I called yesterday to perform a cutout of a long established hive from a backyard shed. The owners noted that the colony had been...

by Adam Ziegler in Colony Removal From Shed

I decided to replace some of my winter hive losses with packages bees. The packages arrived from California to Lynnville Iowa late...

by Adam Ziegler in Spring Package Install

I am going to try some screened bottom boards on a couple hives this year to see how the bees respond to an open bottom. Besides...

by Adam Ziegler in Building Screened Bottom Boards

Today was warm enough to do a quick check of the hives. Three colonies have bit the Dust. One box (Nuc#4) did not have a single...

by Adam Ziegler in Three Down...

Good idea: render the wax collected up from various efforts and render it into a clean block of wax that can be used in various ways....

by Adam Ziegler in Good idea... Bad Idea...

The cutout hive from a last month had generated some queen cells. Today during inspection I found eggs, larva, and then the queen...

by Adam Ziegler in Is the Queen Cut Out?

I wanted to transfer the cutout from the bee-vac to a nuc hive while performing an inspection. The bees had attached the comb to...

by Adam Ziegler in Queen Cells on Cutout

Tonight I placed a bucket of sugar water out with pieces of styrofoam sheet pieces floating on the top. It took the bees about 5...

by Adam Ziegler in Open Sugar Feeding

Is it ever going to rain? A coworker contacted me a couple weeks back and said that he had ran into a snag with a home improvement...

by Adam Ziegler in Fall Cut Out...

Today is National Honey Bee Day. As it has been almost a month since I have done an inspection of the hives, I thought I would take...

by Adam Ziegler in National Honey Bee Day 2013

I was contacted this afternoon to capture a swarm West of Geneseo Illinois. The swarm came from a cavity in a mature maple tree,...

by Adam Ziegler in Swarm Capture and Beekeeper Relocation

Yesterday I noted that Nuc#3 was ready to swarm. It was late in the day, and thought I might have time today to split up the bees....

by Adam Ziegler in Missed the split...

I culled a small amount of old comb from hTBH and from Warre#1 today. From the comb I was able to harvest 18-20 pounds of honey....

by Adam Ziegler in Culled comb

Was a bit late getting over the the new property to remove the screens. It was warm, and the bees were ready to exit the hive. ...

by Adam Ziegler in Screens removed...

Large storm last night cooled down the area and kept the bees confined to the hive most of the day. By the time I got home from work...

by Adam Ziegler in Some hives moved...

Nuc#1 Checked the queen cells. The where ripped open from the sides suggesting that another queen,or laying worker did it. I ended...

by Adam Ziegler in Not a laying worker?

Sometime between the hours of noon and 4pm, nuc#5 (collected yesterday)swarmed... completely. In hindsight, the swarm did not settle...

by Adam Ziegler in The swarm swarmed...

The hTBH swarmed today. Landed in a neighbors tree about 15 feet away in two separate large clusters. As full as that hive has been...

by Adam Ziegler in Very large reactive swarm capture...

At my son's t-ball game this evening. Kept hearing folks talking about a tree next to the port-a-potty. My ears perked up when...

by Adam Ziegler in T-Ball Swarm

Swarm still up in close by tree. No luck at shaking them down. Cluster looks to be about 3-4 lbs of bees. Nuc#1 Frame of eggs...

by Adam Ziegler in Nuc 1 is fixed?

hTBH It seems that the queen I removed to place in Nuc#3 certainly did not return here, as it is loaded with queen cells. Form the...

by Adam Ziegler in Queen Cells and Swarms

hTBH Aggressive hive, especially when taking a razor through brood comb to fit to lang frames. Using every other bar, (3 total bars)...

by Adam Ziegler in New Queen, Laying Worker, and Splitting with a Knife

Nuc#2 Is honey and pollen bound. At least 8 empty queen cells, at least 2 of the cells were torn open. No signs of a laying queen....

by Adam Ziegler in Hive Inspections

I was out grinding tree stumps when I got a call from my wife that there was a large cloud of bees over the back garden. I was home...

by Adam Ziegler in First swarm of the season

Placing my ear on the nuc, I could heard the tooting of 2 or more queens in the hive. Mimicking the tones with my voice would cause...

by Adam Ziegler in Queen Tooting from Dixon Nuc 2

I inspected both nucs. Nuc #1 had only one elongated cells. This nuc only had one queen cell when I first purchased the colonies...

by Adam Ziegler in Dixon Nucs with Queen Cells

Took a trip to Dixon Illinois to pickup two queen less nucs. There was a completed queen cell in one hive and a couple started cells...

by Adam Ziegler in Two new nucs

Last July I split a hTBH and used OTS queen rearing methods to get a new queen. The methods worked, and I was able to find evidence...

by Adam Ziegler in Found the Elusive Queen

After some nice 50 F weather, we received quite a bit of snow yesterday. This post is really just a test to see how pictures are...

by Adam Ziegler in Winter again...

Last fall one of the hives I had split was overcome with mites, and dropping in numbers. While the hive managed to make it past Christmas,...

by Adam Ziegler in Spring observations

This is an example of some of the 5 frame medium nuc hives I build. The outside dimensions are 9-1/4" x 19-7/8". The sides are...

by Adam Ziegler in 5 frame mediaum nuc