Sorry to hear that your hives died Phillip. My two hives died over the winter too. Have you got your two packages yet. Not that it's any of my business but I'm just curious. How much does the fat bee man charge for a package of bees? I had to pay $112 for my package. It looks like I got some Scout Bees at one of my empty hives hopefully they will be moving in pretty soon. I made 3 Nuc boxes I'm going to set up for swarm traps. I want to put them by other people's beehives but nobody will let me they want to catch there own bees. I don't blame them.

I didn't realize my finger was in the way when I took this picture.

Just discovered this forum. I usually lurk about Orchids & FL Gardening. I've had a hive for a year now. Started when a friend needed to split a hive so the excess came to live in my yard. Made it clear I didn't need other "hobby". Year before his excess chickens came to live w me. Zip forward a year, I took a Bee keeping class, harvested honey in Fall, got my hive inspected, just put in a new hive, and have already harvested 30 lb of honey this Spring. My Super is full but not capped & just added a 2nd Super earlier this week.
Only down side is I've discovered how allergic I am to bee stings. But my hive is sure doing a wonderful job of pollinating my citrus trees & veg garden.

@qwilter That's great 30 lbs of honey already what size supers are you using and how many frames is that. Hopefully your insurance will cover a epi pin. Those things are expensive.

10 frames in my super......same as the hive. When full of honey it's too heavy to lift!!!! Luckily my friend (& local Bee group) has a spinner.

Welcome to the beekeeping forum Jean
We are always happy to have new people sharing their beekeeping adventures with us.
My husband is also allergic to bees stings but not bad enough to need an epi pen.. He found that a dab of honey on the sting after the stinger is removed helps ease the pain and swelling for him
Please feel free to share pictures if you take any of the bees

The other day I found a bee tree. This coming Monday I'm going to be doing a cut out on it since the bees are practically on the ground. I figured I could get them or I could let the raccoons and possums get them. My question is does anybody know what size rubber bands I can use on medium frame to hold the brood comb and honeycomb that I cut out.

I did that cut out last week. It was an old and big hive. I cut out enough brood to fill up 6 frames but I couldn't find the queen so it took two days for them to go in the box. When they finally went in the box they stayed for a half a day and ended up absconding the hive. When I picked up the hive there was only about 20 bees in it and I think they were the ones that came from the brood after the other's flew away. So that night I added that box of brood to my hive. I have been waiting for the weather to clear so I can check to see if they accepted all that brood. Here is a picture of one of the brood comb.

Hopefully they di dacept the new brood

We still only have two hives here but they are doing great
Our neighbor on the other hand is losing his bees to swarms. Even if he catches them they swarm again when he's not around to catch them. Can't blame the bees for doing that. The man has pretty much destroyed all forage for them and uses both herbicide and pesticide on his place.

I'm currently adding new herbs to my yard for them and me. They seem to like herbs pretty well.

Opened the hive yesterday and all the brood either hatched or was destroyed. The bees are using the comb to store nectar