Hi all,

I am in Central NC with 1 hive.

Twoish weeks ago I checked my hive, pulled off my top feeder and was happy with progress. I put a top feeder on to help build comb on my upmost medium super. I have two deeps and two mediums and three was considerable brood in the two deeps and considerable honey in the second medium super.

Today I went out to check and the top two supers have 95% and 55% capped honey. The two deep supers have 0 brood. I found 3 opened queen/smart cells in one deep, and another opened queen/swarm cells in the other deep.

Lots of bees and drones in the entire hive. Jam packed. The deep supers have lots of nectar and some honey but no eggs that I notice.

I'm not good at finding my queen, never have been.

My question is, is this normal for this time of year? Did my queen die? Are they honey powered right now?

Any help is appreciated!

I have queens incoming in about 2-3 weeks (max). Hives are in full bloom atm and have about 8 frames of brood. I am really worried they will swarm and I am actively trying to destroy cells and rotate frames to give them more space (2 deeps).

So now I am not sure if I should still hold for a week or 10 days or just split them immidiately and destroy queen cells before mated ones arrive. Thanks in advance!

I think beekeeping saved my life. When my brain starts spiraling and the anxiety takes hold I try to remind myself to zoom out, remember where I am in this life, and then I zoom in. That’s where the magic is - these tiny creatures are so magnificent. Taking the time to connect with these perfect incarnations of sunlight have saved me countless times.

Eastern Ontario, Canada.

Picked them up and then woke up to a damp morning. The weather is supposed to get warm and sunny from this afternoon on, so here we go! Will transfer them over on Sunday. Expect many more questions from me soon…

Just a question out of curiosity. Do you guys mark your queen's and if so how do you do it? I have 3 queen's and none are marked but I am considering it. I have like a small tube with a sort of stamp that pushes the queen to the bottom of the tube where I can use a marker. I often have difficulty finding the queen so I might mark het. I was told it was best to practice first on drones before doing the queen. Are there any problems that marking the queen could cause?

We know nothing about bee keeping and want to start but need advice! Thanks in advance!

I caught a swarm the other week and I currently have them in a nuc. I am wanting to add them to a queenless hive to get it back on its feet quicker than letting them do it themselves. But what is the best way to do this?

I’ve seen people place one colony on top of the other separated by newspaper soaked in sugar water. Is this the best way to introduce a queenless colony to a queen right colony? And if so, what is the best way to go about executing this?

Getting a new Nucleus hive of Saskatraz bees, in the Puget Sound area of Washington tomorrow. How long, realistically, do I have before having to be realistically worried about them swarming? Forecast for next week + is upper 50s and rain/drizzle.

Going out of town for about 2 weeks in a week, about 3 weeks total time from installation. Can go back in them the day before my night flight.

Do I need to worry here? Thank you in advance

After posting many times here I finally came to conclusion that I need to re-queen my aggressive hive. However it has been difficult for me to find her.

My question is, when the hive swarms does the old queen leave as well? If that is the case then maybe I just have to wait a little bit for the Queen to leave with the swarm and then it will be better tempered and easier to manage.

What do you guys think of this?

Haven't been able to find the queen of one of my new packages that I installed a few weeks back. Have found queen cells but was surprised to find larva today. Hadn't seen laid eggs anywhere from last inspection.

I have reused frames from a dead out due to varroa, is it possible that they used eggs that were left from the previous hives? I'm trying to understand what might be going wrong.

I have 3 other hives that are healthy and have laying Queens, and I've found capped brood in all of them. We've had a pretty cold and late spring in northern Illinois though, so wondering if there is more that I should be doing beyond feeding. Gave them a bit of pollen paddy and the healthy hives cruised through theirs but this one was mostly untouched.

Thank you for your insight!

I'm a new beekeeper on the big island of Hawaii. I've taken all the classes, read all the books, listened to all the podcasts and I finally have my own hives! I got two colonies, one named Clover and the other named Neptune. Clover within 3 weeks had built comb on 90% of the frames. I opted to add a medium box on top of their deep box, it's been a week and I just checked and they don't seem to be moving up to the medium box. The area my bees are in have been getting a lot of rain the past week so it's possible that could have affected it, but they haven't moved in at all! I am not using a queen excluder. I'm buying some more supplies to build more deep boxes today, but I didn't really want to do a deep on deep set up. I know it's recommended to move frames from the bottom box to the new one to encourage them to move into the new box, but I just can't do that with the medium on top of the deep. Any recommendations?

Recovered a swarm from one of my hives!!

I have had two hives in the backyard for a few weeks, but I want to also start a nuc, so I have ~2.5 colonies, to steal brood from, keep a queen handy (or two!), help myself get setup if mine don't make it through the winter.

I have to make another order anyways to get some equipment... So, I might as well buy those as well to save on the shipping.

Is a five-frame nuc enough? Should I also get a divider to have two 2-3 frame colonies instead? Do I need to stack two nuc boxes or is one enough?

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Background: I'm due to buy 4-5 two-gallon buckets from BetterBee for feeding, as it's getting frustrating to keep switching out the Boardman entrance feeders (I have them on the inner cover within an empty deep box, per y'all's advice) within 18-20 hours, as both keep getting through the sugar syrup so quickly, and I need a full suit each time because there are hundreds of bees hanging out in that empty deep, and I still feel nervous about getting stung. So, I might as well purchase more equipment with this order, haha.

New beekeeper with a nuc that went in last weekend. The feeder I have is a boardman, and I just filled it and put on top of the inner cover, then put an empty super box on top of the inner cover. However the inner cover has a small notch that is typically covered by the telescoping lid that is now exposed.

Should I block this or leave it alone? I did see a few bees enter and exit through this.

Any help is welcome and appreciated.

Edit: thanks everyone. I had a small block of cedar I used to block it.