The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 359 with Frederick Dunn of The Way To Bee SAFETY ALERT

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

This is the audio track from today's YouTube Video:  https://youtu.be/kwWYVPR8dZU

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, June the 12th of 2006, and this is back here at beekeeping questions and answers episode number 359. I'm Frederick Dunn. This is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here on this excellent Friday, super hot outside. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please go down in the video description, look at all the topics listed in order. there will be some links there today that I hope you'll follow and learn some more and maybe access some gear that you're going to need. So what else? If you want to know how to submit your own topic, your own question, please go to the way to be.org, click on the pagemark contact and fill out the form there and you never know. If you've got a question on your mind, you've got a picture you want to share something weird that you've seen and you don't completely understand it and you want your peers to review it.

You go to the fellowship. Which fellowship? The way to be fellowship on Facebook. So you go there and there you can share your stuff. Get your questions asked, answered. No politics. No advertising. None of the normal jazz. So what else? Let's see. I know you want to know what's going on outside.

Well, it's hot outside. How hot is it? And where is it? Northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part. of the state of Pennsylvania at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 23.3 Celsius. We have a pretty nominal 4.5 mile per hour winds, which is 7.2 kilometers per hour, 71% relative humidity. That's pretty decent because our bees are drying out some nectar and we're going to talk about what the sources are in a minute.

21 mile per hour wind gusts. The gusts have been heavy, which by the way, I know, kilometers per hour, that's 34. We had heavy winds come through here last night, storms, tornadoes. Really strange lightning, by the way. So much lightning that it looked fake. It was like the paparazzi were on the horizon, just flashing away and the countryside was lighting up. And I thought, you know, I would get my camera and go on

get a sweet opening video for that. But then I thought, well, it's going to pass really quick, but it didn't. It kept going and going. So I don't know where you are, but I hope you're safe. the conditions there are obviously different than they are here and uh lots of problems houses are smashed huge trees came down and i just hope that wherever you are things are good because here in pennsylvania they can be challenging but i'll bet you want to know what the best weather day for getting into your bees is going to be in the next seven coming up i'll tell you

saturday will be high pollen but monday is going to be the best day for you to get out and into your hives and here's a reverse part of it usually we're looking for super warm hot clear sunny days to get in there but actually monday's going to be among the coolest days with the least amount of rain promised in the forecast we've had a lot of rain everything is soaking wet you don't even have the time to mow out there so here in pennsylvania and those to the east of me because the weather travels that way mondays your day it's going to be good time to get out there and so if you want to know what the bees are bringing in there right now the linen trees are blooming i have three of them and they're doing really well this year the bloom just started which means it's going to carry out through the rest of june and maybe part of july we don't know

but it's alive with bees heavy nectar resource there on the linen trees which is also called the american basswood tree if you're looking that up finally white clover blooming everywhere but the bees are finding other things so that's good news too if they're not all over your clover and but it's there for them if they did there's also sweet clover which is yellow it looks different okay so if you see your bees let's look at the landing board if you're watching your bees on the landing board and you're looking for bright cheeto colored pollen on their hind legs you'll be missing it this is why a lot of people including my supervisor the 10 year old Quinn he looks and he says there's no pollen so you would think he's been a bee's been a

beekeeper since he was two that's what he says all the time that he would know that it comes in different colors and some of it is almost white off white tan tan brown and almost matches the color of the hind legs of the bees so he's missing it but clover produces tan colored pollen so keep an eye out for that the other thing you can hear them on the raspberries so raspberries and blackberries the bees are all over them right now and so they get a pale pollen from that also and they're getting plenty of nectar so this is the time the bees are all over the place and I know what you're wondering I'm gonna put a video up here and you can watch it for the rest of my talk there are several landing boards shown there so you can see what the bees are doing and by the way keep in mind that it was during kind of stormy clammy near sunset so the bees activity is way down but what I want you to notice when you look at these bees

in the corner is that it's most of the guard bees guarding things they're a little on edge they're a little angsty so your bees are moving out on the landing board some are bearding because of course they're drying out inside the hive and it's not because the hive needs to be expanded because we've kept ahead of that I hope you have two that you've supered your hives or added frames if you have a horizontal hive and we can stay ahead of this nectar flow they need the room and the bees also need to be moved out of the way so that the workers inside the hive can vent and fan things so you'll also see a bunch of bees one behind the other drafting off of one another moving the air through the hive

and out again so that's really interesting and at the very end of the sequence you will see hive number 44 and they are going gangbusters in fact i might have to take apart hive number 44 and put them if you don't know already they're just five frames over five frames it's a small hive it's nucleus hives stacked on top of each other and so I might be putting out a full-size Lange Stroth hive for them and just transferring them into it and if the weather will cooperate I'll make a video of that and show it to you no promises because every time I say I'm going to do something events come along that make it so I can't do it and we have something

very important to talk about today it's critical telling you not kidding Very serious. And by the way, this is a low year for skunks. Normally we have skunks trying to raid my beehies. Now I don't know if I just landed at the right height overall. If you notice, some of you have a lot of rain where you are and those of you who sit your hives right on the ground or regretting it. Because we don't want our hives right on the ground, not just because of the damp and the rain and the access by all the little critters that run along the grass, but you want it up and away from skunks. Now you may not have skunks where you live. We have them where I live. But this year they're not making much of an appearance.

So we know that 18 inches, 17 and a half to 18 inches off the ground, push your landing boards right out of skunk reach. And it's hell true. So all these years we've messed with skunks. And now, no skunk. They passed early on. Nothing's happening there. Squirrels, by the way, don't bother your beehives. They bother each other. They bother the songbirds. particularly the little red squirrels. They actually raid bird nests.

Did you know that? Don't kill the baby birds. They drive other squirrels out. So I know you don't care. You're here for the bees. So let's see what else? No skunks. On and on.

So let's get right into the very first topic, which is very, very important. I can't stress this enough. Because we're getting into the time of year. Any time of year is a good year to murder mites. We'll kill them. I don't mean murder them. Let's remove them.

from the hive. Let's get those parasites out of there. They're detrimental to your bees. So I got this question from Willie and it says, hey Fred, are you able to make a recommendation for a mask and eye protection when using OA vaporization? I seem to recall, this is the critical part, that you got some in your eyes. I also heard that the full face masks fog up. Thanks, Willie. Okay, so here's the thing. And I've been doing this for a long time. of course and when exhalic acid first came out and was approved that's key by the way use things that are approved please so the very first exhalic acid that came out that was approved is this stuff right here in this pack apia bioxal and so uh better be launched it along with some other people

they did the research they got it pass and approved after that it's important because I'm going to tie in with what I'm going to say here. The other exhalic acid, Easyox. This is from Mike's B's. So EasyOx, manufactured by Mike's B's in Cambridge, Ohio. So that's the other approved exhalic acid source for you. And they sell them in pellet form, and they sell the powders. Betterby also came out with exhalic acid that was in,

it's considered an RTU, which stands for ready to use and it's from BetterB and you don't have to mix anything up so it becomes a very safe this is key it's a safe way to use exhalic acid and I talk to people all the time about what they use what they recommend why they don't do anything in this regard

you know as far as safety equipment and stuff like that some people will not use at all exhalic acid vaporization why not because they're afraid of the safety issues associated with that. And often people get pretty relaxed about it. I'm not going to be one of them. I always tell you to fail safe, and that's what I'm going to do for you right now.

You have to follow the label. Well, I know I can say that, and then you're like, I don't have to do anything, and you don't. But I'm going to recommend highly that you follow the label. If you want to be legal, if you want to do the right thing. But when it comes to safety, Exalic acid vapor is no joke. And just as Willie said here,

I got some in my eyes and I'm wearing glasses. I wear regular glasses. So I thought that would be good enough because I need to read labels and stuff. I need to see the details. I need to see the numbers. So I wore my glasses and a veil when doing exhalic acid and then wearing this on my face.

So it's a respirator. While we're mentioning the respirator, this is not just like a dust mask this has to be suited for organic acids particulates and gas so I'm going to put a link down in the video description to exactly what this is and exactly what these are so that you will know that you're using the right filter when you put this on and I'm in Pennsylvania I realize it's not as hot as it is in other places but you put this on your face this is better than the full mask so for those you who have seen the full face mask super annoying

nobody wants to wear this on a hot day and as willie said they frequently fog up mine does not fog up so i don't know what's going on with the one that willie got because when you inhale it comes in through the filters when you exhale it comes out through this right here so the inhale that air is supposed to blow across the lens and keep it fog-free there is something called defog so if you have ever been a diver or a snorkeler or anybody that wears goggles like swim goggles there are defogged sprays and stuff that you can use and if you want to be super cheap about it you can just smear it with toothpaste and rub that clean wash it off and it'll stay fog-free pretty darn good and just

don't store it in a cold container that's the other thing if you're keeping it cold you bring it out you put it on it's warm outside it's going to fog on the inside so there you go this is my least favorite but i do wear it sometimes can't wear your glasses in there and then so when you put this on which is just the part that covers your mouth and nose respiratory system eye protection is very important now these are not just safety goggles these are sealed safety goggles so they've got that seal that silicon all around the edges there should not be airflow coming through around your eyes now i'm over overdoing it well when I got a little puff of acylic acid vapor the reason that you

can see it is because there's tiny little crystals that are airborne it's sublimated and those little crystals if you could see them under magnification they are pretty angry looking and whenever they contact a moist surface this is key so when they contact a moist surface like the surface of your eye it can start to feel like and it felt like for me little micro granules of sand it was gritty on my eyes and I realized right away holy crap that's accelic acid so I want to talk to you about is severe chemical conjunctivitis and I want this to embed itself in your mind because now me because I'm sharing with you about

solid acid. I always tell you the label is the law. Please follow the label. And also because I am not going to take a chance of giving you the incorrect information and tell you to stand up wind, turn on a fan to blow it away, or all these other workarounds that people like to do. I'm not going to say that because I'm not going to be the one that gave you advice that ended up with an eye injury. So you can get severe chemical conjunctiveitis. It's the immediate result of vapor contact. It's intense burning redness swelling of the conjunctiva, which is the membrane covering the white part of the eye. And here's the part that I was experiencing the last time. Corneal epithelial burns.

The acid can physically burn away the top layer of the cornea. Beekeepers who have been caught in a vapor cloud without goggles. So your regular glasses don't count. Just let me drive that home. They frequently report a sand in the eyes sensation that lasts for days. That's exactly what I felt. Sand in the eyes, which is a typical sign of corneal ulceration or micro abrasions. So it had no lasting effect on me.

You also might consider if you like to have a first aid kit around, and we do around here because the grand monkeys always seem to need first aid for some reason. But you need a same. solution, an eyewash saline solution. As an immediate thing so you can go and get help if you get it in your eyes. Because look at it this way. Not all these exhalic acid vaporizer systems are the same. And some of them have a closed system.

In other words, you put a cap on it and then it sublimates and drives this vapor out through a tube. Sometimes there's blowback. So if it cools down too much or crystal builds up, builds up inside that delivery tube you can get a blowback where the top blows off of your and i won't name a specific one but there are a couple that are associated with this kind of blowout where the top pops off because it's solidified in the delivery tube and then what it can blow the particulates right on your face right in your eyes that has nothing to do with the wind there was nothing you could do

for that and where are you when that happens usually you've just put it on you're getting down like this to put it in there goes poof and it blows back and hits you in the face have there been medical emergencies related to this yes there have so irreversible corneal opacity or clouding in high concentration exposure such as a vaporizer malfunctioning or blowing back directly into the beekeeper's face the corrosive nature of the acid can cause deep corneal injury and this can result in scarring and permissible vision impairment now I've said what I'm supposed to so I'm sharing with you safety is very important now the next thing that I notice that some people don't want to wear gloves you need to please wear rubber gloves plastic gloves

nitrile gloves and not the thin ones there are some nice nitral gloves with long cuffs that are pretty darn thick that hold up if you're pulling on your nitrile gloves and they tear when you're pulling them on that's too thin and you might be thinking I have stuck my hand in that stuff a hundred times and nothing happens that's true while your hands are dry then you go like this oh man my tired or you're rubbing your eyes and you get it around your mouth and the critical area is of course mouth and nose but now you've put some residue on the eye potentially and delivered acylic acid to a moist surface that's where

you get into trouble. Please follow the safety guidelines. So I put a list of these components together and I will list them all. The best protection overall of course is the full face mask. So if you can wear this test fit it, cover this up, breathe it in. Those that have been in the Navy would remember the OBA, the oxygen breathing apparatus that everybody had to wear. I didn't like those either, but that delivered straight oxygen. Anyway, test fit it. Suck it so that when you're breathing in it should pull up against your face and stay there. I realize that this isn't a high risk environment,

but if you are a backyard beekeeper that wants to use this, remember it's the elective, we're deciding to use it. There are options. And so what are the options while we're talking about that? The RTU, the ready to use stuff, because that doesn't go into the air at all. How about the dribble method? All the different manufacturers of these exhalic acid,

sources list the different requirements for delivery. So in other words, if it's not listed as a delivery system, because that's the next thing. People like to innovate. They like to try stuff out. They want to deliver the exhalic acid with a bunch of other creative ways. If it's not listed with the product as an approved method for delivering this might decide. Remember that it also involves personal safety so try not to experiment and spread out into other delivery systems but so the dribble is approved there is a drench that's approved also for packages and those will be also on the labels and one of the best websites to go to to have all of this explained to you including the recipes or the formula for it is to go to betterp.com and look at the different exhalic acid

delivery methods and they'll have exactly what the mixing ratios are for you to make your own exhalic acid dribble. And you might be wondering how does that work? Well, you're going to follow the label, but you're going to be squirting it. I believe it's 50, 50 milliliters total dose, and you run five per seam full of bees. I talked about this. We interviewed Dr. David Peck and we went over it in great detail. So always follow the label. And the reason I say that is because if you watch this year's down the road,

you can still look at the label and find out what the current requirements are and that the dribble is still good to go. And also temperature parameters and things like that, whatever might be required. So kicking it off, I wanted to hit that first in case somebody bails out early. At least you'll have heard the safety guidelines. Full eye protection, full respiratory protection, hand protection. No cross-contamination. It's an organic acid, considered pretty darn safe.

and it's in all your foods and stuff and this is where people start to relax about it. But if you felt what I felt, when you get that on your eye, you will not want that. So, next question comes from Walt, Maysville, North Carolina. I have a question for you on forager-aged bees.

Do they only forage on one plant species during that stage of their life? Or do they forage on multiple types of plants? Thank you for your time. Walt. Leo. Okay, so when bees are foraging, by the way, it depends on what they're foraging for for, but when we're talking about plants, we're talking about two things, nectar and or pollen. So when they go out, the foragers, these are usually the last two weeks of honeybees' six-week life.

That's an average. Some of them may go longer. Some of them may get stuck in the, they just like guarding the hive so well, they stabor on the landing board as guards, others get stuck in the undertaker loop and they just keep undertaking because that's just what they have a propensity to do and they like to do it so overall the last two weeks of a six-week forager's life when they go outside and they hunt their floral constant this is what makes them a very good pollinator and floral constancy means that when they go to let's take dandelions for example they will only go to dandy lines during that flight now a day later or a couple of days later could the source shift when they're talking about bollin and nectar and could they go then to something else they could but often given their short lifespan they often kind of become a specialist for the plants that they're after

and other foragers go after the next line that's coming in that would be for your bees so but on the flight that's what we know for sure on one flight that they are floral constant and will stick with one plant species so if you see them on dandelions and right next to the dandelion there's a whole bunch of white clover full of nectar they won't go to that they won't jump from a dandy line to that and then go back so they will say only on dandy lions that's why when you have a planting a resource for your bees whether it's pollen or nectar or both like for example milkweed is about to bloom that's going to be just nectar for the bees no pollen they get pollen on them and they serve as milkweed pollinators, but they're only getting nectar that they're bringing back to the hive that benefits the colony.

So once they start on that, they stay on that. One of the things that bees don't shift around about, that doesn't have to do with plants, but it has to do with water. So the bees have become water specialists that go just after water. They don't go after nectar and water at the same time, because you could imagine if they're going after nectar, nectar but then they stop off to fill their crop with water. It just diluted the potential value of the nectar that they gathered. So there are water bees and there are nectar gatherers. Now so are there

water specialists? That's something I want to talk about. So once a forager that forages for water goes out, finds a source that's constant and they'll visit that same source over and over. And not only that, they revisit a small area. at the pond, in this case it's a pond because we have an earth pond, that the bees go to and the same bees return to the same little spot over and over again so long as water is predictably there. And so they don't like scoot off to other spots, other locations. This is why a consistent freshwater source for your bees is critical. So once they do water, they don't do nectar. That's interesting too. And it doesn't have anything to do with the age of it. So it's not like a nectar forager or pollen forager gets older and then retires to water duty. It's at any age they can become a water bee and that's pretty much it. Those that mark the bees and

watch what they do where they go and what they collect they've determined that water bees don't do nectar anymore. Now does that mean later on if you are feeding inside the hive let's say dearth is coming for a lot of you so people have a July in early August dearth period if you put sugar syrup on the hive this is interesting to me which bees are getting the sugar syrup in other words are they foraging inside the hive because when bees are returning as scouts as foragers when they come back with a resource if it's pollen they deposit that resource directly into the cell in the hive usually in or near the brood frame

okay so they pack that pollen right adjacent to brood because that's easiest for the nurse bees to turn it into be bred and then of course consume it themselves and then feed the resources that your brood need so badly right there super convenient when the nectar comes in the forages to gather the nectar and sometimes it's pollen and nectar together when they get into the hive with that they do not deposit the nectar in the cells they have to transfer it to another bee that has never been outside and I call those storekeeper bees storekeeper bees are responsible for moving resources around inside the hive and so they take the nectar from the crop and the bee delivers it to them and then the bee can fly back out and get

right back to foraging it's pretty darn efficient because then the nectar transfer storekeeper bee concentrates that nectar into a very specific area so they work areas up together while others are fanning and drying it down. It's really interesting. So when you're feeding inside the hive, what you get are those nectar transfer, the storekeeper bees that are inside the hive. They're the ones that are going after your drinker, your sugar syrup feeder or something like that. And then they're distributing that resource to bees that are working inside the hive, doing fanning or warming and things like that. So let's say, let's say it's in the 70s outside seems hot to us let's say it hits 80 that seems hot to us too

are they still warming things inside the hive they are so just the presence of the bees of course generates warmth inside the hive but they need 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit over the brood and that includes capped brood so there are workers that are in there warming and fanning and there are sometimes cooling bees also that's where the water bees all of a sudden kick in let's say it gets too hot let's say it's at 97 degrees Fahrenheit now we're in jeopardy this explains also why the brood is so near the entrance they have the most control over airflow humidity and warmth near the entrance so they use bee bodies they plug things up they get in the way of things they put a lot of bodies over the brood if it's getting really cold

And then when it's a nice hot day, you'll see fewer bees over the brood, and then bees fanning across the surface, and the water bees painting water over the surface of the brood so that they can cool the brood through evaporation, but also it maintains the humidity. And I want to hit on the humidity part because, and this is something years ago, someone said to me, yeah, we live in the desert southwest, and we don't vent our hives because then it's an issue for the bees. And I just thought of all the places to vent a hive, you would think, desert southwest, New Mexico, for example.

But if it's too dry, if it's very low humidity there, the bees need about 65% relative humidity inside the hive, optimum, especially if there's open brood. You don't want to desiccate it. You don't want to dry it out. so when we add venting in a low humidity environment the bees have to turn on extra duty to try to keep the humidity inside the hive that people in arid areas are vending off so it works against the bees it sounds counterintuitive but once you start to think about it maintaining that humidity then leaves them with only venting as they need to but if you actively vent the hive for them then the bees are challenged now to keep up with you. So remember, 94 to 97, 65% relative humidity.

So it's very important. But all these duties, these jobs inside the hive are pretty darn critical and foragers are floral constant. Bumblebeats, for example, can jump on everything. And they can vibrate plants and shake the pollen out of them and stuff like that. Watch confrhy sometimes. It's a lot of fun. You can hear the bumble bees, bees vibrating it and then some of the carpenter bees show up and they chew into the side of the flower because they're lazy quick access to the nectaries and then who's exploiting that because

the honey bees can't get in there and their tongues aren't long enough to get into the flowers on confrory and get the nectar but once the carpenter bees have chewed into the side the honey bees zip right in there and exploit that opening and now they can get the nectar too so they're working in concert with each other. See how it works? So the next question comes from Jobi. Baker Studio Music says. So I hope you're well. Thank you so much for suggesting slow release exhalic acid treatments.

Okay, that's coming. Slow release exhalic acid. I can't wait. There was a case of American foul brood relatively close to me a few weeks ago, and I'm almost 3.5 kilometers from the local landfill. I'm under the understanding that there can be minute traces of AFB in commercial honey. In the case of a dearth, bees can get into a landfill and find honey jars and some leftover honey in them and pick up AFB. What are your thoughts on this?

Okay, so my thoughts on this are because this is a kind of question, people worry. You can watch an AI video about beekeeping, let's just say. and I listened to one recently where they said bees forage six miles and they acted like they forage six miles in other words they go that distance no matter what and so more realistically is two to three miles and that's only if they don't get what they need right nearby so this plays into what resources do you have for your bees are ready now the idea that they could be going somewhere that we don't know about and there's often on social media people will post a video with pink honey or purple honey or something like that and only to find out there's a Kool-Aid factory nearby or

something like that because there's also sugar in the powder and the bees get into anything that's sweet because they're just sugar fiends actually and so once they find a resource of sugar they just go after it they don't know what it's colored by what's in it and honey in a landfill if there were some your bees potentially could get into that. Landfills don't leave it exposed for very long I would hope not. So I don't think it's a great place for your honeybees to go and if they went there it would be because they didn't find anything between you and that location that was worth their time. So the part of it is what could you do about it? That's that's really the bottom line. What can you do about what's out there that your

bees could be getting into almost nothing really other than to monitor the health of your hives and do what's already described here by Joby. Look at the brood, make sure things are healthy. Because often there are very fine trace amounts of American foul brood and European foul brood in your hives in the honey. And it may not show any symptoms. So they refer to that as asymptomatic. So the honeybees have it.

It's there. But it's not at a level that shows up. and impacts the brood. So it is of course a disease of the brood. And if you start to see anything off, your brood doesn't look pearly white. It starts to look tan or orangy or yellowish. It kind of takes on a jaundiced look it starts to look greasy. Your capping sink in. They look dark and greasy too. And then you go on and you do the rope test and things like that. Whether or not they gathered that from honey that was store-bought somewhere and I don't know what the percentages of American Foulbrood are but there are scientists who will say that on some level American Foulbrew is

present in all store-bought honey which I think is really interesting but what can you do about it you can make sure that your bees are healthy and not compromise as much as possible one of the ways that we reduce viral loads and things that impact our bees we think about no zima so there's no zes Aebus and Nozima Serrani, Serrani is what they're looking at now. And these are all things that have a cumulative effect on your bees' overall health. So one of the things that we know about when we don't have honey soupers on, if we're using a hive alive syrup or fondant, for example, in the wintertime,

that it's having an impact on the nozema in the mid gut of your bees, which affects their overall health and well-being. overall vigor. So that's one thing. The other thing is that we have some control over the varroa destructor mites, which we're going to talk about a little bit today too. But the varo destructor mites are carrying pathogens, diseases that impact your bees, impact their health. They're feeding on adult bees. They're feeding on bees that are developing in their pupa state as well. So they're delivering these diseases. They're vectoring those diseases. The whole time they're living in your hive. So if there was something that you wanted to do something about,

it would be the Varroa destructor mite. Let's knock them flat every chance we get. Now we can do that through integrated pest management. You can do that through selecting bees that demonstrate that they are Varroa sensitive, that they bite them, groom them, chew them, eat their feet, Purdue ankle biters and all the other people that are out there that work on bee genetics that munch on mites. So when you have colonies that are doing really well against mites it affects their overall health and well-being by reducing those numbers. That's what I'm getting to. So we don't have control over what's in your landfill. We don't have control over what somebody's putting in their backyard. R-Bs might be at

somebody's hummingbird feeder. R-Bs are going after they're just sugar nuts. People have had a party and there's cans of soda sitting around outside. A lot of people have gone to sip a half-empty can of soda and got a fuzzy ball in their mouth and it was a honeybee that was trying to get a drink. So there are a lot of things going on that your bees can get into, but control the things that you can. Keep your bees healthy and be vigilant about what the health conditions are inside your hive and what the brood is looking like. If your boot is healthy and going well, as I mentioned last week, I might as well mention it again because it's still here on my table. This guidebook honey bees and their maladies this is by extension dot psu dot edu this is a fantastic

pocket-sized diagnostic guide and you really should have it handy even experienced beekeepers can benefit from these if you're looking for a gift for a beekeeper handouts that would be at the top of my list of things for people to have So here we go. The next one is from Jason Seward, and this talks about an issue that Jason had. By the way, he starts off by mentioning the moth. The moth that was in the opening sequences last Friday. Someone even asked if that was a wax moth. I wish wax moths looked like that. We'd have a hard time deciding to kill them. But what that is in the opening sequences last Friday is the Sucropia moth. It's the largest moth.

North America and we hatched a bunch of them all males unfortunately I was hoping to hatch a female because they have video sequences of it I was going to show male female make comparisons and I might as well explain that just a little bit because it was in the opening they're large they're impressive they're super pretty to look at and they're nocturnal so what they do is they fly around and in that video that's at sunset we're releasing them so They have their best chance to fly at night. They only live about seven days. They don't eat.

They don't drink. Their total goal, the Socorpia moth, is to find a mate. So the females tend to hang out and sit tight and release a pheromone into the air. And the males zigzag around. And they can locate a female up to a mile away. They can sense their pheromone. So the males fly out into the night sky and they zig around. And they try to find them so they can mate.

And then you can find their. cocoons often on wild cherry trees and things like that so look them up they're very cool anyway this discussion other than thanking me for those videos and photos this is about a problem that jason had when he decided to take a weak colony and shift positions with a strong colony of honeybees now that can seem like a good idea in theory it feels sound because the strong colony, what, has a huge foraging force out there? So what happened is took the weak colony that needed fortification, just needed a numbers buildup, put it in the position where the strong colony was sitting,

and took the strong colony and put it in another location in the apiary where the weak colony was sitting. And what ensued was a battle royal. So they killed the queens. because the dynamic of what happens is when you have foragers that are out and about doing their thing they come back they navigate geographically so they navigate by the sun they navigate by landmarks and so they're finding their hive again and they're coming back now how long would this go on this will go on for two weeks remember they're forging outside of the hive on average for about two weeks of their life the last two weeks So these older bees are flying out, they're foraging, they're getting what they need, and they're coming back. And when they get home, they hit the landing board.

What's on the landing board now? Well, it's a new landing board. It's a new colony, and they have their own guards. You don't smell right. You'll see the guards open up their mandibles, and they will intercept the incoming foragers and test to find out if they have the queen mandibular pheromone of their resident queen. So when this is the smaller colony put in the old larger colony's location, the foragers are coming back in pretty decent numbers and they're scrapping with these defenders of the hive and they're going inside and nothing smells right to them either. And they probably get cranky.

So swapping and fortifying that way is very difficult and can't create skirmishes that were experienced here by Jason. So one of the things too is if you want to fortify an existing colony that's weak and if you've got another colony that's let's say building up so fast, they're going to be on the verge of swarming, or you've got resource colonies, resource nucleicides, which I have now that are too large, their populations are already too big. We can pull frames of brood from those colonies because brood has what on it? Nurse bees. Nurse bees are not scrappy. A lot of new young bees don't even sting yet. So when we take those with some brood and we fortify a colony that's already existing and doing okay, just not great, you put a single deep frame of capped brood in there and you just boosted them by about 6,000 bees. That's both sides of a deep frame of capped brood.

So when you put that in there, they get fortified right away. Their numbers are increased right away. And then of course they can release some of the other bees that have hive duties right to foraging a little bit sooner if their numbers are low and that leaving the hives in the same locations. That's the best move dumping a bowl of nurse bees. That's another thing that some people like to do, which means going through an overly populated colony, picking up brood frames, shaking them out in a plastic bin. You can also dust the plastic bin with powdered sugar because it makes it so they can't get their footing and they can't climb out and go over the side. Nurse bees tend not to fly out of the bin. If there are foragers and older bees caught up in what you're doing, shaking the bees off, they'll fly out and go back to the other hive. The nurse bees have never been anywhere else.

And this is why you can take the nurse bees over to a colony that needs numbers, needs fortification, and dump those right in the hive and they actually get accepted pretty good and that's because the nurse bees are well nourished themselves they're there to contribute to help out with the brood that's in the colony that they've just been transferred to and there isn't a lot of fighting that goes on the fighting that occurs is when you're putting older bees together so that's the problem now this is different when you're creating a split so if you're creating a split and you're going to take that means you've got a colony that's fully populated, eight out of 10 frames or brood, for example, in one deep brood box, and you want to make a split, so you're going to make another colony out of that. Now, all of your source peas are related. So the workers are all, at the very least, half-sisters, and in a lot of cases, they're full sisters. Aside from those, of course, that just drift in from time to time.

But that's the main makeup is they're genetically connected. So if you're making a split, you take the big box. that has all the extra brood and everything in it, you can move that to a new location, and the new colony that you're making from the split, you can put that in the existing location, and then the older foragers will come back to that hive, and there won't be any problems because they smell right.

It seems like they belong there. And then the colony that is without a queen, which should be the one that's now in the old location, your queen with the rest of them move to the new location, the existing queen. then they will make a new queen, of course, several, probably. Those will be emergency queens. But you can also make a split when you come across queen cells in production while your queen is still there.

Now, I've said in the past that we can take her out, create a nucleus hive, and make that a resource hive. But if we want to do a full-blown split and take a bunch of resources out, we can take the existing queen and then, several frames and move her to a new location and keep those that are making the new queens right there in the old location and then they get the bulk of the foragers back so it's an easy way to make splits and there won't be conflicts but if you're going to swap complete colonies out that's where the problem comes into play now another option for that let's back up let's say your heart's set on it and you've got this small colony if you just want to combine them, which is a different thing, now you're down to one colony,

but you can get rid of the queen that they have. And the low-performing colony, get rid of the queen completely. And the next day, combine both colonies, and they'll be more apt to accept the existing queen. Another colony, less fighting. You can put those boxes together. Much more complicated, though, and now you've reduced the number of your hives by one. Next question comes from Diane. in New Jersey, this is I was just reading the Formic Pro label, as advised by above average intelligence

individuals, and I realized that it shouldn't be used on my long length with its 3 by 3 eighths of an inch entrance, are there workarounds that you might be able to suggest? Ditto, my gifted, classic, flow hive, its entrance is only 3 eighth of an inch, and not the required by label, half inch. Thanks. So we're talking about formic pro, which is formic acid. There are two methods of delivery and of course we follow the label. And Diana is exactly right. When it comes to a long Langstroth hive, it's not convenient to put the formic pro pads in there. And the ventilation is inadequate because when you put in formic pro and some of the people like

Dr. Robin Underwood would recommend the two pad method all at one. once, then we need to remove the entrance reducer on a standard Langstroth hive, and it needs to be an open entrance all the way across the board for maximum ventilation during that initial treatment in particular. So the first 72 hours are very important because it's very volatile and a lot of new beekeepers panic because they're going to see dead bees in front of their hive. So with a long Langstroth hive, I do not recommend Formic Pro at all. on the hive not just because the entrance three eighths by three inches which is pretty darn good for everything that your bees normally need to do what would be your

option there you could do the exhalic acid dribble method would be my recommendation easy to do you pull all the cover boards off bit by bit and everywhere there's the seam of bees you trickle that in there I believe it's five grams per seam which you have to follow the label of course don't just listen to me. But then you don't know where respiratory protection or anything else. You do your treatment and you're out of there. It's not suited because people think, well, I'll just open up the lid a little bit or I'll just take one of the cover boards and put a screen over it. Like we have a rapid round feeder that can sit and the top boards, those four

inch cover boards are cut out for the rapid round feeder or for fondet and things like that. Couldn't you then just put a screen on top of that and open the screen vent? through the cover of the hive and that's actually bad news you don't want to do that so and that comes from the people that developed formic pro that's nature's own design nod and i've interviewed their chief science researchers and it's not something they want you to do so if you do any venting it has to be down low the main entrance uh in the case of the classic flow hive here um you also don't want to pull out the insert underneath if you've got a screen bottom board which that one certainly has you don't want to pull that out and just have a wide open screen bottom board we still want

them to control the venting through the entrance so that's going to be it you're going to have to decide what to use but it only works it should only be used on highly populated colonies that can take the hit because there is going to be some die-off and a lot of people say that they cook their queens and things like that. I can't attest to that. It is my backup plan. Sitting, you know, 15 feet for me right now is a big old thing, a Formic Pro. I get it every couple of years because that's the shelf life and then I never use it because I never get that far. Why don't I get that far? Because the exhalic acid, which is much cheaper to use, easy to use if you're vaping with it, you can use the trickle method. You have to open a

the hive anyway to put the pads in there and you don't have to worry about temperature parameters where you do when you're talking about forming so there are limitations in the summertime for forming those same limitations do not apply to exhalic acid so I'm a big fan if you can't tell already of organic treatment which form it falls under the organic banner as well but the exhalic acid applies to all hive configuration So top our hives for example we have those here now we couldn't put formic pads in there And they're not they don't have they don't meet the minimum

opening requirement to vent the hive the way you're supposed to and that is a very critical thing Because the key is when you're talking to these people about it you don't want it to vent off too fast either So you don't want it venting off through the top carrying up and through the brood You want to close up and have an entrance and there's like a dwell time. You want that formic acid to work its magic on your brood area. When you use the two pad method, which is why Dr. Underwood likes it, you're killing off the varodisturitur mites that are beneath the cappings in your brood. So it is a very good treatment. The results are good. The efficacy is really good. But you need to have a high. configuration that allows adequate venting or you could actually kill a colony of bees with it so fail safe I'm not going to recommend form it for top our hives for layens hives or for long langstroth hives so hope that helps next we have Wendy in Seattle Washington so have a question about your long lang my husband

made one per your prints and was feeding bees sugar syrup to support during sudden cold snap 27 degrees Fahrenheit it's cold right now June 9th as it warms up in the wildflowers and clover bloom will add new frames how do you keep track of which ones you can harvest honey from I don't want sugar syrup honey okay so here's the thing fail-safe this is what I always do I know there's a lot of people out there telling you to feed sugar syrup all day long you both your honey super zone and I say good for them I don't want that either right so once you have honey superzon or if it's a horizontal hive once you have frames you plan to

harvest so beyond your follower board and I realize the follower board is the end of the hive unless your follower board is a second follower board that has a cut out that functions as a queen excluder because you'll put a queen excluder over the cutout section and doesn't have to be huge then the bees can pass through that and keep storing honey past that follower board that's going to be your harvestable honey everything to the entrance side of your follower board that has the queen excluder in it will be for the bees so if you are feeding sugar syrup every friend that's on the hive should be considered tainted adulterated so then

once you know for sure that you've got a nectar flow coming up. So keep building your colony, keep building the strength, keep their numbers up where you think you want to have them. And then when the real nectar flow comes on, no more sugar syrup, period. That's just it. That's how you know. Because the bees, here's the thing of it. When the bees draw comb and you're putting drawn comb in there, they can actually move their sugar syrup all over inside there. So it's not like there's a definite starting point. So this week you feed a whole bunch of sugar syrup, which they can store and it can still be in open cells. And you add some frames because the nectar flow is about to come on.

They can transfer that into those new frames. The storekeeper bees that I described earlier today can be moving that around into those. I realize it's a tiny thing. It's a tiny potential. But if you want zero opportunity, I'm telling you how. No more feeding sugar syrup. See? at that point so now we're already at the last question of the day this comes from rural crane

that's the YouTube name says we'll look forward to how the bees handled vented gates all down the hives from the main opening okay so what we're talking about is the Beersville bees long Langstroth hive has that which by the way the bees are doing fantastic in it it's insulated and but it has entrances all down the front of the hive I decided just leave them in there and then I just rotated them around so they're just on the vent because they don't have a complete closed setting Someone else wrote really good advice by the way that if you want a closed setting those little metal dials on there have a tab that's bent out that functions as a queen excluder Okay, it's just a single little oval so you can actually take it off lay it flat and take a hammer or a mallet and

tap that closed so you can actually make a closed segment on it but mine are all set at the little vented the little holes in it and the bees are propolizing those up so i didn't have to do anything so there's the main entrance which is wide open and then the little holes down the line once we expanded the follower board and we expanded the frames which i did a video about recently the bees just go down and now they're propolizing up those discs so they're sealing it on their own And so easy to do. What else can we do? So let's just talk about the fluff section here and that follower board as I mentioned You can make those for a topar hive a layens hive and a long langstroth hive You're just copying the exact dimensions of your follower board

Which closes off the hive space as your bees are occupying and you can cut an opening in that and it can just be a circle Whatever you've got handy this is not critical and then you take apart in metal queen excluder and just cut it to fit and you can stable it on there use screws panhead screws or whatever you want to it doesn't have to be double thick it's just a single thickness which is your queen excluder so now only workers get through your queen is not going to be laying eggs in the frames or the comb in the top bar hive case where um you're going to be harvesting the honey it'll be nothing but honey and beeswax that's never had brood in it uh what if you don't do that don't put a follower board with the queen excluder in it will they still have

frames or nothing but honey yes they will and they do so that's also key you want to have an entrance a single entrance and that's the only source of airflow for your bees that single entrance your long laying your lay-ins and your top bar hive so because of what happens as I mentioned earlier your bees will be keeping the brood near the entrance where they have the most control So as they progress into the hive, that's where your honey stores are. And it's, I've almost never seen this be a problem. That they all of a sudden started having brewed back in there.

So the thing of it is, when wintertime comes, you have to calculate the number of frames that you're going to need that are going to have honey that's capped to get your bees for winter. Beyond that, that's where you want to market because after you've done your honey harvest, if you put those about, back and in wintertime if they start to use those frames for brood it messes up the frames I don't like frames that have been used for brood to be later used for honey harvesting because they get fibrous they're constantly they're darker it's not appealing as a containment for your honey that's just I just want it to be perfect so you will harvest off those frames at the end of the year and use that as your condensing activity bringing the follower board back up to the number of frames of cap tony that they will need to get through winter.

So I hope that works. Six or seven full frames of cap tony are all my long length Rothbees need to get through winter. And you'll know case by case with the top our hides last year they had 14 or 15 frames and they got through winter really well. So that was interesting. but we did not of course harvest any. This year we have to harvest. Why? Because the top of our hive is full of bees right now.

Both of them are. And one of them is pretty darn new. They built the comb incredibly fast. And what are we facing right now? A decent nectar flow. All the bees are fanning the nectar off, the water off. And we're in a pickle because now we have honey to deal with. The supervisor wants the honey,

but he doesn't seem really good at, putting forth the effort other than pulling the covers off of his length or his flow hives to see what the progress is so he can't lift things so but that's the beauty of something like the flow hive where you're not lifting to get the honey out you're tilting it about two degrees back and then the honey comes out through a tube that's the easy one but then he wants more honey so he's picking other highs and he's claiming them as his own so what a way the fluff this is the time of year if you're going to control your mites this is the time of

year to find out which of your colonies have mite loads if you're going to treat what you're going to treat with and you need to get on top of it now and here's why we want the bees to be really strong we want the populations to be up because here in the northeastern part of the united states we get a nice big end of summer nectar flow So we are going to get goldenrod and asters and maximillions and sunflowers, milkweeds coming in. So we want to get these numbers of mites under control. We want to get diseases that they carry also under control. And then so that by the end of summer, so by September, end of September,

the bees that are making the winter bees are the healthiest they can possibly be. I hope that makes sense. So this is the window of opportunity to get it. opportunity to get them really under control if you don't know how to count mites also I suggest for those you have removable trays under your bottom boards clean them all up that's what we've been doing here clean them all up put them back in leave them for a week look at just passively how many mites are falling in there and you get a really good feel for the condition of those

hives and we've been seeing twos and threes which is not bad at all does that mean we won't treat it means we know which colonies are doing really well all of them and we want to do some treatment because I want to see what the mite drop is when we use xylic acid see if we really do have you know a bunch of mites just aren't getting groomed off but if you have screen bottom boards with trays underneath and your bees are groomers they groom off the mites they fall through the screen and into that tray and you find these mites trapped down there and when you treat them you should see you know a

smattering of mites but if you give a treatment and there's 150 mites on that tray three days later you got an issue you're gonna do a full regimen on that colony if you did an exhalic acid vaporization treatment following the label and you find there's four or five mites dead on the tray mark that colony that's a great queen those are good genetics things are going good and can change overnight of course. But remember at the end of the year, when the population of foragers dwindles and your brood numbers stay high, that means there's fewer bodies of living bees for the varro-destructor mites to feed on, and now they concentrate on the brood, which seems like a sudden increase in the varroa-destructor mite numbers,

but what's really happening is they have fewer bees to feed on, they're parasites, so they all converge on whatever bees are left. and it looks like a spike in mite numbers, but what really may be happening is that it's a drop in hive population near the end of the year. Let's kill mites. Let's do that together. I think that's a good idea.

Inspect for queen status. If you let your beehive go for three weeks without a queen, you are risking laying workers and your problems are compounded. So find out if you have queens. Level up your hives. So the ground is settled. It's been raining and everything else. It's a good time to repair a line. Make sure everything's good to go. Trim tall growth around your hives. I see a lot of people have their beehives.

They're mowing the kind of the hive yard, but right next to the hives because it's a pain. They have to weed whack or whatever. There's tall grass and growth all around the hives. That is a ladder for bugs. So if you don't like ants, getting up into your beehives, then take away what they use to climb into the hive. So keep things trimmed down around your hives. It's so much nicer to work. You're going to drop a hive tool or something.

You're going to drop things in the grass. If your grass is trimmed nice and tight, good to go. And I'm going to see some people at breakfast on Wednesday. So if that's catching you off guard, I'll see you Wednesday. And I'm going to see other people on Saturday at the field day at Ernst Seeds. So that's going to be good too. That's what's coming up this week. And that's all I have to share.

So I want to thank you for being here with me today and watching. Once again, if you have questions for me, freshen your mind. Write them down now while you're thinking about it. And then go to the way to be.org, click on the page mark, contact, and send me whatever it is you want to know about or whatever it is you want to share with me. So I want to thank you for being here.

I'm Frederick Dunn. And this has been The Way to Be. Have a fantastic. weekend.