Beekeeping around the country

Wondering how your bees are doing?? Gonna treat ours with the oxycilic acid this week. Got them fed up good but going add more pollin pattys at the same time as the oxycilic acid treatment. Just got back from the annual meeting many good speakers from several states and university's giving us info on the bees, problems today, and what they see as future problems. Was a good 2 day school.

Hi, I had 7 hives a few years back but over a couple of years they died off. There was a lot of bees dead in the spring but a lot must have just left. I tried a few nukes to replace but never worked out. Then a woman wintered her many hives across the highway from me so I didn't need my own anymore. I have an orchard so bees are handy for pollination. Ed Will Oliver BC

i fall treated with apivar, had them on 2 to 1 sugar syrup with lemon, mint and lemon grass extract, and ap 23 patties since late september. last week i switched them over to candy boards. the girls should do well over winter.

The son and I have tried keeping bees the last 5 years, with not a lot of luck. 4 packages have died and what we found in the spring was only several hundred ....no queen and no dead bodies, but 25 to 40 lbs of honey!
This spring my son made swarm traps that worked well, catching 2 feral swarms. The workers are a bit larger than Italian strain and so far....MUCH more docile (less than mild interest when checking the hives)
We will see how they are this spring
Sorry 'bout the pic...can't figure out how to flip it 180d
(Though it comes out fine anywhere it's been posted!)
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bruster, are you treating for mites?

I've been keeping bee's for about four years now. They seem healthy but they haven't really produced extra honey but lots of pollen. They are package bees Buckfast breed.I consider them a little aggressive at times.
I also got a small ferral hive this summer and they are much more docile than the Buckfast.

Did before at the start, but only had trouble w/foulbrood(burned the hive)
Son wants to let them take care of themselves, with minimal interaction from us
These farel bees are way more active than the strains we bought
We live in Youngstown and located the hives at my dad's farm, 60 feet away from a 1a. pond

At last check, son checked with no gear on and hardly any smoke, but could see a plcked hive where all frames were filled from scratch with pollan and honey....no obvious signs of pests or other problems.

I was amazed my son was soooooooo confident to check his without and gear on, but then I was only 6'from them and they showed only a passing interest in me
If they're ok in the spring, he'll add a few small frames, but he wanted them to use this year to build hive strength

I am definitely not an expert but I don't use chemicals in my hives. I use IPM bottom boards and I use foundationless frames. I check for mites but so far there are very few. I do put out beetle traps when needed.

have you done a sugar roll mite count? at 5 mites per 300 going into winter will kill the hive by spring. as the bees get sick, they leave the hive to die, and in the spring the hive will be empty but still have food stores. another problem that happens when the sick bees abscond, is they will infect other hives in the area.

Have not done a count glen.
Being as hot as it was, they bearded at the enterance a thousand strong, with the "a.c." on high.

This is my son's love, and will sit at times at the hive enterence letting "his girls" land on his hands and arms and chek them out.
He has not seen mites(even on the dead bees in previous hives) and is lucky to have an older guy that kept bees for almost 40 years as a resource to fall back on when he wants to know something!

He just wants strong hives for producing enough honey for family use....and his honey mead!

Is it a common practice to use Hygienic behavior bees in your colonies?

I just do not see how bees lived for millions of years with all the work you guys need to put into a colony.

john, the hygenic queens genetics get washed out when they mate and popullate the hives.the traits diminish over time. i take a lot of classes on beekeeping thru our asscoiation. usda has a lot of info available. the number one threat to our honeybees are varroa mites and the diseases they carry. to name a few, israeli acute virus, kasmir acute virus, chronic bee paralysis, and acute bee paralysis. european honey bees have never dealt with varroa, but africanized bees and asian bees have. those are the two areas that the varroa mites came from. each year, 70 percent of commercial bee hives get shipped to california for almond pollination along with other crops. it concentrates mites and diseases and when the hives are shipped back to their home states, the infected bees spread the diseases to local hives. when these hives collapse, the sick bees infect other hives in the area. the usda highly recommends bee keepers adopt an ipm management program. integrated pest management. when you purchase a new package of bees , or a nucleus colony, we quarrantine the bees at another location and treat them before brining them to the apiary. most all of the feral colonys in the us are gone, because of disease. the feral hives out there now are most all from swarms that escaped form a bee keeper.

Robbed my one hive in July. In two weeks they moved out. Got to start all over.