The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 341 with Frederick Dunn of The Way To Bee

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

January 23, 2026 winter storm arriving. Audio Track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/JVipt4FgSg0

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today's Friday, January the 23rd of 20206. This is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 341. I'm Frederick Dunn and This is not the way to be. This right here, this is the way to be. So I want to thank you for being here today. Where else would you be if you're here and where is here? The northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state. state of Pennsylvania in the middle of a heavy weather system. That's right. I know the first thing on your mind is what's the temperature outside but I can tell you three degrees Fahrenheit. That's minus 16

degrees Celsius and it feels like minus 5.6 which is minus 21 Celsius. 85% relative humidity and we're having wind gusts right now up to 24.8 miles per hour which is 40 kilometers per hour. and you know what I like to say I like to point out what the next best day is going to be in the next seven and there isn't one. It's going to be cold. It's going to be a blow freezing the entire time. So all we're doing now

here in the United States is waiting it out. So wherever you are, I know somebody's going to write that it's 75 degrees and perfect wherever you live. Great. Good for you, Simon. By the way, who shared with me that Australia is sitting pretty. That's good.

If you've got some special trick for protecting your bees and your hives from the heavy winds and icing that's coming your way, especially in the South now, write it down the comments below so people can benefit so they can run out there and wrap their hives with trash bags or something. Another thing you have to think about, if you're going to do any kind of emergency wrapping on your hive, make sure you can take the high winds. We're going to have serious wind. So the windchill is going to be dangerous to people. And just make sure you're secured and ready to go. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please look down in the video description. You'll see all the topics listed in order, as always,

with maybe some follow-on links that you can use and find helpful. If you want to know how to submit your own question or topic for a future consideration for a future episode, please go to the way to be.org, click on the page marked contact, fill out the form, and there you go. We just might be talking about whatever is on your mind. Speaking of that, if you've got something on your mind right now, you've got a picture you want to show, you've got a question,

and you can't wait for the next Q&A, go to the Way to Be Fellowship on Facebook. Friendly group, I popped in there. There's 9,000 members now, and there are people from all over. The moderators are super friendly, and you can share your pictures and expect some very flat, very truthful feedback.

That's what they're there for. So everybody can look at your picture. your stuff and point out what you're doing right what you're doing wrong and when we're criticizing we're doing it in a respectful tone to help you move yourself ahead in beekeeping the other thing is maybe you're stuck in traffic right now you can't watch this you're worried that your phone is going to run down on its battery so here's what you do you get off of youtube and you do a google search the way to be podcast and then you'll find it i heart radio whatever it's on all of them it's even on audible by the way which is on amazon

on 100% free as always and you can listen and that way you can pay attention to the road and you won't wipe out something like that and I think that's pretty much it we're gonna jump right into it first question comes from Ron in Philadelphia New York I thought it was gonna be Pennsylvania no there's a Philadelphia New York anyway if I observe a B doing a waggle dance on a frame and then I rotate the frame several times stopping in different orientations to see if the bee gave accurate directions what happens okay now that's an interesting way to confuse a bee but it doesn't work here's why where do they do the waggle dance well they do waggle dances inside and outside by the way you can see bees on swarm

clusters doing waggle dances trying to notify the other bees where they should go where it found a nice final resting place a cavity that they can go into so that's what we're one reason they waggle dance so that's outside that's visible most of the waggle dancing happens inside the hive though where it start so what's their frame of reference because they're on the frame on the comb gravity so the bees that are paying attention to them and they're following them around the waggle dance is something that a scout or forager does when they return to the hive and they communicate the physical location of whatever the resource is the most waggle danced for resource in a hive is always going to be water. So anyway, the waggle dance is performed in total darkness inside the hive and the bees that are in contact with the waggle dancer are sensing how many vibrations, how long the vibration is, how many waggle cycles they do, how excited they are about the resource they found and the dancer is basing its movements off of gravity.

The information that it's passing on is based on the position of the sun at the time that return to the hive because when it's giving instructions it is angling either directly at the sun off to the right off to the left directly away from the sun for example if the sun is over here and they waggle dance they're waggle dancing straight down that means they want you to go that way none of this is contingent upon the position of the frame that they're on or the comb or the cells themselves so it's an interesting question but nope you can't mess them up just by turning it around as much fun as that would have been. Question number two comes from Michelle,

and that hears her YouTube channel name. It says, I wonder if a swarm trap would do me any good instead of trying to find someone to sell me a split. So I did not read the entire question here for Michelle, but it also includes lots of questions about pollinators, native wildlife plants, herbs, flowers that they go to, and the inability to recognize a honeybee.

when compared to other native bees, for example, and wastes and harnets and things like that. So I do find this valuable when you have a bee club, for example, and you're teaching beginner beekeeping. One of the first things that we need to establish is what's a bee? Where do you find it and what's it look like? And that was the gist of the beginning of Michelle's question. So before we're even thinking about getting bees, let's talk about that we should know something about the biology of the bees and we should definitely know bees when we see them. Something that is a little bit frustrating to

beekeepers is when they see someone on social media and they'll say look at these bees and they're singing my kids and we're going to hit them with raid and all the other things. Well they show you yellow jackets or some other wasp and so we know these aren't bees bees and wasps and yellow jackets are completely different. So at the very beginning we should definitely know what species we're talking about and what they look like and there are a lot of native bees some of them feel like very similar to a honeybee so i think it's very important that that's the starting point the other thing is we want to learn about bees before we even begin to collect them uh because some people and i've run into them

frequently thankfully people like to share their stories with me and they think they just get bees put them in their yard and off they go so it can be that simple it really can but that's a bee haver so got them they're present but you need to be aware of some management so being that here we are in a major storm and we have lots of time on our hands because it's still winter and there's not a lot happening here at least in the northern part of the country and even the south is getting smacked right now Tennessee it's going to be hit with ice so if you're in Tennessee you better be ready for a blackout because ice will overload your power lines and so on anyway back to the bees take a class

get connected. If you're a veteran and you don't want to hang out with crowds, you don't like people, I don't blame you. Preaching to the choir. They're out there. I've seen the people. They could be avoided. You could join a club, an organization called Hives for Heroes.

Veterans and first responders that suffer from stress, maybe they don't like crowds, you can get a mentor through that program. Maybe you are a mentor and you'd like to have someone that you could teach. It's a great way to spend some time and get through the boring months where you could educate somebody and then when the weather breaks you can go out and start your practical factors so the theory is done

you get out there and now we can look at things and teach so hives for heroes i'm just going to give a shout out to them right off the bat but now let's go ahead because i know a lot of people are looking forward to starting off with bees this coming spring and so there are ways that people obtain bees some of them are free those are my favorites you can buy a nucleus colony of bees you'll hear people saying get a nuke get a knuck i don't know where you come from where you talk like that nuke is short for nucleus it means it's a complete colony of bees it has queen it has brood in all stages has workers probably some drones in there which are the male bees as well and that it's the quickest way to start up a colony also happens to be

the most expensive. So if you're going to source a nucleus colony of bees, a tiny hive, usually five frames, then you want to make sure it comes from somebody who's reputable, who's going to answer all of your questions. If you're talking to somebody who's selling nucleus colonies of bees, they should be comfortable answering all of your questions and concerns. but I also take you back to the beginning of my response, which is, take a course, get educated, read a book, understand kind of the life cycle of the bee through an entire year, all seasons. So anyway, let's say we don't want a nucleus hive. The next thing is you could get a package.

A package is just that. It's a package that gets shipped through the mail. Usually it's a bee bus these days, a plastic bee bus. What happens is a lot of bees. bees get piled into a package and they're sold by the pound. Three pound package, five pound package, and they don't even know the queen that's with them. Because when they shake all those bees into that package, they also install a cage that's got a queen in it. And the queen is of known genetics usually.

So when you're buying a package, you're really buying the queen and it can be shipped through the mail. All right. So that's probably the second one. That's second. All the big companies sell. And the next part and my favorite, so by the way when the package comes they're ready to go, they just don't have any young brood in it. They don't have eggs, they don't have comb. It's a free floating package which means you have to provide them with a hive when you get them.

And the hive needs to have frames in it. It needs to be set up so you can receive those bees and get them going in the right direction. Also, you eventually will release the queen if they don't chew her out of the queen cage that she comes in that has a candy plug in it. in it. Okay. Now those two are out of the way. Let's jump into the free bees. And I'm going to say the same thing all the time these days. This website is called B-Swarmed. B-E-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-D.org. You register on beswarmed.org and you get a notification when there's a swarm of bees in your area when swarm season starts. I see this as probably the lowest investment, the best way, the most satisfying way, to collect your first batch of bees in spring. And because you're under no pressure to make sure that you have a big colony of bees.

And so I think local genetics rule. So they do year after year after year. If you can cycle back genetics, bees that are also adapted to your area that make it through work. winter and when you collect a swarm in spring first thing I've said this before and it's worth mentioning again you get locally adopted stock that survived winter and it might even be lucky enough that you get that swarm from a bee tree somewhere where you live how do you know if the environment where you live can support a lot of feral colonies of bees well there's another website that you can check out It's called B-Scape, B-E-E-S-A-P-E-D-O-RG. And that will, when you put in your social, not your social security,

you put in your zip code in your location, and it tells you the quality of forage that you have, whether or not there's a dearth where you live, and how much habitat there is to support the feral colonies of bees that would live in trees, cabities, and things like that. So, one way, getting free bees, collecting a swarm, hiving a swarm, keeping that swarm from leaving the hive,

those are all great skills and experiences to have. And they're free. You have nothing to lose. If they fly away, they don't like you, they abscond, you can do it again. Swarm season is not a short season here. Swarm season for us here in my part of Pennsylvania. We have a big one in spring,

and it kicks off again in about August and September when another big nectar flow kicks in, and they're trying to reproduce, of course, just before going into winter, but those are less valuable than the ones that you get in spring. So, swarm collections. Instead of trying to find someone to sell me a split, you can also just get your own stuff. And use your B mentor to do it. Let somebody help you out.

I have a 10-year-old around here. He's a swarm collecting expert. We refer to him as a supervisor, and he would be happy to stand there and criticize every step you take when trying to collect a swarm. Swarms are fun, swarms are easy, swarms are free. Freebies. Question number three. This comes from Dustin from Bolverdi, Texas. Says Lofred, I wanted to ask your thoughts on rendering wax. My question more specifically is if you render retired brood comb.

Is there a concern for pesticides or other chemicals, including Apevar in the rendered wax? If using this rendered wax, is there any risk using it to wax new foundation, or even if used in candles or cosmetic products? Thanks for your thoughts on this. Okay, my thoughts on this. It left out kuma fos, by the way, which seems to be found in every wax sample that sends off for analysis. So I will tell you a few things that you can use. Brood comb, by the way, is the oldest comb in the hive. also has the greatest concentration the longer bees wax is in the hive the more

it gets used and worked by the bees the more pesticides are concentrated into it when foragers go out and they walk over it you get darker and darker and darker and I rotate mine out there's a lot of different this is an area that's going to be frustrating for a lot of new beekeepers I start cycling out my old brood comb on the sixth year so I get five years out of the brood if it looks black and the bees are avoiding it and the queen's not laying eggs in it and you can see the queen showing favoritism or the nurse bees only allowing the brew to develop in other parts of the comb and other parts are so dry and dark and old that they're ignoring that it's time to cut that out I don't mean cut out beekeeping I mean cut out the comb and then we think well look how fibrous that is it actually feels like it's made out of felt like really concentrated fibers and it's terrible to work with you can render it into beeswax. But I want to give you some options to use that beeswax for.

And it's not cosmetics. And it's not to start new comb, for example. And I'll tell you which wax you should use for those things in just a second. But it's true. The pesticides build up. And I want you to think about it because some of the things that are mentioned here. For example, what if they use it like for things on your skin? If you're making bee balm and things like that,

you don't want that to come from the brood wax at all. You want that to come from the freshest, newest, purest, beeswax in your hive. What beeswax is that? That's right, the cap wax. So when you're processing honey, which by the way, honey storage in the hive, is high and away from the brood. And in a natural colony, that beeswax that has the honey in it is the cleanest because it's above and out of the way of the brood, which again is lower

it and down near the entrance. So that means the brood is the dirtiest area and the honeycomb with the honey in it and that fresh cap wax on it is the cleanest and least impregnated with pesticides. So that's the wax that we want to use. If you're going to eat comb, think cut comb too. That is always going to be brand new bees wax. It's going to be the first time it's used. It's also going to be the first time it's capped and everything is ready to go, gets cut out, and that's for human consumption. You're pretty safe to use that also for bee bomb and other things like that. Now it's hard to convince ourselves to waste the beeswax that might be in the really dark comb. And I know a lot of people like to take it as a challenge just to see how clean they can make it.

And we did that here too because the supervisor was here and you wanted to see what we could render beeswax out of. And you get a lot of what's called slum gum. And that's the fibrous material and stuff that once you heat up your beeswax, and you're melting it down. Highly recommend you do not go above 160 degrees Fahrenheit because the hotter you render the wax. The wax doesn't smell so good. It's a little brittle when it does set

and I like to keep it at as low a melting temperature as possible. And once you've got it all liquid, I pour it through 100% cotton cloth. Some people pour it through cheese cloth and things like that. And it comes through pretty, darn clean in fact it comes through about the color of this rapid round right here so nice yellow beeswax when it's brand new and never been exposed to anything no propolis nothing at all is white by the way you see that brand new crystal clear white beeswax it gets changed in color a little later

also pure beeswax when it's brand new has almost no smell to it so i think the propolis is uh giving it it's scent and so there are a lot of things that contribute to that but let's say we're going to render the garbage beeswax the garbage comb the tough stuff that's no fun to work with and you render it what could you use that for well you can melt that wax into pieces of cotton and use them as fire starters for your fireplace and things like that or maybe you're camping things like that you could also use it if you're building up your own wood finish so if you're making shalax and things like that that use beeswaxes the wax that you render from your brood comb could be outstanding for that it would not be good again lip balm and things like that you do take it through osmosis right through the skin so you want to have the cleanest purest stuff now when it comes to setting a foundation for the bees let's say you've power washed a bunch of plastic foundation and you blew away all the bees wax off of it bees propensity to

work wax foundation no matter what company makes it if it is not waxed it's kind of a challenge they don't they hesitate they don't like to build that right away so you can prime them and get them going by rubbing it think of using your bees wax as a crayon and just rub it on there and leave bits of wax on it you really don't have to roll it on or melt it or dip it bees will use bees wax that they find in little bits and pieces and that also makes that foundation smell right to them so that they'll use it. So there you go. Also, while I'm talking about bees wax and the bees drawing it out, let's see you have a 10 frame brood box. And you put 10 frames in there. And somebody else said, no, put five frames in there so that the bees will draw it out

even farther. And that makes the comb stand out beyond the frame and make it easier for you to cut off and uncap. And that's true. And you can do that. But what I'll like to say is that the brood box is just for the bees everything in that brood box is only ever going to be used by and for the bees so we leave it at 10 now let's say you had a second box and you're going to get honey from that then start with 10 and the reason is we want to observe bee space we want to make sure that they don't make a bunch of wonky comb that they don't also if it's with a plastic foundation that they don't start it adjacent to the foundation and leave a little gap there now there's the space between the comb and the foundation so start with it all push together in the center all 10 frames as they draw it out when it's nice and full then you can gradually shift them apart and make them equidistant from one another so then they can draw out the cells even further and that way it greatly reduces the chance that they're going to make that wonky comb so for those that want that but if you're trying to harvest beeswax

for candles. Because remember when candles burn, sure, some of the chemicals burn off at the wick when the candle's burning, but it also gets atomized into the space. And if you've got a heavy pesticide load in your candles, it is, in theory, going out into the air also. And depending on how often you burn beeswax candles, you could really be accumulating a dose of pesticide from the air. so why not just fail safe and make all your candles out of honeycomb wax that's going to be the best so fire starters furnisher polish yes you can use that for anything bee bomb and all that stuff you want it to be as pure as possible and for the bees themselves it doesn't really matter that much because they're going to draw out all the comb anyway so it's just a foundation it's just getting them started it does not compose the entire cell. So I hope that helped. That was a good question, by the way. Kind of interesting. Question number four comes from Peter in Morrisville, Vermont. Says, which, by the way, this is my Vermont flannel shirt, by the way. Best Flannel ever.

Okay, moving on. Just heard of Vermont Public Radio article on the difficulty of cleansing flights for the Northern Honeybee during these bouts of free. rigid arctic low temps how do they manage so I actually when we've had extended cold periods and extended snow which we have frequently here in the snow belt in the state of Pennsylvania the bees actually come out much better than when they have these odd warm-ups and then the bees are flying which happened a couple of weeks ago by the way they had a warm day or two and the bees were out doing cleansing flights and there were some orientation flights which means that's new

brood but your bees have a huge capacity to store waste material in their abdomen and I also want you to think of it this way how often do you need opportunities for the bees to fly out to do cleansing flights well we're going to need that about every five weeks we could get a day would be nice day or two and you can see when you get those warm-ups because what color is the snow going to be right in front of the hive, which by the way is a good sign. They might have little tan spots in the snow. You don't want to be around when the bees are flying out for the first time. I know the new beekeepers get excited and they run out because the bees are flying and they go sit there and then you get these little tan streaks on you. And even our car that is a good, I don't know, 30, 40 feet for the nearest beehive where I parked my car, you'll see a little.

little tan streaks on the mirrors and the glass and the side of the car. So they're flying away from the hive as much as they can as fast as they can and they're eliminating. So those are cleansing flights. They're cleansing their abdomens and getting rid of the waste material. But when they're in a state of torporum when it's really cold and it stays cold, the metabolism slows the way down. And this takes us right back to what we're feeding the bees, by the way. This is why we don't want to feed them high protein midwinter. at least not where it's cold. Some of you are listening to this and you might be in the warm climate

and your bees can fly all the time. There you go. You have an advantage as far as feeding proteins in wintertime. We up here should not. So we want to give them the cleanest fuel possible. The more particulates that are in whatever you're feeding them, the more they have to hold on board until they're cleared to empty their bowels outside the hive.

they do not go to the bathroom inside the hive it's part of their hygienic practices if something happens and they actually get dysentery inside the hive and they start eliminating inside the hive there's a very high chance you're going to lose those bees now this takes me into my next part which is one of the number well one of the most important things you can do for your hives in the wintertime keep the entrance clear it doesn't mean a huge entrance 3 8s by 3 inches is fine make sure that's clear and you need to get out there

let me just plug B-smart designs this little reacher and I got another one I have two other types here they're also aluminum square stock but anyway dig in there and clean out your beehive entrances I can't say this enough

if the bees can't get out I know bees aren't people right but what happens to people when they think they can go to the bathroom? They prepare their mind, they think they're about to go to the bathroom, and then last minute the door shuts in front of them because somebody ran ahead. You live in a big family, and one of your sisters ran in there and locked the door. She's going to do her hair, brush her teeth, stared herself at length in a reflective surface,

and you're out there needing to go to the bathroom. So when you're prepared, ready to go to the bathroom, and all of a sudden, there's a sudden stop that keeps you from doing it. That's what dead bees are at the entrance. I don't know if that was a good analogy. But the bees can't get out, so they might start eliminating right there. So you end up with a lot of bacteria, a lot of dirt, a lot of potential to spread disease. If you've cleaned it out and they can actually do a cleansing flight.

The bees that go out to cleansing flights that don't return, that's okay. Because they still did a service. They removed waste material from the hive. both the material that was already in their digestive system. They left with that because they were going to eliminate in the snow or whatever. But if they're also at the end of their life, keep in mind, honeybees don't live forever, they'll be flying out and not returning because they themselves are part of the waste material that otherwise would build up inside the hive.

So a cleansing flight might actually be a final flight. So that's it for that. Keep it clean. Don't feed a lot of proteins if you're in the normal. particulates even dark honeies are hard for the bees think a buckwheat honey the darker it is why is the honey dark because there's a lot of particulates in it and it smells good and has a strong flavor and honey is the best stuff for the bees but the clearer the honey the fewer particulates therefore the higher the carbohydrate what compared to the particles that are

going to be stuck in the bees digestive system so clean entrance is very important. Because you have to think about this. There are bees that, when do they make their first flight? Let's see even when the weather's warm. Yeah, bees that are in there for four weeks straight, five weeks straight that have never made a flight.

So the entire time, whatever they're consuming, metabolizing, the residue of that is still building up in their abdomen. So they can go many weeks on their own. So this is not a huge problem. And just, as I said before, you're going to want to wear glasses and protective gear if you want to be right in the front of a landing board when it warms up and it hits 11 o'clock in the morning and it soars to 55 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun you're going to get initiated with whatever they've been saving so there's that the queen bee this comes up to while we're talking about bathroom breaks the queen honey bee how often does she fly out do cleansing flights she doesn't the Retinue that takes care of the honeybee, which are young nurse bees, they take away all of her waste material,

which basically it looks like honeydew. It's clear. So remember that the queen is not eating proteins directly. She's being fed. So she's getting the equivalent of a high protein queen-specific diet that's coming from the nurse bees. So there aren't a lot of particulates going into the queen. they clean up after her and she never goes to the bathroom. So there's that. Question number five comes from Brian. And Brian's in Wilbraham, I always said that right, Wilbraham, Massachusetts. Which, by the way, I saw a special and somebody else came up and talked to me recently

and said that people in Massachusetts are losing their accent. So they're going to be losing their cats and their yads and whatever else they say where they lose their ars. Anyway, so they have a question about the nutritional content of different flowers. Don't we all, Brian? Says, as flowers have evolved to optimize pollination, and some flowers rely heavily on wind and not pollinators, Katkins,

is the pollen and the nectar from Katkins less beneficial for bees? Is there less nutritional value in the nectar? Have the flowers that specifically rely on pollinators? Do they have higher nutrition? value. This is a huge question. And by the way, this is something that I reached out to Ernst seeds about. There are native pollinator promoting companies and those that keep the seeds and things like that. And the answer to this question about highest protein value, the best nectar for the bees, the proteins, the most complex proteins, the complete amino acid profiles,

which is what the botanists will tell you about they change even within the same plant species so this becomes a challenge because the weather conditions contribute or attract from the quality of the proteins that are in the pollen and in the nectar even the amount of nectar so the consistency of nectar can change so we value nectar first of all what's valuable to that honeybee about nectar well it's carbohydrate and they need to at least get enough of a carbohydrate from the plant that they go to for nectar to justify the trip farther they go the higher quality that protein and nectar which is the carbohydrate the higher value it needs to have for them so the same plant can provide nectar at higher and lower doses of

sucrose depending on the time of day depending on how much rainfall there's been this is why one reason that we speculate why honeybees don't forage until later why would a honeybee forage first thing in the morning here where I live when there's a bunch of dew all over the flowers it waters down the nectar and it messes with the protein and their ability to collect it which is the pollen also some flowers stay close up to protect their pollen anthers until the sun is high and until the rain has stopped. So they'll even close up during heavy rainfall, for example. So, and the question is relevant, I know, to plants that produce pollen, but are wind pollinated, for example. There are a lot of plants out there that don't need honeybees to pollinate.

They don't need pollinators in general, not just the honeybee. but having the honey bees around pollinating those flowers still produces a better fruit so and that could be like think of coffee beans for example i'm told the coffee plants don't need honey bees yet when there are honey bees present you get bigger coffee beans so therefore there's a benefit both of the plant and the bee that gets resources from that now when it comes to pollen value to the bees. And I'm going to give you website resources here in a second, but I'm just spitballing, talking about the different things that bees do and what they get from it. Bees do go to plants that don't even have nectar sometimes. So therefore, we must guess that the pollen coming from that plant must be really good. So like when they go to ragweed, for example,

they don't get any nectar from that plant. So it must be all protein all the time. It must be really good. Or think about it this way. it may be the only source of protein at the time. Or there may be dwindling resources for the bees to forage. So, for example, the dandelion in spring, every time, and I'm pretty sure I'm the first person to ever post a picture of a dandelion being visited by a honeybee with big old pollen packs on the corbicula of the honeybee,

and of course getting nectar, somebody will say, that is an incomplete amino profile. So why would you promote dandelions? Well, because it's better than what else is out there right now, which is almost nothing. So the bees benefit. Now, is it a complete meal?

Probably not. I don't know if it's equated to us eating pizza all the time. I don't know. But it's something, and the bees will lower their standards based on it's here, it's available, and it's enough to sustain us. If that's all they ate, it wouldn't be enough to keep the colony healthy,

but in a pinch, almost anything will do. Now, we want a resource that rates pollen, because, for example, sunflowers, and then you have to get into which specific sunflower. There's lots of sunflowers. So when bees visit sunflowers, we learn from Dr. Marla Spivak, that some of that can actually

break down or protect your bees from things like American foul brood. Well, that's really interesting. So as soon as we hear that as beekeepers, I want to plant a bunch of those sunflowers. And they order a bunch of sunflowers. You find out it came from a place that produces sunflowers for cutting flowers. You know what that means? No pollen.

So now we have to know more about the plant. We have to know more about who's selling the plant. We want to get plants that aren't treated with neonicotinoids. We don't want to get plants. produce pollen because we don't care if it sheds a bunch of pollen on our kitchen tablecloth because that's not what they're there for they're there for the bees so if only there are a resource all right there's a government resource which i know some of you are like government resource no way i'm not going to that but anyway it's called honey bee net and it's run by nasa of all places

let me give you the website name the link will be down in the video description also if you can't figure it out. HoneyB-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-T dot G-S-F-C dot NASA.gov. And you go there. And you know what they say right off the bat? This site receives such low traffic that they've stopped updating it. So people aren't making use of this government resource, which is your tax dollars at work. identifying different bloom periods and classifying the plants whether they are a primary or secondary source of nectar and or pollen and they rank the pollen quality and they rank the nectar quality that is a government resource that we are not using they even have a honeybee forage map it's divided into 14 ecological regions I think you should go to that and let these people know that we want Tim here whoever's assigned to update it if they get enough attention that he has to get out there and update the data for us.

We want to know. Now let's see you don't want to do that for whatever reason. There is, and I mention them all the time, the Xerxes Society. How's that spelled? X-E-R-C-E-S, X-E-S-Zerxes Society for Invertebrate Conservation. So anyway, when you go there, pollinator-friendly, native plant, list. I get people are not happy sometimes when I show the plants that I plant or the plants that I celebrate and they're probably not happy with what I'm growing right now because I don't think it's

native. There is pushback. There are people that want you only to do native plants. Well, the Zerxes Society is one of those that promotes that. There's a book called the Top 100 Pollinator Plants, but you don't have to buy the book. Just go to the website for free. and check their resources pollinator to conservation programs pollinator friendly native plant lists and then they actually break it down on their website the protein quality of those pollens and also the nectar value of the plants how much nectar do they produce and you know what i have a lot of questions about nectar just as a sidebar here uh i like milkweeds and i know that my honeybees get a lot of nectar off of milkweeds

because they can't even use the pollen that comes to the milkweed. But the milkweed definitely depends on honeybees. Honeybees are the number one most effective pollinator of the milkweed plant. But they get a lot of nectar from it, and my point is, if I gave you a bottle of honey that was made by my honeybees at a very specific time of year, and I said, hey, tell me about this honey, how do you classify it? Well, you know how they classify honey.

They look for pollen in suspension, and they identify the pollen. They identify the source. There you go. It's the fingerprint of the nectar. But if there's no pollen in it, if it only gets nectar and no pollen, how do they identify milkweed honey? Have you ever tasted milkweed honey? You probably did.

You just probably didn't know that's what it was because there's no pollen to make that connection, which I find very interesting. So anyway, the Zurichsia Society for Invertebrate Conservation, go there. I'm a member. I join them. I have their book, Top 100 Pollinator Plants. I think it's nice. They make it very easy.

They have little, they're not emojis, but the little pictures of the bird and the butterfly and the bee and so all these things so that you can identify what's friendly. But if you want to make everybody happy and not get derogatory messages from people, plant natives. Let them believe that's all you care about natives, only the native plants. And meanwhile, I have creeping time that I have growing right now because I'm going to plan a bunch of creeping time. So those are the sources. So for Brian, that's the best. And I know that there is a distinction that Brian's trying to make that plants that don't need pollinators, but yet, you know, what's the benefit? Are there still great pollen?

Is there pollen value for pollinators there? And yes, there still is. And it's variable. So as I said before, the same plant in a different location will provide a different quality in the resources, both pollen and nectar. So it's variable. Question number six, this comes from George in Long Beach, California.

Fred, you've often talked about ways to catch swarms and could one tie an old brood frame to a post in a tree and apply swarm commander. If it works, the frame of bees could be transferred into the nuke or the hive. If it's too good to be true, what do your thoughts? Okay. So there you go. That is another way to repurpose an old brood comb and an old brood frame. But, see, when I say but, it means I'm going to shift directions completely here.

I pick a branch, personally, on a tree that historically gets a lot of bibwax from swarms. These are swarms on the move. When your bees move out of a hive, when they're reproducing, and the existing, laying, productive queen leaves with the swarm, they temporarily land somewhere, and that is our opportunity to control where they're going to be. George mentioned Swarm Commander in here. Swarm Commander. Very good stuff. It is not just lemon grass oil. Where can you get it? Who makes it? The Blythewood B-C-C-C-C-O-O-O-D. That is the company that produced Swarm Commander. It works great. Okay, enough of

the advertising there. So, oh yeah, tell him Fred sent you. Pay the same as everybody else. Moving on. I like to start the year off by Spurs. I have two methods for making a branch appealing to a swarm of bees on the go. It's not a final destination. Swarm of bees on the go.

Recently, people have been mentioning Russian Sions. It's the same thing. They are, a Sion has a sheltered thing. post with boards and beeswax and propolis and stuff all over it this becomes attractive to the bees and they go to it my point is I don't need that when I just turn a branch into the same thing basically so we're making it appealing to the bees they land on it they sniff it and if they're temporarily resting they're going to rest there seven times out of nine okay so I like to build it up but here's the

other thing is I want to talk about if we put out a frame of comb I don't think I would put out the frame I think I would actually take the old comb warm it up and glom it onto the branch just think of wrapping a wet rag put your nitral gloves on get it up to melting temperature make it super soft and just actually glom it onto a pine tree as spruce tree whatever you've got on a branch that you want them to go to that already smells right to the bees now here's the thing the longer it sits out there without any bee attention so in other words don't put that out three weeks before swarm season is going to start put it out a week before swarm season is going to start when you start to see the where i am you see the dandelions starting to

bloom in significant numbers you look across an open field and there's little yellow dots all over you're in here at the beginning of swarm season so that's for us here of course that's when i would go out and prime the branch with the sense so we can use the old comb like that and the reason i say not to put it out earlier is it's ultimately exposed to the weather the bees aren't retaining and maintaining it they're not preserving it they're not adding to the scent so we could ultimately dry out the scent could wear off and before you know it it's just a glom of other stuff on your tree branch. So you go out there and spritz it lightly with Swarm Commander and that makes this residual scent. Swarm Commander is actually a replica of the Nazanof scent that comes

from the Nazanof gland, which is how honey bees signal to one another to say, hey, something over here is cool, check it out. So when there is Nazanof in the air, bees that are just flying by come, whoa, what's that? And they check out that smell. They see where it's coming from and they walk around and they look at it and they realize they get duped and it was a fishing scam and they left. So you can do that. Now here's the other thing. If you're going to put the frames out again wait until the last minute and the thinking is of course that you get them on the frame. The frame is already convenient or on it. You put them in. Now you don't have to do that, but there is something else that you can use the frame for. and there's a tool and by the way I ran into the guy like I just happen to have this thing it's called the

swarm reacher that's what this green plastic thing is on top it goes on one of your window cleaning threads here on the top you can put comb that you found or cut off or saved from your hives or old brood comb and you can spritz it but this whole idea of spritzing with swarm commander something like this, the tiniest amount, the lightest little sprits. Don't overdo it. You can make it repellent to the bees.

But this swarm reacher is called. You could Google it if you want to find one. And you can telescope this way up into a tree with a scent on it. Because let's say you missed them. I know that almost never happens. Once you decide that you want the bees to do something, they almost always do exactly what you need them to do but let's let's say that you prep your branch you set everything out and didn't the bees come and land high in a tree well now

that's where this thing comes in you spread out a little bit you make it smell good looks good that's what you do in my recommendation with your old old brood comb that's super stinky and appealing and you can sprit a little bit of sugar syrup not a lot they're not really hunting a lot of sugars right now. The pheromones are much more of an attractant. And then you telescope that thing up there and you wait for them to climb out onto that. And then you bring it down and you put that frame full of bees into your box that you're hoping that they occupy. And now this is the fun part. So you set up this brood box that you're going to collect the swarm in and you took that frame and you hoisted it up there and you loaded it with bees and you brought it down. I'm not saying shake them off of the frame.

I'm saying put them in the box with the bees on it. Take another frame out of that box because you saved all your old brood comb. That's no good for anything else. Clip that on to your swarm reacher. Hoist that up there again. And then more bees come onto it until you're going to lock out. And eventually the queen's going to walk out onto that frame. And when they do that and you bring that frame down

and you put the queen on the frame inside that box, what's going to happen at the landing board? to the box they're going to communicate they're going to signal the rest of the bees of the queens there how do they do it they're going to raise their abdomens you're going to see that little gland open up and the nassanoff pheromone is going to go into the air and what's going to happen to the rest of the bees that are up on that tree branch they're going to be actively searching for the queen that's now missing and they're going to leave the branch you're going to go in your box and you're done so there's a lot of things you could do swarm reacher put at your

pocket keep it handy works really well believe it or not that was last question of the day and we're on to the plan of the week some people are really in for it sleet ice snow everything else it's going to be bad i wish you could tell you there's be a warm day our warmest day here is going to be in the 20s as for the whole week ahead we're going down the single digits today and And minus when it comes to the windshield factor. So another thing someone asked was, well, with the windshield being, you know, minus 15 and minus 20, how will the bees take it? They don't have to take it because your bees are sheltered. Your bees are inside a hive that you have cared for so well that there are no gaps.

There are no places for a draft for windshield to act on living things. And that's what it's for. that's what the estimate is for you just need to keep air movement off of your bees and you do that by providing them with a hive that's well fit together and this is why as soon as you're done listening to this you're going to run out there and you're going to look for gaps and cracks and openings to make sure that there is going to be a huge wind chill factor blowing into your beehives and damaging the bees in your care especially those southern bees that they just can't take anything you know these are northern bees up here there if you just keep the wind off of them just like chickens if they're not in

a draft they fluff their feathers they're good to go so bees the same thing secure for heavy weather we don't want the wind to blow them over just be ready stop all drafts drafts result in windchill the chilling of the bees if they fall below a certain temperature they're done absolutely done so we need to protect them now let's say just for peace of mind you have to wrap this hive you just can't take it anymore you just have to put something on there well it's too late for you to get online and order something like the hive hugger it's too late the storm is here it's coming and this is this is something that always think is kind of funny because I talk to delivery people you know the weather's so bad that schools cancelled

and if you're in a snowbelt area and school gets canceled that means you have significant road problems road conditions it's bad out there and so people order same-day delivery on supplies and expect that to show up what are you doing so anyway uh you can't buy stuff in this is why you have to pre-stage all your stuff your deliveries may not get here so you can wrap the hive you can even wrap it in cardboard cardboard ultimately in rain of course gets defeated gets wet gets ruined but if we're talking about just arctic temperatures and a blast you need temporary protection bungee cords put that on there paracord very important stuff paracord you can just get big spools of that stuff

and wrap it you can put house wrap on there if you've got it if you've got rolls a double bubble and you've got one colony that's particularly vulnerable wrap it with double bubble just go ahead and you don't have to waste it why cut it to length just wrap the hive wrap it up and then you can take it off later and you still get double bubble that you can later cut up and use for other things break probolice seals on your hives unless you absolutely have to the weather conditions are not going to permit you right now to open a hive and check on or replenish fondant dry sugar sugar bricks whatever you've got on there is their emergency resource these temperatures they're going to be tightly clustered and very few bees inside the hive will be

accessing those resources anyway they're only going to eat the resources they're directly over so don't break the seals unless you absolutely have to and if some something happens to one of your hives and even though it's windy and cold and snow is blowing, you think you're going to run out there with no personal protective equipment and put that hive pack together. You'll be amazed that they can fly in that stuff and sting you while you are trying to help them out. Well, the only reason they're in trouble in the first place is because you did not secure the beehive. So wear protective clothing, at least a veil if you're going to run out there to fix them. When you go shopping for anything, if you're getting fonded or whatever, I found out

there are companies that are giving discounts, and I think that is great. If you ask for the Frederick Dunn discount, they might give you one. If they don't have one, they might say, what's that? And that's your chance. Come up with a number. I mean, don't make it silly, but ask for 10 or 15% or something. See if they give it to you, because people are writing saying, hey, I got that discount company I'd never heard of so good for you if that works the other thing is often people are asking where am I going to be to talk about bees where am I given a presentation so I added a page where is the page it's on my website the way to be dot org there's a page now that has all of my presentation schedule on it so if you want to know if there's a chance I'm going to be in your

neck of the woods or if you have already scheduled me and you don't find it on there send me a note and let me know that hey remember you're talking here and I don't see it on your page I'll put the link there so I will share that that way it's always there and people can find out what's going on and last but not least you have to take care yourselves I hope if you live where places like where we are we need to keep an eye on old people you know I mean I don't know a lot of old people being a spring chicken myself, but I heard they're out there

and you should check on them and see if things are okay, particularly when, guess what happens? It's going to happen in the middle of the night, 2 a.m., wind's going to be 50, 60 miles an hour, and everything's going to go dark.

And you're going to hear those backup battery systems beeping. That means your powers down. If you've got central heat and things like that, your house is about to get very cold and when electricity goes down you need to have a plan in place so maybe you've got a fireplace maybe you've got a wood stove maybe you've got a propane heater in your house those are all great things to

have and this is the time to test them out make sure they're working preload your fireplace put the kindling there and everything else so all you have to do is go out and light the kindling I have not used my wood stove for two years but it's loaded and ready to go in the event that our heat goes out. Have candles ready to go. Charge up your phones. If you've got a router, it's going down too when the power goes out. You can find out that you're cut off from all the important updates you need.

I mean, you could be sitting down with popcorn ready to watch or you want to tell everybody the power just went out. Look at us sitting and you did that thing where you take a picture of popcorn on your lap with your feet, you know that you have your fresh I don't know your slippers on or something and you just social media just has to see it you'll find out if your if your stuff is down you can't update social media so be ready for outages that's all for today and if you have a question don't forget go to the way to be dot org click on the page mark contact fill out the information and tell me what's on your mind and it might work out for next week I wish you all the best this week, and I hope that you get through the freeze in fine shape right along with your honeybees. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has been The Way to Be.