The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A #343 with Frederick Dunn

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

This is the audio from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/hoq86VGn7pI

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, February the 6th of 2006. This is back-haired beekeeping questions and answers, episode number 343. I'm Frederick Dunn and... This is the way to be. So I know right off the bat, probably the only one that's cold this year. I'm cold all the time every day and it's getting old. And I know you want to know.

the numbers how cold is it outside 16.5 degrees Fahrenheit that's minus 8.6 Celsius that's really cool 16 days below freezing not a warm-up not a single minute above the freezing line which is 32 degrees Fahrenheit zero Celsius of course 4.9 mile per hour winds and 7.8 kilometers per hour that's the good news but it's going to get windier which increases the wind chill we have 95% relative humidity So that wind chill is going to be a big problem. I'm in the northeastern part of the United States,

the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please go down in the video description, and you'll see all the topics listed in order with some associated links. It might be helpful to you. If you have a question right now that's on your mind, you need an answer. You want to share a picture. You got a video sequence.

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You fill it out. And it's good to go. I don't know what people are doing here in the southern United States right now because this ice storm that came through and it's not over yet. There's two states to stand out right now. These people are not used to cold weather like this. What would make it worse? Mississippi and Tennessee.

What makes it worse? It's not bad enough that it's cold, it's freezing, it's sleeting, and your life is on hold, so to speak, but some people are without electricity. Can you imagine that? So our thoughts are with the people down to Mississippi, more than 20,000 people still without electricity. That's an extended period because they just can't get to them. They just can't fix it yet. And Tennessee greater than 9,500. Those numbers are reduced, but it doesn't matter if you're one of those who's without electricity, and you're one of the people that's probably not even watching or listening right now. So if you've got friends down there, check in on them, see how they're doing. So what's going on outside other than the fact that it's freezing?

The deer are doing weird things. So I posted a video during the past week of deer walking around in their hind legs. So, and of course they don't continuously walk in their hind legs. They walk in all fours, but they get up on their hind legs enough now. It's very strange if that's the way you see them for the first time. Why are they doing that? because they've exhausted almost all the forage that's at normal browsing height. And it's funny looking only not because they're really chewing down everything.

The problem with the deer population right now is that they're consuming all the resources that other deer needs so the herds are not under control. And I mean herds of deer. What's it got to do with honeybees? Well, the things they're chewing and destroying are going to feed our bees normally in spring and they just can't get through the snow and there was another weird thing that i noticed when i was walking around looking at beehives with my thermal imager just a few days ago taken some pictures in fact i took the photos and series of videos that you saw at the opening of today's

video something was sitting on a robin's nest which is under the overhang the soffat area of the way to be academy building what do you think it was it was a raptor a small raptor a screech owl It was dead. So I learned some things about screech owls over the past few days. One, they have to catch a vole. That's their number one target or a deer mouse. So every single day. If they don't, their metabolism is so high if they just die out.

So the suspicion is that that screech owl ended up in a robin's nest because they build in sheltered areas. And it was protected from the wind and the snow. And fluffing all its feathers out. I thought it was playing possum. so I got a close-up photo of it until I realized it was dead and I had to call the game warden. Then the game warden came out and they collected it because they're concerned. Do I have chickens on my property?

Is what the game warden asked me? Yes, I do. Well, they're worried about high path avian influenza. He didn't seem to understand the numbers associated with that, but that's okay. H5N1 is high path avian influenza. And they just want to make sure that, for example, domestic poultry are not spreading it to wild birds, and wild birds aren't spreading it to our domestic poultry, that little tiny owl, very unlikely that it would feed on a chicken, and the chickens are all cooped up anyway.

So I wasn't worried about that. Another thing that they look for, what has the owl eaten? So if it is a rodent, what if the rodent was treated with some kind of pesticide, and then the owl ate it, then the pesticides, and the owl dies. This is why we never use. pesticides or rodenticides on our property ever. But it led me to some other thoughts here. Of course, the snow is so deep.

There's ice packs on it too, which normally owls would hear things moving under the snow. They'd dive through the snow and they get a hold of it. And the voles. I would like to see the owls get as many voles as possible, but then it occurred to me. I have cameras in a lot of outbuildings. And we keep an eye on mice and rodents because I talked about them at the beginning of the winter because we need to get them under control once they get inside a building,

including the building I'm sitting in right now. Once they get in, it's a big problem. But you know what? There's been zero rodent activity for the past, oh, I don't know, four or five weeks, and I have several cameras, motion detectors, so that I know what's going on. That's the first thing to check every morning.

So I think the rodents might be protected under the snow. I don't know. But how about you? With the extended winter conditions, are you seeing fewer rats and mice and voles and things like that out there? I haven't seen a single shrew not since the beginning of the year. And normally you can hear them fighting too. So anyway, the bees are in tight clusters. So I have not opened a hive yet. We have a warm day coming and by that I mean it's going to hit the 30s.

And so when we hit that warm day, it's critical. We're going to definitely swap out emergency field. resources on the hives this is going to be part of the fluff at the very end of today's talk so i just wanted to point that out that things are challenging now this is not the worst ever of course but the longest because i looked it up the longest time we've had a continuous cycle without a single degree above freezing for extended days we had it for 40 days here in the state of pennsylvania at one time but that goes back to 1977 so we're not even worried about that We're not that bad off yet, but it is bad. It's dragging you down. Find a hobby. Find something to do.

Watch a YouTube. Learn about your bees. Get a book. Those are all the things I have to tell you. Let's jump right in with number one, which comes from Alvin from Yonkers, New York. Did they say Yonkers? Yonkers? Okay. Hey Fred, I recently bought a Lycun 8-9 poly hive. I knew you have had issues with condensation in these hives. before but these newer models have optional venting slots in each box do you think this would fix the issues you were having here in the Northeast thanks and it's true the license hive I've had in the past I was not that thrilled with it to be honest and they did have little vents like in the bottom right in the bottom board

the polystyrene that the bottom board was made of there were little twist dials that open up the vents I didn't like it, to be honest. I also didn't like the feeder design that they had on top, and ultimately I just abandoned the hive design. But before I responded today, I wanted to take a look. Let's find out. Maybe Lysen has made some changes, and they did.

So they're looking better. In fact, if you consider the price of all the other beehives that are out there today, Lison is competitive, and they have what's called their rapid hives. And they sell them in six frame, and 10 frame designs. And where did I go? I went to better be. Because I check there often.

And what happened is I noticed all their new equipment, the new bottom board design. They have medium supers. They have a new hive top feeder that looks pretty darn good. They have a deep telescoping cover that's more insulated than their other covers from the past. They have reinforced joints. I have nothing to do with these people.

I don't sell them. I don't get a discount. You should ask for the Frederick Dunn discount when you go to buy one if you buy one but you know what with this current weather with this winter a lot of people are wishing they had fully insulated hives polystyrene hives right now I don't have any I have the hive IQ hive but of course is not deployed to the backyard and someone else said hey Fred if you don't want it you could give it to me and I said no

because I'm keeping it because I am going to put it out there. How can I talk about it if I don't test it through a year? But I'm almost wishing this year with all the weather and issues that we have that I had more polyhives out there. I don't know. But BMAX is the other one. And by the way, the Lison hive stands are my all-time favorite hive stands hands down. So if you're buying an adjustable hive stand for uneven ground that's going to last you the rest of your beekeeping life, Lysen. Get those things. They're worth it. And I'm telling you that because they already got mine because I don't need them I took care of myself first so you should ask them

for the Fred done discount absolutely pay the same as everyone else. Better B does not have a discount for any of my viewers. We should lean on that. We should make them give us a discount. Ask for it anyway can't hurt. Question number two comes from Matt from Easel, Kentucky. Hey Fred so my question comes from a listing Betterby had, so we're back at Betterby here. in the 2026 catalog for the complete bee lining kit that includes the following the wild bees book the swarm trap box an anise scented syrup i don't think i've ever seen anyone bring up that scent outside of lemon grass that you can use i did some searching and it looks like it can be used for other ways outside of attracting a swarm have you attempted to use that in the past not sure if you can use that how much better it would work over a swarm lure or lemon grass essential oil thoughts okay so what we're talking about here though this is confusing question for me because we're talking about bee lining and some of you may not even know what bee lining is so have you ever heard let's make a

beeline for this location well when the bees go from one location to another they zing around take a look and then they streak straight at it it's called bee lining so we're going to to talk about Dr. Thomas Seeley and I have this box you know what this is for it's for bee lining now I tried it what's the purpose of bee lining you go outside you find a be on a nectar or pollen sores primarily a nectar source though because you're gonna lure this bee back to the box so what do you do you open the box up note there's a plug in the front of it what's the plug do covers up a window why is it a window because bees follow light so for now let's make it dark so the bee lining

box this flips all the way up by the way but you're going to open it just enough you're going to see a bee on a flower you're going to close this up around the bee on the flower you've got it inside will we open the window now that we got the be inside no bees go towards light look at this there's an intermediate barrier we pull that out we also pull off the back barrier look there's a window there the be inside this box now sees the light goes to the window Once it's near the window, we close it up. Now the bee is trapped back here. We need that to be dark again so that we put the back closer in.

Now the bee's in a dark room. Camara obscure dark room. Okay. Now we open the front again. There's no bee and it can't get out to here. What do we do? We're going to feed it sugar syrup. So we take this fake honeycomb here.

You can use the real stuff if you want to. You can cut a chunk of better comb since we're already at better bee. You want to get some of that. fill it with sugar syrup. Now this is the part that I think they wanted you to use anise oil. And I've got a couple of different types here. That's anise oil.

And this is the stuff, this is what I recommend. If you're going to use it at all, get the stuff that's approved for people. This particular one is the highest ranked anise oil that you can get right now on Amazon. Okay. Okay, so you mix up some sugar syrup.

I recommend that it be a light sugar syrup one to one. You put it in the cells, you put that in here. Oops, you put it inside. Now we need the bee to feed on that. So fill it all the way up. Close it. Take off the cover because now we want light to go in there because what are we going to do?

We're going to pull out the middle. The bee now goes from darkness to the light. It walks into the light. So it's attracted to the light by couple of things so this is the only way I could think that maybe the anise oil is important if you've got to be that's not that uh encouraged that doesn't move right away to that and once you see them in there and once you see them getting the sugar syrup set that's on a stool or something out in the meadow where you're sitting because you're bee lining what's a purpose we want to find out

where this bee came from so we're going to open this up now the bee will finish eating once it finishes eating it's going to come out here and it's going to do a little flight and it's going to do a little figure 8 back and forth. It's going to orient, it's going to make sure it knows where this is located, and it's going to fly off. And you're going to pay attention to the direction it flies off in. But I recommend you wait first until two or three of them come back to this nectar source that it found before.

Once they do that, once they're in there and they're all feeding, close it up again. Now we don't have to move them all the way to the back because we have sugar syrup right here, they're in the front, that's good. They went in on their own. We move this to a new location. at the new location in the direction that we saw them come from and go to so you move that way open it back up let them finish shrinking they fly out again they all do the orientation they take off again

and whatever direction you see them go you continue going that way and then let me tell you what you end up finding you why this thing does not look used i'm sorry i keep shutting it with a snap that might be loud for you but you know why this basically looks brand new because where I live in farm country all you end up doing is finding another beekeepers apiary that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it it's really good theory things work well it's good to teach kids kids are excited about stuff like that they lack patience so getting them to sit down turn off their cell phones tablets whatever they have and pay attention to the bees instead this is a great way bring your folding chair sit

watch and it's your job you spend an afternoon doing this and then once you find them but you might on a great day luck of the draw find out that it's actually coming from a bee tree or something and then you found your bee tree and what was a method that you used to find that bee tree bee lining i want to thank dr thomas seeley for the biology of the honeybee so anyway essential oils is that because that's the discussion really, bee lining is something I wanted you to understand. Highly recommend it, try it out. But the essential oil, I don't think is that, it's not that important because we're catching the bees. We're not luring them. Essential oils are really good for getting bees that come in from a

distance. And because they fly through a pheromone stream or a scent that they like and they come right in. So hyssup, for example, is where that oil comes from. And now as to why, Betterbee recommends that specific essential oil in that mix to get their attention better may help the bees find it once they're returning but i think their visual cues are the strongest and they will come back so you can try it and put down in the comments section by the way if you've done bee lining before have you ever found a tree whether you just get kicked out of your neighbor's yard what happened did you make another beekeeper mad it's fun it's good bee theory and of course you want to do it during prime flying so anytime after lunch would be great to get out there and

start doing that you get your best foragers at that point now if you're let's take it back to early discovery let's say we wanted to find a scout let's say we didn't want to go and collect it from the flower itself let's say we wanted to sit out with our bee lining kit early in the morning 10 a.m. not 10.5 10 a.m. and now we mix one-to-one sugar syrup with the tiniest bit of anise or anise oil. And then we have that great scent. Now when the bees are forging, scouting,

looking for new resources, one may fly through that and actually home in on this and find it. So rather than us going to a plant that's got bees on it, collecting them off that plant, maybe we can do the passive method. We just sit out there with a stool that this sits on and allows you to just wait. And then you watch bees come from downwind

and up to it. So you could actually lure them that way and now we're not collecting them off the actual flowers. So there's another method. I guess that's a part where it would work. How about that? Try both. See what happens. Question number three comes from Beth and Beth is in Findlay, Ohio. It says in the last few Q&As, you've talked about keeping the bottom board clear for B cleansing flights. What about non-traditional hives? With the lay-ins, long Langstroth hive or the top ours it is a box with an entrance hole how do bees and humans keep these entrances clear apever a z hives as a cabinet with different entrances how do those hives keep the entrance clear well here's the thing here's a good part i don't have to clear those

entrances let's take let's take the layans hive for example when you look at the entrance to the hive it is a circle by the way which is very easy for mice to get through which is a annoyance to me anyway that hole is off the floor of the hive so if you're making a beehive like that long length or off any of the horizontal hives my recommendation is not to have the entrance right on the floor here's the interior floor surface don't have your entrance so when you look through you see the floor the entrance could be three quarters of an inch or an inch off the floor because what does that do for us it means that we don't have to clean it

of dead bees. I've never had any of those hives with plugged holes, including my small nucleus hives that have entrances off the floor, an inch off the floor, to be exact. Dead bees that collect on the bottom don't plug the entrance, so we don't have to clean them. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I mean, if you get a vacuum cleaner or something, you can do that. I have that little shark bag that's portable, it's handheld, it's battery powered. You can go out there and just clear the entrances for GP. but those hives don't need it. Now the AZ hives, they have entrances that are on the bottom board,

but screen bottom boards, and I don't think there's a lip going down. So AZ hives have other entrance alternates, so you've got at the next level up, you can open those if you needed to to let your bees fly if there's a chance. Get a nice warm day, they should be doing cleansing flights. You can open one of the upper entrances if you can't get the bottom board cleared. But so long langstroth, long long long, layens, nucleus hives, AZ hives, anything that's got the hole that's not directly on the bottom.

You don't have to clear them because they don't plug up. Also, some of the hives that we've put slatted racks on, they have a solid board on the front, leading edge of the slatted rack, and the dead beads end up on top of it because they're dying from up above in the brood area, and down they go on the slats, and I've noticed that those stay clear. better too but that's just because you'll find the pile of bees on top of the slatted rack instead of blocking the entrance which is under the slatted rack so on the cabinets as far as venting goes because there's some discussion here from beth also about azi hives or the ape

verre hive which by the way if you were at the north american honeyby expo which i'm sure many of you're tired of hearing about by now when you first walked into the expo um floor the very first exhibit was really well done and it was by Apevere. A-P-I-V-E-E-R-T-E-A-B-V-E-V-E-V-E-V-R. They're a Canadian company, and I meant to talk to them, didn't get to. Why? Because there was so much interest in their product,

in their cabinet style inside a building, you know, kind of modular hive system modeled after the A-Z-Hives. The only difference is, of course, they take standard Langstroth frames, which is a huge bonus for those of us who have a bunch of that equipment. So inside a building, the additional venting inside that space facing the interior is fine because we don't have winter wind blowing through there. We're not the bees are still controlling the airflow. I guess is what I'm trying to say You also have an opportunity to collect dead bees off of there check your trays on the bottom There's green bottom boards I believe and removable trays underneath if they're designed the way I wish they were

Then you could just pull those out and dump the dead bees and put them back in. So there you go. And then once you close up the back of the hive inside the space, the bees are loose moving around, just go right up and back inside the hive. It's pretty, pretty tight. Pretty good stuff. Okay, so I hope I answered that question. But just think of places where the bees occupy spaces on their own. Think of bee trees. The entrance is very rarely at the very bottom of the cavity. Usually the cavity extends below the entrance. And that's good and bad. It's good because, again, dead bees in detritus build up there

until the weather warrants until your bees are flying, until the undertaker and the house cleaning bees can move around and get rid of the detritus that's inside the hive. So, but it's not critical. They take care of their flights first, which are cleansing flights. You're going to get their moisture second, which water is number two. And then, of course, they can start cleaning house. But usually that hole is about in the bottom third,

not directly on the bottom so same thing happens okay so here's another question from wendy it says hope you and your bees are well i noticed my colonies temp and my big two times long lang was dropping my big two-by long lang was dropping okay when it looked in this afternoon there were tons of bees on the floor only two frames of bees including a small queen were left last inspection was october 14th two thousand In 2005, there was a mated queen. And a bunch of dead bees stuck in Apameh half feeder, full-on fondant. Have you had an issue with those half-featers

of condensation dripping on the fondant and making it sticky? Okay, now I've already responded to Wendy because that was kind of important. And she sent pictures, which was really key because this is the fondant. When you get a fondant pack, and this is the only fondant I use, and this is Hive Live fondant, if you tear this completely out of the pack, pull all the plastic off, and I've seen others do this too,

I've never recommended doing that, and Wendy's photo about what was going on in her Appamee feeder that just happened to fit on the long length Stroth Hive was due to the fact that this is all exposed. so the plastic was completely removed. So my response is, please don't take all the plastic off of your fondant and just stick the fondant in a feeder. Because that moisture, by the way, that was on the fondant, that's great.

It helps the bees metabolize it better. Helps the bees metabolize it quicker. They can't consume anything, even their own stored honey, unless they have enough water, right? But when you have something like this is basically a very, very, viscous liquid are ready. And if the bees can access it and walk on it, it's very easy for them

to touch their wings to it, their bodies to it, and get bogged down in it. So what we want to do is cut this right in half and put the half, leaving all this on and they'll just have an open seam inside this Appamea feeder. So I'm going to show you what the feeder looks like. And the reason this is set up like this is because I've demonstrated this already before. But the half pack of hive live faunit fits in there just right you'll have one side that's just cut away this one's inside a gallon zip-lock baggie right now just because i'm trying to preserve it and you just have these on the candy fitting so the bees come out on the ends which is what the photo had but in the photo there was no plastic here at all it was just the fondant and the fondant

was kind of spread out all over the bees were stuck all over the fondet so we want to just open a seam or just open a center hole for example when it's on top of your insulated inner covers and things like that the bees will eat their way into it but then they can retreat without being stuck on the fondant I hope that makes sense and that was my response to Wendy and hopefully now they've got it under control but when you put your fondant in even though if you're making your own you still need to find some way to cover it most people use wax paper and then of course the bees need to access it so they can consume it to survive if it becomes

her emergency resource and a lot of people are seeing that their bees are just making it because they put emergency food resources on their hives if they didn't have it I can tell you right now some of the hives that I have out of the 43 colonies that I started at the end of the year with I know that a bunch of them would be dead already if they did not have emergency food resources inside the hive on the top. So that's why they're sticking. There's too much exposure of that material and they'll find their way through. So you can cut through, cut the seam, expose it, cut the corners off, but don't let the bees have full on access to all the surface of your fondant. They will get stuck. Question number five comes from

Carrie George. That's a YouTube channel name. Thank you for the very interesting video. the end you mentioned checking the food stores when it warms above freezing what is the best way to give them any additional food at that point in winter so you have lots of food options in winter and when we say winter here it may be different than what's going on in the south although i can only imagine that some of you that are in the south right now uh are in unexpectedly arctic conditions so uh syrup for example we don't feed sugar syrup in the wintertime. It's too much moisture.

Your bees have to fly. They have to get out when they consume those resources. So you have choices. Dry sugar. It takes the most amount of work for the bees to consume metabolized dry sugar. Sugar in a sugar brick. Dry sugar can ultimately become a sugar brick. If it's exposed, the condensation and the condensation

changes the sugar and turns it into sugar candy. That's why they're often referred to as candy boards. Now you do need a feeder shim to accommodate the food that you're putting on. So at this late game, you know, this late date in the game of keeping bees alive, there isn't time, you know, for a lot of people to change configurations, to pull an inner cover off and put a feeder shim on, for example. I hope that you already have the ability and the option to feed your bees at this time of the winter. That means you have a feeder shim or some space that allows your bees to access food.

This is a feeder shim, for example, with an optional upper entrance that I personally never use. And if you had this sitting on your top box, so you've got your honey that's stored in the wintertime, maybe it's a medium soup or something like that. This sits on top of that. Now you can put a single layer, for example. This is an emergency. single layer of newsprint. I use regular newsprint, but newsprint can also have print on it.

Some newsprint is made with vegetable dyes or whatever, but I just get regular newsprint. Most elementary schools have it. All art classes have it. Anyway, you put that on there, and you can just pour dry sugar right on top of the frames. You don't have to make cuts in it. I know some people say take a blade, punch a bunch of holes in it, and do stuff like that. No, no, you don't need to do that.

Because what's going to happen is, and above this, will be completely insulated. Word to the wise. If it's not insulated above it, please do insulate it above. So if you've got a standard telescoping cover up here with a metal clad top and that really thin leon sheet under it, and that's it. Now it's time to put some, after you put your sugar down, put some double bubble. Foil-faced bubble wrap is. what it looks like it's double bubble insulation reflectics is another option put a couple layers of that on there then put your standard telescoping cover on top of that and that's with the dry sugar underneath what's going to happen to the dry sugar is the condensation from your bees up above them is going to ultimately soak the paper

the paper's going to get moisture in contact with the sugar the sugar is going to start to leach down into the paper the bees are going to find out the sugar taste sweet they're going to chew it cut it tear it away and they're going to access the sugar. Then you'll see a bunch of holes in it. Instead of the whole thing, just opening up and the sugar falling down in, more condensation may come up into the space, and then the bees will metabolize more of that sugar.

That's not efficient, by the way, but it is better than nothing. So the next thing is, let's say you plan ahead, and you've got a feeder shim up there, and you've got a really nice feeder system. A really nice feeder system, for example, would give you the option to feed sugar syrup, like when the weather's warmer,

or when it warms up in spring, or solids, fondance, sugars, sugar bricks, candy blocks, things like that. So you want to make sure that you have something up there. So whatever is your final feeding station on top of your hive, and on top of the hive is the most efficient place to put it. Obviously, closer the bees is more accessible to the bees,

but if you'll notice, there's not a lot of the hive, there's not a lot of space directly under an inner cover, for example. I've seen people take fondant packs or winter patties and really force them down on the frames to jam them in so that you can put that inner cover on. And then as I see them close it up after they've done that, where the intercover sits, it never makes the connection to the top box. And now we have an open gap around the full periphery of that.

Now let's say you're one of those people, that you don't have anything. So you're going to put winter, paddies on which by the way a good intermediate move is winter patties because they're thin but if you put those on there don't jam them in rest that right on top of there and then i would wrap the sides with hvac tape what is that illuminize tape this stuff it sold at all the home centers and then but that's not very insulating is it well then around that you're going to put double bubble you're trying to save your bees You don't want to make it so that the cold spot, the dew point, gets achieved inside the hive up above the cluster.

You want that area to be more insulated than the rest of the hive. That's the rule. If it's above the cluster, it needs more insulation than whatever is below the cluster. Or at the cluster walls. So I hope that's clear. So you make an insulation sandwich. Of course, I wrote back to Kerry George right away, set everything because we're talking, it's a time crunch right now.

People are going to lose their hives. People are going to lose colonies of bees this year. And they won't know. Was it because of Nozima? Was it because of, I don't know, was it the Varroa mites, the lack of management? They're going to be the blame game's going to go wild. But people are going to lose bees this year. So what's under your control at this point in the game?

Feed. Emergency resources, semi-solid feeds. What's my number one choice? If I had to tell you one thing to get, it would be winter patties or fondant and they're kind of similar different companies sell them the hive alive fondant hive alive itself has scientific research backing it that's how we got everybody's attention in the first place and now I can't talk to a beekeeper that hasn't tried it that doesn't use it doesn't swear by it some people say it's expensive well

compared to losing your colony I guess it could seem expensive I don't know know. The stuff lasts a while and you can save your bees and get them in the spring stronger than the otherwise would be. They metabolize it much easier than a candy board. Think about what a bee has to do. And if you make your own fondant, good for you, you can do that. So if you're savvy in the kitchen and if you can do some kind of cold process where you don't make that damaging byproduct of heated sugars and stuff that I don't trust myself around. So for me, getting it pre-mixed is in package and ready to go, so I just go out there with a big box of it, go hive by hive,

and I pull it off. And if it's two-thirds consumed, it goes off, and the other one goes in. And then some people get upset because there might be some bees in the packet that you pull off. So you're in a pickle there because if it's really cold, you need to try to get those in the front entrance or vacuum them off or something like that. I don't have a really good answer for how to get the bees out of that. and back in the hive right away because you're going to seal up the hole that they're accessing your fondon with with the new fondon so bees are in that packet they might just be lost bees at that point but shaking them off on the landing board if you can do it

they tend to stick in there quite a bit okay um so food that you can put on top if it's dry sugar remember they have to liquefy it first so i've made extensive observations of bees can consuming dry sugar, and B is consuming sugar bricks. And they rub these little holes in it at first, and it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. And someone recently asked me, says, where you come up with a number of, you know, 40% more energy consumed in getting that instead of fondant or syrup?

It's a direct observation of time spent collecting the resource. So with all things being equal, temperature parameters and everything else, offering fondant, for example, head-to-head with dry sugar and head-to-head with sugar candy boards the bees work on that extensively the candy boards it's actually 10 to 1 so in other words they're spending 10 times more time on the dry sugar or on the sugar bricks as they are on the fondant which means a foraging bee or a bee that's out collecting

these resources gets the maximum resource they can carry in the shortest amount of time possible, and they fly back to the hive, to deliver that resource, and of course to pass on the information to other bees inside the hive through a wangle dance, and then the bees that also have the potential

to go out and carry that resource home, go out to get it. But water is necessary. The drier something is, the more water is necessary. So they have to carry water with them or enough moisture, and water bees are not nectar-gathering bees.

this is a conflict for the bees. So the moisture needs to be in direct contact with it or the bees have to have some way of getting hold of moisture so they can metabolize a dry resource. Remember that if your bees were flying out in the environment to get a carbohydrate, it would not be a dry carbohydrate. It would be a nectar source. Now the closest thing to a solid that bees go out and collect naturally would be stealing honey from other bees. That's a hundred hundred percent honey completely finished that would be in theory the most viscous material they would encounter so the fondant pack is much more accessible to the bees even though it's more dense even than honey it is easier for them to work collect and return home

with than it is for them to do dry sugar or a sugar brick so then we make that comparison inside the hive because they also depending on the resource if you're looking at the packet if it's a winter patty if it's fondant, whatever it is, is it invert sugar. Now a lot of people get very fixated on that because sucrose is something that your bees collect, but they have an enzyme with them. Okay, it's called invertase.

And it creates invert sugars, glucose and fructose. And that then becomes something they can metabolize. So they have to first liquefy it, invert it, and then metabolize it. because they're not storing it. Most of them in the wintertime are going to take this and through trophlaxis, which is the behavior where bees pass on a resource to another bee inside the hive

that might be doing a very important job that they can't move away from. Let's take, for example, a heater bee. So in the middle of the cluster in the wintertime, we have brood right now. We have bees that are keeping the brood warm. So even while, look at the temperatures we have outside, even while it's cold outside,

there's a mantle on the outside of the cluster and as you move your way in it gets warmer and warmer until we're at 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit on the brood that temperature is kept by heater bees sometimes you see holes in the brood area and so now we have one b sticking its thorax in there with its abdomen sticking out and it's generating a lot of heat it's heating six adjacent cells they can only do that for so long and they glow if you're doing a thermal scan and then it backs out has to recover. During that recover period, another bee, like think of a resource B that comes through and brings additional resources to that B so it can replenish the water that it needs and or carbohydrates that it needs. So all this is going on. So the closer to a liquid state

that it is and the more metabolically prepared it is for digestion, the easier it is for the B to utilize it in a short amount of time. so I hope that makes sense now dry sugar candy boards bricks better than nothing that's for sure but a colony that's weak that's struggling that isn't already doing well on its own is not going to be able to make very good use of that that's why these resources need to be put on as soon as winter begins not at the I don't realize that this is you know it's water into the dam and all that water over the dam under the bridge anyway at this point the reason I'm telling you this is not an I told you so thing in other words if you didn't listen to me in the fall good for you your bees are

going to die no I want you to resuscitate your colony I want you to still take some action if you can and get it wherever you can get it whatever is cheap and ready because something needs to go on a hive if the bees are clustered at the top and they're out of resources That's all I'm going to say about that. Okay, so we're going on to Scott from Omro, Wisconsin. I wonder if I said that right. Omro, Omro. Okay.

I've long admired your hoods for your hives, both for snow and shade. I'm not much of an engineer, but hope your career might lend some ideas for a simple hood for winter for Apameh highs. Note, I want to avoid attaching a hood similar to what you have developed shown on your videos to avoid piercing the outer wall of my

insulated hives. I thought about using half a two-liter bottle cut down and so on. Anyway, first of all, they're called hive visors, and some people call them hive canopies. So if you notice, flow hive has also made one. But the hive visor. So if you don't know what that is, it is nothing but a piece of one by six. And I like to make them out of cedar, some of the lightweight wood. and it is a canopy, an awning, whatever you want to call it, but I call them hive visors. And they have screws that hold them to the size of your hive and a straight arm that comes out.

And then the canopy just hangs in front of the hive and shelters your bees from the landing board being either in sun or sleeting, rain, snowfall, and things like that in the wintertime. It makes a big difference. So the thing is, the Appamehives. If you don't know what those are, they're plastic hives that have, uh, paulmonary hives that have, uh, styrene sandwiched into a very durable plastic cladding and on the outside how would we attach it right so this came to me easily and quickly in fact because of this message from Scott in Armrow Wisconsin I'm going to produce another quick tip video that's going to show you how to make the new advisors because what I'm going to share is going to actually work well on both sides of it So right now we put thumb screws on and the thumbs screws adjust to some variation in the hive width. And we have them for eight frames and for 10 frame hives and they're super handy. A lot of people use them.

So this is great. And by the way, even though I put out a video on how to make them and stuff like this is not my innovation. So people think when Fred came up with that, no, I did not come up with it. Behind me, I have a really old book. ABC and XYZ of beekeeping by the AI root company. They're in there. That's a really old practice, by the way. In fact, they used to put wind baffles on the hive entrances also.

So cross winds would knock your bees off the landing board when they're trying to come in. So the hive visor thing is not new at all. Why haven't people used it? Why isn't everyone using them? Because it's expensive. It's another piece of kit. that you may not need you can do without it so see the problem is our I don't know if it's a problem but we're after efficiency of resources because a lot of what we do is based

on commercial beekeeping so efficiency means what's the return of my investment going to be if I have to pile up a hide visor for every one of my hives it has to be taken off because we need to stack our hives together so we can ship them around no no no this is back your beekeeping. You can put all the ornamentation onto your hives that you want to. It makes no difference. We're not moving them around. So once we're setting them up, you can put all these little additions on there. Do you know that one of Langstrass complaints about the beekeepers back in his day, if you don't know who Langstroth is, he's the father of modern beekeeping in the United States. Yeah, he's the one that came up with

using bee space effectively with removable frame beehives. A lot of people had removable frame beehives before Langstroth, but they were not set up in a way that respect to bee space that allowed the frames to suspend themselves without being attached to the walls, without the bees gluing them up all the way around because he understood bee space. Langstroth was griping way back in the day about how beekeepers were such skin flints that they could not see that their economy in buying equipment was costing them profoundly in the long. run that he was upset that these tight wads won't add things to their beehives that would benefit the bees and instead they're buying the cheapest bee equipment available of the thinnest materials available

he was upset about it so that kind of carries on even today people get so uptight about what every little thing is going to cost when you're a backyard beekeeper i look to see what's the benefit to the bees and if there's a proven benefit and it doesn't cost me a lot if you can make things yourself your way ahead because then it's just the cost of materials it's rummaging through a woodpile at a construction site if you want to there's a lot of wood being chucked around out there that you can use and so if you can build things yourself your way ahead a lot of people can't and don't that's something that we kind of have a problem with today is practical skills woodworking and things like that. But anyway, there is a benefit to it. Now what's my change? What's the new part

going to be? See, you really had to glue and put screws into the sidewall. So because we're putting this stress, what's called a tinsel load. We're pulling on the screws and the glue joint there because the side is out here and we're pushing those screws into the side of the beehive, which pushes that apart, which means it has to be really strong, a tinsel load. Now, I can use. get away from that because what I'm going to do so visualize it the same thing the hive visor that width so it goes just the side rails or just beyond the width of your hive it doesn't have to be much just enough so it's not impeded so it's not really clamping or gripping on what do the appamahives have every single one of them they have handles on

them so they have these flip out handles so think of your glasses think of the hooks on the end of your glasses we're going to put they're called L bar or L bolts. So it's a bolt with a 90 degree angle on it. They come in 8 inch, 10 inch, 12 inch. So if you've got 8 or 6 inch bolts with that angle on them, and you just drill a hole into the end of the sidebars, and you put that L in there, and you set it with glue,

and you could use something like, oh, I don't know, type on 3, or it could use gorilla glue. Even the foaming kind of grilla glue would be good for that one. once the glue is set you have a bar with this hook on it flip the handle out hook the hook on it and leave enough of a gap in front this isn't something that hooks tight it will sag down and then you have your angle your shedding angle and that works so that's what i've told you in advance i'm going to make my video about it's going to be so easy to make now for the wooden hives they don't have handles right so we're going to hang those on well all i have to do for those is put either

a screw in the sides so that the hook goes over the screw so now instead of for the wooden ones i would want a u-bolt end so they're threaded there's a little u-bolt 180-degree turn there and then that goes over you just put a screw in the sides and hang it on that and then there's no clamping it just hangs on there good to go that's going to be the new version so you know it now you can build your own most of you have already figured it out in your head it's so simple So easy. And it will never shift and move around. And then you have to do something with the hive. Lift it up, unhook it, set it aside. You don't even have to turn screws to take it off. So easy. Like a genius right now. It's very easy to do.

You know, that was the last question for today. So we are in the fluff zone. Now one of the things that we did, I like to ask people to do backyard citizen science with me. Right. So we do these simple things. And what I do? things is what we're talking about earlier today which is the bees metabolizing resources now candy boards are super popular by the way why because they're easy they're cheap you can make your own candy boards so easy you can take one of those shims and put it on paper and turn it into a candy board just by adding water to sugar it's almost that easy some people add lemon juice and stuff like that but anyway I

wanted to know because we need the bees to consume it so we set up this experiment and this is a very lengthy experiment so to make sure that everyone was on the same page we um i defined it for everyone those who wanted to participate by the way it's not over with you can still do it if you go to the community link the community area on my youtube channel page where it says community if you go down there you'll see all the surveys and stuff that i have this is one of the surveys so we wanted to find out if you're bees you're So we took a board like this, divided it into thirds, plain sugar, sugar with essential oil added. Third panel, sugar with essential oil and a pollen substitute added.

And the whole thing was a brick or a candy board, whatever you want to call it. I wanted to find out which would the bees consume first and the most. that would tell us what they want, right? Because everything else pretty much the same. So with those three components, keep in mind, 55% of the participants, and this number can change because I welcome more participants. We want this to continue going.

So anyway, 55% demonstrated a clear preference for sugar only. No essential oils, no pollen substitute added. all 13% went for the sugar and essential oil recipe mixed 13% also went for the sugar essential oil and draw dry pollen sub so sugar with essential oils or essential oils with dry pollen sub were equal but less preferred than regular sugar with nothing in it and then 19% of the respondents said all recipes were consumed the same no preference at all but i have questions for that when you say they consume them all the same does that mean they just open it up and it was all gone or did you open it up kind of mid-consumption to

see what they were eating first so that's important and because i can't put that many um that's one of the problems with the survey set up on youtube like that is i can't add a whole bunch of other categories because that's one of the ones i would have Is this an in-progress check or did you open it up and it was all gone? So we need to know what the rate of consumption is in which parts they take first. But it's clear 55% are reporting sugar only. So if I were telling you right now this late in the game and you want to put something on that high, if you really want them to start getting their carbohydrates and you want them not to die.

If you want to make a sugarboard, a candy board, it would be dry sugar with water. If you want to know what the formula for that is go there and erode it all down so that everyone is doing the same thing. It's 10 pounds of sugar to one pound of water. That's what you're mixing. And think of it as packing it together just like you were going to make a sandcastle, something like that. And by the way, that's the foundational formula before you mixed in essential oils and those percentages. And of course, the pollen substitute are all defined in the recipes as well. So if you haven't done it, you're interested in doing it.

please join us and do that so this is the fluff section and i don't want to ring alarm bells i think we're going to be in a pickle because even looking forward you know we're going to have one day out of the next seven where it's even going to get above freezing that's tough because they need to be doing cleansing flights my wife was out in the br just the other day freezing cold day the sun came out for a minute and bees are doing cleansing flights That's a one-way flight. They're flying out at a 19-degree temperature as they're not coming back. They're just going out there and getting zapped by the cold, eliminating in the snow and dying.

So we're playing a game of attrition right now. So what, here's my plan. So that's the way I'm going to phrase it. This is my plan in the northeastern United States. I'm in the snow belt. Every time the Today Show gets up there and Al Roker starts talking about where people are going to get hit, I'm always smack in the middle of the path, whatever it is. it's going on with the exception thank goodness of that issue with the weather that's going on in the

south but this is what i'm going to do the microsecond that i can get out there i'm going to put high of life fondent packs on as soon as i can um as because right now we're still in really tight winter conditions and it's going to freeze it's just going to continue to do that keep in mind most of them already have fondent packs on and and that was my goal last summer was to make sure because in many winters before. And by the way, just for kicks and giggles, this is my 20th year of beekeeping. So I started in 2006. So this is going to be in my 20th year, 2006, and still doing it. Anyway, the problem I had before was not all my hives could even take an emergency feed supplement because it just weren't configured for it. So this year, there are hives that still are not prepared

to take emergency feed supplements and uh the layens hives are one of them they're still alive the long langstroth hive has no more it has holes you know i have those cover boards with holes that i can put historically i put uh ross or rapid rounds in there i almost said ross rounds i put rapid rounds on there historically but there's so much honey in there uh that i just left them with what they have this year so we can see what happens there but those that can take the packs i am feeding those now when spring starts to get here because I think they're going to be fighting the tide things are going to be late and I want to make sure that we don't run into one of those problems where with a warm-up the the double the double tap of that is going to be that it'll probably rain it's going to do something that prevents your bees from foraging so along with a warm-up when the bees get active they need to get resources or they'll start to cannibalize their own brood that's right they eat their own brood they can't feed them and why not cycle them right back to the bees but if you can put pollen

patties in there you can thwart that so that's my plan there are top tier pollen paddies out there that have all been studied so global patties makes really good patties there's something called rocket fuel out there i don't know if they have it with pollen or not the hive live pollen patties i started using them last year for the first time and uh i don't have any gauge for it I'm not set up like university where we can do the bean counting and find out exactly what the benefit was. But I did notice that the colonies that got that had large brood numbers. So because this spring, I'm just forecasting that we're going to be compensating for a lot of losses due to the extended cold. And we're going to want to recover those early.

So when you have a chance to get into that, when things warm up, the hive alive for me pollen patties of 15% pollen patties are going to go in and they will replace my fondent packs now if it's a you know if it's a low investment hive that seems to be okay and they really don't need a boost I will go ahead and put just fondant packs on so how do I gauge which one is going to get the expensive pollen patties and which ones are going to get hive alive fondant packs. The robust colonies have a big heat signature. Let's take, for example, that silly keepers hive, which is a two queen system, they have so many bees in there, I don't understand. Because they should not be doing well. They were super splits. I understand that's cheating.

Super splits, if you don't know what I'm talking about, each side of that had two frames from two frames per colony, six frames, three colonies per side. So I was pulling brood frames two at a time from three different hives, put them all together with the queen, and we did the same on each side. That was a recipe for success. Late season success. So in spring, the colonies that are small, let's take, for example, a hive 44. That's a tiny colony, a miracle that they're alive right now. They should not be making it. So we have these little underdog colonies.

And again, when we go back to being counting and deciding, what's a return on the investment? Should we even resuscitate that colony? Just let them die. Take your losses in fall. I don't like that because it's a game to me. So if I have resources I can put on there, it's a game. Can I get them to survive winter? So 44, they're going to get pollen paddies right off the bat.

I might put two at a time on there. And so any small colony that's at risk of XVI's. Their heat signature is small. They're underdogs because these are the ones. This is let me give you my logic. So you can assign the same logic to your own bee management. The big colonies with the big numbers when the warm weather kicks up, they can do all the jobs at once and have foragers coming and going and have guards on the landing board and everything else. They can multitask. They have easily probably 10,000 or more bees coming into spring. And they can multitask really easily. You'll find that some colonies don't fly at all and they're still occupied and you're puzzled by that. You look at it and you think, wow, why aren't they flying? Why aren't these bees out there? Because they're in maximum economy mode. They cannot send out frivolous numbers of foragers to do things unless they know for sure there's a resource out there that they can get and bring back.

That colony is undermaned, understaffed. They just can't do all the jobs they need to do. So foraging is something there they need to do. but they're in hive stuff and conserving their energy and resources is why they don't fly until the weather conditions are perfect and also why they don't fly unless there's nectar and pollen to be gathered they don't just go out to see what's going on in the environment and scout out new things so those are the ones to get the fondant packs or uh they get the protein they get that pollen pack that's a paddy so plus i already have them sitting 15 feet from where i am right now so i'm going to use them it's going to save their lives because of care. All right. So and then of course when the weather breaks again when we get decent warm weather. Consistent days in the 60s let's say and it looks good going ahead. Let's talk the end of February. That's when the sugar syrup's going to go on again for these high risk

colonies that I need to resuscitate. I just don't want to lose them. So I'm going to put one to one sugar syrup on at that point. Am I going to put anything in it? Yes I am. What am I going to put in it? I have a live syrup. Why? Because it's proven scientifically to work. Am I advertising that stuff? No, but if you go to buy any, you need to use a discount code called Fred 10. They actually have a discount code for me. Fred 10. There's a lot of places that have come up with discount codes they didn't even know about. So wherever you shop, wherever you buy, ask them for the Frederick Dunn discount code. So that's it.

as we get to the warmer days sugar syrup then because that's the easiest for them to metabolize use right away and a boost them it also gets them into comb building and all the repairs that they're going to need to do come spring so and then your very bottom line what are you going to do to recover your losses when spring hits collect swarms if you've never collected swarms you don't know how to do it I get a mentor somebody to talk to you about it we have made multiple swarm collection videos. There's so many different tools. You can be as basic as using a butterfly net. You can just shake them into a tote. You can use a V-VAC if you want to, but that's an investment. That's a lot of clutter and equipment. Swarms are so easy to get once you understand what you're doing. So test my thinking. This spring you want to get, if you're thinking about starting bees this spring and you're like, I want to order a package. I want to order a, I want to order a dag on nucleus hive. I'm ready to spend $300. 260. Because along with heightened demand is going to be an elevated price, I'm assuming. Now why don't just get your bees

for free? Why not get a swarm that's local and just house them up perfect and see how they do? If you're just starting out with bees, you have nothing to lose. Prime swarms in spring can be huge. Better than any package you could buy. Because they're locally adapted bees. Now here's the other thing that occurs to me. Like our stock gets messed up. We get swarms.

People buy in packages from all over the place. I'm not saying packages are bad. They're just not as good as your locally adapted stock. That's all I'm saying. So when we have drones flying around in spring because we're going to mate, we're going to create splits, and we're going to, you know, hive swarms and stuff like that, maybe even our own swarms. That would be the best, too, because it's drone stock. And then when your new queens are flying out to mate, are they mating with drones that are inferior?

From these packages that are coming in from all over the place? No, because those packages don't have drones yet. See, those colonies that come in packages, they're way out before you're going to see. drones coming from them that can mess with your genetics so your way ahead by getting and making your own splits and getting these swarms that are local and how do you get the word out that you're ready to go and collect a swarm you go to a website and it's called be swarmed b-e-e-es-w-a-r-m-d-d-d-d- and you register you give them your cell phone number you tell them you make an account there it's free and you tell them how far are you willing to go

go for a swarm and it's regional so you get yourself on that list and then there's no more this facebook post so-and-so has a swarm vs come and get them and then you find out three people got there ahead of you get registered get it for free uh there may be an instance where you can get the alerts through your your website or through email or if you want to get a text message they may charge for the text message 50 cents i don't know just random i'm guessing So let's say that you got a 50 cent text message and says swarm discovered one mile from you. That's the kind of thing it does. And you have a chance to click on a box there that says claim swarm.

As soon as you do that, the alert doesn't go out to anybody else. And anybody else that checks it, it says claimed. Until you release it. So you show up and it's just too big, it's too good, they're too healthy, you don't want them. Now you unclaim it or it's too high in the air. There's no swarm. Any swarm that's within 30 feet of the ground now. is accessible. Do you know how to collect a swarm that's 30 feet off the ground?

You watch a video of me and my grandchildren that was taken five months ago. And we use a pole in a waste basket to get a swarm that's basically 30 feet on a tree, 25 to 30 feet. That's easy kit to tow it around in your car, collect swarms, and put yourself right back in business. I think some of the people are going to end up with no bees in spring or just a very tiny number of them the weather conditions are looking bad going forward I mean we got Pucks a tiny fill even he's against us that marmot that woodchuck whatever you want to call him that whistle pig he came out he saw his shadow so he's making us

have six more weeks of winter all right that's it for today if you have any questions or comments please put them down in the comment section below i look at every single comment if you have something you want to talk to me about or you want to send me some idea you have go to the way to be dot org click on the page mark contact fill out the form i look at all of those and that'll be it so i have you have a great weekend ahead i want to thank you for being here today and wish you all the best with your bees and hope that you're not frozen solid I'm Frederick Dunn and this is Ben, The Way to Be.