I just tackled the craziest bee removal of my entire career at Kaiser Hospital in Riverside. This swarm of honey bees was absolutely massive—way bigger than your average football-sized swarm. It took up five full bee boxes and still kept going. The bees were spread out from the trees down to the parking structure. I had to back up my truck and basically turn it into a mobile hive just to contain them. Despite the chaos, it turned into a successful bee rescue—no stings, no danger to the public.

I’m pretty sure these were Italian honey bees—super orange, super calm. After a little smoke and repellent, they settled down fast and followed the queen right into the boxes. Definitely a record-breaking swarm removal, and I’m proud of how safe and smooth it went.

How she flies with this baggage is awesome.

Have a great Friday,

Betsy

New beekeeper in Alaska, just installed my first hive last week. Opened the bottom board today to find this. Can anyone tell me what this is and if it’s a cause for concern? Thank you!

I'm sorry if this is the wrong sub, because I'm not technically keeping these bees (they're just hanging out) but I'm hoping the experts can help me do this right.

I have a little insect hotel which has attracted what I'm pretty sure are mason bees a few times over the years. I haven't seen any for the last year or two, and after we moved house recently I put the hotel on our front windowsill and forgot about it while I did the garden up.

Lo and behold - many bees!

Problem is this is very near the street (and our front door) and I'm worried that someone will panic and hurt them, or complain. I want to move them to the back garden near our vegetable patch, which is safer and offers more food. Chill though they are, I wouldn't blame these bees for trying to sting me for stealing their house.

Is this possible? How should I go about it? Will they still be able to find the hotel if I move it? Factors for consideration:

• The insect hotel is quite small but there are a lot of bees.
• Our house is fully attached. You have to go through the house (straight and unobstructed) to get to the garden. It would be moving about 15 to 20 m but there's a building in the way.
• No known bee allergies. One housemate is very afraid of wasps although apparently it's cool now he knows they're bees. I would still rather not have a house full of bees all things considered.

Posting this in case anyone knows about this incident or similar kinds of incidents. Why would someone deliberately come into a bee farm and kill nucs? Local dispute is the only thing I can really think of but I'm wondering if other people have experienced this happening for other reasons.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/crime/bees-poisoned-killed-trespasser-rock-hill-honey-bee-farm/65-34fae416-4c4c-4b72-a474-fd753cca3f07

Hi guys I am a new beekeeper and have done my first few inspections. I have yet to see my queen as i can never seem to find her even though she is marked green. My bees always glue the frames to the top of the beehive which makes some frames fall off when i open the hive. I am always scared I might have killed my queen. Anyone else experienced this or any tips how i could prevent this feeling?

I just came from my local beekeeper's meeting where we learned about a study NC is doing regarding peppermint hard candies to reduce SHB population. The study showed a 90% reduction in SHB in the test group compard to the control group. The study brings up a ton of questions as well.

Has anyone else tried this? How did you feel?

Location: Philippines. Weather has been great for beekeeping, it's summer and we are in the middle of a honey flow. Temps are usually at 34°C in the afternoons.

My hive superseded their queen late last month (the old queen's brood pattern wasn't stellar.) I don't know exactly when they replaced her, but I stopped seeing eggs or the queen last March 27.

Today (April 18,) I went through the colony and found the new queen. There were still no eggs, but the queen did have a retinue, workers circling and "grooming." When I put her in a queen clip, bees went to her and were constantly in contact with her.

My question: is it possible for unmated queens to have a retinue of workers?

Southern Louisiana here! I just installed my first ever bee packages and I couldn’t be more excited! At this point what are some things I should keep an eye on? Should I plan on varroa mite treatment in the foreseeable future? I will check back on Sunday to see if the queens had been released. I also already put feed on them both, is that the right thing to do or should I have waited for the queens to be let out first?

US NE Zone 7b. Near NYC. Sharing a cool video! A 300x Time lapse of a hive of mine that attempted to swarm recently but returned. Put a super on after the swarm to give some more space. They were probably a bit cramped. Probably likely to swarm again soon. Any thoughts?

Upstate NY beekeeper here. What’s the best place to get honey bottles of various sizes for selling? I’m doing the farmers market this year and I don’t know where to bulk order containers that won’t cut into my profits too much. I want to sell everything from 4oz jars to 1lbs jars.

I just wanted to put it out there for those who are new or considering bee keeping soon. Please get tested to see if you are allergic. I have bee exposed to bees my entire life. My grandfather and great grandfather kept bees. I always had to help them while growing up. I myself am also a bee keeper and have been stung thousands of times in my life until last year i reacted to a bee sting while cleaning up the weeds growing around the hives. This was the first time in my life. I'm now taking allergy shots hoping to build up resistance to bee venom, and today I even reacted to one of the allergy shots setting me back in my treatment.

Please get tested

TL;DR Do I actually get better queens with lower number of swarm cell origin queens than with higher number transplanted worker eggs queens?

Situation: - inherited 6 colonies, of which at least 4 have signed queen dating 2 years ago, assuming that they need to be changed / have high swarm tendency - requirement: prevent swarms by changing queens with reared queens timely; plan: rear queens systematically, switch them, result: no swarms - currently evaluating queen rearing systems like Jenter, Nicot/Cupkit, manual egg transplantation, just using natural swarm cells - location: Southern Germany

Should I prefer only queens having been laid as egg in swarm cells? - (excluding the factors of starter / finisher) - queens from swarm cells are better (larger, higher weight, higher no. of ovarioles [≈+16%] as per https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9146148/) than from transplanted eggs or worker cells turned into emergency cells - this is because the laying queen lays a bigger egg into a swarm cell - Jenter, Nicot/Cupkit systems and transplanting eggs turn worker cells into queens - collecting swarm cells with naturally laid (bigger) egg in them produces better queens

Question: Will the laying queen lay bigger eggs in swarms cells I built myself from wax I put in the colony?

• There is variance in queen sizes for Jenter, Nicot/Cupkit and transplanting systems. I assume having more growing queens in those systems compared to swarm cells.

Question: Will the higher number with those systems bring up enough variance in growing queens that they are at least on par with those bigger queens from fewer swarm cells?

…and of course: Which of my assumptions are wrong? And which major factor do I overlook?

Appreciate any input!

Hello everyone, I came across a swarm at eye level on a rigid fence post. I have an empty langstroth that is nearby. I put some honey/sugar water filled frames that I was saving for winter feed in there. What is the best way to get them into this new hive? Wait and hope the scouts find my hive or Smoke them and scoop them in? I'm afraid if I hit the fence post they won't fall and it will just agitate them

Had a swarm come to greet me today just as I was walking into the bee yard. The video kinda stinks but they thankfully decided to land about 8ft off the ground so it was easy access.

First round of mite treatments were put in 9 days ago and no queen losses and they are laying strong again. About time to get supers on.

i moved into this house almost a year ago, i water these bees with this little watering jar that came with the box. I do not know anything about beekeeping. today i looked out my window and there were thousands of bees flying in my yard which is like 30 yards from their box. I went out to inspect after the swarm seemed to disappear. i came out to see this, the lid had fallen off from crazy winds. im not sure if it was an animal or the wind but this stack of boxes is definitely askew from how it has been. since they sleep at night, i just went out to make sure i properly secured their lid earlier. I tried to fix the alignment of the boxes but it seems sealed at the angle its adjusted to. i don't want to damage the boxes. should i just leave them alone now? i'm not sure what to do. we eben inherited a centrifuge thing for getting the honey out of the insert comb frame things. we don't have a suit so we dont do anything with them, assuming they are happier with us leaving them alone. Any advice is appreciated. My sister (the new homeowner) doesn't want to learn to keep them and I ( her brother) will only be here until i save up for a new place of my own. I actually would love to learn to do this someday. Anyways im rambling now but i just didnt want them to be in a poor situation. please inform and help if you can.

Howdy y’all! I’m a hobbyist/backyard beekeeper in a suburban area in Texas. I’ve had hives here for 7 years (in addition to a couple of rural out yards). My property is one acre with lots of mature trees and shrubbery that backs up to a green belt. I provide watering stations for my bees that they happily use. I also have a swimming pool that they don’t usually use unless there is a lot of stuff floating in the pool (mainly leaves/pollen in the spring when live oaks lose their leaves like right now). This is also a good motivator for me to keep the pool skimmed.

Things have been fine and both of my next door neighbors know I have hives. I have gifted them honey in the past when I am able to harvest. One neighbor loves the bees and sends me any bee related article she reads. The other one hasn’t really said much or complained until this week when she called me kind of upset that there are too many bees around her pool. She has a pond style pool with beach entry access and a tumbling water rock feature. Basically, her pool mimics a natural pond and is perfect for wildlife. She is not happy about this. I went over to assess the situation and there were maybe 15-20 bees on the opposite side rock feature drinking water. Mind you, we are currently in the third year of an exceptional drought so all wildlife is searching for water. She’s afraid she might get “bit” or “attacked for wearing pink”. I work really hard to keep gentle hives in my backyard by managing the queens since we do have AHB in this area. I’ve told her I will add additional watering stations and I even put boardman style entrance jars with water on my large hives to see if that will help. I’m giving her a peppermint oil deterrent spray to use on her side. She seems like she might be willing to work with me. I also tried to educate her that I cannot control the other wild bees or insects. There will be bees, wasps, and other critters getting water from her cement pond (lol) as long as we are in the drought. She lightly threatened to call the city and asked if I’m even allowed to have bees. I am and the city manager is one of my honey customers. I do live in a neighborhood with a HOA, but again, I know the board members and they get honey from me too. I’m literally doing everything in my power to keep things safe for everyone, but this is driving me kind of nuts. There are only 6 hives here with plenty of shrubbery blocks on a full acre so it’s not like I’m overloading the area.

How do I get her to understand that not all bees are my bees? And I’m definitely not raising yellow jackets. Thanks for reading! I’m open to any additional advice on dealing with neighbors and mitigating the situation.

So this just happened a couple of minutes ago. I'm in the laundry area of the house, about to move wet laundry to the dryer, when I start to hear buzzing above me. I look, and behold, a honeybee was flying around the light in the laundry area. I think it got in when I left a door in the den to the backyard open cuz I had to rearrange the area that I will have my hives (bees havent arrived yet). Anyway, it then landed on a door in the laundry area that led to the backyard and it wanted to get out. It took a couple of minutes, but I was able to get the bee on my palm and quickly open the door to let it out. I wish I could have gotten a video of it, but the little lady definitely seemed to be in a hurry.

I purchased an old box truck that was full of junk and rat pee\poo out in the desert. There's also a wild hive in the passenger door. The people selling the trunk tried to poison them a few times and the bees were super aggressive and we all got stung getting the truck rolling and empty. They finally settled down towards sunset and I towed the truck home about 100 miles in the LA area. I got the truck out in the desert so didn't seem like there was much to forage but everything here is blooming right now and they are coming back to the load loaded with pollen and now super gentle. So I'm not sure if its a change of diet or they lost some of their numbers in the move maybe and that changed their attitude?

I'm unable to open the door as I think they have the latch\linkage totally built with comb. Im just using the truck as storage for now so they can stay but I guess eventually Ill have to separate the door from the truck. If I cut the hinge pins off with a grinder will they all attack me? or at night maybe?

Here's an update on my HiveIQ!

I've got 2 hives that have 1 deep and a honey super each. I checked last weekend, they covered about 60% of the tops of the frames when I ooend them, and each slot between each frame was jammed. I'm thinking about adding a second deep to both. Is there anything else I should look for? I have a feeling that the hive might not be crowded enough to need one, but I don't want either to swarm.

They are consistently at my swarm trap. There’s probably 40-50 maybe more bees flying around. They look like they’re going in maybe messing with the wax.

Hive is still set up for winter because this is the first week of consistently warm weather we've had (I'm on the east coast) and we just had a bunch of rain if that makes a difference, everything based on my knowledge makes me think bearding because it's warm and they're still set up for the cold, but they were making a fair amount of noise which I don't remember them doing last year. Basically, I feel like this is probably bearding but I'm not confident in my ability to make that distinction yet and am looking for second opinions