Good day. I am interested in constructing a self-made beehive (einraumbeute) to commence beekeeping next year. However, I have only observed it in photographs and lack a construction drawing. Could someone kindly provide assistance in this matter?

One hive has a lot of bees at the entrance flying out and in. The other hives have little activity but seem to be fine when I opened the hive

Central Texas Zone 8 Easiest way to transition from Langstroth Deeps to mediums .... ?

Ok going to try my best to explain ... I am 67 year young retired lady, started beekeeping in 2022, I have 2 hives, each hive has 3 deeps .... these are extremely heavy and I now have 1 hernia & possibly another ... SO ...I would prefer to keep a deep on the bottom as my brood box, then have mediums as my supers. Thoughts - in the spring can I do a split (on each hive) and do this - keep bottom box for brood, make sure the queen is there, (as this will be her 2nd year on each hive) then add mediums with waxed foundation? Then on the 2nd & 3rd remaining deeps, move those slightly over, add a queen to each and continue to add mediums as needed? Wouldn't this be the same as starting fresh with a new nuc & new queen for each deep? So instead of having 3 hives, I would then have a total of 6 hives, or even just convert to 4 hives.... I realize this depends on how many bees I have in the colony to assure they will be vibrant enough. This way I have deeps as my brood boxes and mediums as supers .... hopes this makes sense.

We found this swarm nesting in one of our fruit trees, does anyone know what bees these might bee?

We're located on the central coast of California, and there's a lot of farmland around us, so I wouldn't be too surprised if they were honeybees, but if they were, I know my husband would Love to start an apiary.

Any advice? He has been enjoying watching them and we're pleased to host them however long they'd like to bee here.

I posted earlier this week about my hive, but it’s been sunny and they’ve been flying so they are all good! I was watching a few fly out this morning and THEN A FREAKING WASP FLEW OUT???

My entrance has been reduced to 1/2 inch the last week and I’m in Utah with the weather around ~40°. Has anyone had this happened to them and still had their hive be okay? I have no signs of robbing.

I’m looking to start harvesting a small amount of bee bread from my hives but am having a hard time finding any equipment to make the process of harvesting more efficient. I have not found any equipment available to the states online. There’s one website that pops up but is located overseas and does not ship to the United States. I’m also trying to figure out how to dry it correctly. If anyone has any tips and tricks, it would be very much appreciated! Picture is the small amount that I have removed from the comb by hand. 🙂 also, it tastes like candy! 🥰

I've got a stack of 6 boxes with frames and I've put paramoth in it. I have more frames, but no place for another stack. Id like to put 8 frames in a clear plastic storage box and put paramoth in there as well. I've got shelves I can store these on. Has anyone ever used netting or fiberglass screen wire that I can tie up into a ratchet? Is there a different way to do this?

Central NC

Hi there, midwest beekeeper. I previously had used my dad’s quilt box and now need to build my own. I have an old honey box I was planning on converting. I have pine shavings and wire mesh, but I have read an assortment of other materials and combinations of such being used. Please show me your quilt box pictures for inspiration :)

Hey guys I’m a bit concerned about my two hives not being strong enough to get through winter since I’ve lost a hive over last winter. I live in Germany so it’s getting winter here and it’s already only 2°C at night. The one in the picture is a new hive I got this summer (don’t know what the terms is in English) and the other one that looks pretty similar is a swarm in caught this spring , during summertime they had been sitting on 9 Frames but now they just seem to have decimated a lot. Is there anything I can do this late in the year I can do ? Only my second year and I don’t want to lose another hive

This past week, one of my hives has been showing some unusual behavior. The bees left the hive several times in a dramatic swarm, only to settle below the entrance. At first, I thought the clustering (or bearding) outside the hive was due to the recent hot days, but even with cooler weather now, they’re still in this state.

Today, I inspected the hive and found emergency queen cells. It seems that the colony lost its queen—possibly due to age or an unexpected issue. During this time of raising a new queen, the colony can become stressed and more crowded, leading to this bearding behavior. The bees are working together to keep things stable as the new queen cell develops, even if it means temporarily relocating outside to help with ventilation and reduce congestion inside.

I checked for pests and other issues and removed all but one of the emergency queen cells to prevent multiple queens from emerging, which could lead to secondary swarms. If the new queen doesn’t successfully develop, I’ll introduce an already mated queen to help the colony get back on track.

This hive originally came from a captured swarm, so I didn’t know the age of the queen—she may have simply reached the end of her lifespan. Watching the bees adapt to this challenge is a reminder of how resilient and interconnected they are, depending on each other to keep everything running smoothly.

I'm no beekeeper but it looks like a cool job. Problem is, I'm deadly allergic. Once I get stung, I have to use my epipen and rest for the day. I've watched a lot of beekeeping videos and hear about how keepers get stung once or twice sometimes during removals. It's nice to get protection from most stings but does there exist a suit that guarantees I won't get stung at all?

I'm unsure why location information is required but nonetheless I'm from Washington State

When I am placing frames back into the hive during an inspection, bees crawl into this little gap and it takes me ages to wait for them to leave the gap so I can push the frames together. To clarify, it’s the part where the frames touch each other. There is no bee in the gap in the photo.

Does anyone have any tips to get them away from this gap? I feel so horrible if I squish a bee. I have resorted to using smoke sometimes but I am conscious of over-smoking them and I want to avoid smoking for this if possible.

My location is NSW aus but I don’t think that’s relevant to this post.

My mom lives on a rural farm and beekeeps, she has lots of farm animals, wild birds, outside cats, and a dog. She keeps getting the advice to put out flea medicine covered cat food but the problem is all the other wild life/animals might eat it and get sick or die. She has the frames in front of the entrances to the hives to keep them from getting in but they’re figuring it out and destroying them anyways. She just lost her two Italian hives and she’s really quite bummed out about it. Help!

Hey !

I'm planning on building a few boxes this winter and I was looking into the easiest joints I could make with my limited equipment and a miter joint with a few dowels seemed like an interesting candidate.

But since I have limited experience with woodworking I was wondering if it would survive the tough conditions the wood is put through outside year round.

But I could also be overcomplicating the whole thing.

Anyway, thank you for reading that !

I am a children's book author and am doing research for a picture book on bees--specifically, on the waggle and circle dances bees use to communicate. I'd like to have my child protagonist observe a waggle dance in her grandfather's urban beehive (it will probably be set in California; not sure if that's important). But is this behavior that can be easily observed in an intact beehive? I've watched videos of them, but I don't know if it's just something where you can take the top off the hive and watch it. If you've observed waggle dances in your hive, could you interpret the directions they are giving? And lastly, f you were showing a child your hive, would you require them to wear protective clothing? Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise with me. Much appreciated!

Not my hives - From work. This was my first time in this hive. It’s looking like a bad disease, rotting honey, or galleries?

Hive has only been at this location for 1.5 weeks. I’m in Gainesville, FL. UF keeps hive beetles and other pests and pathogens on purpose for studies. I’m not very far from them. The purpose of going in the hive today was an oxalic acid varroa treatment. I don’t even know if it was worth it.

I have a have that currently has 2 deep and 1 medium box, however the bottom box doesn’t really have any brood or honey. Just a bit of bee bread, and I was wondering if and how I should remove the bottom box. The cluster covers about 5 frames in each of the top 2 boxes, and about 3 frames in the bottom box. Location Iowa.

Location: Atlanta Georgia

Hey all, I lost my hive and I'm trying to figure out what to do with uncapped frames of honey and pollen. We're going to buy two hives and a spring and I'd love to be able to give the newbies these frames so they have something to start with.

From what I've seen, you can store dry frames pretty easily and capped frames pretty easily, but uncapped looks like it would easily lead to issues.

Is my only option putting them in a freezer until spring?

Located in Ohio and just checked my hives. All active except one. When I popped the top there was a cluster of bees (maybe a dozen) with the marked queen. All moving very slowly and clearly on borrowed time.

What are some potential causes of this? I have seen dead outs in spring with the exact same pattern but never opened a hive in the fall to see the collapse in action. There is no build up of dead bees in the hive. Still plenty of stores. Would workers abscond and leave the queen? Potential aftermath of robbing? Colony collapse disorder?

I’m in the U.S. and want to get some for Christmas since I love bees and honey and heard you can get high off of it! The thing is, I heard this honey is apparently rare and easy to sell fake versions of it online, which is why I’m skeptical of what website is legit and sells the actual thing. So far I see a couple that look maybe promising, like Maddest Mad Honey and Best Mad Honey, but am still unsure. Does anyone have any experience with this and do you know someplace legit that I can buy it from?

Well, the warm weather caught up to me. Both my hives were attacked around 4 days ago. One of them fought the yellow jackets off and the other (lower population) hive just didn't and fell to their robbing yesterday. There are wax capping on the landing board and yellow jackets are going in and out as they please right along with the remaining honeybees in the robbed hive. What do I do now??? I wasn't expecting this when the hives were already winterized with a very reduced entrance. Any advice is appreciated.

South central PA. 2 hives. First year.

Update: Went in the hive this morning before robbers would be flying. Both deeps had had all the honey sucked out. Not a single bee left. Frames with the remaining wax are in the freezer now. The other hive still has bees and I slapped some fondant on under the quilt box for good measure. With the heat and fighting off robbers I'm not sure how much honey they have left. I'll check inside around Thanksgiving. Thanks to all who answered.

I’m in Maryland near DC. I’ve had three hives at a friend’s house this year. One of them swarmed the 3rd week of October. I wasn’t there but the friend reported there were bees all over the grass around the hives. I figured there was low probability the new hive would survive as I had already observed workers throwing drones out of the hives. Last week the hive appeared deserted. I figured it had deaded out. Yesterday I disassembled the hive. It was in the process of being robbed out by the adjacent hives. There did not appear to be any defense going on. I had an anti robbing screen on the hive but also had holes drilled on the face of one medium. This hive had been very strong before it swarmed, a deep and three mediums stacked. Inside two of the mediums had been robbed out or cleaned out by the swarm, the top medium had about 5 full frames of honey not yet reached by the robbers. I split the frames between two medium boxes and took some honey from the other two hives to make a 5 frame center store in a new stack on both of them. The robbed out frames, I gathered to take home to put under para chlorobenzine for the winter. There were bees who were very persistently clinging to those frames ( also some of the frames that I put into the other two boxes to go on the other hives). I left the deep on the hive stand to be fully robbed out before i brought it home. This morning I came back to get it. There were a few bees in the deep, but one of the hives had a full blown robbing swarm trying to get in. It’s mostly closed up but there is one drill hole in a medium. Clots of bees kept falling from the area of the hole, all hanging on to each other. I’m suspecting now that the virgin queen after the swarm actually did get mated and was laying eggs into all those robbed out frames. I suspect that I closed her up into the other hive with its queen. I’ve never been any good at finding my queens. They’re not marked and my eyes aren’t that great. What should i do here? Will the two colonies keep fighting until the queens find each other and battle?

I do want to comment to mods of this sub: the message about including your location is pinned both at the top of the comment and as a floating window over the text entry. This makes it damned difficult to enter a long post as it keeps floating up over the text you’re entering. Why two warning windows? One should be suffficient and it really makes it hard to enter a post

Hi! Im on my first Spring with a hive that succesfully made it trough winter (Apis mellifera carnica) and my Hive just swarmed for a thrid time (first time was about eleven days ago). I understand that i made mistakes with the Hive, not checking if there where new Queen cells and not giving them more space sooner, but i wanted to know if they can keep swarming (i already expanded the hive) and if its usual for a hive to swarm multiple times in the same season, and what don you recommend to keep them from swarming again.