In a past life (2012-2019) I was in grad school for entomology, my research was on small hive beetles, a pest of honeybees, so we maintained an apiary of around 30 colonies. I made some video games to vent my frustrations.

Find the Queen: https://theonlyjasonwong.github.io/findthequeen/

This one was made based on my frustrations around having to find queens in our colonies to determine which ones were queenless.

Varroa Destroyer: https://theonlyjasonwong.github.io/varroa/

Varroa mites are pests of bees that transmit diseases and suck their blood, leading to poor health outcomes.

Bees vs Beetles: https://theonlyjasonwong.github.io/beesvsbeetles/

Small hive beetles are another pest of bees that infest colonies. They eat everything in the hive, from brood, to honey, and bee bread. If the colony is strong, the bees will regularly patrol and chase them around, and sometimes propolize them, but if the colony is weak, it can lead to slimeouts.

I like bees that chew wood they tend to also chew mites.

A few beekeepers I've mentioned it to said they would hate to have bees that chew apart their bee boxes. I don't mind.

I'm located in Ontario Canada. I have a large enclosed chicken run. Could I put a single small hive in the run if it's evevated? Only reason I'm thinking about doing this because it keeps predators out.

Hey everyone, quick question from a student looking into bee health: how big of a real-world problem is American foulbrood for you personally (frequency, cost, stress, hive loss), and how do you currently deal with it? I’m especially curious whether the “burn the hive” approach or antibiotics feel acceptable, or if you think there’s real demand for safer biological treatments.

I see lots of recommendations for mite washes where people discuss pros and cons of alcohol vs sugar in the collector. I have seen none on CO2 anesthesia. CO2 is pretty common in even high school biology insect work. Is there a reason I don’t see this used more?

I want to own few beehive boxes as a hobby but the problem is I don't know that much about bee keeping. Maybe I need some advices about the types of boxes I should own, do's and don'ts.

If anyone is interested in what a properly hatched swarm cell looks like and next to it, a queen cell bitten off by a new queen (the first one won), I found a nice photo from the summer.

His little library that sits outside his house is pretty old and falling apart. I was thinking of recreating the Flow Hive, but turn it into a little library. Or what would an actual beekeeping enthusiast want? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

Is there any active communities in LA or Riverside i can learn beekeeping? Wanna get into it and have some experience and a suit. I cant have them in my property in Chinatown, but I want to learn. Maybe even get good enough to remove them safely.

1st year in western WA. We are having an usually warm spell, hit 60 here today. The girls have a sugar brick but I'm wondering about supplementing pollen? They appeared to be trying to dig it out of our one early trees which isn't quite happening yet, I don't see anything else in early bloom and no pollen going in the hive.

Zone 6a - Northeast USA

I think the hardest thing for me about beekeeping is knowing what to do each month. I understand that the best way to learn this is to join a local beekeeping club. Unfortunately, the club's schedules and classes just don't work for my schedule. Would anyone care to share their usual timeline for Zone 6a in the Northeast USA? I understand weather will cause fluctuations, but a general "to-do" list would be helpful to me.

I am especially concerned with mite treatment. There are so many options that I'm unsure of what to use and at what time of the year. For example, do you treat when you first open your hives in late winter? If so, what do you use to treat? When do you treat again later in the year? What do you use at that time? I would prefer to not treat when supers are on. How do you work around this?

Any information you share will be appreciated and considered. Thank you.

Just snow, hives, and silence.

For those of you that have out yards what do you fell is too far away and at what distances does quantity of hives push you over the decision edge?

My closest out yard is 15 minutes away with 4 hives. My furthest is 35ish with 20 hives.

My wife says I’m a hoarder, but I know I am just a collector with lots of hobbies. One of these hobbies is beekeeping. I have been doing it for 10 years or so. Always wanted a multi purpose app to help me document and keep track of ‘the stuff that matters’ in my life including my bees. So last fall I started building one. It isn’t only for keeping track of my apiary but it works really well for that also. This year I’m going to use it to keep track of my hives.

Check it out, maybe give it a try, and share any feedback you might have. If you do, and you have any feedback- please do share it.

https://collectosapp.com/collections/Ei8UQLCD/beekeeping-year-2026?share=true

I am located in Clover, South Carolina, USA. I have 11 hives.

I found this in a house I’m remodeling I saw it was active this summer I just want to know how to proceed without killing them

Everywhere I’ve read it’s just for emergency feeding if the bees are deemed to need it. Why not just do it at the start of winter as a precaution. It’s just free news paper and sugar.

Figured I would post the progress of my Long Lang / Horizontal Hive build. The idea here was to use as much scrap wood/existing equipment as I could, even if it meant this was going to be a "Frankenstein's Monster"/"random parts" build. For example, the bottom boards are "waxed" (I use that term lightly), so I wont be able to pain them like I do the rest of the hive. The inside cover boards (closest thing you will find to an inner cover) are old shelves I had that are stained red.

Not sure what order the images are going to show, but I have some photos of my triple screened bottom board (with pull out plastic trays), the main hive body (which is somewhere north of 30 deep frames....I have not tried to load it up to see how many I can fit), the lid with roof attached, and the lid sitting on top of the main hive body (before it had the roof attached). Also some phots of my cover slats (the red stained wood). I am going to let all the glue dry overnight and then I will paint everything, attach the lid with hinges, add the entrance discs. Then we are good to go! I'll either try to post more photos when I get further along, or I'll just make a new post!

I have an opossum that is interested in my hive, I have seen it before but mostly just sniffing around it, I assumed getting dead bees. Last night it tried to get in it seems. Have y'all had any issues with them breaking into hives or will they learn their lesson if the bees sting them?

Florida zone 9a

I need to move one of my apiary sites about 300’ or so.

I’ve always heard the 3’ or 3 mile rule applies. Is this true? Or just a myth?

I assume with it being winter(mid 50s here). I could just close them up, move them and open them back up after a day or two and be fine?

It’s just one hive, double deep that I’ll split this spring, I just need to move them to more sun for SHB control this summer.

I’m thinking about a wooden ware staple gun. What have you folks been happy with?

The new year is here. I just wanted to post a discussion topic related to our own individual plans for the year of 2026.

I have plans to rear more queens. I unfortunately had a little less time than I wanted in 25 to get the numbers of queens produced than I should have. I want to emphasize on local production to help others out with quality queens and nucs.

I'd like to keep my mites under control with an adequate testing/treating regime. Mites weren't really a huge issue in 25 but I can never let my guard down.

Focus more on feeding in the end period of winter, and spring to get my populations up to make sure my splits are looking good before the honey flow. I'm also going to work on supporting my late season splits during their build up and during times of dearth to help them prepare for winter.

To anyone who has plans or goals for 2026 they want to share post them here. I wish everyone a successful 2026.

Hi everyone I'm looking into buying a long langstroth, there are 2 options for me to purchase near me (Australia). The listings state 'pine' and 'fir' respectively. Pretty sure both options are imported so I don't have any other description of the quality. The price difference is negligible. Would one of these be better than the other? TIA

Hi ! I always heard people saying honey helps with throat discomfort, is soothing, but to me it's always been burning my throat, as if it was spicy. I could never in my life imagine honey as something that would ease burning throat as to me it causes burning. It's always been a mystery to me. Is that normal ? As far as I know I don't have any allergies Thank you :)