The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 357 Is your smoker fuel "illegal"?

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

This is the Audio from the LIVE Chat on YouTube:  https://youtube.com/live/mpzL7tz5ruA?feature=share Smoker fuel is "smoker fuel" unless... you use it as a miticide. 

Okay, so we're live. I hope everybody can hear me. Anyway, I want to welcome you. Happy Friday. This is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answer. This episode number 357. And today is May the 29th of 2006. And this is a live edition. So we already have people in the chat. Others will be joining later, of course.

If anyone has a question just for me, you can talk with each other. But type it in all caps and I'll be sure to see it. and respond. So we have no time limit today, although it should be around an hour. So I want to thank you for being here. For those of you catching it later, if you want to know what we talked about today, please look down in the video description. You'll see those topics and links. We have links that are probably going to be of interest to people coming soon. So I want to thank everybody for being here. This is also a podcast later. The podcast is always delayed when we do a live stream. And it's through pod beans. So if you just Google the way to be podcast, you'll be able to find it. So all the topics

that I have in front of me were listed. And others, of course, questions will come in from the people that are in the chat right now. And I see a lot of familiar names. If you're not familiar with half-tracks and honey, Keith Spelman, he's my bouncers. So if you act up, he will politely introduce you to another place to unload your angst. So I want to thank everybody again. And And if you want to know how to submit a topic or a question of your own in future episodes for future Fridays, please go to the main website, which is the way to be.org, click on the page mark contact. There's a form there. You can fill it out, and you never know. Might show up on a Friday. So, man, people are already starting off. I'm just going to do some housekeeping first.

So I know what's top of mind, Ross Wagner's here and is typing in all caps. I'll get to that in just a second. But you should know what's going on outside here in the northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania, 68 degrees Fahrenheit right now. That's 20 Celsius for the rest of the world. 39 degrees Fahrenheit this morning when we got up, if you can believe that, which is 4 degrees Celsius. And the humidity is low. That's good news. 50% relative humidity because the bees are having to dry out some nectar right now. They're working on honey. There is a honey flow on. So two mile an hour wins. You could hold up pretty decent under that. Swarm risk today, something you should know in my area. It's about 50%. It's not much of a high risk.

And right off the bat, I want to thank Ross Wagner for pay me fat stacks with a he contributed. There's a little dollar sign down there in the bottom of the chat where you can just throw money at your screen. It works out because I'm financially embarrassed. I need to I need to invest. I need resources. Okay. Moving on, there was a trailer that if you didn't log in early, you didn't see it. But it had to do with some entrance reducers that I swapped out.

So I made wooden entrance reducers for my Aphamae hives. And because they do things that the hive entrance reducers that come with your appamah hives just don't do. So that's coming up in another video. But for those who were on early, they got to see that. So what else is going on? Outside, there is a nectar flow on, and somebody else commented that there's a nectar flow on where they are. And so here in the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania, we have a lot of things coming in that the bees are foraging for.

So let's just run it down real quick. Black locust, nectar and pollen come from that. Raspberrys and Blackberries, go take a hike, and you can hear them. They're on the raspberries and blackberries. So that's also pollen and nectar coming from those sources. is clover. So the clover is blooming right now. Ladino clover hasn't done anything yet. La Dino, I don't know how you say it, but the Dutch clover, the white clover is doing fantastic. Dandelions are being ignored. That's good news because it means they're finding better things elsewhere.

And they are humming. Brut is on the rise. And so, of course, it's time of super your hives. We'll talk more about that. Now I will get to the first question that is here from Ross Wagner. It says, I'm two for two with your bucket and excluder method, which is an above average method by above average influencer I might point out. I have an overwintered three-deep hive that I want to take down to two deeps. Can I move one of the deep boxes over to one of the swarms that only has one? That's interesting. Can I move one of the deep boxes over to one of the swarms and only has one? Does a deep box have brood in it?

So if it doesn't have brood in it, yeah, and if it does have brood but guaranteed not to have the queen, then yes, you can also do that too because nurse bees are pushovers. When you take it apart, if you have nurse bees in there and brood, the forages that are in there, the guards and stuff like that will come out of the box. The ones that stay in are the nurse bees. So yeah, you could fortify a swarm with it. That relates to another question that's coming up later today. So we have more to say about brood and use.

using those to anchor a swarm. So we will be talking about that. Okay, good. So I'm going to start right off with my first question. And this individual is in the house in the chat. And this is going to be, I just predict that this is going to cause some friction among beekeepers. And here's why. Man 78 tax C2Y is right there in the chat.

And here's the question that was posed to me. Dry stinging nettles leaves in a smoker for Varroa control. So right out of the gate, because I've had questions like that in the past, can't we just burn something that's high in exhalic acid and get that to control or kill varodistractor mites? It would be, it kind of seems like a perfect world where you could just light your smoker, which you're going to light anyway, puff your bees around. At the same time, kill a bunch of varroa destructor mites. So I did that. When Man 78 wrote this in the comment section in one of my new social posts recently, I said, nah, I don't think that's going to work because a lot of things in the past. I just kind of jumped the gun on that, and then I decided to take a look and see if there's any published studies on it, and there is a study.

So don't get excited. Don't run away and grab a bunch of stinging nettles, dry them out, put them in a smoker, and think you're going to control Varroa. It's a single study, and there's a lot of warnings here. So don't jump on it too quick. And also I have Gigi saying, Fred, are they asking you to speak at the North American Honeybee Expo this coming year? Yes, they are. Okay, so moving on. So this sad and all the thing, you really have to know. There's a study I looked it up. I did all kinds of checks and balances. Do you know why influencers like me or YouTubers are not responding to this question? Because there's legal ramifications. Why? Because it's a it's a varroicide, which means it's a pesticide, which means it falls under all kinds of restrictions with the United States government.

So the study that was done, and I'll give you a link to that later. so you can find it afterwards. Read the study yourself. And keep in mind, it's a standalone single study. China is part of it, right? So, but they make some really interesting claims in here. First of all, it's considered a biopesticide, and that's because you find this material in the wild.

And remember that what it is is these are stinging nettles. So the first question I had is, are the stinging nettles that we're talking about, even found in North America, more specifically, the United States, and yes they are. So then the study, what they were doing is they were collecting the nettle leaves, drying them out. And then, of course, they used them as smoker fuel.

And so when they used it as smoker fuel, do you think it had any efficacy against the Verro Destructor Mites? It did. It wasn't amazing, though. It was in the 78 percentile there for killing Roe Destructor Mites. But if it was just smoker fuel and it's doing that, you might be sitting there thinking, Well, I'm going to use that. That sounds good to me, but you can't.

It's illegal. The man will come after you. And I can't sit here and tell you to use it because that would be legal, and they would come after me and probably shut down my YouTube channel over it. So what you need to know is, for example, in the study, and keep in mind I'm quoting a study, I'm not endorsing it. See, I have to protect myself. 76.28% might reduction on adult bees.

So then the same old thing comes out. It exists in nature. and people use it like oxalic acid exists in nature. We use it, formic pro formic acid exists in nature, and we use it to control varro districer mites. But remember those are registered, tested, and proven safe for people and bees. So that's key too.

This hasn't been through all those wickets. But here is the interesting part. 94.82% efficacy on varroa destructor mites under cappings, which put it right ranked with the Formic Pro. Think about it. So can you go out and just get a bunch of singing nettles, dry them out, follow the study, and get your smoker loaded up and kill it with 10 grams? That's the dose they cite in their study that I do not, by the way, tell you to use.

The label is the law. If there's no label, it hasn't become approved yet by the FDA, for example. So there's a lot of wickets these things have to go through. I just want to make sure that you understand. Now, one of the things that people do not control is what people put in their smokers, which I think is pretty weird too, because you could put anything in your smoker and use it to smoke and calm your bees without even knowing it may have some efficacy against the road instructor might.

So I'm not going to spend a whole pile of time on it, but I just want to clear it up a little bit. If you're going to go rogue and run out there and load up your smoker and follow the study and see if you get similar things, we don't know the impact on people. That's very important. You're concentrating something in a smoker. You're lighting it. You're burning it. Chances are you're breathing it. That's not known.

So keep in mind, this is not a legal mighticide here in the United States. I don't even know that it's legal where they did the study, by the way. And again, it's a single study. We want multiple studies. We want peer reviews. And we want people that know things to talk about it. So I want to thank Man 78, Tech, C2Y, for bringing it to my attention because it went right down a rabbit hole. But the fact that it is a single study, often when there's just one study, people get all excited and think, wow, it's too good to be true.

And it could be because it hasn't been through adequate testing. So keep your eyes peeled for that. And again, we were talking about stinging nettles and looking at looking at it. look at the study yourself and I have to tell you because they have to be responsible and say it is not a legal might decide to use in the United States even though you find it in nature. It's just because if you are putting this in a beehive, there are products coming out of your beehive that people consume honey. They use the bees wax and stuff like that for humans, like for makeup and things like that too. That's why all these additional wickets are there

because it's going to find its way into your food chain, as well as, of course, the beeswax and everything else. So, some DC's bees says peer reviews are overrated. I know DC's bees, but I can't stand here and make a judgment call on it. I have to fail safe until you follow all the rules and regulations each and every day, and now we're going to move on. So I knew it was just going to, the man is in your business. Okay, so Joy Irwin, lost my queen, 28 frame long, full of bees, now full of drones.

If I get a new queen, June 10th, is it too late? Will there be enough brood tenders, all brood types? Let's see, May 15th, should I get two and split? Is it too late? June is not too late. But you want to be careful when you're introducing that queen because you've got sounds like laying workers with all the drones in there and they can be hostile so there's a lot of guidance from a lot of different people on youtube telling you how to get rid of those laying workers some people say you can shake them outside they can't fly back to the hive because they're just

too heavy because they're ovaries have been activated however uh i like to do what's called going in strong so at the time that you're introducing your new queen you could bring in a frame or two of brood also with NIRSBEAS, which is a pheromone flood in there, and you can actually start to push those workers, the laying workers, out of the way. And here's the thing. You want to protect the queen that's coming in because you paid money for her.

You want to put her in a queen introduction cage. You really need to do that. It can be hard because look at this way. If there's already drones emerging, right? A flood of drones, no workers. That means that those laying workers, workers have been around long enough to produce drones. So we're talking 24 days.

They're established. This is not just, by the way, it's kind of beekeeper error because we need to be looking into our hives at least every 21 days before 21 days have passed so that we know when things have gone bad. And it looks like we have laying workers. So I know it's after the fact and everything. But now we kind of have an issue going on. So the queen that you introduce needs to come with brood, strong pheromones,

and she needs to be protected from being killed. They'll grab onto her and try to sting her to death and pull her apart. It's brutal. So that's about it for that. And you can share your thoughts on the stinging nettles. Because you know what? It sounds like if somebody could get that passed, if somebody could get that past,

it seems like it would be solving a dead nettle or a stinging nettle problem too. They'd be everywhere. So I'm going to pass the buck to people like Dr. David Peck over at Bedderby, and people that have been instrumentally getting other miticides in there. Okay, so this comes from M-M-A-L-T-O-N. Fred, since you don't vent your Apamehives. Have you considered covering the upper vents with double bubble insulation? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Okay, so here's the thing. The Appameehives, which come heavily vented, by the way. The outer cover has vents front and back, although now you can get blanks to cover those up. The interfeeders, which I really like, the new full-size interfeater that's got solid feed in the center, liquid on either side. I really like that setup, but it's full of vent holes also.

And yes, what's described here is exactly what I do. I put double bubble right over the entire feeder, and then I put the outer cover over it, it pushes it down and creates a great vapor barrier and adds insulation to it. So it's a total win-win. That's exactly what I do. Every single APMA hive that I have out in my apiary right now

has exactly that configuration. So here comes Wildwoods beekeeping, which is Grayson. Fred, have you ever tried using tea tree oil to treat for mites? Bob Benny had a video talking about a recipe with tea tree oil and other oils that help with E.S. FB and mites. What are your thoughts? Okay, Grayson, I have to say the same thing. I cannot. Bob Benny's huge. He's big. He can ignore any rules he wants to. He is a huge company. And I can't. So if I say it's a miticite, it's going to kill varroa mites. I can't make a recommendation that you use it. It needs to be controlled. And we need to understand how it works. Because often essential oils, we just think it's an essential oil. It must be really good. but everything can have a toxic level. Therefore, I always defer to departments of entomology, where all the smart people are,

and I can't just sit out there. We also can't quote Bob necessarily because it may be out of context or something. There's no way he would just recommend a miticide and say, go do it. So it might be something he's doing because he partners up with the University of Georgia. They do a lot of research. He offers them his apiary and his out yard. for use for studies and trials and things like that. So they often operate under an academic permit so that they can test those things.

Randy Oliver, much the same. They get permits to test things out. That means that I can't sit there and say, yeah, it sounds good. Go do it. It's a miticide. As soon as we call it a miticide, regardless of where it comes from, I don't care if it came from your kitchen sink. If we say it's a miticide, now it's a treatment, and now we fall under a lot of protections

and restrictions. And fortunately, because we don't want to just run amok and just put things in our hives willy-nilly. So, here we go, do to do, pine needles. Yeah, so now we're going to talk about a lot of things because it is something conversation-wise that I would like people to have. When you put stuff in your smoker, on your best day, it's combustion. So all the things, all the chemicals associated with combustion are going into your beehive.

So loading things up in your smoker and just thinking that it works great or it's plentiful and it stays, it burns hot, it burns consistently. We have to be careful. But there again, see, we're just hopefully you're minimally using your smoker when you're getting into your beehives. Hopefully you're not creating a fog of war. And if you're not in your rehives all the time, let me tell you who's at greatest risk of what's in your smoker. It's not the bees. it's the beekeeper. There are people out there with occupational exposure

to whatever is in your bee canister. So be smoking canister. So I would be more concerned about the beekeepers and what they're breathing in and inhaling. You know, when they've been to the bee yard and they come home and that bee suit smells like they've been at a campfire somewhere. So what you put in your smokers should be of concern,

all right, aside from the impacts on the bees. So the next one comes from Joy Irwin. It says, what do you think about me uncapping the remaining drone brood in that hive? It's a huge hive. Every frame has been honey or drone brood. So you can uncap them. You mean as a Varroa destructor might control because if they're in there, you can, of course, freeze them. And if you have chickens, feed them to the chickens.

I wonder if anybody has put drone brood out for wild birds before. Seems like woodpeckers and things like that would go nuts over them. But there's nothing wrong with getting rid of your drones, of course. It's not going to have an impact on how resistant they are. But however, it makes a good point because when you bring in your new queen, and if you're bringing new brood, you've got a bunch of nurse bees that are there to care for the new queen and the brew that she's going to produce, they have a whole bunch of drones emerge from their cells.

What's the first thing they're going to do? They're going to hit them up for food. Because the drones that feed themselves, they put an instant demand on nurse bees that are present in the hive, and they would have to feed them. So actually, now that I think about it, getting rid of the drones from laying workers would not be a bad idea. I think that's good.

Just my opinion. So here we go. There's plenty of drones. Trust me. I believe you. Yeah, they're out there. Okay, so I'm going to go on to my next question that was previously submitted. This is from ACE, S-H-R-94-99. It says, just wondering, how come you don't recommend putting, see, it ties right into what we're talking about now.

Just wondering, how come you don't recommend putting a frame of brute in boxes where the hives won't go in? you told me, and it works like a charm every single time. Okay, so let's think about it, everyone that's here today. We've got a bucket of bees. We want them to go into a beehive. They're not going. They're sitting in the bucket. They're hanging out.

They're wasting time, yours and theirs, because the clock's ticking. Why can't we just walk over to another hive, get a frame of brood, bring it in, sticking in the hive. Now they realize there's living things in there that need care. And so they all zip into the hide. Does it work? Yes, it works. What does it work against? I'll give you five seconds to figure it out.

Because one of the things that we can do when we install a swarm, we can get a clean install. And by that I mean on the seventh day, six day, let's go six days. You can treat them with exhalic acid vaporization. Talk about an organic treatment. And you'll knock out the dispersal phase mites that are in there. So if you bring in a frame of brood and do that, now we potentially also have brought in a fresh load of mites with them, depending on the condition of the colony you took them out of. But so that's one of the reasons why.

If you can get a swarm to go in just on their own, I much prefer that. If they're super stubborn and you want to get them in with a frame of brood, you can do that. But I like the clean install and the option to knock out the broodestructor mites at the same time. It's a lot of fun. So let's see. This is from Francis Moore. Francis has a question in here. So now let's see. This is the first time I've seen you on live chat. Thanks for doing what you do. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate everyone that's here because if all of you weren't there, I wouldn't be here. There'd be no point. Okay, we're going to move on. Remember, if you have a question for me, it should be in all caps. If not, I'll assume you're just talking to one

another and that's perfectly fine. This question comes from CS-Tack X-G-2-X-H. I'm not even going to try to pronounce that. It says this is so similar to the swarm I caught Sunday. It started 30 feet up in a tree. The next day it was in the grass. I didn't have drawn comb, but placed three frames of wax foundation around the cluster. They started crawling onto the frames. When the three frames were full of bees. I put them in the pro nuke and placed it close to the cluster. Never saw the queen, but the bees were marching into the box, and most of them climbed in before I had to leave for the bee yard. Confirmed yesterday that the queen is in the box, couldn't believe they climbed into that foundation into the box. So this was a recent video I did where the supervisor was here,

and if you don't know who that is, he's 10 years old, that's my grandson. We were walking around. Storms came in and it started raining and there was heavy wind and everything else. Did you know the weatherman did not predict that? That's amazing. So anyway, we were finding bees on the ground because it was only in the 50s. And it was really cool. So I thought, what do we have to lose if we just, I'm walking them around, go, what can we do about these bees on the ground? So we took some pro nukes that I don't use for bees at all.

I just use them for equipment storage and moving things around. What if we just sat one with frames in it and drawn comb right next to this cluster, which even looks, they look doomed. They were covered. They were wet. They were cold and they were clustered for the night. I just thought a skunk would come and eat them up. So we put that down there and they walked in. So they woke up.

So pro nukes really work well for something to collect the bees off the ground. And now we have another one here from this question where I took some frames, set it next to the bees around the ground, get them onto those frames, put their with bees on it into the pro nuke and there you go but i'm looking at these pro nukes these things are in they're plastic if you set those out in the sun i've noticed lately that people use them to sell nucleus hives no shocker and but they're sitting out in the sun this thing's just plastic so i do want to say one thing i wish i had one that i could show to you oh what would happen this is a pro new i have no idea where it came from anyway one of the things I was thinking about when you have these pro nukes this plastic thing right here gets super hot

double bubble when you're putting these things together if they're going to sit outside for any amount of time you got the frames in here put your sheet of double bubble right on side of that on top of that put your pro newt cover on top of that and you will not give your bees a heat challenge when these things sit out in the b-yard that's the backside they're vented like that there's no way to close that vent, by the way. And that's the entrance. Look how open that is. Anyway, I've decided to play around with pro-nukes a little bit because there's nothing cheaper, $17 or $18. If you buy them in packs, I ordered mine from Betterby, but then I noticed that Foxhound is the company, is selling packs of six or eight of them. You can save almost a dollar for nuke. Always consider, of course,

the shipping on that too. So anyway, pro nukes, they work great, and you can set them out in the rain. They're never going to rot. And then store your gear, move frames around, super small. For most of you, you know that I like the High Butler Tots. High Butler Tots are huge, and they hold 10 frames. And there's space beneath, so if you had queen cells and things like that, you can move them around. Pro Nukes make it really easy because now it's small.

You toss them in your car, you go to collect a swarm somewhere, and then you just lock them both in once the swarms in to just a vented thing. And you've got a pretty handy thing for moving things around. So, what else did I do? Thoughts on 31 frame lands, two colonies separate by Queen of Slitter, Common Honey Area, Keepers Hive. Thanks for all you do. Okay, this is Mr. High Jumper, 83. Okay. Do they scare you to do that or do you just jump? Okay, so anyway, when the long hives, and I've done this with the top bar hives, where I did a colony at each end, and then we've got follower boards, and we've got a common space.

And another person asked a question here, could we just have queen excluders on the follower boards so they can get through? and then in the middle of your long hive, whether it's the lay ends, the top bar, the long langstroth, almost makes no difference. Would they share then the common area and produce a lot of honey in there? And of course, the bees inside each colony, two colonies, one hive,

would share that the way they do, the two colony keepers hive. They would, but, and I haven't done that, by the way, I've had two colonies, but I have not had them share the storage area, the honey area. And the problem with it is, the hive's not big enough. They just fill it out too fast.

So with the top of our hives, one side builds faster than the other side, and I don't even know why. And this is only my second year with top of our hives. But there isn't room. So you'd have to build a much larger hive and actually just test it out. It does work. So the concept is, would they share a common storage area? So where they're storing the honey,

would two colonies would access, both having access to the honey storage area, would they continue to work it, or would there be some kind of conflict? And we know that part, because the multiple colony systems have been around for a very long time. The Keepers Hive came out with a way to access those frames without lifting the top boxes off. So that's kind of the distinction,

two full-size boxes on the bottom. Central riser is where your common honey storage is. And that does work. They get along. I don't know why they get along. And also they produce a lot of honey. So you could try it. I've never tried it with the horizontal hive.

To have the common area, I have had multiple colonies in horizontal hives, and then I run out of room. And so then what I end up having to do is, what I end up having to do is just open them up and let them all use it, and then one of the queens has to go because the hives, you have to custom build a hive that's much bigger. Okay. So with a lands, 31 frame lands, two colonies,

I think they'll just run out of room fast, unless you're going to actively manage and continuously. Because, all right, let's pause for a second. you'd have to continuously pull honey to keep up with it so they don't get cramped for space and then of course swarm and then it becomes a swarm generator which by the way my first top bar hive has become a swarm generator it has 19 top bars of comb and it's not enough for it they still swarmed so and it was also one of the ones that I had my state inspector get into for the novelty of it so they do really well, I think it's just going to create a challenge. It's just going to be hard because what happens, I don't know where you are, but here where I am, winter is going to hit and who has access to those stores going into winter because here's the thing. Now that I'm thinking, if we have honey in there that they need for winter,

we'd have to close that up ahead of time so they backfill their resources. They have the honey they need to survive winter for each colony. with the keeper's hive the box is divided and they have honey up there which is actually not intended for them to go through winter on you're supposed to do a single brood box management with those but i cheated and i used the second box with the queen excluder on it and it was divided so i let each side have the honey that's in that second box up which is in defiance of the design of the keeper's hive but they went through winter extremely well that way but you also have to plan for winter stores wherever you are. So food for thought, haven't done it. So we're just talking about theory, just shooting the breeze. And remember, for those of you're joining late, if you have a comment for me, all caps. Mr. High Jumper says I'm in Georgia, planned on pulling honey as needed. Okay, there you go then. Maybe Georgia's easy peasy. Maybe it's easier to keep peas down there than it is up here. What should someone bring to inspect neglected highs?

This is from UMPQA Valley beekeepers. What's just someone, well, neglected hives. So let's talk about it. What are we going to encounter? If it's a neglected hive, what's the level of neglect? So here's the thing. Sometimes somebody will discover that somebody used to keep bees. There's beehives behind their barn and they've been there for so many years.

Nobody really knows what's going on when the last time they were attended to. It's just a fact of life. A lot of beekeepers are elderly people, and things can happen, and they can just suddenly not be able to get into their bee art anymore. I bring new hive boxes because the older boxes may be coming apart. They may be in disrepair. It's much easier to transfer all the frames into a new hive. So same size, same space capability. I come with new gear.

If you don't have new stuff, then some kind of tote that you can move everything into. but I try to keep things as organized and keep them in line as much as possible. Chances are you going to deal with a lot of propolis too when you get in there. So you need tools, of course, but your really good hive tools should be enough to get you through a propolis problem. I always do that on a really hot day. So it'll be a little warmer and a little softer to work with. And you have to have frames ready to go because wooden frames, you may end up pulling some of the existing frames apart.

you not be in good shape so you need to have rubber bands and things like that for the frames if you're going to salvage comb. But I would just bring a whole new box and be prepared to transfer everything in it, keeping them all together. And then hope, we're not saying, are we transporting them? We're just taking them over. Are they going to be in place? And we're just going to kind of see what's what. And you definitely want to be prepared to inspect for rude disease and things like that. That's pretty much right off the top of my head all I can think of. 44 frames for one queen. What do I think of 44 frames for one queen?

That's a lot. That's four deep boxes. That's more than four deep boxes. So I think that's more than enough. Way more than enough. Okay. Okay, so this comes from Peter in Morrisville, Vermont. And he wants to know what would I think about setting up an observation hive

setup with special lighting and have a live stream with cameras on the hive so that people could just log in and see it at any time. So here's the thing. Live stream observation hive. I don't know if that would be exciting for too many people. But the setup, we have an observation hive building here. We have three observation hives in it. So I wouldn't need to make a special hive for that. They already exists. And this year, I've even gone the extra yard, not that anybody's asking, but I have special sound dampening equipment in there so I don't get outside noises so we can record exclusively the sounds from inside the hive without a chicken going by and crowing or some hen announcing that she laid an egg and has to talk about it for 10 minutes. So,

the other thing is bandwidth. So if we run a live stream, just like the Eagle's Nest, videos that show the baby eagles. I know those things are interesting to a lot of people. I don't know if somebody wants to look at an observation hive for that long. And here's one of the things I think about. I have done extended videos that include very detailed audio, very good quality audio from inside the hives. But it's not, the static video isn't very interesting to me.

So we need to kind of travel slowly around. So we have rails for the camera equipment. And it's like sliders for those that are in the cinematography, but these are powered sliders that incrementally travel really slow. So you can get very close because people want to see things up close. And then it'll just travel really slow in kind of an undetectable way. A little faster than the minute hand on the clock, but still very slow. I don't think that a lot of people would be interested in it.

If something interesting is happening, it's more fun to make a video, but I don't have the bandwidth. And I can't live stream even from that building because I live in rural America, and we don't have the connections to do stuff like that. So DC's bees, I know it's not for me because it's not an all cast, but it says Fred needs a small remote control ant camera. By the way, talk about ants. You want to know what's weird? There's an ant mimic spider because I was watching ants. recently because it's what I do and one of the ants didn't look right it was in line with the other ants but it wasn't moving quite the same and then I discovered it's

an ant mimic spider so it's a spider it looks like an ant so we can hang out I don't know what's going on and by Gigi brings up Starlink Starlink is too slow not to bad mouth the company so anyway there we go ant mimic spiders they're cool and I didn't post it because I I post videos sometimes that entertain myself, but very few people like and I don't know what's going on. So anyway, I put out, sometimes I put out videos that I know people aren't going to watch. I don't know why I do it. It's fun.

Yes, I did 18 minutes of rain and 30 minutes of winter or snow. I knew that those were going to be seen by 20 or 30 people. It's okay. It's fun. So, okay, here we go. Remember, if it's for me, it's in all caps. Otherwise, I'm going to ignore the comment section. Next one comes from Scott.

I have built three new Tupper Hives. Oh, wait. This is the same question about whether or not we can have multiple colonies in a common honey area. Was this brought up somewhere else? And that's why it's a hot topic. Because this is Scott in Sugg, Switzerland. So having the same question with Topper Hives. So I'd say it's up for experimentation.

If somebody does it, I'll tell you this, people would probably like to see that and how it works and how you manage through the year. Do to do to do. D.C.S.B. is part of the 1%. That wasn't for me. It's not in caps. Okay, moving on. I have another question here from Lambrook Farm. I've been thinking about using a strong propolis tincture to paint or spray in new boxes. I haven't tried it yet, but I think I got enough dead out frames to store.

scrape, and is there any pathogens besides AFB that will survive alcohol in the tincture? So this is interesting. Alcohol doesn't kill as many things as you might think. I was listening to a presentation that was done by a doctor of veterinary medicine, who deals a lot with isopropinol, for example. And she made some remarks that were interesting to me even back then, and it was because she said that the alcohol wipes are worthless. this, you know, it's just a feel-good thing to do.

And I thought, what are you talking about? So when we talk about does, so other than AFB, we know that alcohol and propolis will not stop AFB, which if you don't know what that is, it's American foulbrood, it is a guaranteed killer, and it subsists for decades. And, for example, if you wanted to clean that off of your hive tool, if you had American foulbred on your hive tool,

do you know how it has to get? It has a glow red, cherry red. Think about it. The stuff is tough. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about. But if you put alcohol on something, what I learned is alcohol has to have a dwell time to be very effective. You also need to break up whatever the material is that's under the alcohol,

or it can't even get to all of that. So alcohol, you need four to ten minutes of dwell time. It has to stay wet for that entire time. Now, most of us know when we use alcohol, that evaporates away in about 40 seconds. So it doesn't stay there long enough to be really good. But this got me thinking. And keep in mind of no expert on this, we're just, you know, throwing ideas back and forth.

The propolis itself, think about that. The bees refresh propolis all the time. So it's not that the propolis could destroy a pathogen, but it could encapsulate it. This is what I was thinking about with this question from Lambert Farm. because we've come across asbestos. And you have people that are asbestos removal experts. And sometimes they recommend, rather than removing asbestos, that they encapsulate it.

So that's where, you know, high gloss paints and latex and things like that, because there used to be lead paint and stuff too. But they encapsulate the asbestos, and it gets this protection. Now, keep in mind, I'm not saying that you can do that with asbestos. I'm just saying that this is what got me thinking about the propolis. Because bees, when they find something that don't like that they can't get rid of,

that doesn't feel right to them, they'll propolize it heavily and they'll cover it everywhere. And then beekeepers come along and scrape it out because it's in our way. But we all know the story. They found a mouse inside the hive. They couldn't get the mouse out of the hive, and therefore they propolized it and created a mummy mouse. I've never seen one of those propolized mummy mice, but I do understand that the bees are trying to protect themselves from a decaying animal. It's going to stink and result in germs and bad bacteria.

And so the propolis buildup and refreshing of the propolis encapsulates it. So I'd say rather than counting on the alcohol to do its thing, which basically helps make the propolis fluid so that you can do things with it, the bees propolizing areas are much more effective. but and there were in fact several different things that you couldn't count on it destroying even chalkbrood for example was not defeated by alcohol and propolis so there are a number of things but it can't hurt to spread propolis on the inside of a box so that's the other thing does it hurt anything to do it no does it help the bees think it smells like home probably after the alcohol is

evaporated away, it is. So that's it. Where are we at? Am I missing stuff? For instance, I'm in Virginia and in a pollen dearth. Here my other hives do have brood. Okay. We're pollen fat right here in Pennsylvania, just saying. Here's Jenna Baker says, you are the best. Use my instant vape for the first time in a long time, in a long hive. I have a screen bottom board and I drill the hole in the end where you insert. Where do you insert the tip? Thank you. Okay, so I always drill that quarter inch hole in the back side of the hive opposite the entrance off to the side so it's not in the center of the brood.

And the bees will fan it through the entire hive. If you've got screened bottom boards, make sure the inserts are theirs that they're closed off. That's about it. and it works really well. And that instant vape is great. I'm holding out for Mike's B's. I hope they get that extended release sponge for exhalic acid.

They're held up with the EPA or something. Let's see. What are your thoughts on, this is from Sonda 47. What are your thoughts on placing your hive in a greenhouse with an entrance directly to the outside, similar to your observation eye.

That question comes up so often. Here's the problem with greenhouses. And it is a problem. There are mason bees and there are bumble bees and things like that that people are trying to use inside greenhouses because they don't have the numbers that honeybees do. The concern I have with a honeybee hive inside a greenhouse,

even though you've got an open window somewhere for them to go in and out, honeybees fly towards light. So they'll be up against the windows, they'll be up against the translucent panel, in the ceiling, they may have a tough time figuring it out. So I'm not personally a huge fan of putting a beehive honeybees inside a greenhouse. And a single greenhouse isn't even going to begin to provide the resources that the bees need. That's a huge challenge. There's a lot to work out.

So Jimmy's neighborhood, Bees is here. Hey, Jimmy, fellow veteran, United States Navy, he's a boiler technician. So good to see people here. Anyway, here's a fun question. Ever seen any data on earthquakes affecting queen cells? Graph Tuesday, earthquake late Friday, six. Putting cells in this week and 50 percent of it dropped off the royal jelly. An earthquake means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I, you know, the only time I was ever in an earthquake, just felt like everything turned into rubber. I don't know how much. jarring that would do, but it's not good to shake around your queen cells. But I don't know, were things banging and falling off? I can't even speculate. So you're actually in a better

position to decide that, but I would say don't shake your queen cells around if you can avoid it. Maybe you should have put them in some kind of suspension system so it would absorb all shock and vibration. It's too late for that. But if somebody lived in a high earthquake area, you might want to have your queen cells in some kind of suspension so they don't get shocked. Keith Spellman says, does a virgin queen get out to do mating flights without causing a swarm? Yes. How does a virgin queen get out to do mating flights without causing a swarm? Well, first of all, she's sneaky.

She's zipping out at a time when they don't expect her to. She's not telling everyone that she's leaving. She doesn't tell the rest of the colony that she's going to zip out and meet up with some guys at a local drunk congregation area. She just zips out and goes. Keep in mind, she fooled them too. She probably did a couple of orientation flights first, where she said, going out, stayed in the yard, came back in, everybody relaxed and decided that she wouldn't really take off.

And then when she did, she can fly farther and faster than the workers. So there's nothing they could do about it. And then she just came back, made it. And that benefited everyone. So it doesn't cause a swarm because the indicators are very different. The bees themselves are the ones that decide when it's time to swarm. the queen does not. So if the queen scooted out

and even fell on the ground, it wouldn't cause the swarm because they wouldn't understand other than that now they're queenless because the queen mandibular pheromone is no longer present. So then they would start looking around for her. But when a queen flies out to mate,

there's no swarm because all the other triggers for the swarm are absent. That's the short answer. So DC's bees, Fred, have you tried an Nell hive. I think that's those plastic hives and I have not. Nothing to go on yet with that. Go back there and see my question please. Oh, here we go. Francis Moore. What is the question that I missed? I miss you. My questions have two hives, no brood. Give them pollen patties. Will they start laying?

So here's the thing. If two hives, no brood, give them pollen patties, will they start laying? pollen patties are supposed to do that, but your bees are responding to what is in the environment. So rather than pollen patties in the hive, personally, this personal opinion, if I wanted them to boost brood and to fool them into thinking they're going out and finding it, I would much rather set up dry pollen substitute somewhere outside of the hive, let the foragers find it, let them bring it back to the hive and then as far as the nurse bees inside the hive know they're bringing it in from the environment and the environment is going to support brooding up so i much prefer having them go out pollen paddies inside the hive when you have a specific targeted hive pollen patties are expensive so let's just start there limited shelf life so we'll do that too um and uh i think because

if there's nectar or if you can provide sugar syrup or something like that. AP 23, dry pollen substitute is demonstrated to perform extremely well as a gap filler like that. So I much prefer to let the bees go out, find it, bring it back because then, as I just said, you get any of the top three, AP 23, mega bee or ultra B for Mann Lake is in third place. But anything would be better than nothing. And remember, just trying to subsist, I wouldn't expect them to explode or really build. So moving on, to do for the second year running, I had a swarm, move into an empty hive. I left in my apiary.

Thank you again for that tip. Yes, that's Ian in the UK. Leaving your, this is played out, all the hives got full. Every dead out was filled with bees. Here's the thing. I don't put up swarm traps anymore. you know, I like to catch bivouacked swarms on trees and branches and black hats, of course. So here's the thing.

Because years ago, we had perfect swarms, which are self-installing swarms. And all we did was clean out of dead out, pack it down to a single deep box, and make sure there's no dead bees in there. And no conditions inside that hive that would deter new residents. and I mean to tell you, get every dead bee off the bottom, out of the frames, out of the comb, and make that smell as fresh and appealing as possible, and you'll see scouts checking it out. Now, that does not mean leaving honey in there. Don't leave a bunch of old pollen in there. So those are examples of things you want to pull out.

And then keep the old brood comb front and center right in the middle there, and they get occupied. And then also, think of it this way. Once they're there, you don't have to move the hive anymore, so we don't have to worry about that stuff. And let's say you did go out and you collected a swarm somewhere. So that box is ready to go. How many of you get a call for swarms and you're running around throwing together a bunch of equipment

so you can go get it? Clean up your deadouts, have them ready to go. And whether you're installing a swarm over swarm wants to install itself because your hives are just that good and your apiary is just that appealing, then why not do that? And I get that reinforced time and again. Statistically, we know that running swarm traps, 12 feet up a tree, 150 yards from your apiary is a good setup.

But your apiary, if it's established and bees are checking it out anyway, the chances of you getting a self-hiving swarm are very high. So there we go. And thanks for that feedback, by the way. I'm really glad. All right. This is Jobi Baker. Let's see.

I'm on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. I'm spending quite a bit of time away from home. So my beekeeping style has had to adapt. I'm not interested in harvesting tons of honey. I want the bees to be healthy and happy. I bought my first nuke in 2020. And all my bees today are descendants. of the first colony.

I currently have five healthy hives. My dilemma is I'll be out of the country from July to November. My concern is creating mite bombs. So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your approach with exhalic acid treatments. So, by the way, these extended release treatments are high on my list. And as I mentioned already today, because you're going to leave the area if the only concern is whether or not you're going to have a mite farm where you raise a whole bunch of mites and you just disperse all over the place. I would say just do your best to get your mites under

control before you go. Exxalic acid vaporization series are good. There's the new, which may not be available in British Columbia, but the RTU, the ready to use dribble is having a high efficacy and that's at four grams. And the new dose for exhalic acid vapor is also. also four grams per box. Follow the label. I'm always going to say that because who knows, when this is being looked at, the rules could change. So always follow the label,

but I would look for some kind of extended release. Might decide. You could also do Formic Pro if you wanted to spend the bucks on it. Because that stuff, because here's the thing, you're not going to be able to come back and get it and remove it. So speaking to the people from Nod, which stands for nature's own design, I had an interview and I talked about what happens if you just leave your formic pro

pads in the hive and you don't get in there to take it out nothing it just decays down to background so the bees really can't remove it themselves so that's a hindrance to the bees but it's not going to negatively impact them so if you wanted to leave something like that in your highs the week that you're leaving for example assuming the temperatures and I think it would be given where you're located, but make sure it's not going to get too hot, particularly in the first 72 hours because it's highly volatile at first, but then you can just leave it there and it would continue, of course, to kill pheromites for a while, and then you've knocked them way down. So when you talk to the endomologists that deal specifically in miticides

and really enforce those organic treatments like Formic Pro. Formic Pro seems to lead the pack when it comes to what to put in there. Now, on the flip side of that, if Mike's B's, Easy OX, if those guys would finally get the clean slate that they need or the path or the approval or whatever it is, those new sponges with the holes in them, you could look at the interview that I did with them for the North American Honeybee Expo back in January,

EasyOx, Mike's, Bees, extended release sponges. That's what I would put in there because that's designed to go like, 60 days or something. So I'll stop on my head. You have to follow the label. But I'm saying those would be dropped in. And you've got a very effective,

long-term extended release, exceolic acid that will kill varodistractor mites. So they're just waiting for approval. They're held up. So I think it's going to come out at the end of the year, according to them. But that would be my number one choice. So, and I can't tell you,

I don't know what's legal where you are. So I would look hard at extended release potentials. So for the exhalic acid. See if anybody else has anything here. And there it is. Okay, so the next question comes from Mark and Cynthia here. It says, we have had a drought here in southwestern Virginia. The bees have struggled a little with their nectar foraging.

And I have picked up, but have picked up lately. So we are forecasted for seven straight days of rain this coming week. PA for the rain, but I'm concerned that the nectar already brought in will be consumed during this time. If I feed them some sugar syrup, will they preferentially consume the syrup immediately overeating stored nectar? So here's the thing. Yes, here's what goes on. And I know this just because of the observation hides that we have and we see it all the time frequently. I mean, not all the time. But they bring in a bunch of nectar. Things get heavy. And, all the cells seem full.

But keep in mind that they occupy twice the real estate when the nectar is new, because it does a high water content. And as I mentioned in the opening today, we're at 50% relative humidity, so it's easier for them to try it out right now. But it can look like they're consuming it when actually they're consolidating and condensing it. So they're dehydrating it. And the bees do go for whatever is open and available first. then, like if they've got capped honey in there, that's the last thing they're going to touch.

So if there's an extended period of rain ahead or something like that, I highly recommend light syrup. So that's one to one, sometimes even thinner out than that. Because then the bees will consume that first. And it goes to ready consumption, so they use it. Now, if you have honey supers on, what do you think I have to say? I have to say, don't put any sugar syrup on any. colony that has honey supers on. Even though I understand that they will consume the honey for their daily use, for their

metabolic rate that they need to have their carbs going because they have to keep the brood warm and everything else, the chances of it being stored are low, however, there's chances that's going to be in there. So it's up to you. You know, what risks you want to take, but open or unfinished nectar honey gets used first. So if you put something on there and it's a light syrup, then they would consume that rather than try to store it. That's all I have to say. Okay.

So next thing comes from Chris here. Chris 6884, Chris O. This was my first spring with bees here in western New York, was caught completely off guard by how early the swarming started. Was this an early swarm season in this area based on your experience? It's not that it was an early swarm season, but let's be honest, we're all caught off guard and here's why. But crappy weather, cold weather, terrible weather, rainy weather, and nobody wanted to work their bees.

And the bees didn't want you to work in them while we're at it because bees do not like you to open up the hive. So it seemed like they surprised us. So here's what happened. This is just my take on it. Okay. So the bees are all in there. They're dying to go.

they want to swarm, but they can't because they're not going to go out in the rainy cold weather, unless they listen to our weatherman and don't know that the rain's coming. Anyway, they don't like to fly out. So what happens? This is why I always say, if it's warm after a storm, expect a swarm. So what happened was they're all penned up. They're ready to go and they can't. And the minute the weather broke, they swarmed multiple swarms.

People that are signed on to be swarmed.org. And I recommend everyone listening, sign on to them. E-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-D dot-O-R-G. We got alerts on our phones. I'm dealing with three swarms, and I get alerts from B-S-Wormed.org. So, of course, I pass on everything. So it feels like a sudden swarm year for everybody,

like there were swarm-year than normal. And I think what happened was it was the concentration of the number of swarms when they happened. It was all packed into the first clear, warm day that it could happen. And then everyone just thought, this is such a huge swarm year. And the thing of it is, I think normally when weather is nice and we don't get these blocks of bad weather,

the swarms just kind of trickle out whenever they're ready to go between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., the highest swarm potential times of the day. And we don't notice it often. But if you just happen to be around, and it's the only opportunity to go out and work your hives, and you go to the B yard and swarms are remitting, and while you're catching this swarm, and other ones going over there,

I would say a lot of my colonies swarmed this year, so it felt like it was just out of control. And sometimes, and I don't know why they do it, but of course there are new queens coming in behind them. They have to get rid of their existing queen. So sometimes they'll swarm out with a storm incoming. And that's what happened. That's why we were doing those pro-nuke plastic things,

putting them out because it's better than nothing, putting them on the ground, collecting swarms off the ground. They definitely flew out into bad weather. They weren't going anywhere, and they could have even, they would have just died on the trees because high winds,

cold temperatures, and rain really wiped their numbers out. If you didn't house them or hive them up, they were definitely doomed. Swarms on their own have a very low survival chance anyway. And if somebody listening or watching now wants to know how to find out

if the environment that you're living in will even support feral colonies of bees. You can go to B-S-C-A-P-E-E-S-A-P-E-S-A-P-E-S-U. So that's run by Penn State University. And one of the things you evaluate, other than the pesticide load in your area through agriculture, they kind of let you know from satellite shots what kind of habitat there is where you live

that would support swarms. feral colonies in trees, which is being much reduced where I live, by the way, because they're harvesting all the lumber. All right. What else do we have? We're here. We love guard. How early swarming came.

So, yeah, I don't think it was early necessarily. I think that the bees also did remarkably well, considering the winter that we had that was heavy and cold and snow was deep, the winds were high, and we thought that the bees were going to have trouble. They actually came out much stronger than ever. Overall. So this is Outdoor with Dean. What do you think about AZ hives? So AZ hives, I like them. I'm not going to lie. If somebody would just offer me a building with a wall of beehives in it, I would be all over that. Oh, somebody said, please repeat the URL. I don't know for which one it is, but if it's for B-swarmed, it's B-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-D.

That's where you register to collect swarms and get notified when one's available. And the other is for understanding your environment and whether you have a girth and if there's pesticide loads and if the environment can support bees, That is B-Scape, B-E-E-S-A-P-E-S-U. P-S-U dot E-D-U. Okay. So the A-Z-Hives. I like hives in buildings. This is different from greenhouses.

I have a plan, but I have a restricted. I'm too close to my property line, apparently. And I want a row barn. The long wall faces south, a knee wall. Beehive entrances coming through the knee wall. But I like the concept of having beehives inside a building because look at all the benefits. There's another company that was at the North American HoneyVee Expo,

which I did not interview this last January, which I had. They were just so busy, everybody was interested. They were called APAVIR, API-V-E-R-T-E. And they're from Canada. And so they have like the A-Z-Hive setup, up, but it's with the Langstroth-sized boxes and frames. But same principle. Look it up, see what they're like. You don't even have to paint your hive boxes. Think about it. Inside a building, they're not

exposed the elements. You don't have to worry about bears. You know how many people were hit by bears this year? A lot. We had a big old bear come through here. It didn't get any of my stuff, but they are, when you have your bees in a building, there's so much you don't have to worry about. Think about this. It's lightly raining outside, and you have to inspect your hives or you need to pull honey or something. Inside a building, the entrance goes outside. The hives inside, you can do all the stuff you need to do. Heavy winds, you're not going to go out and have a hive blown over.

I think I can make a really strong case for why AZ hives are awesome. Any hive bank system that's in a building with just the entrances facing south would be sweet. Just think of the big windows that you would have in there. Now remember I said in a greenhouse, the bees will fly to the windows and they get kind of trapped in there. But see, this is your bee building. This is a hive building. It's designed just for those bees. So you open up inside.

Let's see some bees fly out inside and they're zipping around. You turn off all the lights and your only windows are at the top and their hopper style windows. So the window angles out. The bees fly up. They're on it. You angle the window, opens up. Out they go. Close the window again.

so easy. The problem is expense. If you're not handy, if you can't build things yourself, these hives, these buildings run into a lot of money. I'm just fortunate enough that I can build things myself. I built the house. I'm sitting in right now. So I want to build one. It won't necessarily be specifically the A-Z, but the principle will be the same. Just sink all your honey processing equipment in the same building where the hives are. Just it's too easy. It's too good. So I like it. What does everybody else think? Okay.

If it's for me, it's all caps. 21st B. 24th B is here. I don't know. Darn, I thought I had one of the frames. Thanks for showing up, everyone that's here, by the way. Let's do, do what's going on here. Oh, guess what we're at here?

We're on the last. I have some studies. going on and I need your help see I don't ask you for anything I just want you to give me your feedback so when you go to my YouTube channel which is of course Frederick done and there's a social area there where I might put statistics or experiments or ask your opinion on something so this is the backyard citizen science that we're hoping to do and what I want you to do and I'm going to give you some feedback also because I have some friends this year that I'm working with.

When you buy frames, let's say the ones that come from 21st B while he's in the house right now, they're covered in beeswax. And the more beeswax that is on the frame, the better the bees draw it out. I was just in a few hives recently, so those frames are doing well. But I also have other frames that are not waxed,

and I need the bees to work them. So I had one of those big cookie cut, you know, it's three inches thick is a big thing of beeswax that I made myself, of course, for rendering the wax. And I just rub it all over these cells and frames. And when I say rub the wax on the plastic, every surface that you can get onto.

So wherever you touch it, it should feel grippy like bees wax. So I rubbed it all over everything. And the bees are interesting because they actually get those bits of bees wax, and they're moving it around and using it wherever they need it. So that got me thinking if we had frames inside the hives that were dipped or rolled or they've been coated in wax that was heated up and coated onto the plastic, as compared to frames that we rub the beeswax all over, which ones are the bees drawing out the most?

So that's a survey that I'm doing. And I want people to, the parameters are listed, so please participate. And I realize that some people never rub beeswax on things, so it doesn't matter to them. So obviously. But people answered right away. Now, I'm always troubled when people answer right away because I want you to do it to see it, make comparisons, same hive, same bees, different wax application process. So rubbed on bees wax was first drawn by the bees. 26% of the people said that's what was happening.

Dipped or melted wax was used first by the drawn and drawn by the bees. 52% of the people that responded said that's what happened. Now another one surprised me. The other category is no difference. Dipped, melted, rubbed on all the same. 17%. Okay. No wax at all on a plastic frame.

4% said their bees used that over. wax that was rubbed on the frames and dipped or coated frames, I find that remarkable. 4% the bees demonstrated a preference for untreated bees. Now, I have had examples of frames inside hides that have no primer on them at all, no beast wax at all. They ultimately do work it, but they have to bring, they have to make the wax themselves,

they have to bring it with them. This is another thing. I'm wondering if I can't think of a carrot grater or something. If we could shave beeswax and somehow have it in little bits and pieces available to your bees where they pick it up and take it over and use it where they need it, if it was really good quality of beeswax rendered at the perfect temperature, which, by the way, for me, I want to keep that below 160 Fahrenheit. Because if you really cook your beeswax, if you really overheat it, it gets kind of brittle.

And it starts to lose the scent that it has, which probably comes from propensity. But if we can keep the rendering temperatures low, you get much more malleable, workable beeswax. Okay. 21stB chat people use code done on our website. Check out for a break. We'll see, there you go. The Frederick Dunn discount that I tell you to ask at every place, 21st B is here in the house right now and says that he has one. Just use what's the code?

used done okay yes so somebody else this is pain ubert i've seen a video of a guy who did a study using rolled wax yes i've seen that too um and that's like this wax i'll just give an example this is that foundation that's really pure that it got from dr leo shirashkin on horizontal hive dot com by the way stuff is really expensive. But I think in that study, you took some of this. If you get a close up of what that looks like, it's all beeswax without pesticides in it. That's one of the things, all beeswax had pesticides in it in kuma fos was the number one culprit there. But they rolled it up. But that's expensive. That's an expensive route to go. I don't want you to use foundation wax has been rendered and made into foundation and just roll it up and give it to your bees.

And that study's been done, but it does demonstrate that your bees will get wax and carry it to other parts of the hive. So I just want feedback. We just want to see what's going on. Maybe it could lead to other studies, other things. We don't know, but I like it. What else we have going here? This is from Glenn Perkins, 6154.

Fred, have you tried? ape of our 2.0 strips. The ampivar strips, once you open them, you got to use them. I haven't used them, so I'm probably not going to give a really strong comment on that. I know in the studies that have been published because the dosing that was approved for those strips is a little low compared to what currently is the accepted dose and the new stuff that's out there. So I've been told, so that's, I'm going to share what others have told me, that it's good at kind of holding your mites where they're at. Probably didn't do a great job of knocking them down. That's hearsay. It should be considered anecdotal. I would do separate research and do some

looks into that, but that's not, it's not personally the thing that I would go after first. I think they are repackaging them now so that if you open the package, you don't have to use them all at once because it runs into a lot of money that way. So packaging specifically for two or three hives at a time would be super helpful. So it's kind of all I can think to say about that.

Okay, this comes from Mitchell. It says, I asked Peggy at Hive Hugger if she offered a Fred done discount and she gave me 11% off. What? I didn't know that Hive Hugger has a Fred done discount. I guess what I get for that? Nothing. Just you, just you get that.

See how generous I am? But that's good feedback. Seriously, though. I'm glad. Have you heard of the Wade Wax method? I've never heard of the Wade Wax method. What is that? I don't even know.

All right. Let's do, I don't know what the Wade, what's the Wade wax? Who's Wade and what is he doing with the wax? Anyway, so moving on here, I want to talk about the plan of the week. And I hope that everyone responds to my beeswax thing. And I know that some people use wax foundation and stuff like that. That's not the question. I'm not trying to be picky, but I'm trying to find out rubbing it on versus dipping or rolling it on to a plastic foundation.

which one are your bees working the most. And I really want you to really put a lot of it on the frame when you're rubbing it on. I don't want it just a couple of passes. I want you to really work it up. And then we'll see. I want it to go a certain way. And it's not. It's going towards the dip stuff.

I have both. I don't have a dog in the fight. I just want to understand. I want it to work. I want to be able to put little bits and pieces of beeswax and a hive have a music. it and have it be great. 21st B says I carry chunks of pure wax and rub it on bare spots as I find them. I make hard cut down splits.

So it happens. I have a dupin wax producing aged bees. Strong hides. Just pull it out fast. Well, yeah, strong hires. Yeah. So true. I mean, not every bee.

That's why these frames have to exist in the same hive. Same bees, same nutrition, same everything. and then I want to see checkerboarded stuff. I want to see how it works. And Lambbrook Farm says the Wade Wax method is rolling up Wax Foundation and placing it on the end. Oh yeah, okay, so we just talked about that. Yes, rolling it.

That sounds expensive to me, though, as I said, rendering your own wax, most of us don't have a wax foundation press roller system. So I personally would not waste that because you can just carve little bits of wax and just make it just malleable and put it in there. Because we all have wax. By the way, we see people inspecting a hive that hasn't been gotten into it for a while, and they're scraping out all the burricom. It makes me borderline stressed when I see them just flipping it in the grass.

That could have been a birthday kid. That could have been a lipstick. Bebomb. Don't throw that stuff away. Scrape it into a bucket. Collect everything. Don't throw your burrcomb away. I don't care if you're in a hurry.

Collect that stuff. It's got proboscis. It's so good. Don't toss it. Don't waste it. We save it. It's really good stuff. Okay, it's planting time here. So you might be wondering what I've planted. My usual. Sunflowers, a lot of different varieties. Sunflower pollen, fantastic, nectar, everything. Cosmos, of course, have a granddaughter. She needs to be able to pick flowers. So I have acres of it. Borge. I planted a lot of borge. year. So we're in the zone right now. So Blue Giant Hissup, by the way, I was practicing guerrilla gardening, which is, if you don't know what it is, you just chucking seeds around, see what happens. So I just threw little seeds of Blue Giant Hissop over my fence. Now,

from where my fence ends in the lower field to the road is almost 100 feet. So this is all ignored area, 100 feet by like 400 feet, something like that. And I was just throwing seeds out there. And then last year we look and there's all this great blue giant hissip out there. So gorilla seeding just chucking things around sometimes just works. So I'm doing more of that. Maricles. I know they're not native. I like them. And there's these African miracles that stand like three feet high, four feet high. And the bees were on them. Even the petals that they're not supposed to pay attention to. So, and I like those because, of course,

is a deterrent for deer and other critters. And I want to thank Malton for the generous donation here today. I do appreciate that. What's up already? Clover. Buckwheat has started. Buckwheat, if you don't know, doesn't look anything like wheat. Look it up.

When buckwheat grows, it'll seed itself and you get a second batch out of it. It creates a very strong, very dark, very flavor-filled honey. You can't beat it. Deer like it, wildlife like it. I'm not here to feed the deer, but the clover's up, buckwheats up. And what I want you to know in the northeastern United States, if you haven't done it already, get your super zone. Super, super, super. It is time.

Put them out there. Do not let your bees run out of space. The nectar flow is hitting right now. And that's it. I will give you 30 seconds. If you have a question, you have to type it in all caps. Otherwise, we're going to wrap up. And I want to thank everyone for coming and participating in the live chat.

For those of you who are watching it later and not understanding when live chats come about, it is the last Friday of every month. I don't do a lot of lives. And last Friday of every month from 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I want to thank everyone for joining me today. And I hope that you're on top of it. We have a weather opening here. It's supposed to rain Monday.

So in a perfect world, you would get your seeds out there and everything's set up Sunday night. And by the way, throwing seeds around at night. Why should you do that instead of daytime? You're being watched. The birds are watching you. So if you go out there in the middle of the afternoon and you're throwing a bunch of sunflower seeds out and then rolling them into the ground, which is what I do, the birds see it and they're on it.

Don't even get me started about a flock of chickens following you around, eating everything you put on the ground. So do it at dusk when the birds aren't watching, and then it has all night, hopefully it rains on it and gets everything going. So thanks again for being here. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. And I wish you the best, you and your bees. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has been the way to be.