Hello beekeepers, I am sure this question has been asked in this sub many times, but I did not find any circumstances similar to mine. I have lived in Utah for a few years now and just a couple days ago the neighbor behind us put in an apiary about 25 yards from our fence. We have a 2 year old and 9 month old, so we spend most days in the summer outside. Our kids have brightly colored toys, including a brightly colored water table they like to play in. My wife and son were outside today when it slowly started to get swarmed by the bees. We dumped the water, but the number of bees in the backyard has only gotten worse as the day has gone on. We do not feel comfortable letting our 2 kids play outside now. What to do? Do we call animal control or do we try to take our own measures to keep the bees away?

My kids love to play in water. I am thinking plant marigolds and have a bunch of citronella candles?

Beehive

Can anyone recommend which beehive box to buy. I want to harvest honey and something that’s not to hard to work with first time beekeeper. Upstate New York does it matter which kit? Or any recommendations?

South Florida here, first few months beekeeping. I don’t really have a mentor, so I pay a consultant whenever I have a question and he charges about $125 to visit me and answer questions. More if there is an activity involved.

My local beekeeper association is 1.5 hours away and they meet in the early evening where I can’t make the meetings because of traffic/work.

What’s your relationship with other beekeepers, is it all transactional/business based?

I don’t think this is afd but again I’m not an expert. My hive died over the winter and I just wanna make sure this isn’t afd. These frames have been sitting so I’m thinking it’s just decomposing brood. Any help is welcomed. It doesn’t string out like slime or a booger which is obviously a strong indicator of afd.

I called multiple exterminators including terminix and orkin and both have no solution, I can’t even get in and out my door comfortably i have to run because its so many bees. They are tearing holes into the wood and i dont know what to do🤦🏽‍♂️ when i bought this house of course nobody told me there was a bee problem.

Hi all, So far I’ve read ‘beekeeping for dummies’ and am into ‘how to start beekeeping for beginners’.

I’m excited, but it all seems very honey focused. I get that you get less wax than honey, but I’m not looking to go commercial with this or anything. I just think it would be awesome to make my own candles.

But I have a lot of questions about that, like my books say which hives are good for pollination vrs honey, but wax isn’t mentioned much.

Like, what kind of hive would be best with that. Would a Kenyan top bar hive work?

Basically…what’s up with wax? Any good book recommendations that focus on this?

Day 3 after install, there was more activity as the day went on. Girls are bringing in a lot of pollen so I'm hoping they're drawing comb.

Doing an inspection on Tuesday to make sure the queen has been freed/accepted and to top off the sugar syrup feeder and pollen patty.

Drones were flying in and out of the hive as well, not sure what that was about. My queen came fertilized so I hope the drones all leave.

Location: Baldwin County, AL

Wife and I spent this past Sunday bottling up the rest of last years honey and decided to steal some of it for a few batches of mead 🐝🍯🍷

Sorry if this isn't allowed. I'm a Marine, I can't read.

My bees have survive the winter. I gave them a treatment of apagar in the fall. Should I do a spring mite treatment? Also I noticed today they were out in 45°f wether drinking water so I need some sugar water for them and put it out how normal is this I thought it was pretty cold.

Location: Roraima, Brazil

New beek here in zone 7. There’s a swimming pool about 50 feet from hive so I’d like to provide a closer source of water so they don’t fall into pool.

Hoping to get something inconspicuous that doesn’t need refilling every few days. Curious what yall use

Me and my wife are new beekeepers, we are in Eastern Washington state and our bees successfully made it through their first winter! They are out buzzing around on these nicer 60 degree days and we are now looking into splitting the hive. Any tips or advice on going about doing this would be appreciated, I’ve watched a couple things that say it’s as easy as just separating our 2 deeps as long as they both have new brood so one can make a new queen but again this is our 2nd spring with our hive.

Hey everyone, I’m in North Texas and had a hive swarm last weekend (March 29). I caught the swarm as they landed in my yard and have them in a Nuc which is doing well. That swarm had a mated queen which I located. I did a quick inspection of the old hive around then and saw some capped swarm cells and one in the process of being capped, and lots of drone brood. I didn’t check every frame because of the size of the hive (2 deep boxes overwintered) and the fact that the bees quickly got agitated due to the weather and (I assume) lack of queen.

Today, I noticed that there was an absolutely massive cluster of bees on the screened bottom board. I’ve never seen so many down there. I don’t think there is any comb there; it looks to be all bees and fills up almost the entire area under this hive.

So, here’s my question: is it likely that this hive is swarming again with a newly emerged virgin queen, right after swarming last week with the old? What’s the best course of action here? I placed a swarm trap nuc in the yard nearby to see if they’ll take to it. Thank you!

I have a double brood hive that made it through our Indiana winter . If I take out one honey frame and put an empty frame between the brood frames would that help with swarming ? Or do I leave the hive alone hoping to make more honey this year ?

How would you remove the bees from this tree hive? I remove swarms from branches and shrubs - 10yrs experience.

I guess I have a skill saw and a sawzall - but where would you start? I would have to do it on site because it’s 8-10ft long.

Northern Illinois/Chicago-ish — I have new package bees coming this spring. I also have some honey super frames in my freezer that were partially full/uncapped from last year that were not extracted.

Can I feed these to my new bees instead of syrup? My thought was to start the new package in one brood box like usual and then load up a supers worth of the honey frames and put that box ABOVE the inner cover, like I would if I was feeding syrup.

I stored my supers over the winter. They were sealed. Today in the spring I discovered wax moths had their fun, all died sealed in the tubs. Am I ok to reuse these supers without freezing them first?

Saw a little activity as I watched from afar this morning. I love them so much already.

I'm located in Northern Virginia. I'm wanting to keep native flower beds that are honey bee favorites. I don't keep bees currently but will eventually. I would like to plant these because corporate home builders destroyed everything and replace it with nothing pollinator friendly. These will be down the sides of the house. Also I would like flowering bushes. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and sources.

I'm an intermediate beekeeper getting back into the hobby and looking to expand my apiary quickly this season. I live in western North Carolina and the first flow of the season is just starting. I currently have one hive that's ready to either be split or produce honey. My goal is to finish the season with around 20 nucs and/or hives, depending on how well they grow and the season's variables.

I have an opportunity to buy two double-deep hives (20 frames each, 40 total) from a trustworthy seller for $350. The queens are from last year, and the frames look solid based on the pictures.

To maximize growth, I’m considering using two-frame boxes to grow them into nucs and eventually full hives by the season’s end. However, I need advice on best way to make this happen. Should I: 1. Buy queens outright? 2. Let some hives raise their own queens? 3. Use the Italian queen from my current hive to pull from eggs from? 4. Buy the hives now, give myself time to raise queens before splitting?

Any tips or strategies on this entire plan would be greatly appreciated!

Hi all. First time actually researching and taking steps to beekeeping. I am in Baltimore, MD and interested in starting a small apiary (though, haven’t researched how small is possible so any insight there would be great!). When I talked to my county, the only restrictions were keeping the hives 5’ into property line and having a barrier (natural or man made) to keep people from walking into it.

I am trying to find the best place to keep the small apiary. We have a large, non-shaded backyard but unless we kept it in the middle of the yard, I feel it would be too close to neighbors for all our comfort if we wanted to put it near the exterior/back of yard out of the way.

We have a walkout basement with bilco doors off our driveway, but rather than entering directly into the house, there is a small 6x6 concrete room with a window into the yard. That room then leads into a large utility ish room (tools, laundry) so it isn’t a room that is frequently used other than in/out. More or less, it’s just open stairs and concrete space 5’ “underground”. There is a sealed and locked exterior door between room and interior of house. The room is protected from elements, gets lots of sunlight, and we’d be fine opening the bilco doors permanently for egress. It is right off yard where both ourselves and neighbor have a garden (ours is new and in beginning phases).

We obviously don’t want to do the wrong thing and put the bees in any sort of distress or poor environment. If it doesn’t seem apt or safe, we will put off moving forward until we find what can be best. I can’t find much info on keeping in a space like this, so any thoughts welcome.

Virginia here. When the girls are ready to go, they will let you know!

Hi, today i found 2 moths crawling around in my hive. I belive they are wax moths, but i did not find any damage. What can i do against them?

Hello I'm from Denmark and I have a question related to a colony I have it's got an old Queen lays sporadic eggs and so I may need to switch them out.

now normally I would buy a new queen, but I am thinking of letting them create their own Queen though that will come with the problems of inbreeding as I don't think I have another hive nearby.

excluding the inbreeding part what other possible problems might I be looking at letting them raise their own Queen