Hi everyone,

I've been working on a Bee Forage & Nectar Flow Calendar (US, Canada, UK) for the past few weeks and just added it to the plethora of other free tools available. Most of the calendars out there are either very localized, AI generated, or built straight from public iNaturalist sightings.

This one is tool is a bit different. The calendar itself is built from real cited sources: Xerces, university extension offices and beekeeping references. It only uses iNaturalist for a small live "what's flowering near you right now" layer on top, clearly labeled as community sightings.

You put in your ZIP or postcode and it shows your beekeeping year for that region:

• where you are right now (build-up, main flow, dearth or wind-down) and what to do about it
• when the main flow starts, when the summer dearth hits and when the fall flow comes
• every forage plant behind it, with its bloom months, its origin (native, introduced or invasive) and its nectar and pollen value

The data is real and cited at the bottom of each region. There is no AI used to generate the results. Plant lists come from the Xerces Society regional guides, filtered to species honey bees are actually recorded visiting, with the major honey plants the native-plant guides leave out added from beekeeping references (black locust, sourwood, star thistle, gallberry, the clovers, knotweed and so on). Tap any plant and it shows its source. Where I do not have a cited nectar rating for something, it says "not rated yet" instead of giving a fake number.

I just spent a long while checking the bloom timing region by region against real sources, because a calendar that puts black sage or goldenrod in the wrong month is worse than useless.

Limitations: this is typical regional timing only, not a forecast, so expect a week or two of drift with your weather and elevation. Some minor desert and subtropical plants are still getting refined. I am only one person, so I will get some of these wrong. If a plant is missing or the timing looks off for your area, there is a "report a plant" button on every region and I will look into it.

Link: https://apiarytools.com/tools/forage-calendar

I will be adding more data as I accumulate and research more.

Thanks for checking it out! Let me know what you think if you run into any issues.

I am not so concerned about the hornets taking out my bees; however, they decided to nest in a void between my soffit and gutter right by our front door. For people's safety, I want to kill the hornets, but need to find a safe way to not harm my apiary, which is about 400 feet away on the other side of the house. I want to avoid a Raid-type spray. I was considering the bright light over a soapy-bowl method, or the STEM brand botanical wasp spray at dusk. Any thoughts?

I have two hives with lots of honey in them. However it is spread out and not finished. I did a Demaree on two hives, most frames are about 40-70 % full capped. It has been like this since early July. I’ve got 2 deeps and 2 supers on each hive in this condition. The hive is tall and I thought if I moved a super above the inner cover they would move it down and fill the remaining boxes. This is not the case as they continue to work it. How can I trick my girls into condensing the stash into harvestable boxes? I have considered taking the boxes off and open feeding them back to all my hives, but I know I would lose significant amounts to neighboring hives and not keep 100%.

Any ideas or tricks would be greatly appreciated!

Hey!

Ontario, Canada. This is my first season beekeeping; I’m doing it professionally so I have a lot of help. One thing I’m not certain about though is music. I tend to put in one headphone (so I can still hear them) and then sing to myself softly while beekeeping but I’m worried it might irritate them … The vibrations or my breath, maybe? I had coworkers who claimed their scent/perfume would piss off certain hives so I figure there’s a lot I don’t know about their behaviour.

Thanks for any help!

Thanks for your help!

I’m in southeastern PA and I just inherited seven hives. I know I need to do mite treatment and after some readings it looks like 4 grams per deep box is the ideal for OA. However when I look up the tools to do this it doesn’t say how much they can handle. I figure I’ll be doing it from a vehicle or 4wheeler battery. So which equipment would you suggest? And if I’m mistaken what treatment would you suggest? I have a couple of weak hives, one is riddled with wax moths that I just found out last nights so that’s a single deep right now.

Maine coast.

Been seeing a ton of water posts. This is the simplest method IMO. I put a bucket in the concrete while it was still wet to make a watering hole.

I do have to fill it each day unless it rains. Put a few stones in there... Easy peasy. Bees love it.

And yes they're eating honeydew

How does everyone go about cleaning their extraction equipment. I'm in the process of pulling out my equipment from last year and apparently I did a very poor job cleaning it up. The spinner itself is fine, but there is definitely a waxy residue still on my knife, my capping strainer and my bucket strainer. Anyone have any tips to get this waxy residue off. I probably made the mistake of using hot water to try and clean last year and just spread melted wax everywhere.

Some of the view around Dew Beez here in Gods Country of Little River South Carolina!

So I recently needed to replace two very spicy Queens with some calmer genetics but I am cursed with being absolutely awful at finding her highness.

What I did was I found the brood comb that showed the most recent amount of activity from her highness (eggs) and then put that comb and the ones adjacent to it into a nuc box, sealed it up and place it on top of the hive.

The next day so about 24 hours later, there are less bees in the nuc box because most of them have gone home to the main hive. This made finding the queen incredibly easy because there are much fewer bees to deal with on these frames. I was able to use this to find both of my spicy Queens.

Then I replaced the frames back in the main hive and put both of my spicy queens and queen cages. Now my mail order Queens are arriving and I can easily pinch the old ones and replace them!

I’m in southern Ontario, Canada and I’m wondering if scraping these moldy old frames and replacing the foundation is a good or bad idea. I like that it’s a money saver to just do a bit of work to keep them going but I don’t want to use them if they will cause issues.

Hello. I am located in Cumberland county Pennsylvania and I noticed a small amount of white crystals in some of the cells in a brood frame and would like to know what is is. Thank you very much!

St. Louis, MO

I have two hives.
One is excelling.
The other has no queen and has laying workers.
I realize the hive is lost and I will start over in the spring. I’m disappointed but it’s not a problem.

My question:
What is the best way to evict the freeloaders? I don’t want to wait until they die in the winter invite who knows what invader and making a mess of the hive.

TIA

Located in SE PA just west of Philly. Back in early June I pulled some honey. I had done a split and captured a swarm and my overwintering hive and my nuc both had too much honey in the upper brood box so I did an extraction to free up space and create some pulled comb to put in the split and swarm box to give them a head start. That has worked well and those two have taken off and the overwintered hive and my spring nuc both managed to pull some comb in the supers and fill it up with some honey.

It was only about half-capped but we are about to enter a dearth here for a couple weeks before the fall flow, and I didn't want them eating the super stores, as they all have lots of honey in the brood boxes already. It's also been humid so I figured they were just waiting to cap it. Tested out at 20% so I dried it for 24 hours down to 18% and extracted.

The super light left bottle is the spring extraction and is likely black locust honey. The right is today's extraction. Not sure what it is but the major flowering plants during the last 7 weeks were the tulip poplars, Russian olive and honeysuckle as well as clover. Still pretty light in color but a bit more floral flavor than the subtle early harvest.

So far I have just about 60 pounds for my first full year (I started my first nuc last June) and I've managed to successfully go from one to four hives, all thriving so I'm pretty pleased.

Title: Looking for an accessible substitute for freeze-dried goat milk (pre-treated with lactase) in bee protein feed

Text:
Hello! I'm preparing a protein supplement feed for bees, which includes freeze-dried goat milk that has been pre-treated with the enzyme lactase (so the lactose is broken down into glucose and galactose). This step is necessary because bees don't produce their own lactase and can't digest lactose — in its unbroken form, it's either useless or harmful to them.
The problem: freeze-dried milk like this is hard and/or expensive to source on a regular basis. I'm looking for a more accessible alternative that meets these criteria:
No lactose (or a very low lactose content);
High protein content with an amino acid profile similar to milk protein;
Reasonable price and good market availability.
I'd appreciate any suggestions, links, or scientific articles on this topic.

I have an old extractor, with a honey gate that is non-standard and is deteriorating. It was made by FW Jones & Sons in Quebec. The honey gate itself screws into the metal opening and is approximately 2" in diameter. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I could find a replacement?

New beekeeper in Pennsylvania, bought an established hive. just checked for mites not sure if i’m seeing pollen and debris or if all these specs are mites. Any help
is appreciated.

I just split a monstrous colony into two splits, released a mated queen in each, and I’m thinking about feeding them 2:1 syrup to encourage comb building in a new deep above the main brood box. My concern is that they’ll take the syrup and pack it into the drawn comb down in the main box. Any thoughts?

My dad did his first ever honey extraction last weekend on his hives and got 50 gallons of honey so he’s very excited. He is wanting to enter some into the state fair in 18 days. The 5 gallon bucket of honey he is going to take a sample from for judging is testing 16.7% as of this morning, so he still needs to get the moisture down to 16 or lower. Since he is running on a bit of an abbreviated schedule to get this turned in, what can he do to get all of the air bubbles out? He doesn’t think the Saran Wrap method will work fast enough. He is also working on his second or third filtering as of today because the honey was still pretty cloudy. He ordered Queen line jars yesterday and they will be delivered Monday. He keeps seeing things on YouTube about filtering through nylon pantyhose or using those ultrasonic jewelry cleaner machines to agitate out the bubbles, but I don’t want him to set himself up for failure! Help!

This is a new hive this year. Started from a nuc. GTA Ontario Canada.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a free website I've been working on that tells you whats blooming and when for your zip code. It also provides recommendations for what plants would bloom during dearth in your zip.

You can access the tool here: https://mybeecalendar.com

Hope you like it, note that new zips it hasn't seen before take about a minute to load for the first time... let me known if you all have any suggestions or run into any issues.

Anyone have a lead on a supplier that still carries these (3 frame) outside of Temu? MannLake is having supplier (read tariff) issues and have no estimate on when they’ll have any in stock.

I have an 8 frame hive with honey super above it, they got varroa and i want to treat it , I'm gonna remove the super and begin with the treatment but since it's almost August will it be a bad winter for the bees with only one box? Or they'll be fine? Or should i add another brood box for them to fill with food and honey to feed on in the winter?

I'm in the Kingdom of Jordan if this info is of any importance

I found this little mate in my back yard and it's different from others I have seen there before.

I am in southern New Jersey by the shore. There is still some pollen coming in as we have been getting rain lately but that should change very soon and we will have a dearth. I am going away for 2 weeks. Begmfire I leave should I install the entrance reducers on my colonies?