The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 340 January 16th 2026

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/EBjASzOJIzg

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, January the 16th, and this is back hered beekeeping questions and answers episode number 340. I'm Frederick Dunn. I'm feeling sad. So I hope that you're having a good time today. Of course, the northeastern United States, northwest and pro the state of Pennsylvania is snowbound right now. And that's what you want to know. All the topics that we're going to discuss today. all the questions were submitted during the past week. You might wonder, how can you submit your own question for future consideration? Well, you go to the way to be.org and click on the page marked contact. There's a form there. You fill it out. And then you end up right here in my pile of questions and topics to discuss or answer.

And what else can I say? If you've got a question on your mind right now and you just have to share a picture or a video clip or something like that, get the opinion of your peers go to Facebook go to the way to be fellowship and there you'll get the answers from your peers not from me from other people just like you hopefully in your neck of the woods because where you're located matters most when it comes to issues dealing with bees and winter time also so with the weather I know you want to know traffic pileups here and I-90 the corridor was closed up triple 18 wheelers ran into each other you don't care who knows when you're

going to be watching this but just know that the things are different where you live I'm sure and hopefully better but has 21.4 degrees Fahrenheit outside that's minus 6 Celsius 8.9 mile per hour winds and wind gusts that are pretty substantial which is 14.3 kilometers per hour and 81% relative humidity active snowfall right now so that's kind of it. Now, the opening sequence that I did today, sorry for how extended that was,

but there were a lot of little knick-knacks and bits and bobs or whatever that I got from the North American Honeybee Expo in Louisville, Kentucky. And I lost my voice down there. No great surprise talking all the time. You know, when you live in your yard and you don't go places and visit people, you can lose your voice pretty quick when you're talking. And I wanted to give a shout to. today for starters for this honey that I got at the expo because it cleared up my

voice and it didn't do it until Saturday so is there Wednesday night Thursday Friday and then Saturday and this is from B-Bum Honey Company so when you give a shout to them that stuff works I'll bet you're sitting there wondering we'll tell us what's in it okay I will it has a honey of course because it is honey orange peels cinnamon cloves all spice they didn't give it to me by the way I had to pay fat stacks just like everybody else but that stuff worked so shout out there be bum honey dot com and they're from Beatrice Nebraska Beatrice Nebraska if you wanted to know okay so let's just jump

right into it the very first question for today comes from Mark in Chilacothe Ohio and he says I have a question about using better comb. This is I'm wondering if I can put the queen and a few nurse bees in the cage with a frame of better comb and she will begin laying right away. I'm a concern how would I provide for her and the nurse bees inside the cage any suggestions would be appreciated. So now there are differences and this comes from a video that I posted by the way during the past week. I posted a bunch of videos because instead of the the long format which I've done in the past of a couple hours two and a half hours

whatever the entire expo I published every interview independently so and that lets me know what's popular what are people interested in and so this discussion with Dr. David Peck from Better Bee was pretty popular we talked about cages so this idea about you know sticking your queen in the cage on Better Combe first of all you may not know what Better Combe is better comb is pre-drawn synthetic beeswax That's what it is. I use it at the end of the year. If I've got a colony of bees, that they're kind of doomed and the temperatures are too cold for them to build meaningful amounts of beeswax, which happens at the end of the year,

I can put a few frames of better comb in there and get them going and possibly help them get through the wintertime. But when we're putting a queen in a cage, if it's the queen introduction cage, which is what the question is related to here, worker bees can't get through it. so we have to stock it with worker bees therefore the best bees to do that with would be capped brood worker brood we put it in with the queen and I highly recommend to use the two frame system and Dr. Peck went over all of them very effective so if you haven't seen that video please check it out and then because they need to really work on the wax they can't start laying eggs right away when that's brand new so the reason we want at least a frame of capped

larvae is so that when those emerged those nurse bees they will attend to the queen and workers cannot get through the bars on those frames and so how do they get the resources what goes on there well it's trophylaxis that's when the bees that are outside of the cage the nurse bees that are out there collect on the bars and they use their tongues and they pass resources through and most often it's the receiving bee that has the tongue extended and the bee that's providing the resource just spreads their mandibles apart and then they feed them So that's the best way to do it. However, it's not a, if you really only have a single frame that you can do, like this, he said the most popular one is the deep single Langstroth frame introduction slant isolation cage. So if we shift to the isolation cage bars, now it is just to keep the queen in.

The workers can pass through the bars easily. Drones cannot get through the bars. So if we have that situation, now they could work on the better comb finish it up attach it on all sides to the wooden frame that it's in and then the queen could start to lay eggs in there wouldn't happen right away because the bees have to prep it but once they do that then you're in business and of course the nurse bees come and go through the what's really a queen excluder cage and they can attend to her so those are your choices queen introduction is something I probably wouldn't recommend for beginning beekeeper I would recommend the queen isolation cage. We just keep the queen in there. Workers can come and go and they can keep up with things.

So if that's helpful, question number two comes from Wendy. Says, thank you so much for all you do. I've been troubled about switching out fondant in the Apame dual feeder during extreme cold weather. Last, did so a couple of weeks ago, and the bees flew out and promptly fell into the snow, even though it was probably 100 bees, I was upset, knowing numbers are critical in our cold apiary. My plan next year is to use my hive alive fondant stuffed into mason jars and put in Appamee comb jar adapter in the top of the hive.

I can stuff in five pounds and put those jars in the center, closing off the rest of the holes and filling the rest of the Apamee super with insulation. an idea I never would have thought of if I didn't watch your APMA, North American Honeybee Expo update. And that was an interesting spin-off. I was talking with Corhan, who is, of course, he does marketing for the APA company. His father is the originator of the Appamay. And his dad was there, too, so I got to meet them both. Anyway, they had a new edition that they added on last year, and some people got it at the end of summer,

and they could put it on top of their Appamee deep box, and what it has is receivers with queen excluders built into them, and it's for mason jars to sit on. Inverted mason jars. And then the bees, of course, would go in there and build honeycomb inside the jars. So what's being talked about here by Wendy is she figured out that after watching that,

people were putting fondant and other solid feet, in those jars and inverting them instead of having the bees build honeycomb up in there it became a feeder that doesn't have to be replaced during winter because you can just have multiple jars on this rack and of course insulate above that and have it all enclosed and you don't have to worry about running out of your stuff so no more pulling one jar out that's got a bunch of bees in it in order to swap and put a new jar on and this is solid material that you're feeding in wintertime you'll have multiple jars and i would suspect that you could probably put something under those and just open up another jar and put that on instead of having

to remove a jar that's almost finished that still has some beads in it so it was a really good spin-off something that one of those people who bought the apamehive and had that adapter plate on there they discovered that they could use it as a solid feeder so there you go question number three comes from bert from balsam north carolina can you compare in contrast the Lance hive and your long lang hive is there a difference in winter survive ability so historically there was a difference so we should probably talk about that your layans hive is the de lands this is a miniature version of it and I'm going to use this to answer another question today but this is what it looks like not to scale and the lands frames are

deeper than the Langstroth frames Langstroth frames frames are wider, not so deep. And the long Langstroth hive, it looks like a coffin a little bit. The layens hives that I have are from Dr. Leo Shirashkin. They're insulated well with sheep's wool. And so originally, the Lance did better in winter than my long langstroth hive did. Today, they're about the same. So what changed? Well, I opened up my long langstroth hive, and I put this. under the cover double bubble I also created another blanket just like this for this of course is the lands model but I put another double bubble quilt so to speak on top of the frames which there's frames there's B space and there are

cover boards on the cover boards I have the double bubble and I extended it as I've explained many times before I extended it out over the bottom box so when we close the top it also becomes a gasket when I did that there's no difference in wintering between the two hives so insulating the top bars themselves and the boards above that in the Lance hive it's just the top bars of the frames there are no cover boards above that so the insulation goes straight on that and Lance does very well and how the long strength long long lankstraw does well also so the key was insulation side walls on the long

Langstroth hive are just a standard 2x12 lumber and no additional insulation on the sidewall so the only difference I made was to add insulation on top. Lanz hives I have rigid foam board insulation on their lids I have double bubble and then of course the sheep's wool in the side walls of that hive so now they both are pretty much the same so it's just a matter of which of the frames you like best or which form factor you like to use the bees are equal There is some compatibility there with a long Langstroth hive that everything made for Langstroth space, Langstroth frames, deeps, mediums, you can use them all in a long Langstroth hive. Layans are very specific. You must have layens frames. Just for comparison, Layans frame.

And Langstroth frame. So you can see that the Langstroth doesn't go down its deep. deep and but it is wider from end to end and then the lands is just deeper in specialty frames so i hope that helps if i had to let's say i was forced i have to get rid of one of the other i would get rid of the lance over the langstroth and long langstroth is more practical easy going easy to work with some of the land frames by the way when they're full of honey all the way down Some of the beekeepers that have them have reported some drooping and sagging of the comb all the way down there because they are deep frames.

And some people that are elderly or young people have a hard time gripping and lifting a full frame of capped honey when it's lay-ins. Where a fully drawn-out, fully-capped deep langstroth frame is about six or seven pounds. Most people can lift that just fine. So there are some other considerations. to move on to question number four which comes from Jessica it actually is Jessica reviews that's the YouTube channel name says mr. Dunn have you seen much robbing in the middle of winter like a warm spell in January so I've not actually seen a lot of robbing so for those you're wondering what's robbing well we're not talking about other

animals now that come up and harass your hives we're talking about colony to colony bees raiding other colonies. So hopefully your entrances are reduced for winter and that your bees can defend themselves a little bit. And most of the bees in the wintertime when we get that warm up, they're doing orientation flights because there are some new bees that are going through the ranks inside your hive and just haven't been able to get out because it hasn't been warm enough. So if you get a sunny day in the mid-50s in Fahrenheit and into the 60s, you'll see some bee activity and some orientation flights and things like that. You'll also see cleansing where they'll fly out and eliminate.

You see little spots in the snow sometimes. Sometimes you'll see dead bees in the snow. So if it's a sustained, warm period, and the bees find a resource in another hive that's not well guarded, that's key. So it would be a colony already that has few numbers, that isn't awake, isn't ready, can't defend itself, potentially getting robbed,

but it's actually not high-robbing season because the temperatures are generally nominal at best. They're not really good foraging, exploring temperatures, and your bees are after water, number one. And then they're going to go after nectar and pollen as things clear that. But where I am here in the northwestern part of state of Pennsylvania, we don't get a lot of potential for them to rob each other in winter. And when they do meaningfully go out to forage, it's because a scout has gone out and found something worthwhile. Very difficult for them to get into a hive that's got bees in it.

because those bees will also be waking up and there'll be a bunch of bees at the entrance. It's kind of a resistance point that the foragers and scouts don't want to challenge and try to get into. So if you are concerned about a colony that might rob others, it's usually because they're low on stores and they have extra workers in there. I would look at food resources and make sure that they're being fed. So this also plays in what bees smell at the entrance of your hives. So if you have put hive alive in a hive, for example, that is not demonstrated to encourage robbing or investigation from robber bees. If you have honeybee healthy or something with a strong lemon grass oil sent to it, combined with the sweetness that's being delivered in there, that can get the attention of scouts because that pheromone is very encouraging to them.

They go to check it out. and so you might consider what's being added if you've added something to your sugar bricks what does your fondant smell like what are your winter patties like do they have scents that would attract bees that are not from that colony those are all things to consider and all feeding should be well up inside your hive above the cluster so i hope that helps keep an eye out though on a nice warm day when bees are flying you want to go around and see what colonies are doing well anyway and watch for robbing behavior Beasts that are trying to get through the sides, the backs, checking out gaps and entrances that are not the main entrance are suspicious. I want to pay attention to them. See what colony they're coming from too.

And if you can find out what colony the scouts are coming from, feed that colony. Keep them going. Next question is number five comes from Kenny from Claremore, Oklahoma. Says in your interview with Mike at Easy Oaks, he mentioned water content. of the OA powder. So OA is oxalic acid. And it says, I use the Lorabi's vaporizer with the blue silicone cups. And I put desiccant packets in my package of EZOx, which makes it very dry. The crystals don't clog up in the cups, and it falls easily into the vaporizer.

Am I messing up? No, you're not messing up. Those little rubber cups that go with that, the ProVap had those, the Larabies, exhalic acid vaporizer also has them. And the point of that is when you're putting your exhalic acid powder into those cups, they're right side up. So there's no concern that they're going to just fall out on their own. Then you put it on upside down, you flip it right side up, and it starts sublimating. What we were talking about is powder that is too dry, and they added just a just, just, enough moisture to it so that it would clump and the reason it needed to was so they could stick those other dose meters that go into the new instant vape and now of course they have the turbo vape and all

that stuff but because once you stick that in your exhalic acid it needs to hold it needs to pack kind of like almost damp sand that would stay inside that cylinder until you deliver it and hit the plunger and then it goes down and begins to sublimate so no if it's completely dry that is no problem at all when you're putting it in those cups the provap system also i don't know what the material is it's not silicone um but it has those white caps that have the black rubber seals on them that's teflon and so we would put those in too and leave them right set up and then put the unit on upside down and then when you flipped it right side up it all fell in and started supplementing so no you haven't messed up at all kenny you're good to go

go. Question number six is from Thone Jones. This might be a stupid question, but I don't understand the purpose of the follower boards. Why not give them the full use of the hive? Isn't that usually the reason they swarm running out of room? So follower boards, what the heck of those? That's why I have the Layans hive model out here today. So it's a Lance hive. Now this is not going to be any different. Topper hive, Layans hive, long langstroth hive, they all have follower boards. Take off the installation and look we have a bunch of frames in here. We would be using this entrance over here and none of the other entrances will be open. When you install a colony of bees in a brand new hive, we need to size

the space correctly for the swarm that you're installing or the package that you've received. So for example, right now the bees would have access so all of these frames. This is called a follower board which as far as the bees are concerned, this represents the entire hive. I don't care about all this additional space over here. Now this is a lot of frames and if I were putting in a package of bees or a hopefully newly caught swarm in spring, I might have just four or five lands frames so I would do this. I'd pull these out of the way, move them off to the side. This far follower board happens to be insulated which I highly recommend and here's one of the

advantages of a horizontal hive you move the frames that are not in use after the other end of the hive and all we do is put the follower board in here and now as far as the bees are concerned this is the size of the hive right there so why not just give them access to everything well it's been proven time and time again that honeybees when they're giving a large space to work in they slow down We don't really know why. But they stop building comb. They don't use up the whole space.

Maybe it's just too much for them to police. Remember that when they're in a big space, they have to cover and condition and clean and put propolis on the seals and cracks and crevices of all of it. It's much easier for them to occupy a smaller space. And then you as the beekeeper, as they start to fill and involve all of these frames in production of brood,

resources like pollen and of course honey as they start to fill all these frames then you just pull your follower board out move another frame in or two as they go and then you put your follower board back in and now you've expanded the colony it's very easy that's the purpose of the follower board if you have ever taken nucleus sized hives and put a swarm in them you'll realize that they grow really fast. Now, I always did what you're suggesting. I used to just collect a swarm, get a 10-frame deep Langstroth box,

single deep, put the swarm in there, close it up, because I didn't want to have to deal with them. I wanted to leave them in there, let them work on all 10 frames in a 10-frame Langstroth box. And they would do it. It would take a long time. So one of the things I learned was by starting them off

in a deep five-frame nucleus hive box. And people just like you were watching my videos going, hey, Fred, you really should try nucleus hives. They work better. The bees will work them faster. It didn't seem to make sense in theory, but actually it does. In the smaller space, they filled out the frames faster,

and then I was stacking nucleus hives, five over five. And so then we also learned that rather than more space in a big 10-frame box, a 5 over 5 configuration. See the heat column that's there? That would get used more readily by the bees also and they'd build it out faster. And then I started to routinely have stacks of 3. So that's 15 frames. Well, that would be a standard long Langstroth hive too. So you can expand them out infinitely, hopefully, you know, my long langstroth is 5 feet long. You can make a horizontal hive as long as you wanted it to be. And the follower board defines. the space for the bees. So it just works better if they have a manageable space when they first get into it. Now the question about congestion or the population being too cramped for the space being a trigger for swarming. That's true. If you don't keep up with them, then they're going to swarm out. So that's why you need to actively check to see how many frames are left. What do they have available?

What are they using? What's a brood look like? Are they building queen cells? Things like that. You need to get ahead of it so they have the expansion and the available space before they're triggered to start building queen cells and doing a split themselves, which is a swarm. So not a stupid question at all. That's what they're for. And starting in smaller boxes requires more attention from the beekeeper, but they grow faster. Question number seven comes from Armour, and it says, I'm confused. If bees are so much warmer, they use less food. I've always been told that when there are warmer, they use more resources,

keep them cooler, and they use less. Now this comment was left on the hive hugger, which was with Peggy DeSanto, also at the North American Honeybee Expo. She had a display there, and we did a nice interview there with Tara Chapman, who's also a big-time beekeeper down in Texas in Austin. And so it seems like that if they're warmed up and active, they would burn more calories and be more active and need more food. Well, actually, Peggy said during this discussion

that if you had a colony that was building up a lot, and they can, they can have more brood because less of their energy is spent clustering tight and warming the existing brood that they have. When you have an insulated space, the hivehugger insulates everything. Top sides. full on a lot of it more insulation than i've ever put on a hive so it was interesting to look at that

and talk with her a little bit about that um so we have several different kinds of insulated hives here there's a happy medium we want to find enough insulation that your bees are making it through winter without burning through all their resources because it's the other side of it if you have zero insulation uh your bees have to stay warm so they're fighting the elements and with standard pine beehives. There's three quarters of an inch thick or whatever even if it's cedar or something like that. No big change by the way in cedar to pine to hoop pine and these other plank pieces that people are building their boxes out of. What made a huge difference for me was again just like with the long Langstroth hive insulating the top insulating the inner cover and then having an insulated food resource up there. So

insulated cover, food on the insulated cover, opening in the middle, insulation over the top of that. That prevented airflow through the top of the hive, prevented heat loss, created a warm cap. So what's now being called the condensing hive, and Peggy talks a lot about that. Etchen Tartiff, he's definitely a cold weather beekeeper from the Klondike region. So he was there, actually, in Louisville. and so you want to find a happy medium for the colonies that you have now i ran license hives too i don't do them anymore it was too insulated and i know that sounds kind of dumb but it's a polystyrene hive and what happened was there was a lot of condensation in there and it was below the clusters that's

not terrible but it was really wet so overly insulated hives that are overly airtight and have very tiny entrances end up with black mold in them and you'll see that and this depends again on the region where you live you may have high humidity levels we have over 80% relative humidity right now and some of the more arid regions of the united states it might be down to 30% relative humidity so these things are very different and you need to learn um where your hives are going to do best and what insulation levels are going to keep your bee going and not allow them to expand too much or get energized too much so part of the concern about using up too much of the energy too many resources because it's too warm

this is tied to outside temperatures so when we have these really big warming days in the middle of winter where there are not a lot of resources available to your bees and they're also flying out so not only is the cluster inside the hive looser and they're not spending all their energy shivering and generating warmth from their thorax which is what they do they go out and they fly flying bees are dying bees they're wearing out their engines they're wearing out their wounds so those hot days are actually more of a challenge for the beekeeper in the middle winter unless they can also when they go out on these flights forage for resources remember water first and then they're going to after protein and sucrose

so they're going to get nectar and the early nectar around here usually comes from trees so a warm day without resources means they're flying using resources and they're going to come back what are they going to do they haven't brought any groceries home so they're going to they've expended all this energy they burn these calories now they're going to eat more honey and more resources inside the hive and run the risk of starving them out so the colony that's just more insulated that doesn't require them to work as hard to maintain brood core temperature which is from 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit. The less they have to work and burn calories to do that, the more energy conservation there is, and then of course the more heat is retained in the hive.

So what else can I tell you about that? That is really what's going on. So more insulation does allow them to keep more of their honey. An uninsulated hive for me required venting. if the top of the hive was vented because there's no top insulation which is the way they come the way they're made if you're getting a standard langstroth kit then that venting through the top is a removal of the moisture that's building up inside the hive and it requires them to consume calories to keep a core warmth in the center of their cluster so they can have what so they can have some brood in there and so i have incrementally advanced my insulation practices here where I live. Until I find out that the bees are, number one,

they're alive in spring. Number two, they're brooded up enough that I'm already dealing with swarms even without doing any spring protein feeding, which a lot of people seem to want to do. And so they're getting what they need from the environment, and I dropped my consumption of resources by more than half just by closing the top,

stopping the venting, insulating the inner cover and outer cover. I do have hives that have sidewall insulation as well. The Apameah hives are insulated right on down the sides. The Lianz hives, as we spoke about earlier, they're insulated all the way around. I do notice more condensation in the land's hives, but that could be resolved through a little additional venting

or something like that. But remember, the condensation, depending on where it's located, is not necessarily a bad idea. But this is one of the reasons that I want, the people that are following me who are using Langstrath hives and I talked to Bob Penny about this at the conference also because he is in a position to make a lot of hive equipment and it was very interested in my take on the bottom boards being

screened but enclosed with a removable tray now sure that's not a new innovation they're out there people just aren't using them I am not satisfied with the company that I'm getting my bees wax finished screen bottom boards with removable trays in them but you know what there aren't a lot of people making them and the reason I'm bringing this up is because this is where additional condensation can go it doesn't have to increase humidity inside your hive if it goes down through the screen into a tray where the beekeeper can remove the tray and remove the condensation and inspect what's falling through the screen into that tray it is a very cool thing to have. So anyway, I'm hoping that we get a better version of the enclosed, that's key,

enclosed screen bottom board with removable inserts like cafeteria trays. So insulation with the bees able to access more honey resources inside the hive is a good thing. This is why your bees in eight-frame hives. And I was talking to Dr. Peck. again and more people are showing an interest in eight frames high frame hives I was also talking to Matthew over at Premier which do the propola hives and they're also seeing a big rise in interest in eight-frame hives dr. Tom Seeley is also going from 10 frame boxes to 8 frame boxes because the bees are utilizing all of those resources better than they do when there's a 10-frame box

And most beekeepers have seen this in spring. The cluster has risen up through kind of the center of your beehive through winter. And then they abandon the number one and the number 10 frames that have cap tony on them. And very frustrating when we want them to access those resources. Well, because the side walls are really cold. And they don't like to move away from the cluster. And the cluster is tight. Well, we have the circumstance that we do outside right now.

where it's so cold the cluster is tight they have no problems having a very tight cluster move vertically this is also the thinking behind the lands frames being deeper uh dr leo says they move up at one millimeter per day um so they also need to move laterally if it's horizontal hive they need to migrate through the frames and so they can do that without breaking cluster unless there's no holes in the middle of the frames like plastic foundation and things like that. Now they have to go out around the edges or underneath or over the top and then back down onto the face of the next frame of honey and resources. And unless it's facilitated with holes in them, the cluster cannot migrate through a horizontal hive very well. This is where, now I'm going to throw another company name out

there, and I'm not promoting these people. I don't have a connection. I'm not marketing anything to you. 21st B also had an exhibit I interviewed him and he has holes in those one piece plastic heavy waxed frames and because the holes are already there that's for ventilation it's also for transit if you've got a hole in the center of a plastic foundation on a frame the bees can now migrate through that and if they don't want the hole

they can just build beeswax into it but if they don't have a hole there made by you, the bees can't chew through a plastic foundation or a solid one-piece plastic frame. So it's up to you to take a center, not a center punch. It's a hole punch that actually you knock holes in those foundations, which I highly recommend that you do if you don't have it. So the whole point is that our cluster of bees can move over and get to these resources in the wintertime. But if the outside wall of your hive is so cold, as mine are right now.

Do you think the bees are going to migrate up against that cold side of the box and use the number one or the number two frame? They don't. They leave the number one or number 10 frame intact, even with capped honey as an insulation barrier. So the cluster can again stay warm and move up. So there's a lot of moving parts to that. More insulation gives them access to all of it.

Or they're just waiting for warm days. and when we have a warm day, then they can go out and get access to that too. What else happens when these frames are well away from the cluster of the bees? So a 10-frame box. Then because the bees are not right up against it, condensation is also going to form on that when it's cold. So the outside of frame number one, for example, which is against the outside box,

it's just as cold as the outside. And so when you're looking at dew point, the dew point is the temperature that must be reached, inside the hive where condensation forms these outside sides of these frames with capped honey on them can hit the dew point get condensation on them and form mold and other things unless the bees are actively out there and moving around on those surfaces periodically so additional insulation permits your bees have access to all of that this is why i have some insulated hives uninsulated hives because i'm observing what they have done when springtime

comes and we can look inside the highs so that may be more of an explanation than you were looking for and that by the way was the last question of the day so same old story this is a plan of the week clean your entrances they need ventilation through the entrance always check up on that and by the way i want to thank todd for making metal entrance cleaners that he gave me at the expo and they were featured in the opening sequences today, those will scrape ice. So check the alignment. And if the alignment is just slightly off, you just wrap the hive. You can wrap it with double bubble. You can use HVAC tape, things like that. Look for gaps and seams and openings because all of this buffering from wind causes vibrations that extend over long periods of

time and your hives can shift a little. We do have one right now that's right at the verge of shifting just enough to open the air gap into the hive box underneath. Hives like Appa Mae don't shift. They overlap each other like that. They don't move anywhere. Long Langstroth hives, they don't shift. Those things are bulletproof. Top bar hives, they're sitting solid. Lay in size, they don't shift. But your regular Langstroth boxes that are sacked on one another, they are gradually in motion. There's nothing to keep them in alignment other than the straps that hopefully you've put on. Check your fondant and dry sugar, whatever you've got on there, don't let them run out. It's much easier to overfeed or over-provide for them than to wait until they're absolutely out of

resources and then hope to kind of resuscitate them. Try to keep them supplied, overlap it, use too much. Don't take a chance that they're going to run out at any time of an emergency resource. And also, some people have got frames, foundations, boxes, things like that right now. It's wintertime. It's time to put them together. Get stuff ready because you know what happens? Spring shows up. We're not ready.

You see us warm. You don't have a hive to put them in. And so staging. Pre-staging everything now. Paint your stuff. Get ready. Order spring supplies. Oh, I wanted to say this about Expos.

This is probably true of any conference, but I noticed this even more in Louisville at the North American Honeybee Expo. you're probably sick of hearing about it stick around I know that people scoot it out of there Saturday morning and they wanted to hit the road and wanted to get out of there and by the way the weather was turned cold it went from nice warm 50s to 30s so people were starting to think it's time to go I want to caution you stick around at a conference like that it's huge it's indescribably huge and I wanted to to talk to so many people and I had all my people with me. So they were scooting around trying to find interviews for me, things to look at, stuff to see because it was too big. I could not go around and

even pause and look at every vendor. There are too many. So what you had to do is make a list and prioritize your vendors and go see who you can while you can, but then you get there and as a content creator, there are a bunch of people around the vendor and it would be rude for me to zip in there and go hold that purchase i need to do an interview with the owner of this company or whatever i don't do that so i cruise by and see and if they're busy i think he'll come back later well later never comes but for you as the shopper the consumer stick around do you know what those vendors do not want to do at the end of the day end of saturday last day of the conference they don't want to take their stuff home.

Particularly if it's big, bulky, heavy, they will throw out some deep discounts. And people were selling so much stuff. So that's the time to make your deal. I don't want to say if it's something you really want in need, don't wait until the last minute. But if you're kind of on the fence and it seems a little pricey and you're thinking, hmm, maybe if I mill about smartly

until the end of this thing, make friends with the vendors, they'll give me stuff cheap. And they will. In some cases, they'll just hand you things. They weren't handing me things, but I saw them hand things to other people.

So it was, we'll give you 50% off right now kind of thing. Anyway, long story short, there are bargains to be had at the end. Just think of the end of the day, clearance sales. things like that. They do not want to reload their trucks. They've been there for a long time. And it was a great. If you are a person who sells B equipment, you're probably not watching

this Q&A or listening to it on Podbean, which, by the way, if you just Google the way to be podcast, you'll find it. It's a way to get stuff cheap. That's all I'm saying. But if you're trying to sell a product, people were selling stuff. everywhere there are people that came to buy period that's what they did was a great time okay so that and easy ox we need to talk about these guys mike's bees i spoke with them and they have an extended release sponge that we talked about you can look at the video it's part of the it's a playlist that is on my youtube channel and it is what's the name of the playlist north american honeybee expo 2006 and uh if you look at that

he's waiting for clearance to sell the product. Everything's done. Everything's ready to go. Extended release exhalic acid with the new dosing and everything else. He thinks is going to be available in May and I think it's going to be super popular. And here's why. The personal protective equipment that you require when you're doing exhalic acid vaporization is annoying to say the least. I see a lot of people not use. eye protection. I had a scare with exhalic acid vapor where just the slightest little puff of it got onto one of my eyes and it was like very fine grains of sand in your eyes. Protect your eyes. Period. Anyway, by having the sponges, you can

get away with a lot less PPE and they have extended release, very good efficacy, all that stuff, there's been a lot of study and Dr. David Peck also talked about another delivery system, which is the dribble, which people have formulas for the dribble, but a lot of beekeepers are not comfortable working out the exact formula that's required to first of all have a legal dose that you're going to give to your bees

to knock out the varodistructer mites and how to deliver it. So that was at the very end also. I went to Better Bee and looked at that, their new abo-bioxylic acid delivery system. So we have more choices now. The one at Better Bee is available right now, but most of us aren't treating right now. If you're like me in the Northeast, look at the weather.

We're not open in hives and treating for mites. And the temperature parameters, no restrictions. So it's based on what your bees are doing activity-wise, how tight or loose the cluster is and whether or not it would be a meaningful delivery of a dose of an organic treatment that kills rhodostructer mites. So we have two things ahead happening there. Easy ox. I sent you don't forget pay the same as everybody else even Mike's bees there's no

discount associated with my name but I want to thank you for watching today I hope that you're surviving the cold weather just fine and that you take every opportunity to get out and check the landing boards entrances keep everything aligned and going well keep them well provision and have some kind of fondant on there or dry sugar or something else don't let your bees starve Thanks for watching. I'm Frederick Dunn and this has been The Way to Be.