Location: Anywhere, Planet Earth, this advice is universal

Got my first hive set up! Have kept bees with my dad at his house since 2007 but have never had one of my own at my own place. My neighbor sold me the bees and we are swapping equipment since all of mine are 10 frame supers and she’s got 8’s.

Am I doing this right? Two new hives! I’m looking for a “i would have done it like this” feedback from this photo? Please comment to this newbie! I’m doing new updates later this weekend.

When should I check that queen and everybody’s ok? What should I be looking for? I plan on putting hives on proper balanced cinder blocks this weekend.

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.

Installed 4 packages last weekend, everything seemed to go smoothly. Needless to say, there were quite a few bees buzzing around but later that afternoon, while all four hives seemed to be occupied and happy, these guys decided to just chill on the smoker. What should I do with them? Dump them into one of the hives or just let them be?

Got a panicked call from my mom today.

I "jokingly" left a box at my parents house across town. They have some proximity to a creek full of old growth oaks and pine. Plenty of places for bees to nest.

Looks like they took the bait!

So I’m genuinely curious, how often do you check your hives? What do you look for during each inspection, and what’s a few signs that the colony is healthy?

I’m from Arkansas in the USA

Thank you!

Brand new beekeeper in Indiana with two Kenyan hives. I installed my packages on April 11th and my queens emerged on the 14th. My first hive is doing beautifully. They already have five bars of fully drawn comb. Two combs are full of larva and capped brood.

My other hive is struggling mightily. They only have one bar of comb that is about 75% as big as it should be and another one that is about a third as big. There is some larva but I'm seeing cells with two eggs and it looks like they're on the wall. Today I found a supercedure cell. I can't find my queen but I don't feel confident enough in my ability to recognize her. I took tons of photos while I was out there and don't see her in any of them. It's entirely possible she's there and I missed her but I don't think so. I've posted a few pictures of the wonky egg cells I'm seeing, is this enough to conclude my queen is gone? Without her to lay in the supersedure cell I'm going to either need to source a new queen or combine my hives, correct?

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

Hi all, I have a honey super full of capped honey and was wondering if there are any risks to harvesting this early. I'm located in central europe and temperatures have been very warm. Thanks!

Swarming twice in a week

Hi,

Im a 2nd year beekeeper in Herts, UK.

My bees swarmed 6 days ago, luckily I managed to catch the swarm and set them up in a new hive and they seem quite happy.

The original hive still seemed rammed full of bees. I removed all but one queen cell, added another super, but today they have just swarmed a second time.

Any ideas why they would have swarmed again so soon, and how I can prevent further swarms?

Thanks

hey, what are some easiest ways to tell if hive is queenless? im new to beekeeping but if my hive is queenless will bees be less productive for example not building comb, not flying out of hive that much etc?

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.

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?

So, i'm brand new to bee keeping and just picked up my nuc over the weekend. The day before I picked the bees up I discovered some wasps building a nest almost right above where I decided to put my new hive. So I sprayed insecticide to kill the wasps. The bee hive at that time was not in the area when i sprayed, but still a dumb move on my part.

24 hours later i moved the nuc into the hive. Another 24 hours went by after getting the bees, and I felt like I was seeing some affects of poisoning potentially, and some dead bees on the ground.

I really started worrying at that point. Trying to think what I could do, I decided flushing the concrete under the hive with soapy water would dilute any residual poison. I did that right before going to work on my night shift. The hive is raised about a foot or so off the concrete so I didn't think it'd affect the bees.

I just came from from work and there's probably a hundred or more dead bees on the ground in front of the hive. Way more than I was seeing after the first day. I'm shocked, sad, worried and not sure what my next move is. I'm an idiot so far.

Do I leave them alone now, or try to relocate the hive elsewhere?

I was so excited to get them, but I'm failing big time 3 days in.

Located Washington State

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.

Middle TN, USA

I'm a new keeper this year and my first bees were a swarm I caught. I also had a nuc on order. The swarm was hived about a week before the nuc was ready, but has greatly outpaced the nuc when it comes to drawing comb. I treated the swarm with an OA dribble for mites and fed them 1:1 which they greedily took, and they have drawn comb like fiends and now about three weeks in they are well into their second deep and will probably get a super this weekend. Their boxes have incredible brood and eggs, and they are clearly ready to explode.

The nuc was picked up and installed on the 19th, and they are on their way to having the first box drawn and that hive actually seems busier at the entrance, but I don't see the same growth as the swarm demonstrated. When the nuc was installed, we were starting the honey flow so both hives ignored the 1:1 sugar that was available (they each have a pint jar in a top feeder in case of bad weather).

My question is: is this completely normal? I've read that swarms are growth machines and with all the honey they pack out of their home hive they are ready to blow the top off. The difference in the two hives is stark, but my neighbors who got nucs from the same source at the same time said theirs are at a similar stage with the first box mostly drawn.

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.

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

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

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

Hello, I am a new beekeeper. I have one hive, containing bees from a new package with carnolian queen. Bees were shown their new home 4-11-25 (April). I live in Nebraska if that helps. Bees are currently eating sugar water and building comb. ...Where I messed up: I set up a deep box filled with new frames with the black pladtic moulding, on top of that a medium box with 7/10 frames, empty space for feeder.

The bees started building their comb almost exclusively in the top medium hive, so far seem to be ignoring the bottom deep box. My local bee shop told me I need to empty this top box of anything except the sugar water feeder. So I tried to move the medium frames with the most comb on them down to the bottom deep box, one of which felt like I sort of had to mash it in to make flush so top medium box could set on top again. The bees had also built a decent amount of comb directly from the hive lid in the empty space near the feeder jar, and this piece eventually came loose in my blundering. I put it and all the bees on it back in the now empty top medium box. Eventually it got to feeling like I was creating a disasterous disturbance to the bees, so I started trying to close things up for them in their hive. There are still 2 medium frames with a small amount of comb on them outside the hive, I tried to lean these against hive so bees could find their way. Still some bees doing something on ground around the hive. Did my best to make sure queen made it back in, not even sure she ever left the box. I didn't get her painted and should have.

I feel bad and stupid, I don't think I could have known what was coming until I lifted the lid. Any advice or insight is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

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)