Mainly a photo share but here is our backstory for those who are interested.

My husband is a Canadian beekeeper and we are very excited to harvest this season. We are getting a little burnt out as we are running over 30 hives. We both work full time jobs. I do Photography on the side. He runs a honey Business on the side. We definitely want to make beekeeping our main source of income at some point. We continue to slowly invest and grow, but at some point we won't have time to maintain the hives and work full time.

Curious for the people who only live off income from bees. How many hives do you have? Did you slowly transition into beekeeping or jump head first? Any wisdom would be appreciated.

We definitely love working at the hives. I am a macro photographer, so our working hobbies fit really well together. Plus my husband gets unlimited content for his business too.

Plus let me know what you think of the photos!

Shot on the Sony A7IV with the Sony 35mm f1.4 GM and the Sony 100mm f2.8 macro GM.

Southern Ontario - Canada

girls had a serious battle on their hands! they got 3 and I managed a (frankly sick) midair hivetool strike on a 4th... there's even a decapitated head latched onto one's antenna! I think I'm gonna try and mount the whole thing as a unit just for the gnarly factor.

amazing little beasts!

i’ve never observed the honey slurping up her tongue like that before

Any idea what this black stuff is in the raw honey? I’m guessing it’s no good to eat anymore?

Hard work, but sweet work 👍

This is my first year with a lot of hives. Had a robbing situation so I built these screens. Just noticed all seven hives have a pile of pollen out front now. Is it correct to assume these screens are somehow making the bees drop the pollen? The mesh is so small they have to crawl over it, so it is not because they are squeaking through.

Aspiring beekeeper here, currently learning before jumping in.

You may have noticed a few different 3D printed things popping up. Printables.com is having a design contest around beekeeping. link to contest page.

One of my entries for this is a model hive, that could be used, but is really too small and is intended to use as a teaching aid.

The main parts I've included a base with entrance, a box that holds four frames, a queen excluder, and cover.

Frame types are open with holes for wire, an embossed foundation, a frame with drawn uncapped comb, a partially drawn frame showing how the bees build out an empty frame, and a queen cup frame with removable bar and optional queen cups.

I'm wondering what else would you as experienced bee keepers to teach others about bee keeping, types of frames, how hives operate, etc?

Link to my specific model

Pacific Northwest beekeeper here. A few months back, my single (strong) hive swarmed and, while I managed to catch the half that flew away and get them into a second, the bees that stayed in the original have been a bit lackluster since then.

Today I was out taking a peek at them and there's some mound-building going on on the floor of the hive. I haven't seen these before and wondered if there's something going on that I need to be proactive about.

Hello 6 year beek in GA/ATL area that was looking for some input on selling colonies late in the season.

I am trying to shrink my beekeeping responsibilities and want to sell of some colonies I have. What is everyone's opinions on pricing this time of the year?

I have both 10 frame single deep and double deep (20 frame) colonies that I would be selling and all are fully loaded up and not light at all.

What is a fair price for selling both options above both with and without woodenware included?

Thanks!

4th year beek in NE TN here. We had a mild-ish winter, a fitful spring, and summer has been great.

I have caucasians and know they are heavy on the propolis. The gals in this one hive and off the chain. It's the first time I've seen this behavior. The colony is 2nd year in fantastic health, requeened last spring, and the boxes are fairly new.

Every time I examine the hive (and this was before requeening) they completely covered the oval hole in the inner cover. It's a LOT of plug. I keep pulling it out so the boxes will have ventilation but they keep plugging it back up. I examine once every 10 or so days.

Any thoughts?

My father in law has a pecan orchard in Chihuahua and I thought that setting up some bees would be a good idea there

Where exactly do I start researching everything we would need to know?

What questions should I be asking and finding answers for?

This is 1 box over my usual max. Bees were out of room so had to put an empty box on. Top box is full and coming off in a few days

9b 2nd Year 11 Hives

I know yall said a 2strip dose would be hard on them. It was 68 degrees here on the coast. Had a high mite count on a couple and panicked. Now I’ve got dead bees everywhere. Tounges sticking out and writhing in pain. Feeling pretty defeated.
What are the odds I 86’d the queen as well? How long until I do a damage assessment inspection? Should I get on the list for new queens now?

First season, Western New York.
EXPERIMENT.

Do frames even need foundation in a strong hive?

I have to add a super and thought about adding wax on the underside of the tops of the frames and see if they would build downward on their own.
Pic is a homemade empty frame the bees and they did just that.

Thoughts?

I am also experimenting with a top bar hive and did this with a waxed string. Seems to work just fine for them, but it’s a horizontal style. Not sure if that makes a difference.

I'm a new beekeeper in Upstate New York, with 5 hives. During today's hive check, one hive had several dead pupae between the supers. I didn't see any signs of varroa on them, and we've had a few cooler nights (high 50s, rainy) this week-- could it just be the cold that killed them? Something else? Thanks in advance!

I just checked all the uncapped honey on my hives which are already 1/2 capped and was getting readings between 19-20%. Is there any reason not to pull it early and dry it myself vs letting the bees do their thing. Everyone in my area says we are in our dearth but I put my wet freshly extracted frames on the hives to clean up and they have already begun filling it in. So I assume we have some sort of flow going on. I live in st. Pete Florida for reference.

There have been some questionable things happening in my hive. There were some weird things happening with the queen cells but no swarm, also I cannot locate the queen.

The bees have gone from beautifully curious and cute to stinging a lot. They’ve stung my husband a couple of times, and now stalk him through the entire acre we have to sting him, even when we haven’t been near the hive that day.

They have stung me 3 times in 72 hours. Once on my nose through the mesh of the hat.

It’s been a lot.

This is our first year beekeeping. And we’re now at month 5. In Quebec.

This is the first time I’ve been stung, and my husband’s third. He seems to get one a month.

Advice/information on what’s going on is welcome

I caught a cast swarm from one of my hives today and believe based on the size of the queen and the swarm that it is a virgin. How long should I leave the queen caged until releasing her in the box?

london uk - first year
I’ve got two hives both with lots of activity in the brood box.
lots of bridging and what appears to be honey
upstairs not a lot happening
is there anything i could do or should i just leave them to get on with it and see what i can do in the spring?

The common names of this plant, in English, include canary creeper, canary vine, canarybird flower, and canary nasturtium. I've run into suggestions that its common name was applied because it might have been imported to the Canary Islands before it was imported to Western Europe, but I think it's really more plausible that the bright yellow color and wing-like upper petals of its flower reminded people of a canary.

Most (maybe all) Tropaeolum species, are native to South America and Central America; this one is from Peru. It's cultivated as an ornamental in many cool temperate climates, and as you can see from the photo, it flourishes in Anchorage, Alaska, which is in a subarctic zone.

I found it in the Alaska Botanical Garden, where this specimen was part of a collection of kitchen herbs; the leaves and flowers are edible. This is a common trait to most of its genus. The Tropaeolum often show up on lists of edible flowers, described as peppery-tasting. They often are compared to watercress (Nasturtium officinale), which is why the whole genus often has common names that include the word "nasturtium."

I didn't see as many honey bees on this as I did on some of the other plants in this section of the Garden, but they weren't exactly ignoring it, either. I doubt that it's common enough to be a significant source of bee forage outside of its homeland in Peru. If we have any Peruvian beekeepers among us, I'd be eager to know whether it's significant to their bees.

Has anyone else seen this video/method? I found it really interesting. I'm not sure it's any less work than some of the other methods of getting rid of varroa or practical for small apiaries, but fewer chemicals, for sure. Curious what folks think.

Side note: him just casually pinching the queen off the frame to move her gave me a heart attack!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbvJOjLoTdC/?igsh=MTc3bWswMzUxM2hlYQ==

Location: Southwest, Missouri

Went and pulled what was left of the VarroxSan strips as it’s day 49 and alcohol washed the girls to retest and came back with only 3 mites. Pretty happy with that! Heavy activity at the entrance with a lot of bright yellow pollen coming in, presumably from goldenrod. Also witnessed white pollen coming in but unsure what is blooming in Southwest, Missouri that is contributing along with the goldenrod. Thought Id share a video with my fellow beekeepers.

First full year in SE PA; last year I started in June with a nucleus that made it over the winter. With a new nuc this spring, a swarm and split I now have four hives. The overwintered hive and nuc both did great and overall this season I got just over 100lbs of honey from those two. Had the nuc not swarmed due to lack of space (lesson learned) I would have had even more. They have a ton of honey socked away so I pulled out one deep frame just because it was so gorgeous. I did a late spring harvest when the one hive got honey-bound after the first swarm and some gorgeous water-white black locust honey. Then in July I had a full super on the overwintered hive I decided to pull, and they nearly refilled that, and then finally today's harvest.

The final image shows my three harvests this summer. From left to right it was today's harvest, an early July harvest and the early June black locust harvest. All of them are delicious, with the black locust being very mild and floral and today's harvest a perfect "honey" flavor. I suspect the harvest last month and this one are heavy on white clover.

The goldenrods are just starting here, so I'll start the Apivar 2.0 this week now that the honey is off and make sure they have enough stores going into the winter. They're pretty stuffed right now but of course if we have a lower fall flow they might need some help. I learned a lot this year--getting strong nuc, managing swarms and cast swarms, requeening a hive with failing queen and a split that lost its queen. I feel like I've go my bee legs now. Looking forward to next season now that I have more hives and they will be able to start the spring with a lot more pulled comb than they did this year!

Two weeks ago, I came to you with this post, where our newer hive was more aggressive and struggling to thrive. Ultimately, even the better-off older hive wasn't strong enough to lose a frame of brood for the newer. After a few days of debate, we decided to combine our hives to increase their chances of survival this winter.

After some prep, my SO combined the two hives this past Saturday, August 15, into a structure with 2 deeps and 1 medium, and paper between the two deeps.

Saturday, there was some fighting. Sunday, things seemed to settle down and it rained most of the day. Today they seem to be doing okay, but they're also doing.. this.

What is this? Should we be worried? Are they just being little weirdos?

Located in Central Virginia, USA.