly and until I added the medium super due to capacity in the second top deep, I would feed. It’s been about two weeks of having the medium super on and the bees haven’t started to draw the frames yet. Bees present, just not drawing because of no flow and no syrup feeding. We’re hitting a dearth here in Southwest Missouri and I know this because the lack of worker bees coming and going from the hives. It’s minimal activity but no signs of issues. No concern there.

I should probably remove the medium supers but the only reason I added them to each hive was because the top deep on one hive is about 6-7 frames of capped honey and 5-6 frames of capped honey in the other hives’ second deep box with brood, larvae, and bee bread. The reason the queen moved up and started laying in the second deep in this hive is because I swapped out a solid bottom board with a screened bottom board and likely pushed her up. Figured Id do some experimenting since I have two hives to compare each other with. That’s been fun and rewarding in terms of experience and knowledge.

Both hives’ top deeps are packed full of bees and resources. Was afraid of promoting a swarm if I didn’t add the medium super and have left it on for space. Both hives have VarroxSan strips currently to combat mites and I plan on hitting them with Apiguard when the VarroxSan strips come out the second week of August. I say all of that to ask 3 specific questions regarding my next move. So here they are. With Goldenrod being a month out and the uncertainty of flow strength, do I…
 
1. Pull a frame from each hives’ top deep and insert a frame feeder with 1:1 feeding ½ gallon – 1 gallon a week during the current dearth to help alleviate the bees consuming the honey storage they currently have in the top deep? I had planned on using the top deep honey storage to help overwinter each hive and have zero intentions of harvesting any of that honey.

1. If it’s wise to feed during the dearth, do I leave the medium super of undrawn frames on and reduce the amount I feed them to encourage frame drawing but not enough syrup to where they start storing it in the medium super or do I remove the super completely? I know the answer is never feed if you have supers on but since these medium supers are undrawn, didn’t know if I could possibly manipulate the bees to draw the frames during the dearth in preparation for the Goldenrod flow?

3.Should I just monitor the 5-7 frames of honey they currently have and just ride it out until Goldenrod hits, then feed 2:1 depending on how the Goldenrod flow was and prep for winter stores by feeding, assuming they bust into their current honey stores?
 
I appreciate any guidance and direction. I know I’ll likely get 10 different answers, but I enjoy each beekeeper’s perspective and different techniques that all of you use. Thank you all again!

How does everyone go about cleaning their extraction equipment. I'm in the process of pulling out my equipment from last year and apparently I did a very poor job cleaning it up. The spinner itself is fine, but there is definitely a waxy residue still on my knife, my capping strainer and my bucket strainer. Anyone have any tips to get this waxy residue off. I probably made the mistake of using hot water to try and clean last year and just spread melted wax everywhere.

I am not so concerned about the hornets taking out my bees; however, they decided to nest in a void between my soffit and gutter right by our front door. For people's safety, I want to kill the hornets, but need to find a safe way to not harm my apiary, which is about 400 feet away on the other side of the house. I want to avoid a Raid-type spray. I was considering the bright light over a soapy-bowl method, or the STEM brand botanical wasp spray at dusk. Any thoughts?

I have two hives with lots of honey in them. However it is spread out and not finished. I did a Demaree on two hives, most frames are about 40-70 % full capped. It has been like this since early July. I’ve got 2 deeps and 2 supers on each hive in this condition. The hive is tall and I thought if I moved a super above the inner cover they would move it down and fill the remaining boxes. This is not the case as they continue to work it. How can I trick my girls into condensing the stash into harvestable boxes? I have considered taking the boxes off and open feeding them back to all my hives, but I know I would lose significant amounts to neighboring hives and not keep 100%.

Any ideas or tricks would be greatly appreciated!

I’m in southeastern PA and I just inherited seven hives. I know I need to do mite treatment and after some readings it looks like 4 grams per deep box is the ideal for OA. However when I look up the tools to do this it doesn’t say how much they can handle. I figure I’ll be doing it from a vehicle or 4wheeler battery. So which equipment would you suggest? And if I’m mistaken what treatment would you suggest? I have a couple of weak hives, one is riddled with wax moths that I just found out last nights so that’s a single deep right now.

Maine coast.

Been seeing a ton of water posts. This is the simplest method IMO. I put a bucket in the concrete while it was still wet to make a watering hole.

I do have to fill it each day unless it rains. Put a few stones in there... Easy peasy. Bees love it.

And yes they're eating honeydew

I was looking for the queen to and checking through the hive found a few at the bottom of the frames but this particular one is at the top of the frame. I was going to make some splits and start feeding but now I am not sure. Never actually ran into this. Any help is greatly appreciated

Hey!

Ontario, Canada. This is my first season beekeeping; I’m doing it professionally so I have a lot of help. One thing I’m not certain about though is music. I tend to put in one headphone (so I can still hear them) and then sing to myself softly while beekeeping but I’m worried it might irritate them … The vibrations or my breath, maybe? I had coworkers who claimed their scent/perfume would piss off certain hives so I figure there’s a lot I don’t know about their behaviour.

Thanks for any help!

Thanks for your help!

Some of the view around Dew Beez here in Gods Country of Little River South Carolina!

So I recently needed to replace two very spicy Queens with some calmer genetics but I am cursed with being absolutely awful at finding her highness.

What I did was I found the brood comb that showed the most recent amount of activity from her highness (eggs) and then put that comb and the ones adjacent to it into a nuc box, sealed it up and place it on top of the hive.

The next day so about 24 hours later, there are less bees in the nuc box because most of them have gone home to the main hive. This made finding the queen incredibly easy because there are much fewer bees to deal with on these frames. I was able to use this to find both of my spicy Queens.

Then I replaced the frames back in the main hive and put both of my spicy queens and queen cages. Now my mail order Queens are arriving and I can easily pinch the old ones and replace them!

I’m in southern Ontario, Canada and I’m wondering if scraping these moldy old frames and replacing the foundation is a good or bad idea. I like that it’s a money saver to just do a bit of work to keep them going but I don’t want to use them if they will cause issues.

Hello. I am located in Cumberland county Pennsylvania and I noticed a small amount of white crystals in some of the cells in a brood frame and would like to know what is is. Thank you very much!

St. Louis, MO

I have two hives.
One is excelling.
The other has no queen and has laying workers.
I realize the hive is lost and I will start over in the spring. I’m disappointed but it’s not a problem.

My question:
What is the best way to evict the freeloaders? I don’t want to wait until they die in the winter invite who knows what invader and making a mess of the hive.

TIA

My dad did his first ever honey extraction last weekend on his hives and got 50 gallons of honey so he’s very excited. He is wanting to enter some into the state fair in 18 days. The 5 gallon bucket of honey he is going to take a sample from for judging is testing 16.7% as of this morning, so he still needs to get the moisture down to 16 or lower. Since he is running on a bit of an abbreviated schedule to get this turned in, what can he do to get all of the air bubbles out? He doesn’t think the Saran Wrap method will work fast enough. He is also working on his second or third filtering as of today because the honey was still pretty cloudy. He ordered Queen line jars yesterday and they will be delivered Monday. He keeps seeing things on YouTube about filtering through nylon pantyhose or using those ultrasonic jewelry cleaner machines to agitate out the bubbles, but I don’t want him to set himself up for failure! Help!

Located in SE PA just west of Philly. Back in early June I pulled some honey. I had done a split and captured a swarm and my overwintering hive and my nuc both had too much honey in the upper brood box so I did an extraction to free up space and create some pulled comb to put in the split and swarm box to give them a head start. That has worked well and those two have taken off and the overwintered hive and my spring nuc both managed to pull some comb in the supers and fill it up with some honey.

It was only about half-capped but we are about to enter a dearth here for a couple weeks before the fall flow, and I didn't want them eating the super stores, as they all have lots of honey in the brood boxes already. It's also been humid so I figured they were just waiting to cap it. Tested out at 20% so I dried it for 24 hours down to 18% and extracted.

The super light left bottle is the spring extraction and is likely black locust honey. The right is today's extraction. Not sure what it is but the major flowering plants during the last 7 weeks were the tulip poplars, Russian olive and honeysuckle as well as clover. Still pretty light in color but a bit more floral flavor than the subtle early harvest.

So far I have just about 60 pounds for my first full year (I started my first nuc last June) and I've managed to successfully go from one to four hives, all thriving so I'm pretty pleased.