Beesource Beekeeping Forums forum

I thought it would be helpful to create a thread that can serve as as a repository of the scholarship around the topic. Others are welcome to contribute research - hopefully following a consistent format. Comments are also welcome, but I would humbly request that any comments be referenced to the research itself.

Hi. quick little story. so I’ve traveled all over the world looking a bees and beekeeping. Poland has a very long history of beekeeping. They do loads of very interesting things like. They make log hives with frames. But they have a door on the side and the frames come out sideways. any how back to the story. In some areas they have dispensed with trap boxes all together. The have a 3or4 meter long stick with a round flat pice of wood screw in the end. This is stood up in a tree with the... Bee’s on a stick

I’m planning ahead for queen rearing next spring. My idea is to put the green drone frames in several of my best colonies and let them produce a pile of drones from genetics I actually want around.I know I can’t control what drones my virgin queens mate with, but my thinking is that if I have enough colonies pumping out drones from my better genetics, I can at least stack the odds a little more in my favor.I’m actually thinking about putting some green drone frames in my strongest colonies... Anybody using the green drone frames to flood their area with drones?

The annual Ivy flow has begun. According to the book, " Nectar and Pollen Plants of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest ": "One of the latest nectar and pollen sources. The nectar is very concentrated and attractive to bees. Flowers on mature growth only."

after further consideration of an exchange that came about in @Kellyb 's thread yesterday i determined this topic worthy of further discussion in a thread all its own. setting the stage: Kellyb said: I think there’s a lot more to the good mites vs bad mites than I’d given credit to. These mites around here just don’t mess around at all. Im pondering if the best thing about the bond method is not to get rid of the bad bees, but get rid... Click to expand... good mites/bad mites

I have a large vacuum packing machine at my house with an unlimited supply of very hi barrier vacuum packing bags used in beef and pork packaging. My chamber can achieve under 2 torr and the bags have an OTR (oxygen transmission rate) of less than 2 cc per day. THIS IS VERY LOW…..a straight polyethylene bag would fall in at about 500 + cc/day. so my question is : why wouldn’t I just pull a strong vacuum and seal up my storage frames before storing them over winter either frozen /... Vacuum Packing frames?

For the last two years I have had a good harvest of knotweed. Probably 20 pounds per hive or more. This year nothing. There are two patches near me that I know about. One is half a mile away. The other a mile and a half away. Both of them bloomed their hearts out. When I checked them they were covered with every kind of native bee and yellow jacket. The closer one had zero honey bees. The more distant one had honey bees but they were the bright yellow pretty bees. Didn't look like... Clueless bees

Found these videos very interesting. I have access to lots of trees and need to make a few of these. These would be great for Natural Beekeeping.

Hi everyone, It’s been 6 months of silence from my side. Why? Because I was locked in pure execution mode, trying to solve a multi-billion dollar problem on a laptop that’s literally taped together and running strictly from a power cord. The European Union dropped the new Honey Directive 2024/1438. Strict digital traceability is now law. Bureaucracy is screaming. Regulators want data. But guess what? There is NO practical tool for an ordinary beekeeper to actually collect and automate this... AgroNode MVP:66 Tables, Free-Tier Chains, and a Broken Laptop: How I Built a Live EU Honey Compliance Engine Solo

So next year I am going to try my hand at grafting my own queens. I have a few hives I want to requeen next year with better genetics and figured this was the best most fun way to do it. I built a couple of long hives over the winter and they turned out great. So i figured I would build a couple of in my terms “queen castles” (really it’s just a long hive with 4 nucs inside). It will have a entrance on each end and 2 up front for each 5 frame nuc. Once I get every hive requeened I... Queen Castle is coming along

Hey guys, so I am trying to get my hive to make it through winter. I had some complications with my hive (not thinking I’ll probably invest in anymore of the Vino Farms style hives) and as a result, I ended up not getting enough honey in the part of the hive to be left for the bees. I don’t think they have enough to make it through, and I want to do everything in my power to save them (my fault why they don’t have enough food stores.) I’m wondering which is better, a candy board that I don’t... Is fondant or a non-cooked candy board better?

I have designed an OH that is two columns of frames next to each other to have 6 deep frames on the bottom (two columns of 3 next to each other), above that 2 medium frames (one on each column next to each other) and two shallow frames on top. I made the decision to do this based on the size of the fabricated elements around the OH. Will I run into issues with this kind of a setup (as opposed to an OH with frames of all the same size)?