Beekeeping Red Flags: Something’s Not Quite Right

Comments · 171

• BE

  @beek · 1 year ago · pinned

  Leave me a comment if your hive snuck out a swarm on you too.

  15

• RO

  @RobbyBates · 1 year ago

  I walked out of the house a couple days ago and watched my hive swarm. I fallowed the swarm into the trees. Had to use my excavator and a 20 foot extension ladder to catch it. It is my first swarm. Couldn't have done it without your videos.

  20

• PE

  @Pestoglass · 1 year ago (edited)

  If you add new queen to the hive with eggs from old one the following happens: new queene gets immediatelly killed and the bees prefers raising own one from the eggs. The fact, they generated so many swarm cells means, they are going to swarm one or two days later. To avoid that you should have leaving them only ONE swarm cell and using the other frames with such cells to generate several separate nucleui. In this way, you would get several new queens and avoid swarm in the hive. There is no mistery in this case. Sorry for my non-native language. Comments and regards from beekeeper from Germany.

  7

• SI

  @silkysmooth7900 · 1 year ago

  This just happened to me. Brand new queen. She was released next day and she started laying right away. Less than ten days later, she was gone. No eggs to see. I checked it again a week later and there was a new queen in there and a bunch of eggs. Unbelievable. I must have missed one of the queen cells that were in there previously.

  7

• MA

  @maryegarcia2432 · 1 year ago

  Just starting out even though I had a hive for more than 20 years! Never knew how to care for them and so when the hive literally fell apart they left. Starting with a new hive and can't tell you how much I've learned already! Please remember lots of us are on the mature side now and finally have the time to learn. Thank you for sharing your wisdom!

  11

• VO

  @vonaization · 4 months ago

  I am a new bee keeper.  I have one hive and after two weeks my friend came by to help me open it up and inspect it, they had a bunch of new bees, so we added a queen ?? ( the thing that keeps the queen from moving up to the 2nd box) anyway, I've been watching for videos and I'm so thankful for them. I'm borderline overwhelmed, trying learn something new everyday to stay ahead of their growth. Thank you so much for your videos.  The one thing I'm struggling with is the new terminology,  lol.  I often have to stop and google them.

• SH

  @shannonhambridge2380 · 1 year ago

  Thanks for showing a defensive hive and how you handled it. It’s hard to stay calm when they REALLY want you out

  2

• ON

  @onevalewa1131 · 1 year ago

  Super helpful in this, thanks David. I still get confused and distracted when checking my bees!

  4

• RS

  @rsurg · 1 year ago

  David, I had a hive throw a swarm with a virgin queen last spring! They had been queenless, so they definitely didn’t bring a mated queen. The day I watched them swarm out of the hive, I inspected immediately after the swarm left. I found 5 of their 8 queen cells opened from the top. I found 4 virgin queens running around inside the hive. And I was able to catch the swarm they’d thrown and install them into a hive. Their virgin queen eventually got mated and started laying but it took quite some time! The original hive requeened but not with one of the 4 virgins I found that day. I had marked them each and never saw any of them again. So they must have been requeened with one of the other 3 cells that had not opened yet when I saw them that day. I was told it never happens but I can attest that it can and it does!

  9

• DO

  @dontaskbb · 1 year ago

  Thanks for the video and happy that I haven't experienced an aggressive hive yet. So good to get good info from an experienced beekeeper

  2

• JE

  @jerrygreen7850 · 1 year ago

  I split one of my strongest hives two weeks ago. They are very defensive now. I introduced a new queen this weekend so I'm hoping they will start to calm down.

  1

• KI

  @KimW-l8s · 1 year ago

  I just love seeing you work on the fly. Making snap decisions.  Very helpful.

  3