3rd year NJ. I was drying my double filter after extracting and noticed this rust stain on the towel. Should I be concerned? Should I buy a new filter/will this affect my honey now or in the future?

You may be surprised how many times this happens. They expect the bees to cooperate and hand over their honey without a lashing 😂

Hello everybody,

I'm a beekeeper in Hawai'i with 2 years of experience and 2 hives. I just extracted my fall honey harvest(2 supers) and decided to set the supers out for a day for the bees to clean instead of putting them on a hive to clean like I've done in the past. It's two days later and I came back and there were a lot of dead bees and a ton of chewed wax bits under the supers. I think it was just some bees fighting/robbing over the honey, but I just want to confirm that.

Thanks so much for the help!

I went out around 6:30am to take my dog out and it was still really dark out, I hear something and there is a tons of bees flying around all of my lights and more just keep coming. My hives are around 35 yards away. I have never seen them come in so heavy like this when it’s dark out, they just kept flying in to all the lights. Is this weird or am I overthinking. I have had hives at the house for over 2 years and never witnessed this behavior. SWFL

What do you do when the honey has crystalized in the frames? I've started my extraction but in one frame the honey has crystalized. How do I extract it? Does anyone have a better idea than using a hair drier to warm the frame up?

Location: Canada

First year beekeeper: I have a quilt box on top of my hive and put in a patty of Hive Alive directly on the top frames of my second deep this past weekend. Today, there's some water and dead bees pooling on the bottom board. It's not a ton of water, but enough to puddle a bit and touch. There's condensation on the windows too.

I'm wondering if the Hive Alive is blocking the heat from rising into the quilt box. I left the plastic on, like the packaging recommended, and cut an x on it for the bees to access. I put it in the center of the frames (10frames). I'm worried that the plastic is causing more condensation, and since it's in the middle, it's right over the cluster. Most of the bees are in the second deep, including the queen and brood.

The hive is really strong, and I just want to set them up as best I can for the winter! Wondering whether I'm overthinking things and this is just normal for this time of year, or whether I should take some action, such as moving the fondant to the side, when it warms up tomorrow afternoon.

Oh another thing - when it was just the quilt box on there without the fondant, the bees were coming out and drinking a ton of water from the water source. Is it possible that quilt box dries them out/dehydrates them?

I'm in Northern Colorado, our highs right now are low 60s and lows are are mid 30s at nights right now. Hardiness zone 5b.

Thank you!

First black bear visit our camera recorded in eastern PA. 👀 I hope our electric fence is up to snuff.