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🐝 Bees: Honey, Wax and Pollination

How to keep honey bees with no bee-supply store, no bought queens and no mite strips: hives you can build from scrap, gear you can make, free bees from swarms and bee trees, the bee year in the Illinois Valley, queens, swarms, mites and foulbrood, feeding and wintering through wet winters, honey and wax, bears, stings, and how many hives a family needs for sweetener and pollination. The bee books are in Animals\Bees; the Oregon State backyard bulletin and the beneficial-insects bulletin are in Gardening-Food, honey processing is in Food-From-Scratch\Wild-and-Local-Staples, wax and candles in Homestead-Skills\Soap-Candles, and bears in Animals\Planning-Predators-Toxic-Plants.

The short version

🐝 How a colony works

A colony is one queen (the only egg-layer), several to 60,000 workers and, in spring and summer, a few hundred drones (males) (USDA AH 335, p. 36). The colony, not the bee, is the animal you keep.

Egg to adult Lives Job
Worker 21 days (AH 335, p. 34) About 6 weeks in summer; months for fall-raised "winter bees" (p. 35) Nurse and build comb (wax glands work at 12–15 days old), then forage the last ~3 weeks (pp. 33–34)
Drone About 24–25 days (Langstroth, p. 68; FAO Forest, p. 148) 8 weeks or less; thrown out when nectar fails in fall (AH 335, pp. 35–36) Mating only
Queen About 16 days (rule of thumb) Lays 2–5 years (p. 35) Lays every egg

Drawings of the three kinds of honey bee: a worker, the long-bodied queen, and the broad, big-eyed drone Left to right: worker, queen, drone. The queen is longer, with a long tapering abdomen (AH 335, p. 36).

🏠 Hives: top-bar, Langstroth or log

Top-bar hive Langstroth hive Log or box ("fixed comb")
Building From scrap; only the bar width must be exact; a strip of beeswax on each bar guides the comb Precise carpentry; frames, nails, wire, foundation Hollow log, barrel or box
Inspecting Lift one comb at a time Easy; frames are strong Can't be checked for disease
Harvest Cut comb: honey and wax, no extractor; combs are fragile Pays off with an extractor — empty combs go back in. A full deep frame holds about 5 lb Cut out end combs; messy
Honey : wax About 10 : 1 About 75 : 1 About 10 : 1
Source FAO Forest, pp. 43–45 AH 335, pp. 72–73; plans; cutaway FAO Forest, pp. 42–43; ratios p. 107

With no extractor or foundation, build top-bar hives; keep any Langstroth boxes you have — they work with crush-and-strain too (rule of thumb). Don't rely on frame hives unless their parts can be made locally (FAO Forest, p. 45).

Building a top-bar hive from scrap wood

  1. Wood: seasoned (green wood warps), durable, no cracks or chemical smells (FAO Forest, p. 44); no treated lumber (rule of thumb).
  2. Top bars exactly 35 mm (1⅜ in) wide, all the same: too narrow crowds the combs, too wide gets extra "brace comb" between them (pp. 43–44). It matches Langstroth frame spacing, 1⅜ in (AH 335, p. 52).
  3. Comb guide: a strip of beeswax down the centre of each bar's underside (FAO Forest, p. 44), or a saw groove filled with melted wax (rule of thumb).
  4. Size (rule of thumb): inside 36–42 in long (26–30 bars), 10–12 in deep, about 15 in wide at the top; bars rest across the side walls. Sides sloping in toward the bottom keep comb off the walls; straight sides work if you cut the attachments (p. 45).
  5. Entrance: two or three 1-inch holes at one end, with corks (AH 335, p. 73 uses 1-inch auger holes). A follower board cut to the hive's shape shrinks the space for a small colony (rule of thumb); match hive space to colony strength (FAO 2006, p. 38).
  6. Roof overhanging, weighted with rocks (OSU EM 9186, p. 5), straw under it in winter (FAO Forest, p. 44). Legs to waist height (p. 47); at least 1 ft up stops skunks (OSU EM 9186, p. 10).

A top-bar hive cut across and cut along: top bars 1⅜ in wide resting on sloping side walls, combs hanging from the bars, a follower board, 1-in entrance holes at one end, a weighted roof and legs at least 1 ft high The hive in the list above; what matters most is that every bar is exactly the same width (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Building Langstroth boxes from scrap

Where to put the hives

🧰 Gear you can make

🎣 Getting bees: swarms, bait hives, bee trees and splits

Package bees came from California every April–May (OSU EM 9186, p. 14). That's over: new bees come from swarms, wild colonies and your own splits.

Catching a swarm

A swarm is the old queen and 30–70% of the workers (OSU EM 9186, p. 14). Swarms come mostly March–June and hang in a cluster for about an hour while scouts search (AH 335, p. 38; resting swarm). They are full of honey and "in the most peaceable mood" (Langstroth, p. 41).

  1. Set a box, ideally with a comb or two of old comb in it, right under the cluster (rule of thumb).
  2. Shake the cluster in with one sharp jolt (hiving a swarm).
  3. Queen in? Bees stand at the entrance fanning, tails raised, and the rest march in within minutes (AH 335, p. 41). If they stream back to the branch, shake again.
  4. Close it at dusk and move it to its stand (rule of thumb).
  5. With no flow, feed 2:1 syrup for 2–3 weeks while they build comb (AH 335, p. 51). Check mites even in a new swarm (HBHC, p. 13).

Bait hives

An empty hive "rubbed inside with some beeswax" catches passing swarms where wild colonies are common (FAO Forest, p. 47); old wax smell draws them (plate 3.5, p. 96). Rule of thumb: about 10 gallons (40 L) inside, one entrance about 1 in across, 8–15 ft up in shade, an old dark comb inside, up by early March. Check weekly; move a caught swarm at dusk.

Bee trees and cut-outs

Splits

A split (nuc) is 3–5 combs of bees and brood from a strong colony (AH 335, p. 65). With a laying queen it reaches full strength in about 9 weeks, against 12 weeks for a 2-lb package; take splits from your strongest overwintered colonies in spring (p. 66). Giving a split a queen is under "Queens" below.

📅 The colony's year in the Illinois Valley

Cave Junction winters average 40 °F with nights near freezing, and only about 15% of the year's rain falls April–September (Josephine soil survey, p. 5). Winter here is wet more than cold, and the hungry time is the late-summer drought. Bloom months are for the valley floor and shift with the weather (rule of thumb).

Months The colony Blooming Your jobs
Dec–Jan Clustered; queen restarts laying late Dec–Jan (AH 335, p. 37) Little; hazel catkins (rule of thumb) Heft hives; don't open them. Oxalic dribble only if broodless (HBHC, p. 29). Build boxes, render wax
Feb Brood growing; stores dropping Manzanita Feb–Apr (NRCS, p. 1); willow (rule of thumb) Heft; emergency feed if light
Mar Drones appear; swarm season opens (AH 335, p. 38) Willow, bigleaf maple, plum (rule of thumb) First look on a warm, still day; mite count monthly from now (HBHC, p. 7); bait hives up
Apr–May Fast growth; swarm cells Maple, fruit bloom, dandelion, ceanothus, clover (rule of thumb) Check every 7–10 days for swarm cells; add room; split; raise queens; catch swarms; cut drone brood
Jun–Jul Peak population; main flow Blackberry, the main flow (rule of thumb) Add space; harvest sealed surplus by late July; fire season — smoker care
Aug–Sep Dearth (no nectar); robbing; mites peak as winter bees are raised (rule of thumb) Little till the rains; star thistle, asters (rule of thumb) Count mites and act early (HBHC, p. 17); narrow entrances; no open feeding; heft, feed 2:1 if light; check the bear fence
Oct–Nov Drones out; brood stops; cluster below 57 °F (AH 335, p. 36) A little after the rains (rule of thumb) Combine weak colonies; mouse guards; upper vent; insulate lids; oxalic when broodless

🌼 Forage, water and planting for bees

👑 Queens: finding her, queenless signs, raising your own

Finding her: longer than a worker, with a long tapering abdomen (AH 335, p. 36), usually on combs with eggs. You don't need to see her: eggs mean she was there within 3 days. A good queen lays a solid, compact brood pattern; replace spotty layers; queens under a year old are usually best (AH 335, p. 70; poor and good brood).

Two close-up photos of brood comb, each with a queen on it: one with many open cells scattered among the capped brood, one almost solid capped brood A spotty brood pattern (A, open cells scattered among the capped ones) and a good, solid one (B) (AH 335, p. 71).

Queenless signs (OSU EM 9186, p. 11): emergency queen cells on the face of brood combs within 1–2 days; no new eggs within 4 days; bees growing more defensive. Experienced keepers hear the difference (AH 335, p. 42). Only drone brood, in raised bullet-shaped caps, means an unmated queen or "fertile workers," which lay only drones (Langstroth, p. 53); several eggs to a cell means laying workers (rule of thumb).

Fixing it: give a comb of eggs and young larvae from another colony so they can raise a queen (queens come from larvae 12–24 hours old: AH 335, p. 64), or unite with a queenright colony through a sheet of newspaper — by the time they chew through, their smells have mixed (p. 41). A long-queenless colony is hard to requeen (OSU EM 9186, p. 11); if it's weak, shake the bees out and give the combs to another colony (AH 335, p. 70).

Swarm cells or supersedure? Swarm cells hang on the bottom edges of combs, a dozen or more; supersedure or emergency cells sit on the comb face, 1–3 of them (OSU EM 9186, pp. 10–11).

Two combs: one with a dozen or more queen cells hanging along its bottom edge (swarm cells), one with two queen cells on its face (supersedure or emergency cells) Where the queen cells are tells you why the bees are making them (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Raising your own queens without grafting tools:

  1. Pick the mother: gentle, productive, not swarmy, winters well (AH 335, p. 76), low mite counts (HBHC, p. 41).
  2. Wait for the season: strong colonies, plenty of nectar and pollen, drones flying — April–June (AH 335, p. 66).
  3. Split her colony: the queenless half, given combs of eggs and young larvae, starts emergency cells in 1–2 days.
  4. About 10 days later, cut out extra capped cells and give each, with a couple of combs of bees, to a small queenless split — the "mating nucs" queen breeders use (AH 335, p. 64). Keep cells upright and handle them gently (rule of thumb).
  5. Look for eggs about 2 weeks after she emerges (p. 64). None after 3 weeks: she likely won't mate (p. 35); unite the split back.

Keep the line going: keep a card per hive — queen or eggs seen, brood, stores, queen cells, mites, temper, what you did (OSU EM 9186, p. 15 has a sample sheet) — and breed only from the best. A queen mates with drones from up to 5 miles away, and in inbred lines workers remove many larvae (AH 335, p. 57), leaving gappy brood (rule of thumb); so swap swarms and queen cells with other beekeepers in the valley, and don't bring bees or combs in from outside — that is how diseases travel (FAO Forest, p. 41).

🌀 Swarm prevention

A colony swarms when more than 6 frames of bees, crowding and lots of young bees line up (OSU EM 9186, pp. 4–5). Warnings: a beard of bees at the entrance on warm afternoons (AH 335, p. 37) and foragers slacking off (p. 42).

  1. Room early: add space before the main flow, and more before the last box is two-thirds full (OSU EM 9186, p. 10).
  2. Langstroth: swap top and bottom brood boxes every 10 days to 2 weeks until the flow starts (AH 335, p. 75). Top-bar: move full honey combs back and put empty bars at the edge of the brood (rule of thumb).
  3. Split strong colonies in spring (OSU EM 9186, p. 11).
  4. Once swarm cells appear, cutting them out isn't enough — the bees build more where you can't see. Move at least half the sealed brood and bees into a split (same page), and use the cells to raise queens.
  5. If a swarm leaves anyway, the old hive raises a new queen from its cells; leave it a cell or two and look for eggs about 3 weeks later (rule of thumb).

🕷️ Varroa and other pests without store chemicals

Varroa mites are the main killer. Unchecked they double every month (HBHC, p. 5; mites on bees and larvae), and untreated colonies usually die in 2–3 years, spreading mites as they collapse; bees with crumpled wings mean the mites are already heavy (FAO 2006, p. 19). Here they peak in August–September, as the winter bees are raised (rule of thumb).

Counting mites (HBHC, pp. 9–10):

  1. Shake bees from 1–3 brood frames (not the one with the queen) into a tub.
  2. Scoop ½ cup (about 300 bees) into a jar of rubbing alcohol or soapy water, shake, and count the mites. No alcohol: shake them with 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar instead — less reliable (p. 9).
  3. Mites ÷ 300 × 100 = mites per 100 bees. Act at 1+ in winter and spring, 2+ in summer and fall.
  4. Count monthly from spring buildup (p. 7); if one colony is over, treat them all (p. 10).

Controls with nothing bought — none is enough alone; stack them (HBHC, pp. 37–42):

If you stockpiled oxalic acid (HBHC, p. 29): 35 g, weighed (about 2⅓ level tablespoons with no scale) in 1 liter of 1:1 syrup; 5 mL on the bees in each occupied gap between combs, 50 mL at most per colony, only with no capped brood (late fall, winter, end of a brood break). Repeating it harms bees (FAO 2006, p. 21). Corrosive: gloves, goggles and a mask when mixing crystals. Vaporizing it is extremely dangerous. If you can still get it, stockpile pure oxalic acid dihydrate now (rule of thumb).

Other pests:

☣️ Foulbrood and other brood diseases

American foulbrood (AFB) means burning. Its spores live 50+ years, spread about 1 km by robbing and drifting, and often arrive in foreign honey (FAO 2006, p. 10).

Telling them apart (AH 335, p. 124; FAO 2006, pp. 12–15):

Dead brood looks like Smell What to do
AFB Older larvae in capped cells, coffee-brown, ropy; scale stuck tight Foul Burn (above)
European foulbrood Young, coiled larvae dying before capping; rubbery scale lifts out Sour Requeen, remove the worst combs, feed or move to good forage (FAO 2006, p. 13)
Chalkbrood Hard white to black "mummies" that rattle — Strong colony, dry, ventilated hive sized to the bees (pp. 13–14)
Sacbrood Larva on its back, head dark, a watery sac None Usually recovers; requeen if bad (p. 15)
Chilled brood Dead brood at the edges of the nest after a cold snap — Too few bees; clears itself (AH 335, p. 129)

Nosema, a gut disease of adult bees, shows as crawling, trembling bees and spring dwindling, worst after long spells with no flying weather. Keep colonies strong and dry, and in a sick yard replace combs about every 2 years (FAO 2006, pp. 15–16).

📚 Go deeper: HBHC Tools for Varroa Management — mite counts and every treatment; FAO Honey Bee Diseases and Pests — photos of brood diseases, mites, beetles and wax moth.

🍬 Feeding: sugar if you have it, honey if you don't

The best feed is their own honey: leave enough, and save full combs of capped honey from strong colonies to give to light ones (AH 335, p. 74). Never feed honey from unknown hives — it spreads foulbrood (FAO 2006, p. 10; AH 335, p. 49).

If you have white sugar (AH 335, pp. 50–51):

If you have no sugar: set a comb of capped honey from your own healthy hive right against the cluster, or pour 2:1 syrup — or your own honey thinned with a little warm water (rule of thumb) — into empty comb cells (AH 335, p. 74). Combine a hopelessly light colony with a strong one rather than feed it all winter (p. 72).

Pollen for spring brood: a cake of your own trapped pollen with syrup and soy flour; 1 lb of pollen makes about 12 lb (pp. 74–75; pollen traps). Never use another beekeeper's pollen (p. 49).

🌧️ Wintering through wet winters

How much to leave: a colony with no brood eats about 4 lb of honey a month; an average one about 60 lb between the last fall flow and first spring food, a strong one 80+ lb (AH 335, p. 72). The book's 90 lb is for cold climates; here plan on about 60 lb — winters are mild but the long summer dearth eats stores too (rule of thumb). A full deep frame holds about 5 lb (p. 73), so 60 lb is about 12 full combs (arithmetic). Also leave 500 square inches of pollen comb and at least 10 lb of bees (p. 72).

Damp kills more than cold. Moisture from the cluster condenses on a cold lid and drips on the bees — chill, dysentery, mouldy combs — while wild colonies in thick tree hollows stay dry (Langstroth, pp. 131–133). Chalkbrood and nosema thrive in damp hives too (FAO 2006, pp. 14, 16).

  1. Upper vent: a 1-inch hole high in the hive lets wet air out and gives a door on warm days (AH 335, p. 73; winter hive).
  2. Insulate the lid (straw, or a box of dry leaves over a cloth) so the top stays warmer than the walls; tilt the hive slightly forward so water runs out the door (rule of thumb).
  3. Don't wrap it heavily — heavily packed bees don't fly on warm days (p. 73), and we get many.
  4. Stores against the cluster: most honey in the top box of a Langstroth; in a top-bar hive, honey combs next to the cluster (rule of thumb). Bees starve inches from honey they can't reach (p. 37).
  5. Reducer on against mice (p. 73), hive up off the wet ground. Combine colonies under about 10 lb of bees in fall (p. 72).
  6. Heft hives monthly. Mild winters start brood early and burn stores fast (rule of thumb), and a cold, rainy spring can starve a colony (p. 48): in February–March move honey against the cluster or feed (p. 74).

🍯 Harvesting honey: crush, strain, store

When: take only sealed comb with no brood or pollen, and leave winter stores (FAO Forest, p. 48). Bees cap honey once it is under 20% water; then it won't ferment (Practical Action, p. 1). Work mid-morning to mid-afternoon in good weather, keep the hive open briefly (OSU EM 9186, p. 8), and cover combs at once (p. 10).

Crush and strain (FAO Forest, pp. 48, 91; Practical Action, pp. 1–2):

  1. Brush bees off with grass or a feather; cut the comb from the bar, leaving a finger's width as a guide for the next. For Langstroth boxes, set a bee-escape board under them the day before (AH 335, p. 100; bee escape).
  2. Work in a bee-tight room, screened windows (AH 335, p. 99), with clean, bone-dry food-grade plastic or stainless buckets (Practical Action, p. 2). Honey over 19–20% water ferments (p. 3).
  3. Keep some as cut-comb honey — the wax is edible and the flavour best (FAO Forest, p. 91).
  4. Crush the rest; pour through a coarse strainer, then finer cloths; let it drain for hours; finally squeeze the comb in a cloth bag (p. 91). A warm room (75–100 °F) helps it run (AH 335, p. 100); don't heat the honey. Save the wax.

Four steps: cut the sealed comb off the bar leaving a strip, crush it in a bucket, pour it through a coarse strainer and a fine cloth into a bucket, and squeeze the rest in a cloth bag Crush and strain, step by step, with no extractor (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Storing it:

🕯️ Beeswax: rendering and uses

Bees eat about 8 kg of honey to make 1 kg of wax (FAO Forest, p. 106), so 30 lb of top-bar honey comes with about 3 lb of wax (arithmetic, from the 10 : 1 ratio on p. 107). Cappings give the best wax.

Rules (FAO Forest, p. 111):

Rendering step by step (FAO Forest, p. 112):

  1. Soak the drained comb in warm water to wash out honey and pollen, three times.
  2. Break it up, cover with clean water, and heat gently, stirring — wax is highly flammable.
  3. Pour into a sack or coarse cloth bag and squeeze it between two sticks into a bucket.
  4. Cool it slowly (bucket in a box of sawdust): the wax floats and sets in a cake. Scrape the dirt off below.
  5. Melt again in an equal volume of water, strain through finer cotton into a lightly soaped bowl, and leave it 12 hours. Store blocks away from strong smells; wax moths don't eat solid blocks (p. 111).

In fire season, use the sun. A solar melter — black, insulated box, double-glass lid, sloping metal sheet running into a pan — needs only 68–70 °C and works best tilted about 40° to the sun (FAO Forest, pp. 112–113). Old black brood comb won't give up wax in the sun: soak it a day, tie it in a sack and boil it in water (p. 113). The black leftover ("slum gum") makes fire starters; burn it after dark so it doesn't draw bees (p. 114).

Uses: candles need a thicker wick in beeswax than in tallow (Practical Action, p. 2) — see the Lighting guide for wicks, dipping and moulds. Salve: 1 cup of wax to 3 cups of oil, melted in a pot floating in water (FAO Forest, p. 129). Also cheese coating (the Milk, Butter & Cheese guide), foundation sheets (p. 114), and waterproofing thread (rule of thumb). Pure wax doesn't stick to your teeth when chewed; paraffin-cut wax feels greasy (p. 108).

🐻 Bears and fire season

Black bears come mainly for the brood, and come back once they've had it (UF ENY-2060, p. 1). Oregon has 25,000–30,000 of them, and ODFW says to electric-fence beehives (ODFW, pp. 1–2).

Building the bear fence (UF ENY-2060, pp. 1–5):

  1. Heavy T-posts every 8 ft, 1½ ft into the ground. No trees as posts — bears climb them and drop in. Fence at least 3 ft from the hives, clear of anything a bear could climb.
  2. Three wires at 8, 20 and 32 inches, 12- or 14-gauge high-tensile, on insulators (step photos); a gate of spring handles (p. 4).
  3. Charger inside the fence, solar panel facing south; a 6-ft ground rod.
  4. Test for 6,000–8,000 volts (finished fence). BearWise asks at least 6,000 V and 0.5 joules, and says lights and noisemakers don't work for long (ODFW BearWise, pp. 1–2).
  5. Cut plants back 2–3 ft — anything touching the wire drains it (UF ENY-2060, p. 5).
  6. Bait the wire with foil smeared with bacon grease so a bear's nose gets the first shock (rule of thumb).

An electric bear fence: from the side, three hot wires at 8, 20 and 32 inches on T-posts 8 ft apart and 1½ ft deep; from above, hives at least 3 ft inside the wire, the charger inside, a gate on spring handles, and plants cut back 2–3 ft The fence in the list above, from the side and from above (a diagram drawn for this guide).

With no working charger: "bear platforms" (hives on a strong raised stand) have also worked (AH 335, p. 132), and hives close to where people live are safer (FAO 2006, p. 33). For bears and cougars, see the Home Defense guide.

Fire season (June–October): a smoker is a fire. Beekeepers' torches have started forest fires (FAO Forest, pp. 42, 56). Light it on bare ground, carry water, snuff it in a lidded can, never knock embers into dry grass, and keep brush cut round the apiary (rule of thumb). To evacuate hives, close the entrances at dusk with screen and move them at least 2 km (1¼ miles), or foragers fly back to the old spot (FAO Forest, p. 76). See the Wildfire guide.

🩹 Stings and allergic reactions

Avoiding them: work gently on warm days when foragers are out; smoke first; never stand in the flight path; no perfume or strong soap; don't crush bees (FAO Forest, p. 48). If a colony turns hot, close it and stop for the day (OSU EM 9186, p. 8). Bees are touchiest in a dearth, guarding big stores, or getting ready to swarm (FAO Forest, p. 49), and when queenless (OSU EM 9186, p. 11). Many "bee stings" are yellowjackets (AH 335, p. 149).

A normal sting: pain, redness and swelling — sometimes big, peaking in 24–48 hours (OSU EM 9186, p. 8). Scrape the stinger out at once with a fingernail or knife edge; pinching squeezes in more venom (AH 335, p. 147). A cold cloth helps (FAO Forest, p. 49).

A whole-body reaction (anaphylaxis) follows 0.3–7.5% of stings (OSU EM 9186, p. 4): hives over the body, throat swelling, wheezing, vomiting, faintness, collapse — usually within minutes, sometimes up to 24 hours later (AH 335, p. 148). About 2% of people grow more sensitive with each sting (same page).

🍎 Pollination for the garden and orchard

🧮 How many hives for a family's sweetener

Need: BYU's one-year list allows 70 lb of sugar or honey per adult (BYU, p. 1); the bare emergency ration (15 g a day) is about 12 lb a year (Food Security guide).

Yield: unmanaged colonies seldom give more than 25–30 lb of surplus, well-managed ones 100 lb+ (AH 335, p. 70); the West averaged 27 lb (p. 21); OSU says one colony "can produce more than 40 pounds" (OSU EM 9186, p. 1). With no bought sugar or mite treatments, plan on about 30 lb per colony and lose some colonies every winter (rule of thumb).

Family of 2 adults + 2 children (about 3 adults) Honey a year Colonies harvested Colonies to keep (about 1 in 3 lost)
Bare ration (12 lb each) ~50 lb 2 3–4
Half the BYU amount ~105 lb 3–4 5–6
Full BYU amount (70 lb each) ~210 lb 7 9–10

(Arithmetic; the loss rate is a rule of thumb.) Each 30 lb of top-bar honey also brings about 3 lb of wax. Build up from swarms and splits, and don't crowd more than about 10 colonies in one spot (FAO Forest, p. 47). While Oregon law still runs, 5 or more colonies must be registered with the Department of Agriculture (OSU EM 9186, p. 13).

🧯 If this goes wrong

Problem Likely cause and fix
Bees fighting at the entrance in August Robbing — narrow the entrance (entrance reducer); clean up syrup (OSU EM 9186, p. 5)
A beard of bees at the entrance on warm spring afternoons Crowded, about to swarm (AH 335, p. 37) — add room or split
No eggs, cranky bees, cells on the comb faces Queenless (OSU EM 9186, p. 11) — give a comb of eggs, or unite
Only drone brood, bullet-shaped caps Unmated queen or laying workers (Langstroth, p. 53) — unite or shake out
Spotty brood, sunken greasy caps with holes Matchstick test for AFB; burn if ropy
Bees with crumpled wings crawling out front Heavy varroa (FAO 2006, p. 19) — count, then break the brood
Brown spots on the hive front, crawling bees in spring Damp hive: dysentery or nosema (Langstroth, p. 131; FAO 2006, p. 15)
Dead cluster, heads in cells, honey a few inches away Starved out of reach of stores (AH 335, p. 73)
Combs full of silk webs and grubs Wax moth in a weak hive (AH 335, p. 132) — combine, shrink the space
Honey foaming, smells like wine Fermenting — too wet (AH 335, p. 95)
Hive knocked over, combs dragged off Bear (UF ENY-2060, p. 1) — fence before it comes back

📚 Go deeper: OSU EM 9186 — robbing, swarms, water and defensive bees; USDA AH 335, p. 124 — brood diseases compared.

⚠️ Old advice in the library to ignore

Book says Do this instead
Kill colonies over burning sulphur to take the honey (Langstroth, p. 264; history in AH 335, p. 9) Take only surplus sealed honey. Kill a colony only for AFB, and the shook swarm can save even those bees
Fell the bee tree and stupefy the bees with sulphur or a punk-wood smudge (Kephart, pp. 367–368) Cut out the brood combs, tie them into a hive and bring the colony home
Smear tobacco juice on your skin against stings (Kephart, p. 368) Veil, light clothes and smoke; nicotine soaks through skin (rule of thumb)
Bee drugs: antibiotics and sulfa for foulbrood, fumagillin for nosema (AH 335, p. 132) They don't kill AFB spores, so it returns, and they leave residues (FAO 2006, p. 12). The 1980 handbook has no varroa section — use the HBHC guide
Mothballs (paradichlorobenzene, naphthalene) or ethylene dibromide for wax moth (AH 335, p. 132; FAO 2006, p. 29) Poisonous to bees and people, and they soak into wax and honey (same page; FAO Forest, p. 108). Use cold, 118 °F heat, light and strong colonies
Count mites with ether or chloroform in the jar (FAO 2006, p. 19) Alcohol or soapy water; ether is flammable and dangerous to breathe (HBHC, p. 12)
Spray livestock amitraz (Taktic) on the bees, or burn it on paper strips (FAO 2006, pp. 21–22) Don't: it kills eggs and can kill bees (p. 21), and off-label use breeds resistant mites (HBHC, p. 14)
Line the wax-rendering room with asbestos board (AH 335, p. 99) No asbestos. Render in the sun, or in a separate shed 20 ft from other buildings (same page); never leave wax on the fire
Heat honey to 160 °F, "often recommended" to stop granulation (AH 335, p. 97, which itself advises against it) Granulated honey is fine; dry wet honey with moving air (Practical Action, p. 4)
Spray herbicide under the bear fence (UF ENY-2060, p. 5) Cut by hand: bees drink dew off sprayed plants (FAO Forest, p. 81)

🖼️ Pictures & diagrams

Look before you try it. 🖼️ = drawings and photos in the books on this drive; the other links open the offline Wikipedia.

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