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My bees made it through the winter just fine and I have brood box full of gentle bees (I can easily inspect with no smoke). There are a lot of stores in the outer frames and some honey in the inner frames, too. I cannot see the queen which doesn't surprise me because I could not find her last...

Newbie question - what is a "shook swarm" or the "shook swarm method"? I keep reading about it in this forum and still don't know what it is.

In this nice weather today I had a quick look inside my hive for the first time this year. I have a brood box and a super underneath that was full of stores when I put it there last autumn. It is still almost full! I want to move to a single 12x14 brood box and get rid of the super...

My one colony was strong last year. I put a super under the regular brood box so they had enough food and space during the winter. I think they are OK now because bees are flying in and out on warm days. I would like to move them from a regular brood box to a 12 x 14 brood box so I can do...

In November I made sure my one new rooftop hive had plenty of food (in the brood body and a full super underneath the BB). I insulated the top and put a reducer in the opening. In November and December I watched bees come and go. I have not seen any traffic during the past two cold weeks. One...

My yellow plastic inspection tray under the mesh at the bottom of my hive is stuck. Any suggestions how I can get it out? I've tugged hard with both hands to no avail and I want to check the status of varroa mites.

I have one hive on the roof of my house so it is easy to check them - I just climb out the window. I rarely use smoke and notice that in the morning they are docile and nice to me and it is easy to check the fames. In the evening they are cranky and buzzing all over me and really attack when I...

I was away for two weeks and left three supers on the brood box. The first was full. When I returned over the weekend I found the top two supers each about half full of capped frames. So I removed the capped frames and extracted the honey. I combined and left the partially full and uncapped...

Before going on holiday for two weeks I put two empty supers on my busy hive to make sure they had space. On return, I found one about half full of honey with a lot of capped cells. The top super seems to have no honey but some wax cells made by the bees. There are now fewer bees than a month...

What is the trick to adding or replacing supers after an inspection? My bees crawl all over the top edge of the box and despite using smoke or brushing them off they come back and I always crush more than I want to when putting the queen excluder and supers back on. Techniques to save my...

I'm new to beekeeping this year and so far so good with three heavy supers. One is full with the cells capped so I want to get the honey out. I do not have an extractor. Someone told me I can cut out all the frame, cells and foundation, melt the lot in a pan so the wax rises to the top, then...

About three weeks ago I got some bees and a queen - 6 frames that I put in my brood box that had 6 new frames with foundation. A few days ago I added a queen excluder and a super. Now about 10 out of 12 frames in the brood box are full of bees, comb, honey, eggs, etc. It seems that there are...