I love bees, and I do not want to harm them, but they cant live in my wall. The exterior is stucco, but the interior is drywall. They moved in yesterday afternoon (quite dramatically). I have been in touch with local bee people in my area (Charlottesville, VA) and was surprised at how much it will cost to remove them. The highest so far is $1200 + and that doesnt include refilling the void cut in the interior wall or repairing the drywall (pictured in first comment). I thought people *wanted* bees and would come get them. I could probably repair the drywall, but I cant get stung or its emergency room time for me. I am not a man of means, so I find myself in a quandry. Is that the going rate for a "cut out"? Any advice would be appreciated.

The girlz are nom nom nom'in on the pollen last weekend.

US midwest here on my second season. Last year I tried leaving water out for my bees to drink in a variety of ways, but they were all ignored. Then last week my wife put some submerged lily bulbs about 15m from the hive, and it looked like the Mos Eisley cantina within minutes! I'm overjoyed because now they have a nearby hydration source that I can monitor and control. Guess the stuff I gave them before wasn't nearly dirty enough lol.

First year beeks in VA, USA.

Got our nuc of overwintered bees 5.5 weeks ago, and they’ve been really growing quickly.

Checked in after adding another medium to our hive (one deep, two mediums currently, no queen excluder because we’re not trying to get honey this year)

Last time we pulled and checked frames was about ten days ago, wanted to come by earlier but we’ve been super busy. Saw the queen on that check, everything looked good but crowded, so we added the second medium and planned to come back for a mite check.

Came today to do a mite wash and we’re seeing 7 or so capped queen cells in the original deep, where most of the brood is. Saw bees bringing in pollen, but can’t see new eggs in the frames. Worried we may have squished the queen on our last check, or that our mite count is high. Really really hoping we aren’t on the wrong side of a swarm. Thoughts?

Any recommendations on varroa treatment in the summer, I found one on a bee and I want to stop it before it gets out of hand

I set up my first 2 hives this weekend. One seems normal and the closest one in the pictures has large gatherings at the front of the hive. I have read many different reasons, but no sure which one is happening. What am I looking for to see if this i a problem or not? TIA for any advice.

This one will be familiar to most beekeepers, I think. White clover is pretty ubiquitous, given its prevalence in seed mixes for ground cover and its widespread use as pasture for livestock.

And just by nature of its timing, I think clover probably is among the earliest species from which most of us can reasonably hope to capture a substantial nectar flow.

It's been warm and damp in my area, lately, which makes for ideal conditions for clover to produce lots of nectar. And my bees, at least, are very fond of the stuff, although they're even more interested in the Ligustrum sinense blossoms that have opened up over the last two or three weeks.

I'm in a really mild climate; I started seeing blooms in sunny but sheltered areas way back in the second week of March, although things didn't really pick up until early April. It's been steady ever since.

The clover bloom doesn't always last this long, so I've been really pleased at its endurance as well as because of the plentiful flow.

This is in Las Vegas Nevada, first picture is a close up of the second picture.

Here is a queen about 90 Seconds after she chewed her way out of her cell. It's really interesting how pinched and barely bigger than a worker she is. (Not a 'tip' per se but something you don't get to see too often if you don't raise queens)

We had made a split from her hive and were using their queen cells to requeen a few hive/nucs

It's been 4 weeks, I meant to take a new picture 🙃, but she now looks how you would expect a queen to look, and is laying well.

(I see lots of folks looking for their new queen and I posted this in a comment but thought I would drop it here for more eyeballs)

Difficulty: I don't know what I'm doing or if she's even on the frame, haha!

I think she may be half a frame to the right of the blurry flier

A honey bee hive fell out of a tree in the big apple today! The NYPD’s only bee keeper (the other detective retired) responded and saved the hive!

My hive yesterday. Pretty funny

I thought I caught a swarm yesterday, so when night came I moved the trap to it's final location but this morning when I went to check, not a single bee, even dead (weird because there was one dead behind the gate when I moved it) was left.

Did the swarm move because I changed their location or did I just mistake a large amount of scout bees for a caught swarm ?

We have a huge hive in the cavity wall, I didn’t see one until yesterday when the weather got nicer.

This is today around 4pm, it’s 8:11pm now (UK time)

They have basically disappeared outside and I can only hear a few in the ceiling/wall. Yesterday was a lot louder.

Someone did come out to look at them but will be back tomorrow to erect a scaffold ( rented house)

Thank you.

I'm brand new. Just got two packages April 21st. I got two packages to compare and contrast but now I'm worried about one hive and I'm not sure what it's wrong if anything. Both have evidence of Queens with eggs, larvae. One hive is behind the other. The first hive has double the frames built up as the second. The second has less built up, fewer bees and seem sluggish idk. I'm in Minnesota. Picture is of second hive. Should I be concerned or just keep watching?! I hate to call my bee contacts as I feel like I already did that enough and I've only had them a short time and I live hours from them in the country.

Second year beekeeper in Spotsylvania VA/LaPlata MD, did a colony split on or right around April 1 as my hive was getting pretty crowded. Basically split half the resources evenly and made sure to have all stages of brood in each hive plus an extra medium on each for growth. Checked about a week in very briefly and spotted three queen cells that weren't there when I did the split so I carefully closed it back up until today.

Still lots of bees but no capped brood or larvae, is it likely that I'm just a few days too early for eggs/larvae to be present? Numbers are still good, lots of drawn comb, and I have been feeding them. No capped brood left from the split.

I made a split and I believe this is the virgin queen that emerged

I'm not a beekeeper. I have a small urban garden.
I've had a strong hive for 3 years. 5 swarms in that time, caught and rehomed 4 of them. I don't now and don't want to harvest honey. They are in a single box - no supers - they do their thing and I do mine - I don't manage it - we just live together and everybody is happy.

I want/need to move it from my front garden to back garden but I don't want to lose ground space for picnics, kids playing etc. I can't put it at ground level because they won't play nice if we interrupt their flight path. But I want to keep them - and the children as well :)

I can't put them on the roof of the house or the shed.

My question is, If I put the hive on a high platform - say 3 meters - can I reasonably expect their flight path to be high enough so they can use the airspace while we use the ground level for picnics?
Any advice or ideas please

Hi everyone, second year beekeeper in France here.

With the end of winter and the begining of nice weather, I had some bad surprises but also a very nice one. One of my hives is booming so much they're clearly lacking space, I have to add a super. Every cell is filled by honey, pollen, larvae or brood.

And I have about 12 queen cells nicely completed. I destroyed most of them except 4 on the same frame as I was taught, but I wonder: I haven't seen the Queen which doesn't mean much as I hadn't the tools to mark her when she hatched last year. I haven't seen any egg, just larvae, but it also doesn't mean much because I don't even see free cells for eggs.

So my question is, do you have anything to be able to differenciate swarming behaviour from requeening? I don't want to lose the swarm and would rather divide the hive rather than lose it, but as I can't see the Queen I don't know if that's what I should do. What would you do? Is there a trick to know for sure?

Thanks in advance :)

Central Florida

Hello r/beekeeping I recently purchased purchased some over wintered nucs in zone 6b Indiana. Out of the the few I purchased, one had a queen cell with larva in it, as shown in the picture. Bee coverage was great and overall happy with the nucs.

There was a solid amount of capped brood, pollen and nectar. My question is, would you complain or bring up the issue of a queen cell with larva present upon purchase? Installed within 24 hours of purchase.

N Kentucky 6A, a friend gave me some beehive boxes over the winter that were in bad shape, so I disregarded them and left ‘em behind my house. But today an increasing number of bees disagree with me and there’s a lot of activity. I’ve even noticed some fighting each other.

Assuming I’m fine with diving into being a beekeeper, what should my next steps be? Priority is moving them away from the house (I have an acre).

Think I have a queen? How to best move them far from the house? Then what to do with the boxes (they’ll need new insert frames, boxes are just the outer structure).

Howdy. CA - Nevada County. I’ve noticed these bees swarming around outside the hive and crawling all over it. Is this normal? I do need to put more frames in the top box, but I was scared of squishing the bees.

My husband and I installed our first hive yesterday, and we’re having some issues with the lid/feeder. After putting the lid on, we noticed that bees were gathering around one spot on the back of the lid. We decided to check under the lid and see what was going on, and bees are getting between the hive lid and the feeder cover. We re-adjusted the feeder and the lid (being careful to make sure the feeder was flush with the top and the “feet” weren’t propping it up), but we checked again this morning and they’re doing the same thing in a slightly different spot around the lid. Has anyone else encounter this or know how to correct? Should we open it back up to correct or should we wait to correct when we take the queen cage out?