The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 351 it's Swarm Outside! Are you ready?

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

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

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, April the 17th of 2006. This is Backyard beekeeping questions and answers. Episode number 351, I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So 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 and maybe some related links after that.

So I'm glad that you're here. There's a lot going on outside, and where is outside? the northeastern part of the united states the northwestern part of the state of pennsylvania so if you want to know for example how to submit a topic or a question that you might have for a future episode of the way to be you go to the way to be dot org click on the page marked contact fill out the form there you go if you have a question right now you're watching this at a later date or something and you have a picture you want to show somebody because you're puzzled you don't know what's going on with your bees you go to the way to be fellowship on facebook and there once you're a member you can post your picture or your video and get an opinion from several other people who keep bees just like you

So what's going on outside? I know you want to know 66 degrees Fahrenheit which is 19 Celsius. It's a perfect day Right now clear skies low wind how fast is the wind moving three miles per hour which is five kilometers per hour 73% relative humidity there's a lot going on out there in the B yard let me tell you UV index is high so yeah you can get a sunburn today stay covered put UV protection and stuff on swarm risk this is something I'm adding 90% here's why dandy lines are opening and when the dandy lines are opening in numbers and I see the bees on them we also look at the landing boards and see that your bees are there fanning and what are they fanning for they're drying out the nectar that they're bringing in turning it into honey passing it from

mouth to mouth through trophlaxis and then ultimately what's going to happen kicking out a swarm the numbers are high in these hives so have your swarm kit ready anyway it's also a great time to mark your bee branches we'll talk about this in the fluff section at the end but what would you mark them with and what's a bee branch in the first place well you get out your swarm commander spray these are little swarm commander packets right here down to one by the way need more those and I don't use that I use the little sprits bottles which right now are many years old because the stuff lasts a really long time but before even coming in here to talk to you right now I went out and I sent marked many branches on a

tree that my bees tend to bivouck on when they're in swarmed mode you should do that too trust me it's gonna work great what else so the opening sequences today of course were video this morning capture today and there's a lot going on. Also, for those of you who are fans of Janice, the Jumping Spider, she's going to be released within the next couple of days. I'm going to try to make a video about it because winter's over with.

She doesn't need to be inside, and I'm going to take her outside and try to get the very moment that she leaves. I'm not letting her go in the B yard. I'm going to take her to the edge of the woods and let her go in an old tree stump or something like that because it's more artistic. It's cooler looking.

So the very first question we have for today comes from Diane. worn New Jersey says my long laying has been built unfortunately the cut wood pieces had to sit around in a non-climate controlled building all winter and there is some warping we managed to get all the pieces to fit together but there are some gaps what's the best way to fill or bridge them i'm considering using some slap material scrap on hand or is there some kind of cock or spray foam that would work. None of the gaps are B space size, but they will definitely let in the wind. What would you do? So there is something I'm going to talk about real quick.

Gorilla glue. Why would bring that up for something that's already put together? Because sometimes we find gaps that we can't fix this time of year. And you can glue and clamp and kind of close those gaps back up because Gorilla Glue original formula, and this is not sponsored by them. I bought this myself. The original formula, remember, it kind of foams up a little bit. So when it makes contact with moisture, in fact, you lightly spritz it to dampen one of the surfaces before you put them together, and that makes it expand and fill gaps. It kind of creeps out on its own and fills all these little crevices.

So that's what I recommend, and that's what it looks like. And notice this is still liquid. You know, one of the top complains is about this stuff, because it's the moisture that makes it set. If you don't pack this away where it is not in touch with moisture, now some people just store it upside down like that, so the air gaps up here on the bottom. And that way if it does harden it all, it'll do it at the bottom, and then you still have access to it up here through the spout. That's not what I do. I take a Ziploc baggie. I put it inside the Ziploc baggie.

I know I'm nerding out. I know for some of you this is ridiculous. I take a desiccant pack. This one happens to be the rechargeable wise drive. tight and then I close it up and I seal it and that's how I store it you can even take it a step further stick a straw on there and suck the remaining air out of it if you want to but this keeps it fresh for an extended period of time you won't be picking this up that you spent your hard-earned money on only to find the thing as a solid block and it is good stuff

you'll be set and ready to go in a short amount of time and it will fill those gaps but I highly recommend because as Diane mentioned it's not B space which is three eighths of an inch it means dealing with tiny gaps so by squirting that in there of course and clamping it up it'll spread seal the joint you'll be good to go anybody else have a better idea okay moving on question number two this comes from Luke from Boston Texas having to start all over from nothing lay-ins versus Langstroth. So one way, I've been a beekeeper in Spain for almost five years,

and for medical reasons, we're relocating back to Texas. Because I currently have only used Lance Hive, the most popular hives in Spain. And now, with the move, I'm very much leaning towards Langstroth Hives. I selected lands initially due to location, simplicity of the hives, but I am not going to lie, I've been missing being able to get. all the options that the Langstroth hives come with. And I'm ready to pull the trigger on 10 hives because we land in the US next week. Welcome home, by the way. And I want to have them delivered ASAP so hopefully can still get packages from the only shop I've found that still has packages to ship

feeling very overwhelmed. Not sure if I'm making the correct decision here. I know you cover more Langstroth stuff and I've heard all the information you've put out over the years, but I'm still very nervous super's brood boxes deeps inner covers covers stands rapid rounds entrance reduces etc it feels like I'm new to this all over again so this is a common question common problem because there are a lot of options out there when it comes to beehives and what would I do this is a question that's a pretty darn good one by the way what would I do if I could only have one style of beehive and as described here we have lay-ins hives here they perform really well. I get those from Dr. Leo Shirashkin, horizontal hive.com,

and I bought them from him. So I bought his top hives, and they are insulated with sheep's wool, and they do really well. Now, the big issue, of course, is the compatibility that's described here, because here in the market in the United States, if we look at percentage-wise, what percentage of beekeepers are using Langstroth equipment? And it's exponentially in favor of the Langstroth basic format, which means all the Langstroth frames fit into a long Langstroth hive, a keeper's hive, polyhives that are Langstroth built. In other words, they're all designed around that standard frame, deeps, mediums, and shallows. So that's why it's much easier to go with that. Every time I have a hive that has unique frame design, top our hives, you know, there's no standard for those. The lay inside, there are people. There are people,

that keep layans here in the United States and do nothing but layans. You have to have a special extractor, for example, when you do that. So, and not all extractors will handle land's frames. That's why if you get, for it, for example, if you were looking for an extractor right now and you went to Maxent, tell them that I sent you and get the Fred done discount, which means you're going to pay the same as everyone else. So moving on, you have to consider how you're going to harvest honey. And when you need to share resources from hive to hive and you find out that each one has a unique size frame then that becomes a challenge

it's an annoyance so easy to say that i would definitely be working with the langstroth frames and then go from there the other thing is depending on how old someone is or medical reasons i don't know what those are but if you have trouble lifting and things like that the horizontal formats are good for all ages and all ability levels so for example example my supervisor who's now 10 he can manage the land's hive completely I can't send him out and tell him to go and do hive inspections first of all I don't trust him for a minute but then he has to lift boxes he's going to put him on my cricket he's going to smash bees he's going to do all kinds of things and that is the old standard here Langstroth of course never talked about

the horizontal format but if you were doing that planning ahead the frames the interchangeability of the frames is enough on its own for me. So I agree with the Langstroth choice there. And down in Texas, some people think when you're in Texas, for example, the heat there means you don't really have to have insulated hives. But I would suggest this. Insulation helps in all environments, hot or cold. And so it's a benefit to shield your bees from heat, just as it's a benefit to shield them from cold and help them retain the heat inside the hive. So there are a lot of things to think about, but I think that's good. Welcome back to Texas. Now on the horizontal hive format, buying 10 of them, don't forget to look into something else like top bar hives too.

Getting started is the challenge there because then you don't have a bunch of resources, but your entire apiary is just getting started. And you're bringing in packaged bees, which mean you can install them now into any setup. So take a look at the be mindful top bar hives too. Just just for consideration. So that's pretty much it. There's no reason to be nervous about it. Bees are bees. If we learn to keep the bees healthy

and understand the way they are and you already seem to because you've come from Spain after all those years of managing bees, we're just changing the box. So the bee behavior, health, nutrition, all that good stuff is going to stay the same. If you were successful there,

you'll be successful in Texas. By the way, a little known fact about Texas. There are more people in the state of Texas. The population of Texas is higher than the population of all of Australia. How's that?

For a mind teaser. Question number three comes from Grem, from Hamilton, Victoria, Australia. Says, in episode 350, you mentioned the possible use of an air compressor to clean deadouts, etc. Compressor air will have

some oil content and also possibly rust from the reservoir. So that might not be a good idea. So anyway, I was very thankful for this comment because, as you know, I like to fail safe. So if you're using low pressure air and I highly recommend it still, but you want to make sure that nothing's coming out but air.

So you can take a paper towel, for example, and you can wad that up, fold it in quarters, whatever you want to do, and blast it, fold bore through whatever system that you're using and see if any oil residue or particulate start to show up on the paper towel. It's a great way to test it out. And I've not found any oil or rust or things like that coming through my system. But that doesn't mean it might not be coming through yours. So take a bit of advice here and before using it, I guess,

spray it on a paper towel or some or an old cotton shirt or something like that and see if you can collect any residue. And if there is a resubes. to do you found something you will not be using on your B frames so that seems pretty easy that was a good recommendation question number four comes from Lori I have hive live syrup in an appamay feeder on a keeper's hive they were not taking the syrup for the first few days but I noticed this morning one hive took it but several drowned I'm sure I have it on right no bees were taking it from the second hive have

watch your video on the two queen keeper and put it together the same way. I'm worried since they're not eating. I'm in Northeast Indiana. Okay, so here's the thing. There are a few things to consider. When I talked to the developers, the inventor of Hive Alive, and I wondered how they arrived at the dose that they have. Does it become toxic to the bees? What goes on here? Because there is time all. There's a lot of stuff in it. Seweed extracts.

and there's been a little scientific study. There's a published paper at least on it. So the risk is that the bees won't take it. That was the bottom line. So it's not that it made it toxic to the bees or something like that. But if you go above and beyond, even a little bit, the dose that's on the bottle that you get, if you're using the syrup and you mix it up with syrup with sugar and water,

then you have to make sure that the dose is high enough to be effective low enough that the bees still will take it and so that i suspect can happen sometimes which can make your bees iffy another way to find out if it's the hive alive itself for example i have recently purchased a wet dry back a small portable one this allows me to remove syrup from a feeder if i open a hive and it's got a large feeder on top and it's still full of syrup or it's got dead bees in it and stuff like that. I can draw out the sugar syrup, filter out the bees. Of course, do maintenance on the hive, clean it out, change the syrup, whatever I want to do, and then put it back. So what that allows you to do then is assess the hive itself. Is it the syrup or is it just the bees? If they're getting resources already, often when, as is happening right now, nectar comes

available in abundance in the environment, then they'll start to lay off of whatever resources you put in there. But I've done the sugar, water, sugar syrup, light syrup tests. And the bees go after the ones that have nothing in it first. So they're getting sucrose from the environment. Strong colonies tend to take both. Some people use this as logic for they can leave sugar syrup on all the time. And I mean after supers have even been on and they say that the bees will only take it when there's nothing in the environment. So it's safe to have on all the time.

I don't subscribe to that myself. I recommend not having any sugar syrup on if you're at the point where you're going to super a hive. And we are at the point where we're going to have to super hives here in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. And I'm sure other parts of the state are warmer than we are here. So you may be already looking at supering and it's not time to feed anymore. now if it's a colony that you're just starting out with and you know that you're not going to be taking any honey off of it you can feed inside the hive and the mention here by lorry is about that apame hive top feeder which i like a lot it's because you can put on sugar syrup and solids at the same time plus it's divided in half so you can have one side of sugar syrup and another side may have something added so you can do comparisons there also with the two keepers

hive system the colonies are divided the two queen keepers hive system so and I was just looking at those just before I came in here to do this and they're looking like they're going to swarm no great surprise because there are wall-to-wall bees in there one of the ways that you can cut down on the drowning inside your hives is of course to keep the sugar syrup light it's the heavy really dense syrup that once the bees get into it they just don't seem to be able to get out of it. So one part water, one part sugar, mixed together, and that's it. In some cases, people even go lighter than that, and you get plenty of comb building and things like that out of it. But it does reduce the dead bees. Now, one of the things

that really kills them, too, is it's a hive top feeder. If it's not warm enough, if it's, for example, it gets down in the 30s overnight and you've got syrup on it, it gets really cold, the bees get in it. Once they get chilled, they're stuck in it, they can't get up. also so there's just a lot of different things to consider but that's my recommendation maybe lighten up on the mixture when it comes to the hive alive and if you know that they're going to consume it fast which it doesn't sound like here you wouldn't have to put anything in it this time of year just sugar syrup on its own but once they're bringing stuff through the entrance and this is

something that I noticed a lot going out there this morning they've shifted from just high activity to actually fanning at the entrance so we know that now they're bringing in nectar we have a nice warm day it's sunny it's clear and they're drying down the honey inside the hive so that means that they're bringing in enough right now so things can be different where you are and uh that's all i have to say about that the feeder's good it's got a good design uh the bees can't access open areas so they're behind little translucent panel when you see them feeding. So that's kind of the best advice I have.

I would. And some of you may be sitting there going, well, show us the vacuum that you're talking about because I haven't tested it completely. I haven't run it through its shakedown phase. I'm not going to do a video about it until I know that it works or does not. And then we'll see how good of a tool it really is.

Moving on to question number five. Comes from Sunny Mame. Sunny Mame 1. 906 that's a YouTube channel name anyway we got ours built with the flex hive attached so they're talking about top our hives we also built the top our hive nuke and we set it out this weekend seeing how strong your hive is I am rethinking about making this a two colony hive I'm afraid that will outgrow it too fast how are you going to configure your new hive so we're talking about the top of our hives and specifically the hives I have that are top of our hives are be mindful so the way I'm going to configure it is I'm letting them fill up space

they're at 15 frames right now 15 top bars see no frames just top bars and I'm gonna let them continue to expand a little bit and I checked on them this morning so we have to be very careful and this is what we're gonna look for when the inspections come up and hopefully that you'll be doing them soon if you're where I am or you're clearly probably somewhere warmer So what's going to happen is we have to look at them and we have to be ready to make splits. You don't have to, I'm just highly recommending that you're ready to make splits. And here's why.

If we go to do our inspections and we're going to inspect every single hive in the apiary this coming week. So for me, that's 40 colonies. And we'll bring the supervisor out, we'll look at stuff. And if we find queen cells that are already in production, multiple queen cells, we have to split it. Or we have to cage the queen and then we have to. to make attempts to there's a lot of complexity there make attempts to remove all the queen cells if we want to avoid swarming and losing a number of bees and while the queen that's there is in the queen cage they can't get rid of her she can't fly out she can't swarm so then we can probably get

them past the swarm propensity if we manage everything correctly we create a brood break we get some reduction in brood in the hive relieve some congestion and they get things right back on without losing them so one of the things I'm gonna do is when I see that those bees are making queen cells are ready because why would I not just make a big split because the population's high and just go ahead and start my new top bar hive hmm what would be the advantage to doing that clearly if we take the hive and we pull a bunch of brood apart and we split the brood let's say 50-50 each hive and all the frames the same 50-50

each top of our hive. But they weren't making queen cells. All right. So then you see that there are eggs in there? Sure, because the queen's in full production. This is why we have to do something about the hive. And then we know that the minute or within minutes, they know the queen is gone. Within an hour, they may already be starting to work on emergency replacement queen cells. Now if they start doing that, we are, you know, 15 days out from them actually producing a new queen. And then that queen has to mature, has to fly out, has to get mated, has to come back. So all that time, there is attrition in the hive because a queen lays up to her body weight in eggs every single 24 hours. So if you did that split, remove the queen.

Now we have a delay before the queen's replaced in the old hot. and before they're back online. If we wait, if you do meaningful inspections and you know what's going on in your hives, you wait until all queen cells are in production and when they get those queen cells built out pretty decent and they're just about to cap them because if you wait until they cap them, it's too late, then we can pull the queen, make our split, reduce the population, avoid a swarm, start another colony, have everything under our control, and now the delay is much reduced because the queen that's on her way out has been producing eggs right up until the time when they started to rush her around.

So while you're, and why do they do that? They're rushing her around because they're changing her diet. She's losing weight so she can fly to a new location when they swarm. So if you're still seeing eggs when you're opening up your hive and doing your inspection, they probably are not making swarm preps yet. But when the eggs disappear, your queen's on a diet. And that combined with the fact that they're making queen cells, if you wait that long, you could be in a pickle.

So I suggest waiting until the queens are, they're making new queen cells, they're making new queens, they're about halfway done, not capped, pull the queen, pull some frames of brood, decongest your colony, and start your other colony. That's my plan. To do that, you have to be able to be able to, of course to know where they're at what they're doing and when they're making those

preps that's going to require possibly a weekly inspection which is not too far off the mark this time of year when everything is hopping and these are established colonies that's what i'm going to do making a split set up the new top bar and they're going to be good to go because then the new queens will emerge they'll fight it out the best queen will win and then she'll go get made and come back and then in a few weeks you'll check again to make sure that in less than three weeks they have to have eggs in there from a mated queen if they don't you run the risk of having laying workers if that failed you have statistically about a 75% success rate of one of those virgin queens getting mated coming back and keeping that colony going so you have to be on top of that part too

this is why you have to have a calendar that you're marking on a whiteboard that you keep them for status or a diary that carry around with you so you know exactly what was happening when with each and every hive, even if you only have just a couple of hives. It's going to be very important. Question number six comes from John from Ford City, Pennsylvania. Any way to keep wasps out of the empty hives, we're trying to attract swarms too? So this time of year, the wasps are looking for places to live, and what wasps are they? They're the queens. So the queens that live through winter in a solitary spot somewhere, usually in Cumis behind clapboards on old buildings and stuff like that.

But they come out and they're the ones that you see now on unfinished wood chewing on the surface, scraping up cellulose and going off to make their paper nests. I've seen them on rare occasions make their nests inside bird boxes. I've never had hives move into a beehive that I was. working with even though it's empty of bees and start building their nests in there although yellow jackets could certainly do that there are a lot of paper wasts that can do that so you're just going to have to inspect and keep up with it because if you find just that little acorn size beginning of a paper nest that's a queen trying to get started you might see an egg in there a couple of cells and they work it up until they have about 14 or 15 cells

and you'll see eggs and larvae in those just like in a beehive and you can just scrape it off and take it out it's very easy there's no physical way to block the wass from going into beehives if they wanted to do it because it's just you would be blocking bees as well so I just you know would observe keeping on things inspect it these are traps so you could open them up and check them routinely and see what's going on in there but there's no way to block them and in fact I used to use old hive equipment and attract wasps because they're a wasse that compete with yellow jackets and so I was letting them live in old hive equipment but I was also leaving the bottom of those old hive boxes off so it was set on a stand just a

box open through the bottom and they would go in there and build their nests I never really had was going through a normal hive entrance with an entrance reducer on it and go in and up inside the hive and create a nest that way not saying it can't happen i've just never had it in all the years i've kept bees so inspection is going to be the best just grab them and get rid of them if you find them question number seven comes from eli it says uh i use some swarm commander in one of my dead out hives from over winter and i'm very confident i've caught a swarm would you wait a certain amount of time to let them establish before checking in opening the and doing an inspection if so how long might you wait since it was a dead out and not a traditional swarm trap it's already all set up and in a perfect location and what's described here with Eli is exactly what I'm doing the dead outs clean them out leave them right where they are right on the hive stand facing exactly the way they're going to be at the end of installation there's no reason to do all the hauling around and shifting around if you've got a lot of bees in your area so

once a colony sets up and you see pollen going in and you know that queen is laying there's almost no reason to inspect them remember that people that often get excited because you've got to swarm and they're in a box and we want to see what's going on in there my grandson would love to be in them all the time you can cause an abscond they do not want you inspecting the hive if everything seems right and the traffic of the entrance seems right and the food and resources going in seem right there's really no one no reason to open it up. Now, if you want to make sure that they're settled and everything else after a couple of weeks, you just want to see because you want to know and you want to see what your queen's like, what the brood patterns like, things like that, then of course, week two, you can open it up

at the best time of day, which is going to be mid-afternoon sometime on a nice day just like today where they're not stressed out from weather and things like that, and then you're going to look to see that they have eggs and brood and kind of what the pattern's looking like, and then know that you've got a viable colony of bees and they're good to go. Now down the line we want to stay ahead of them. So what I want you to do if you've just got a swarm, this is your first time, you've got them in a brood box and that should be the only box for the hive. When you start out, bottom board, single brood box, eight or ten frame length or off box, whatever you happen to have, and then the inner cover and the outer cover, that's it. When you get a kit, you might get a kit that's got two deep,

brood boxes in it to medium supers everything in one big deal and you see the picture and hopefully they gave some information along with that that suggests that you would start with just the brood box and then once they're established and once they start to fill and draw comb and they fill those frames and you're at 70 or 80 percent capacity and there's a lot of bees in there now we start to super the hive and expand from there oftentimes if you put a new swarm or a collection of bees or a package or a nucleus hive, you transfer the frames into a bigger box and you super that too soon, it actually slows them way down. Something about too much space, they just don't fill it quick.

Nucleus hives, they build really fast. So anyway, the idea about Swarm Commander 2, something I highly recommend. It comes from the Blythe Wood B company. This is the time. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Question number eight. last question of the day i thought somebody else asked me a question about they did they asked about hive number 44 and i'll talk about that in the fluff section so anyway julie from leavenworth

washington says what journals do you subscribe to or review to learn about the latest b research by the way i really liked your comments last week about full sisters hanging together in the hive that is fun anyway i subscribe to two B Culture and the American Bee Journal. And I've met both of the editors of those magazines. I think if you want to know, if you're in the business of teaching people or teaching a class,

or if you need to be up to speed on the latest things kind of going on in the bee industry, those are the two publications that I would recommend. And then you just cherry pick through and look at the articles that are appealing to you. You can find out there's some new books out there, new research. I really like the published research, the papers, when things are going on and there's new research being done.

I think it's fantastic. So those are the top two. In the past, there were many different journals. In fact, back in the day, and by that I mean, you know, 100 years ago, the editors of different B publications used to tear each other apart in their periodicals. They would mock each other, make fun of each other, say things like someone is unequalification. clearly with the English language and things like that the way they used to disrespect each other it's pretty funny so anyway that's it that was question number eight so now we're into the fluff section plan of the week I probably should have mentioned this at the beginning but I had a question about hive number 44 and whether or not they were going to reconstruct their shrouded

entrance with propolis and beeswax they have not they're not showing any inkling that they're going to continue to do that and so what you've been watching throughout this entire presentation up in the corner is hive number 44 it was being videoed while i'm talking to you right now and then i added it later see what happened the magic of editing so and they're building it we talk about a colony that's building fast there are 15 deep frames in there so not only did they come through a winter against all odds. You wouldn't believe the number of people that said that they were doomed, that they weren't going to make it, that that was a waste of time. They're awesome sauce. They're good. They're happening.

So anyway, that's coming up. It's a time to inspect your hives. I can't stress that more here in the northeastern part of the United States. This is it. This is go time. So, and of course things are different where you are, but if dandelions are blooming in fields and are starting to open as they here right now like this change was rapid within the last 72 hours we went from a couple of bees on dandelions thousands of bees on dandy lines and so i'm going around and doing a lot of that do your inspections if you're not familiar and you're brandy to be keeping get a mentor to come out and look at your hives with you it's going to be very important have super's ready so that means you got your frames in there your boxes are on standby bring those with you

when you do your inspection. So we load everything up in a wagon, we pull up behind the cart, and then when we find something inside a hive, they need expansion, we might get into a split situation if we find queen cells, things like that, have all the gear pre-stage,

better to have it and not need it. And so then do it all at once. You're doing the inspection, the roof is off, the intercovers off, everything's there, you're in there. Whoa, they're full, there's too many bees. And I don't see any queen cell. great just in time put that super on add it to your log make sure you know what you did

when swarm commander on tree branches I was doing that 10 minutes before I come in to do this the tree branches on the tree that I have in my apiary where the bees most often bivouac what's a bivouac that's when your bees have left the hive to go to a new final residence they stop somewhere intermediate to that They usually stay for a couple of hours. That's not guaranteed. Sometimes they'll hang in a big of whack location for a day or more. That's lucky if you are negligent.

You don't have the time to find them, but I highly recommend going on daily walks now and checking all your trees to make sure there isn't a swarm hanging in them. Because they can move on in just a matter of hours too, especially if they already know where they're going to go. Hopefully, as happened to us for the last few years, they leave the Bivouac location. You can look at their waggle dances on the surface of the Bivouac cluster

and kind of decode what direction they're heading in. And if I see that they're going to be heading to the southeast of me, I'm grabbing that swarm in 10 minutes because I don't want them going there that's somebody else's apiary. Don't give away your bees to other people. Collect them, hide them yourself. Now, if they're doing what's called a round dance, the waggle dances, you know, they do the turn,

they waggle, they do the turn in the other direction. They waggle this way, they waggle that way. They're letting you know what direction they're headed in relationship to the sun itself. So if they're doing a round dance, it's just a round shot, straight shot, round straight shot. And so the sun is this way, my apiary is this way, and they're doing a round dance and going straight down, round dance going straight down. They can be going just 100 feet from where they are. That's a perfect world. Because they told you they're not going very far, and they're going in that direction.

And then this is a great opportunity because if you're a beekeeper, and you probably are, or you're thinking about it at least it's why you're watching, and you have an opportunity to explain that a swarm in a bivouac situation as we had in Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania, there were a bunch of bees on a grapevine. And on the grapevine, they were clustered, and we set up a hive for them to occupy, and we had a bunch of people there to see what they're doing, how we're going to hive them, and stuff like that. So I said we're going to seed the hive with bees from this Bivouk location swarm. So one of the guys happened to be he's now retired from the army.

He came by with his phone so we put his phone on my hand and we scooped the bees up and then we walk him over put it on the landing board of the hive we want them to go into and then and they went and we did that a few times. And then some people said, oh they're leaving that hive that you put them in and they're going back. Right. But guess what they're doing. They're inspecting. They're inspecting. the hive that we carried them over to they're going back look what some of them are doing they're waggle dancing on the surface of that cluster what direction is the sun in so i explained the waggle dance and its position of the sun and i also explain that what they're doing is a

round dance which means they're talking to their the other bees there are trying to win over this election on where they want to live and then pretty soon several of them were going back and forth from the hive to the cluster until eventually they all took off into the air like a cloud and they did a very slow loop around and then they all went where right into the hive that we set up for them it was a perfect situation and it made it look like beekeeping is such a known science and it's so easy to see what the bees are going to do when and they said things like if I hadn't been there I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it and things like that and it made me look like I understood bees and when that happens it can keep you going

so anyway there's stuff to know swarms they're just happening so we want to spritz our branches why do we do that because we want the bitwax to go on the branches we want them on makes it easier for us to find them and then also it becomes an established bidwack location where we can just collect several swarms as the season progresses and by the way you get swarm commander i'm sure you get it all over the place but if you go directly to the blythewood bee company and mention i think there might actually be a fredd discount ask for the fred done discount if it exists you'll get it good stuff if not no harm done anyway have your swarm kit ready i already mentioned that tomorrow i will be at yesterday by the way i was in west virginia so i'm

I'm grateful that they invited me down there and gave a presentation at the Good Zoo, which was really interesting. They have their monthly bee meetings there at the West Virginia Beekeepers Association right in the zoo basement in the educational building. That was fantastic. Had such a good time. And tomorrow, so I drove back last night after the presentation, and then tomorrow I'll be at Edinburgh University.

For a brief presentation, Dr. Jim 2 will be there. He gives the main presentation. and I'm just going to talk to people about thermo grade lumber and thermagrade hives and things like that. So I will be there tomorrow. If you're part of that organization, I look forward to seeing you there. And I know some of you have not done your dead out clean outs yet. So please get on with that, get that done. And that's going to be all for now.

So don't let your bees swarm without you knowing it. And if they do, you need to reroute them into some other box that you have. So if you've got questions, please put them down in the comment section below. And if we've got a question that you want to be entered in the process of whether or not I'm going to address it on a Friday Q&A, submit that through my website, The Waytobe.org contact page and then fill out the form and you never know. So we'll see you there. Thanks for being here. I hope you have a fantastic weekend wherever you are. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is Ben, The Way to Be.