I've got 2 hives that are absolutely booming this year. It's a good thing since I lost 2/3 of my hives this winter. I put 2 more supers on this hive today. It's now standing about 7 feet tall, including the stand. Our main flow has just started so this hive should be able to put up 3-4 more supers of honey but it will slow some since I'm now out of drawn comb to put on them. They filled the last super in 8 days. I pulled a frame of eggs from this hive this morning to make new queens with.

That's awesome. Wish i knew more. I have youtubed and googled abd every different site i learn something different.

That's the best way to learn. I guarantee you don't know less about bees than I did 4 years ago. I dug in and researched them on a daily basis. There is no telling how much information I have read about bees in the past 4 years. The only problem with Youtube is that only about half of what you see on is correct or works.

Pay attention to the color of the bee suits or jackets that the people in the videos are wearing. Most of them are snow white. New suit, new beekeepers, making videos and telling the world how they keep bees. They don't know squat.

When I started I watched every one of fat bee mans videos. He's pretty good, but a lot of the stuff that he preaches, either isn't good for bees or doesn't work. I don't know if he still does this but he fogged Food Grade mineral oil to "kill" mites. The only problem is that research has proven that doesn't work.

He also feeds essential oils to bees. Research has shown that feeding essential oils and/or Honey Bee Healthy (which is a blend of essential oils) actually harms the microflora in bees intestines. So that's not good.

His info on split making is pretty good.

Then there are people that claim that using small cell foundation will keep bees from having mites. It doesn't work, but that doesn't keep them from preaching it's miracle properties.

Then there's a guy in the Gadsden area that sells hundreds and hundreds of bee packages that told me this week that my bees would do much better if I gave them antibiotics every month. That's complete BS. Antibiotics should NEVER be given as a routine treatment. I have never used antibiotics in any of my beehives and if I had one that needed antibiotics I'd kill them off and replace them with new bees. This guy sells no telling how many quarts of honey a year too. I wonder how his customers would feel if they knew they were eating honey with antibiotics in it?

There's a whole lot of self proclaimed bee experts in this world. I don't claim to be one of them either. I just stumble through the best I can.

IMO the best place to learn about bees is beesource.com

The pollinator's Mexican came by this afternoon and said he would bring me about 400 hives next week. He said they had a real tough year losing hives this year, lost something like 20,000 hives. He said most of it was due to pesticides being spayed where they were not suppose to.

Thanks Fur. I see the queen excluder but how many are brood boxes and how many are honey supers?

Also, how do you store your drawn comb? I put mine (only 1) in a trash bag and put a moth ball in it based on what a guy told me last year. When I got it out to air out a couple of weeks ago the comb was real brittle and a couple of the frames actually looked moldy.

Thanks as usual for the advice.

No queen excluder. I don't use them. I think what you are seeing is an "Imirie shim." It's just a rim I made from scrap wood, the same dimensions as a hive body. It's about 3/4" thick and I cut a 3" wide 1/4" tall dado in it for an entrance. It just gives the bees an upper entrance so they don't have to carry the honey all the way up through the whole hive. They don't use it as much as I thought they would. The shim is about the same thing as an inner cover, without the plywood in it. Just a rim of wood, if that makes sense.

I run an unlimited brood nest. Earlier this spring the queen had brood in both deeps and the first 2 supers. They've pushed her down into the first super and both deeps now.

When I extract, I put my comb in a deep freeze for a week or so, then I stack the supers up, crisscrossing them so light can shine in the boxes and air can circulate in them. Supposed to keep the wax moths at bay but I lost a lot of brood comb last fall, but thankfully no honey super comb was damaged to the point that the bees couldn't fix it. White comb always gets brittle when you take it out of the hive, until the bees have worked it more than one year. Just stick it back on the hive and let them clean up any mold and they'll rework the comb.

I want to come up with a better way to store comb so I won't lose any to wax moths. I found out there is a strain of BT that kills wax moth larvae but doesn't hurt bee larvae. I'm going to spray that on any brood comb that I store but I don't want to spray it on honey comb. It's BT aizawai.

Fur,
Are there some hives that are just meaner than others? I have caught 4 different swarms, and all 4 have been right at dark or even after dark. # of them have been very gentle and easy to work with. But the one I caught Weds. evening/night seems to be really mean. I caught most of the bees that night , and left the box there all day yesterday to get the rest of the bees. I stopped by yesterday evening, and they were working like crazy in and out of the hive. I waited until about 10:00 to go and close them to move, and they were still guarding the entrance and would come out aggressively at every noise or the light. I went back this morning at 4:00 and was able to get them closed up, moved them and set up at new home and when I opened they were ticked. They just seem super aggressive.

Yes some are meaner than others. Swarms and cut outs are a good way to get mean bees. I still catch swarms, but I now requeen them with my genetics as soon as practical. My first hive came from a swarm and they were aggressive. I bought some packages of Italian bees (big mistake) that first year too and they were very calm. I could work them without a bee suit or gloves. The Italian packages didn't last long and I bought some nucs from a guy up close to Valley Head. All his bees are descendents of feral bees from a tree cutout he did in 1997. They are highly mite resistant and they are a little meaner (hotter) than straight bred Italians, but they aren't super aggressive.

I have raised many queens from those first Valley Head bees and most are a little hot but not too bad.

I have one hive left that has a daughter queen from that first swarm I got. They are bad news. I can't get within a 100 feet of their hive without my bee jacket and leather gloves on. When I robbed their honey last year, as soon as I popped the top of the hive I had 100 bees on my veil. Within about a minute I probably had 1000 bees on my veil and by the time it was over I had several 1000 bees trying their best to sting me. I decided then that I was going to kill off that hive. I wish I had done it last summer like I intended to do, but I didn't.

I killed that queen about 2 weeks ago, let them get to the point that they had no more eggs or larvae to make queen cells from. I then went in the hive and tore down every queen cell. I shook the bees off every frame to make sure I didn't miss one. I put a mated queen in with them Tuesday and left her in a queen cage for 2 days. I checked yesterday and they had eaten out the candy plug to release her but she was still in the cage. I removed the screen covering and about 30 bees went in with the queen. I couldn't tell if they were trying to kill her but then I saw one try to sting her. I brushed it off her and she went down in between 2 frames.

I am going to check them again first part of the week and if they did kill the queen, I'm going to put an empty deep box on top of the hive, put duct tape across the entrance and fill the empty box with dry ice and kill the hive. I want to kill the hive in a manner that I can reuse the drawn comb. If not for that I'd just pour a bucket of soapy water on them and kill them.

I've read it's hard to get a hot hive to take a new queen, and the only way to do it is to make them hopelessly queenless. I did that by making sure the larvae were too old to make a queen from and by cutting out all the queen cells. I can hardly believe they'd kill their only hope of having a queen but I think they did.

Interesting stuff WAY over my head

BTW Fur, that honey that I got from you a while back is GOOD stuff

Glad you like the honey! I'll tell the girls they did good.

Fur. I have a box now. Going Wednesday or Thursday to cut em out......need to video it for sure.

What kind of foundation do you have in the frames for them to use?

Fur, How much does a super with frames and foundation cost? I have three older ones, but am running short on time and need to add some yesterday. Thanks

I really don't know. I make all my supers. I buy frames 100 at a time and foundation 25 lbs at a time. Best prices are generally at Mann Lake if you order $100 at a time you get free shipping.

You can drive to Cullman, Birmingham or Guntersville and buy what you need since you need it quick. Werners in Cullman at least use to carry bee hives, Guntersville Feed carries bee hive supplies and I know a guy in Birmingham that sells stuff out of his house if you want to go there, PM me for his number. He's right off 65 and 459.

You can check greenbeehives.com in Trussville too.

Can you PM me the guy at 65 and 459 too. I drive by there everyday and I hope I will need a couple more supers this summer too.

Fur you mean like a screened or solid? I have a pic but can't post here i don't think . Let me try

I give up. i can't load a pic apparently

You said you had a box now. I'm guessing that meant a box and the frames for it. You may be running foundationless frames, but I figured you were using foundation of some kind. I use Acorn double waxed, or Ritecell, or natural wax foundation, I was just curious what you were using.

Oh. Between the frames there are black in color and look like a pattern of a comb. My brother picked them up. They have a weird sticky feeling to them. Sorry that's all i know. I built them today but didn't know if i needed to put all together with it o leave some blank.
http://www.landmsupply.com/department/fa...1cJdhoCP0Pw_wcB

Looks like this.

Wade, here's a link to the guys website: He seemed like a real nice guy, his name is Adam.

http://www.foxhoundbeecompany.com/contact/