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Yes, they have been found in south Alabama. I'm in North Alabama some 450 km north from there. The weather difference is considerable. I lived near Mobile for a year back in 1980. The comparison you are making is roughly equivalent to the difference between the English maritime climate and...

I work my bees wearing a t-shirt and veil and have less problems than most beekepers with Italian or Carniolan queens. Africanized bees are unadapted an area with significant winter cold temperatures. What I have seen here is that Africanized genetics die out within 2 or 3 years. I had some...

A few of you may recall that a researcher (Geoff Williams) tested my bees for varroa November 2nd, 2019. Here is the text from that set of samples. "Geoff Williams with Auburn University came out today and collected bee and mite samples from 8 of my colonies at one apiary location. I have only...

Where have I been? I've been busy beyond belief moving to a new location and working on a house. I still have my bees and probably will have them until I die. I've had bees since 1969 so it is 52 years and a ton of memories. I got one more person started with a colony of bees this year. I...

Sad to see reasonably useful threads on this forum devolve into sniping and cat calling. Has anyone read what Brother Adam had to say about fall feeding? He said that it is always best to feed enough to get through to spring and then spring feed to build up the bees. His reasons why are...

Flat sheets of wax will be re-worked into comb, especially if they are thin sheets. Bees generally do better if given starter strips and let them do the rest. Caveat that you will have a LOT of drone comb with this method. Some problems can occur determined by the spacing of the combs. I run...

I don't know how it affects bees on that side of the pond, but over here, that much water would either kill a colony or stress them so much they would not make a crop of honey. Cold does not kill bees normally, but cold and wet does.

Is this a version of "Trust but verify"? As beekeepers, we can do far more to produce quality queens than is shown with most bought in queens. I like Jay Smith's approach of quality at every step. This includes culling of any newly mated queens that don't measure up.

A resistant colony of bees will keep mite load to a minimum even when it is the largest colony in your apiary. Convert your mite drop to number of mites per 300 bees and the picture will become plainer. A resistant colony drops 1 or 2 mites per 300 bees vs susceptible that usually drop 20 or...

Heavy winter losses almost always indicate failure to prepare the colony in the fall. Healthy bees with a young queen plus plenty of stores in September will almost always make it. All of my established colonies made it on this side of the mud puddle. I lost 2 queen rearing nucs that were...

Have you ever seen Finns waiting at a bus stop? They spread out about 10 feet apart. Been practicing for covid19 all their lives.

Look up the "Stewarton" hive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewarton_hive has some information.

Title of a new beekeeping book: 'Dead Bungalows, and other Beekeeping Absurdities' I'm sure there will be a place for historic oddities such as the current crop of "innovative self monitoring IP enabled" bee hives. JBM could donate his picture as the chief absurdity investigator.

Sounds...... wicked.

Highly mite resistant bees usually are also highly hygienic. Caveat that there are some populations of bees that have developed resistance sans hygienic behavior. I would state this a different way by saying that hygienic traits are useful, but are only part of a resistance mechanism...

Bees often spend the night in the area they were foraging, not under the hive. If the colony is moved overnight, the returning bees are left behind. Having left behind clusters of bees is common with commercial beekeeping, especially when pollination contracts have to be filled. Some...

I've read that pollen as stored in cells ferments over time which makes the protein more easily bio-available. I don't have a reference and it certainly is worth verifying.

I'm in an area that can produce very dark honey, especially when using A.M.m. stock. Years ago, I had a ready market to older people who wanted the darkest honey because it supposedly had health benefits. One woman purchased a dozen quarts a year so long as the honey met her standard. A.M.m...

I started building my own equipment in 1977 including building deep Langstroth frames with 31mm end bars. At that time, I was using Langstroth 10 frame equipment. Since I was doing deeps, I decided to make shallow frames also with 31mm spacing. I could just fit 12 frames into a shallow super...

Don't just watch for large sums, watch for small amounts too. Credit thieves often make a small charge to see if a card number is accepted, then if it is not challenged, they make a series of large purchases. I found such a "teaser" purchase on a credit card a few years ago and promptly called...