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No, I'll not be scenting my honey with oils. It's unlawful to use thymol with supers on. Basically the same thing, natural oil that kills mites but adulterates flavor. Oxalic acid is used extensively in Europe. Not so much in the states and again not allowed with supers on. For me, fogging...

If you don't think your hive(s) are of full strength then reduce the entrance with a piece of wood. Otherwise they are perfectly able to protect themselves when full sized hive, two deeps or three mediums full. The bigger worry is when you are growing out a hive for winter and have full...

It'll break no question unless you put wire supports in the open frames. Have a chance of medium frames not busting out if gentle but then you don't get as much honey, usually but one then clog up your strainers....ugh. Think plastic foundation for the surplus frames. So much easier to spin out...

That depends on if I treat for mites or not. Tried past three years treatment free. Started this spring with no hives left....treating again and will use Oxalic. No difference with mediums to deeps. Basically people use two deeps for brood and that is same size as three mediums, after that...

I really like the Horizontal hives. Not top bar but deep frame horizontal. Currently I use all 8 frame mediums (9 in brood boxes). Been contemplating building a Brother Adams style/sized hive bottom to contain Italians in one box. But then I could just do it with horizontal. Hmm, decisions.

Not a lot of action on this thread. Was hard to find- figure I'll give it a bump as it's the largest and oldest beekeeping forum. What a long day I had yesterday. Had queen cells arriving via UPS overnight air and had yet to finish making the mating boxes. Ugh, was out in the yard placing brood...

Finished installing the Spartan VSH/New World Carni queens this morning between rain yesterday and this morning. Had to hurry up on the last hive with drops falling again and can only hope it realized they were queenless before placing the new queen in cage. It was incredible how much comb the...

This new format of uploading files/ copy paste or what have you is really bad...tried to fix all that but gave up in the end. Multi posts of pics, did manage to delete many...

Caught a swarm today. Sure it was my own bees but would have sucked if they left. I'll try to capture in photo what went down... Was home literally putting together bee boxes in preparation of some VSH queens coming likely Friday. Started hearing a buzz, sustained and intense. Looked around...

I'd not heard that about small hive beetles but essentially having a shed with all the hives on South wall is the same as a hive with opening facing South. What's the difference? Both have three sides of solid wall. It's been awhile since looking into the AZ but know with a little tweaking you...

I thought an AZ would work well as shed area for grafting and mating queens. In golden years it makes for little lifting too. If your into making honey the down side is less honey per hive and the honey will be darker due to constant use of brood comb.

Inspected the new hives this weekend. One seemed off to a bad start so looked into the bottom box; starting hives with two mediums. Was nodda in there, no eggs or brood. Before combining with another hive looked in the top box and there the brood and queen was. Odd, had nearly filled the bottom...

Here's a short video with Mike talking about it some, if memory serves me his daughter gained an allergy and this is him restating what the doctor told him: From there go on and check out all his videos and presentations. Very informative and innovative fella.

Allergies is an important issue. It's noted that bee family children have ten times the chance of being allergic to bee venom than the average population. The reason for this is we coddle our children. I'm not being facetious. The body needs to be in balance or allergies develop- the proteins...

Varroa treatment is horrible. It burns everything and think the major reason for it's effectiveness is it causes a break in brood cycle. Burns out all young larva. Which is fine but it also has a fairly high rate of killing queens, that combined with no young larva if your not diligent to find...

I make my own patties. You can use any of the powdered substitutes and mix with sugar water to form the patty. I use brewers yeast and soy flour common recipe with a touch of vitamin C added. Good for brood rearing in spring. You wont need it until they've built comb as there is no brood, they...

I should be clearer on the warmer inside of box thing. What I was intending to say was an internal sugar water dispenser will work but wouldn't use a front feeder. There are frame size, two frame wide, feeder troughs that fit right in the box where it's warm and they will be moving around come...

You probably want to change the pick up date to mid April unless your in southern NY. I'm on the Canadian border and mid to late April is package time here. Southern part of state first of April is probably OK maybe even March. Ask your local beekeepers. Must be a local forum or association you...

Oh, and if your just starting out you may want to think on 8 frame boxes. It makes a big difference if your moving a full deep. I'm getting older and started with 8 frame and now am moving to all mediums too. Still nervous about the all mediums this far North but I like bee keeping and want to...

Package bees though sold local are 99% of the time shipped up from the south to a distributor in your area. Not local bees at all. It's more upfront but because your starting out I'd suggest a 5 frame nuc to get your hive started. The really have a big head start over a package and box with no...