Trust me, I have tried politely educating him about the dangers of pesticides to him and our pollinators for 11 years. He gets more aggressive with me than my Saskatraz bees. On a positive note, I have used milky spore on my lawn for two seasons for grub control 8 years ago. Last year he says he doesn’t need to treat for grubs anymore. I’m hoping it spread to his lawn:). Grub control is a nasty pesticide.
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Not the full-petaled ones, true, but many kinds of pollinators including honey bees do like the single-petaled varieties. Plus, there’s always the chance some of this ‘dust’ will get onto adjacent flowers that are attractive to bees.
@Fortheloveofbees good for you for your advocacy - hope your bees do manage to avoid this yard 
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Hi Everyone! Hope your hives are thriving🐝. I just added another brood box today and stopped feeding sugar syrup. The original brood box had capped brood and honey stores on every frame, so I wanted them to start foraging for nutritious food for the hive. I did make a newbie mistake. I realized I left one frame out of the brood box when originally installed. One of the frames must have been bigger than the others and I couldn’t fit in all 8, only seven.
On each end of the brood box, they built their honey stores larger with the extra space. Second, the new brood box had to be built the same with 7 frames because I brought two frames up to the new box and they were built out as well. I only found new drawn frames with no brood layed yet or fully capped brood. So the built out frames were brought up to the new brood box with equal space left on each side of the box. Other than that, the new generation of bees were pretty docile thank you God:). I’m shocked how quickly they grew in size over the last week.
I think if I left it another week without adding a new brood box, they would have thought of swarming. Queen is doing a great job laying tight brood pattern.
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That IS a beautiful frame of nice, even brood!
Not a big deal, as long as you can do inspections without breaking honeycomb and/or squashing bees. You can cycle out those fat frames next season when the honey is all or partially eaten up, and render the wax. Sometimes I’ll cut the wonky comb out of a frame and put the chunks on top of the inner cover & under the roof (with a shim if needed) and the bees will pick it clean, leaving me with a hunk of nice, dry wax to melt down.
Thanks for the update - well done on your timing & for outlasting those meanies! 
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Thank you Eva! Your support and experience are very much appreciated!
Nick
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Hi All,
Hope everyone is well and their Bees are healthy and productive! I had a little setback for two weeks and lost a few hundred bees to pesticides. I don’t believe it was neighbors. There has been a crop dusting plane active in my area the last few weeks and I believe the honey bees were exposed to the chemicals.
I check the bees multiple times per day and noticed one morning about 50-75 dead bees on the ground at the entrance. Along with some bees that were alive but couldn’t fly and erratic movements. The dead bees all had their probiscus extended. Over the next week and a half more dead bees were found which made me believe they were eating poisoned pollen or nectar in the honeycomb. I didn’t want to stress them any more, so I let it play out and the Saskatraz bees recovered with no new losses and lots of activity thank God. Added the flow frames to the hive about two weeks ago and low and behold, they are full and almost capped. So there will be a late honey harvest in about a week or less:). I’m worried the honey might have pesticide residue. Should I be worried about this? Thank you!
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This is going to be a matter for your conscience, as I don’t think there is any reliable data. Having said that, if your bees are not dying while processing the honey, there is probably not much insecticide in it. However, if it was my hive, I would discard the honey and thoroughly clean the Flow frames. I am very picky though, and you may not need to do that if you aren’t going to sell the honey. I would make sure that anybody who ate it knew the background story.
There are some labs that will test the honey for insecticides, but last time I looked into it, it was very expensive to get it done - $300-800 if I recall correctly. I think that they are set up for commercial producers, not for us hobby beekeepers. 
I lost a hive to insecticide poisoning a couple of years ago, and discarded all of the honey, wax and wood frames from that hive. Very sad. 
That was likely a much bigger dose of insecticide though, and I thought that the risk of significant contamination was very high.
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Thanks Dawn! I respect your thoughts and also am very picky. I have given it some thought and since it was a very small exposure, don’t think it was transferred to the honey. I should be more worried about our food supply, than my hive that I watch closely and nourish to the best of my ability. I read another response on another forum that was interesting……
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I see the logic of that posting, but I would suggest that wax is perfectly capable of holding insecticides, as it is lipophilic/hydrophobic. In fact, build up of insecticides in wax is one reason given for cycling old comb out of hives after 3-5 years in the US.
When we harvest honey, we can’t help but have a small amount of wax falling into the honey. This is more obvious with traditional harvesting methods, but it does happen even with Flow frames. It may not generate a big dose of insecticides, but they may still be there.
I also take issue with the claim about bees dying soon after exposure. Some of them do, for sure, but some do not. I had many bees displaying neurological symptoms long before our hive finally died about 2 weeks later. I bet they were passing the chemical around the hive before their demise. 
Your judgment and risk tolerance is up to you. I am a wuss… 
Great info Dawn! I appreciate and agree with your thoughts. I am very careful about what I feed my family as well as protect them from chemical exposure.
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I decided to extract some honey today as the hive looked like it was close to being honey bound. All flow frames were 99 percent capped and filled. I extracted two frames and while they were being emptied, I noticed first the outer frames are being emptied by the bees in front of my eyes. What the heck? Also didn’t get as much honey as I thought from each frame that was fully capped. Never read about this behavior. Anyone experience this? Front of the hive was very docile with moderate bearding. Almost like their bellies were full of honey. I really hope they aren’t going to swarm. We have had a lot of rain the last 2 months and it has been very warm the last few days. I extracted the frames around 5pm overcast day and the bees were extremely docile. Any thoughts?
I generally get 6-7lb per frame, but it takes 2-4 hours per frame. Also, I start in the warmest part of the day - around noon. For me, 5pm is a bit late, and the later you start, the slower the honey flows.
Did you open the frames in 20% sections? They will often beard like that if the honey developed an airlock and backflowed into the hive. That could also explain why you didn’t get so much honey
Hi Dawn!
Yes, opened in 20 percent sections and it was around 80 degrees outside. I waited for each to stop dripping before closing and resetting the frames. Just a weird behavior to see them emptying the outside frames while extracting. There was some dripping underneath the hive even with opening 20 percent at a time and with tubes pushed in to the line with lip facing downward. Do I need to do anything for the possible airlock and back flow? Or just let the bees do their thing and clean it up? How do I prevent air locks? Thank you!
So you probably lost some of your harvest from a leak then. You can use the forum search tool (magnifying glass at the upper right) to investigate the causes of leaks. There are many causes, so it would be better for you to search than for me to try to repeat it all here. Loose wires on the Flow frames are a very common cause, if you didn’t check the wire tension before the start of the season.
For the airlock, you just watch the flow tube, and make sure that it never gets more than about 70% full of honey. If the honey level reaches the top of the tube, you have an airlock and risk a back flow.
Depends on which Flow hive you have. I have a Classic and have never had a leak. If I did, I would clean off the slider after the harvest - bees hate having sticky feet. I always clean honey spills from around the hive by flushing with with water (I have a hose nearby) to discourage ants, wasps and other pests.
If you waited less than a couple of hours, you probably left quite a bit of honey in the frames. I have found that the last 20-30% (1-2lb) of honey drains after the first 2 hours, but you just have to be patient. Even if it appears to have stopped dripping, often there is quite a bit left to drain. If I collect the honey which flows after the first 2 hours into a different container, it often also has a lower water content than the first honey from each frame. I think that the more concentrated honey drains much more slowly, so patience is rewarded by allowing the good stuff enough time to flow out too.
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Thank you Dawn for taking the time to answer thoroughly! I really appreciate it!
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