The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 368 August Harvest and other discussions, with Frederick Dunn

Episode Date: August 22, 2026

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

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, August the 21st of 2006. This is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 368. I'm Frederick Donne and this is The Way to Be. So I'm really glad that you're here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please look down in the video description. You'll see all the topics listed in order and later with timestamps so you can get straight to it if you don't want to listen to everything that's going on today. So speaking of today, I know you want to know what's going on outside, but first I'll tell you how you can submit your own question. You can go to the way to be.org, which is my website, and click on the page mark contact, fill out the form, submit a topic for discussion, something you just became aware of, or send me a question that might show up in a future Q&A. The other thing is, if you've got something to show, you've got a picture, some issue going on with your bees, you want to talk to your peer group.

You go to the fellowship. Which fellowship? The Way to Be Fellowship on Facebook. There you can upload your photo or your video and ask questions and get answers anytime day or night. And chances are there's someone there from your neck of the woods. Speaking of neck of the woods, where am I located? Northwestern part of Pennsylvania and northeastern part of the United States. And I know you want to know what's the weather like in that part of the world.

Okay, well, I'll tell you. outside right now 75.7 degrees Fahrenheit that's 24 in Celsius and it's windy in opposite land 1.1 miles per hour very slow good news 55% relative humidity why is that good news good news because the bees are trying to dry their honey and lately we've had high humidity really high and that makes it hard challenging they fan away all night long it sounds like a dryer vent on the side of your house all night long in the apiary an apiary is a yard where you keep your honeybees. So what else? Oh by the way, this is one of the reasons that

if you've got some kind of brood-minder scale or something on your hives, they gain weight, they lose weight, they gain weight, they lose weight up and down because what's going on, as I just said, 75 degrees Fahrenheit, but what happened at night? Do you know it dropped to 46 degrees Fahrenheit overnight, which is 8 degrees Celsius, and that's when they cluster, they tighten up, and they conserve energy, but they're also doing what brooding up which means they have to keep the brood warm

which means they're consuming the resources they're bringing in thank goodness we're in a steady nectar flow pretty decent weather ahead so you're probably wondering if we're looking ahead let's say just just a week in the north-eastern part of the united states where you are of course might be different but what would be the best day coming up in my neck of the woods to go and get into your beehives to pull honey because that's where we're at right now well it's going to be Wednesday. Because Wednesday, August of 26, that is going to be the best day out of the next seven. So what would you do? What would you do on Tuesday? The day before, you go and try to pull some honey frames off. Well, you can skew the lid, skew the intercover, and by that I mean,

pry it up and twist it a little bit. Because what happens when you get into the hive? You pull things apart, you interrupt some cells that are made by bees out of bees wax, and then the honey, dribbles out. Not bad. The bees come and take care of that right away, but you could also cause some robbing. So we need to be aware of that. We don't want to kick off any robbing, so then you close it back up, and then the next day you come back and it's all cleaned up by the bees and recovered by the bees that are resident to the colony that you're opening up. See? Super easy. It's just a quick tip for you. So tomorrow is not a good day. Actually, today was the best day, but it's too late. you're listening to me now and it's probably already night time so you're not going to run out there and deal with your bees at night if you do give somebody else the flashlight you don't want to you don't want to

be the one carrying that and you'll find out why really quick 75% chance of rain tomorrow so not a good day okay so going on outside the opening sequences of course showed what's going on right now in my neck of the woods of course golden rod is number one the honey bees are all over it great nectar flow and we had early golden rod, which bloomed early. And then we have this other golden rod that's quite a bit taller. And myself and the grandchildren are out there looking it over. What do you think they call that? Tall golden rod. It's true. So the golden rod is still blooming. We still have a lot going on and the bees are working it really well. Dutch white clover never ends. It's a staple. The bees are getting nectar and pollen from it. It's fantastic. Sunflowers are doing okay. I did not get a great

feel the sunflowers this year the way i normally do i don't know about you where you are but ragweed is causing me issues napweed it's an invasive but the bees are on it there's thistle out there that the bees are on they're getting nectar from that too and the cosmos are blooming but it's moderate you know the cosmos more and more when i look at it and think it over i have to plan ahead for next year and the cosmos are visited by a lot of bees but not a lot of honeybees even though i show them in the opening sequences it's mostly native bees and native pollinator so there's nothing wrong with that if you want to plant it for them but i'm going to shift gears uh going in the next year on the plants that i choose to grow here on my property and uh i'll explain why first of all

if you're planting head and you should it's a great time to go seed shopping because if you have garden centers hardware stores and things like that they get those seasonal seed displays and stuff like that, they're kind of looking to get rid of that stuff right now, and it's usually profoundly discounted. We know that seeds not cheap, seeds really expensive. And in the past, just for the sunflowers alone, because of the nectar and pollen that they provide for our pollinators, including those we keep, like the honeybee. They're expensive. I spend hundreds of dollars on seed. Well, that's all over with. I'm not going to do that next year. What am I going to do? Instead, I'm not going to have sunflowers. No, I'm going to have them. I'm going to have a lot of them.

but instead of buying sunflower seed intended for growing, I'm going to just get bird seed, black oil sunflower bird seed. Yeah, because you get a 40 pound bag for $20. I'm going to be planting that because I've seen people do it. I checked in on, it's called YouTube. You should check it out because there's so much good information on it. You can learn how to do things, see how things go, listen to some influencers.

but I'm doing it next year, black oil sunflower seed, and the most frequent question I get is, when do you plant, how do you plant? What do you do for soil preparation? Okay, so this is what I'm doing. My soil preparation probably won't change. And so what that involves is mowing close to the ground, of course, near the end of the year,

the areas that I'm going to grow stuff on, and in the spring we'll mow it tight again, but we'll till it. And I know there's a big push for no-till gardening, and that would be great if it was a vegetable garden or something small and manageable i'd be all about it no till all the way but this is a field so i'm tilling it two directions so that's two passes way to day till it again two passes way today one more till okay and the reason i do that is because we keep pulling up seeds and small plants and things that are already there and we want them to dry

out a little bit we want to reduce competition for the seeds that we're about to plant and then I'm going to do and this is kind of lazy gardening because that's all equipment based uh once it's all tilled up then I'm going to take my 700 pound roller and I'm going to drive it down one pass one direction all of the areas that I tilled then I'm going to broadcast bird seed black oil sunflower seeds. Then after I broadcast that, when all the wild birds aren't watching me, I'm going to roll it the other way and push it that one inch to an inch and a half down into the ground, which they tell you that you're supposed to have. And then it's going to rain right on cue, a nice soft, extended rain that will keep it moist, and sunflowers germinate fast, and they send down a taproot really fast.

And so I think that's going to work. What are your thoughts? Have you done it before? Let me know in the comment section because I think it's going to work. and nothing to lose very inexpensive I can spread a lot of seed now I don't want a super overseed but I think this method is going to work really well and you might be wondering what's the value of those sunflowers anyway plus they're all going to look like so it's going to be this monotonous yellow sunflowers every sunflower is probably going to look like the others where now see the ones I plant it's this broad variety of sunflowers little ones big ones tall one short ones red ones umber yellow golden

rusty looking and then the bees show you what their preferences are but then when you look up that specific sunflower it's super expensive so I'm going with all black oil next year let's see what happens so anyway the pollen not that valuable for the bees and people are going to chime in be keeping nerds are going to say things like you know that is not a complete amino profile for your bees that is not going to be enough to raise brood inside your beehis well that's fine and here's why because it's not that's not a complete amino profile for your bees that is not going to be enough to raise brood inside your beehis well that's fine and here's why because it's not the only source of pollen for the bees. So regardless of its incomplete status, right, just like dandelions, you get the same thing, you can post it on Facebook, say, save the dandelions and somebody will say, yeah, it's no good for the bees, it's junk food. And then you say, but it's really good nectar.

And that's the same for sunflow. The nectar flow for the sunflow is really strong. You might be wondering, oh yeah, well, what's the sugar percentage of that? What if I told you it's 30 to 50% sugar. Compared to a lot of them which are like 10% 15% 30 to 50% sugar from the black oil sunflower seed sunflower. That's good stuff. Don't play games. This is looking good. It's sounding better by the minute. And also let's talk about that pollen which is not a complete diet for brewed. Yet did you know just because it doesn't have high nutritional value don't underestimate the fact that it have medicinal value. That's right. It can be a medicinal benefit to your bees. What part of the bee would that effect? How about the mid-gut area? What's in there? How about nozima? What kind of nozima?

No-sema. No-sema-A-pas. I know you want to know this, but it was replaced by Serrani. Nozima sports. They grow in the gut. They consume resources that your bees need. They cause sublethal impacts on your bees. So by planning, this supersized field more than 10 feet long of black oil sunflower seeds when they get that pollen nutritionally deficient medicinally superior so you get that healthier and then they can forage farther to get a better pollen source see how that works it's really good and the asters are just starting out by the way and uh that usually kicks in our very good nectar flow but also it can lead us to some funny smelling honey for some people i like the smell i like the taste

goldenrod asters bring it all i don't mind i like it i think it's great stuff so we're going to jump right in with the questions here and the very first question comes from i can't say slavslaf sloca pasov eighty one thirty four i'm sorry about that pronunciation but anyway it was on youtube and that's YouTube channel name. Second half of August, I go to some bees and I get half a cup sitting outside the hive all night long. Okay, the weather is nice, 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, which is similar to what we have right now. This year the swarm got too deep. Some frames in the upper deep is not drawn comb, just foundation. Question, with a small flow in August, why some bees are flying to collect nectar and pollen.

while this half cup sits outside doing nothing. Okay, all day, maybe. Okay, but hot inside, but what about at nighttime? Why do they stay? Okay, so I see the same thing sometimes. And so it all comes down to us looking at the bees, why they're doing what they do. And there's a lot of bearding going on,

if you don't know what that is, when the humidity in particular is really high, and the bees are trying to dry out their honey, which is exactly what they're doing right now. But lucky for us, we're at 55% relative. of humidity and but sometimes recently we've had in the 90s in humidity so bees do beard outside but that's pretty predictable it's nice and even the whole hive but every now and again you walk past the hive and there's a little clump of bees right on

the front and just as described in this question usually when there's a beard out and like you get halfway through the night they get smaller smaller smaller and they're gradually moving inside some bees clump and stay clumped outside so you could investigate there are some jobs inside the hive and for foragers that don't require them to go into the hive and sometimes even get rejected based on the payload they're bringing in so let's say a bee is bringing in nectar well a bee that comes in with nectar from a flower's nectar is going to get in there going to be invited in and their resources are going to be stored right away but

because it's super hot keep in mind and humid some bees are also foraging for water now water gets used for a lot of different things so the the water that comes into the hive from a water bee a water forager and this has nothing to do with the age of it it can be a forager of any age when they bring back water sometimes they need it and you'll see trophylaxis bees will drink it directly from the water bee sometimes they even put it in cells rarely but sometimes they do and the other thing is they'll paint it with their tongues over the surface of brood areas and things like that and the bees will fan it and then through evaporation they get this cooling benefit inside the hive. So if your temps have been really high, you could have

something like that, but 65 to 70 wouldn't kick that off. Now let's say it's a water bee and it shows up and it's got its crop full of water, but nobody wants it. None of the workers collect the water. No one's thirsty and they don't need to cool the hive. This is just one of many possibilities, but now these water bees just go and park themselves somewhere and do nothing else because they can't go and forage for nectar the nectar would then be diluted and be of no use to the colony. So that's one thing. Those could all be water bees stuck in the corner. I'm not suggesting you grab them and smash your crops and evaluate the contents. Don't do that. But sometimes you can check them out and find out that there is on rare occasions a unmaided queen in that little cluster.

And unless you scoot them around and look to see within that clump, you may not see that at all. So sometimes a tertiary queen emerges from herself. Myself and the supervisor got into a hive and we had seven queen cells down one side of one frame and we selectively removed all of them but one that the bees seemed a favor. Everyone had a queen in it. Now let's say one of those little queen scoots out. Nobody cares about it. Doesn't cause a swarm. They don't go anywhere and don't lead that queen anywhere and they don't bivouac on a branch. they just she parks herself outside and maybe 10 or 20 bees collect around her and take care of her a little bit

that's one possibility sometimes you do find them but my number one guess is unemployed water bee what's your guess do you know have you investigated what's happening let's go on with the next question which comes from william tautfus anyway in my second year of beekeeping and harvested almost a gallon of honey from last year's frames. I think it has fermented. After extracting, I bought it at all. However, it has a hint of alcohol smell. Is this honey fermented and spoiled and or how can I be sure? Okay, this is timely. Because although this has already been around, you would already know. if this was harvested from last year and you put it in you know left over honey in spring from winter

you put it in jars which is what i highly recommend particularly those of you are harvesting honey this time of year asters goldenrod all that stuff that has a propensity to set or crystallize really fast so don't let that happen in a big bucket get it all in your little jars now sometimes people smell astor honey they don't like the smell and it can smell sour or off a little bit but there are other tells that's not a stand-alone thing so capped honey can in fact have too much moisture and it can ferment yeast gets into it there's wild yeast in the air it gets into it starts fermentation but let's see you put it in a jar and some of you may be able to identify with what i'm about to describe you processed a bunch of honey you put it in jars you put the lids on the jars you put the jars

on the shelf and later you're going to sell them to a bunch of people because you're going to make a lot of money which back air beekeepers earn so much money so much of return in their investment i'm surprised everyone isn't doing it and i hope you realize that i'm making a big joke there because even my grandson was asking me grandfather what is the return on the investment when you buy all your equipment and you sell the honey how much surplus are you earning okay so first of all he doesn't get to know my economic status, but I would have to explain to him, and I actually did that my costs exceed the income from backyard beekeeping. But that's because I'm not focused on it. I'm not trying to be super efficient. I'm just having fun doing stuff, finding out how things happen.

But here's the thing. You put it on the shelf, and then you notice in the jar, there seems to be quite a bit of foam on the top. Now, my wife would get that jar, uncap it, scrape it, scrape off the foam, clean it out. And by the way, if it's just a little bit of foam, you don't like the look of it, you want to get it off. You put saran wrap, cling wrap, right on the surface of it, and then you pull it out and all the bubbles come with it. Now, when you're looking at it, do the bubble stay in suspension in the honey? That's not normal. That's not good. So let's say it does. And let's say in the upper third or so, there's a lot of foamyness. And the foam seems to be growing. And sometimes, if you're not super careful, if you really bottle this up and it did ferment and it is actively fermenting you can burst the lid and get a real mess on your hands so sometimes the foam just continues to grow and get thicker and thicker that is 99% sure

fermenting if that's what you're seeing okay now sometimes also you'll see it kind of separate a little bit the top will seem really watery and there's no doubt that it starts to smell like and taste like so this is very important it's honey after all just taste it does it taste like apple cider that's getting that zing to it as it starts to ferment so high water sugar content stuff definitely gets a zing and it can begin to ferment so if those things are going on and by the way every beekeeper i don't care what level you're at i highly highly recommend you get a refractometer and if that's the first time you've ever heard that word find a new bee club to join. Refractometers, that's humor, that's, I'm being funny. Refractometers are very important.

You put your honey on that and you're going to know the water percentage. And my recommendation is anything over 18% should be dried down. Dehydrate that. Anything over 18%. So if you're at 18% or under, you're pretty good to go for the shelf life. So the thing of it is, your refractometer will tell you if you've got 19 to 20 chance of very good chance of fermentation happening and your honey spoiling beyond 20% water 99% guaranteed it's going to ferment so now what do you do with it well you cook with it or something like that it's really not reversible but could you stop it could you stop it in its tracks you start to see it happening you don't yet know what to do with it but you definitely don't want that to continue and you want to arrest the yeast exactly

in its current state. Put it in the freezer. It doesn't freeze. It just goes to a temperature where all that activity stops. So that works. And then when you figure out what you're going to do, maybe you want to make some mead, by the way. Where would you go to see how mead is made from honey? Honey, water, yeast. It couldn't be simpler. So you go to the Frederick Dunn YouTube channel and you look in the top right of the home page you see the little hourglass or magnifying glass there not the hourglass that means you got a slow internet but the magnifying glass and you type up in there how to make mead and i show you step by step it is so easy i have bottles of it right here mead is good it's some of the it's probably the oldest fermented beverage and you can make it so if it is

at that point that's what you do with it but you may have no problems with it at all it could just be sometimes it tastes a little sour it has a little bite to it tastes a little tangy but the smell of the alcohol is kind of a tell but it will continue to off gas

and it'll continue to foam up and then it can foam over please avoid that get a refractometer that's it Question number three. This is from Joe Bianco, YouTube channel name, says at the very end of your talk, you mentioned insulated covers. I made five insulated covers for my five colonies. Each cover has three inch thick foam in it, one eighth inch foam reflective, and three eighths inch plywood. The walls are three quarter inch wood. There is a one inch space for fondant. I'm planning on wrapping the hive, body with tar paper for winter. No upper entrance for ventilation. I run two deep brood boxes. And what's my opinion? Okay, sir, this thing. Tar paper, aka Ruth felt. Many of you don't know,

I designed to build my own home. And I don't mean I had a contractor. My wife and I built it. And that's not a flex. That's not to, you know, say, well, look at us. Well, I can tell you what. I'm still dry right now it's it's holding up and uh one of the things is you look at roof felt and roof felt is what people call tar paper and then you get a choice 15 pound roof felt 30 pound roof felt what does that mean why is it even 15 and 30 pound what are these ratings well if you cut a 10 foot by 10 foot square of it it would either weigh 15 pounds for a 10 by 10 by 10 which one do you think I went with because I'm doing it myself I never want to do it again I don't want to climb up on that roof again 30 pound felt so back in the day see that's a really old method been around a long time

so when people were wrapping hives way back in the day they thought it would be a good idea to wrap it with tar paper aka roof felt and when you did that which it is you cut down on the wind getting into your hive some people folded over the top and then put the telescoping lid on it if you had the most basic lankstroth hive. And they would say, oh, and when the sun comes out and it shines on it, it's going to heat it up, and your bees are going to be able to move around inside. And that's true. So you get some solar gain from it.

But I want you to know, because a lot of people are thinking about this right now, what are we going to do when the weather gets colder? How do I get my bees through winter? And as discussed here, I agree with all the stuff because the stuff that I do. here. I also have no top venting and I have an insulated inner cover. This is way more insulation than probably any of my hives have had on them. And what I do is they get to a point where what I'm doing with the bees where I live in the snow belt, by the way, what's getting the true winter and what is the situation when spring arrives inside each hive?

At some point, we almost don't need to do more based on where you're living than I currently do based on what I see in spring. I don't need to boost my colonies in spring. They're way ahead of me. Their populations are big. They're out of control. This is why we have so many bees here. And so do I need to wrap something around the side walls of my hive? And would it help the bees? Well, tar paper solar gains. So we get those, you know, by the way, the southern exposures are going to get the heat because the sun is low and it shines back. when it's shining and it hits the tarpaper and heats it up and yes these will start to move around in fact they'll start to migrate to that warmer wall so it can actually in your beehive if this is

the southern wall your cluster can start to move towards that on a nice warm day and if you get a series of warm days they can begin to occupy your resources right against that wall and then what we get here though and the reason i know it is because i also have solar power we'll get weeks of almost no solar power, which means no solar gain for the hive. So what happens is this offers a windbreak, that's a plus, an opportunity to warm the hive when the sun is shining on it, that's a plus, and beyond that, zero insulation properties, zero insulation value. So I would like to present an alternative for you,

because sometimes what happens to is it'll get cold. So then you say, well, then it's no better off or worse off than if you didn't have anything wrapping on it. Unless some people report this shift over to the southern wall or the warm wall, and then they're off center where they normally would be if everything else were even. So I'm going to say, plus it's usually good for about one season. So roof felt exposed to the weather.

Remember, it's designed to have shingles over the top of it, which protect it and everything else. and it's it just helps so anyway wrapping it on your beehive you're going to get maybe a season out of it maybe too if you really push it but it doesn't hold up exposed to the weather very well on its own inexpensive it's cheap stuff some people just staple it on to things so i personally don't do it but if i wanted to wrap a hive i just want to share with you what i would use so we know that we're a little bit i am a little bit obsessed with the foil-faced bubble insulation reflect ticks is one, double bubble is another,

and then there's just single bubble, which also has the foil facing on it. That stuff lasts a long time. It holds up to weather. I put it out in weather over the past couple of years just to see how does it hold up. And so you can actually wrap your hive with it. So you can overlap it, you can use twine,

you can use anything you want to tie it up. Paracord works really good. And so the same thing, you can blast it over the top, put your lid on and here's the difference first of all it's reflective so initially you might say well no solar gain the sun's just going to reflect off of it and it's not going to absorb the heat the way it needs to and that's true but what it does do this provides a thermal wrap and even the simple single bubble version the thinnest stuff like reflectics right if you wrap that on there that's like adding another three quarter inch piece of pine around the outside of your hive. So they have inch and a half of wood just from one additional layer.

And if you make a couple layers on there, it doubles each time. So it's just like adding another layer of three quarter inch pine wood. So when you wrap it up and you string like that, it keeps the hive snug, warm, wind barrier, day and night, even when weeks of sunshine. Sun doesn't happen. So if I were going to wrap something, I'd go insulation, over hoping for thermal gain, which by the way ends just as quick as the storm arrives. And then I have to dispose of it somewhere. By the way, not biodegradable. Neither of them are, though, so we can make that argument. Argue with yourself always when you're offering an alternative.

So because it has often look up the materials in the composition of roof felt. See what it's impregnated with. And it's not something you're going to chop up and throw in your garden for decomposition. You're going to put it in the dumpster. just like your plastic wraps and stuff like that they all will probably go the same way but the difference being that if you use the reflect takes or the double bubble you're going to get many years out of it before it's worn out and done so get the insulation about that's what i recommend between the two no temp spikes no sudden shifts on your bees and they benefit from the insulation

so that's the thing and here's what i gauge everything on uh keep in mind I've been doing lots of hive testing configuration testing. I do I don't shift everything all at once. So if you're a backyard enthusiast and you really want to know it's one better than the other do both do both take half your hives wrap half of them with 30 or 15 pound roof felt and then take the other one and wrap it with reflectics and see what happens see how the different hives do. Hopefully you're picking colonies are roughly the same. into winter and now we have a practical comparison is it going to be the final

answer no but you will know which one consume more resources what was the shape of the cluster now if you're doing thermal scans on hives you can still do those at night with a tar paper wrap because at night remember no thermal block at all you'll see where your cluster is go to do thermal scans on your double bubble or your reflectics you might see it if it's like wicked cold and say we say up in Vermont if it was in the 20s or something like that you went out at night did a thermal scan you will see proof of life but you won't see clearly maybe exactly where the cluster is located you might have to

peel it back to do that if that's important so once again 50 50 do half of them see what happens test it be a backyard scientist I think that's great okay next I got questions from Lots and lots of people. Okay, three. Because I'm testing out the Keepers Hive. So I have the two colony system, which, so two bee hives, two colonies, merged together, Central Riser, 10 frame, honey super.

Okay. So people are writing me going, hey, I'm trying to buy those. Are they out of business? Did they quit? Everything's out of stock. And by everything, I mean the two colonies. system it seems like whatever you're personally looking for is out of stock so I actually wrote to them because I wanted to know myself because I also went to the

website that there's no way they're out of stock and they were but they're not now to the back-in stock so they're not going out of business they're still there and so I do have another question today about the Keepers Hive so I guess I'll answer that part but for now they're not on a business that is something that they're still doing and they have it back in stock so for those you are looking for those they have them they're not quitting and along that line there seems to be a bunch of concern about stuff that's going out of stock because I guess people are shopping right now because recently by recently I mean it was yesterday

or the day before I don't even remember which I blocked it out they're all blurred together but I took a hive the license hive because it takes up a lot space it's a poly hive it's insulated and i was at the west virginia conference as a presenter and in the showroom there was dr david peck from better be and he had this rapid hive by lison so it just goes has these dovetail things they all go together anyway and it's got thick sidewalls and i generally am not super excited about them because they don't have the things i want to see in a beehive and at this stage i'm my beekeeping experience or life or whatever you want to call it, I have certain things I want to see in a beehive. One, is there a feeder? So in the past, I didn't have a decent feeder. And I've

had license before. And I just kind of passed through. It was something I tested for a while. And then I give them away, which is what I often do. See, people think I'm really being generous, but I'm clearing the way for something else. But it is generosity. It counts because I care enough to give the things I don't want anymore to other people. But here's what happens. They had the bottom board with the screen in it. What do I like to see in a bottom board with the screen in it? An insert or a solid bottom board under the screen. No open screen to the outside.

Okay. They have it. Cool. They had a feeder on it. They did not have a good feeder before. I did not like their high top feeders before. And now they did. They had a really good one that's good for solid or liquid.

Bonus, that's a win. So I got it. So I set it up. But here's the thing. They take up a lot of room. They're super lightweight. You can pick them up so easy. And recently, a few questions have come out about it.

Like, how durable are they? Can you strap it? Can you put it on a truck? You know, people are doing migratory beekeeping. Here's the thing. If you're a number cruncher, let's say, I don't know, in some weird world, let's say fuel is really expensive. Then you have to think about the weight that you're hauling in your truck.

So a standard 18-wheeler that does pollinator services might be carrying in the neighborhood of 440 hives. Now we're back here, beekeepers. These aren't issues that we have to face. But it plays when it comes to these polystyrene hives because they're so much lighter in weight. In fact, you would be removing a ton. That's 1,200 pounds from a shipment of 440-some-odd beehives.

That is significant savings in fuel if you're going to drive through any place that's got a grade at all. that you're going to be using your tractor to pull these trucks uphill so saves a lot of money now are they durable i don't know i don't do things to challenge their durability but there is someone there's sophia if you don't know who sophia is she's the bead rover in australia and she drives these massive trucks and what kind of hives do they have in that operation for the bead rover they have poly hives what are they called hive iq so they're strapping them loading them unloading them ship

them hauling them everywhere and why would she be using that particular kind of hive a poly hive why would she Sophia be doing that and they just call her Fia for short because her dad is one that came up with hive IQ so they own the factory so there it is apparently the durable and you save a lot of money in weight and stuff you do have to think about these things i don't think for a minute this isn't on my mind at the end of use where does it go what happens to the material polystyrene is going to persist for a very long time so if we're making our hides out of wood if we're using wooden materials this is the problem i have every time i look at something that happens to be made out of plastic um wood degrades wood just returns to the environment plastics do not they just kind of break down break down break down break down into finer and finer finer particles until there's something so tiny that they're just almost everywhere.

And so the more we contribute plastics to the environment, that is on my mind. Now if you take a tour as I once did at a landfill, which is usually like the biggest mountain in some cities, you go to the landfill and you find out there's something called leachate and they have to prove that they're locking everything in, nothing can ooze out into the surrounding environment.

And this is one of the reasons why waste management charge you so much money for trash collection is because they're really putting it somewhere where it is trapped it's not going anywhere so you can kind of feel okay about yourself if you buy something like that and it's plastic and when it comes time to dispose of it you dispose of it through a waste management system that prevents these materials from going out into the environment so then and other Others, you can look this up. Can polysyrene be recycled? Yes.

And there are big companies that don't even have enough polymaterial to meet their demand for it so they can repurpose it for something else. So there are ways to feel good about the plastics, but they never disappear. They can change into something else or they can be locked up and then not put out into the environment.

but wood you can just toss it in your garden like my old beehive boxes I give them to my wife and she uses them in her garden and each individual box is a mini raised garden for specific plants tomatoes whatever you're growing out there see how it can work so wood is like the easiest but then you know you're saving fuel if you're a big commercial person so you're cutting down on pollution at the same time you're creating a polyproduct I don't know I think the arguments of pros and cons can go on in perpetuity next question comes from hunting lady top our hives don't need rain guards it's true they don't and i drew a quick sketch it's been a while since i've drawn a sketch and this is what the end of a top our hive looks like now this particular

top bar hive is different from some other topar hives but if you notice what happens is and this is for minimal car So this thing is made out of two by tens. It's pretty clear. I know that Be Mindful has Amish people that build their hives. That's interesting. I don't know where the Amish people are in Texas. I don't know. But we have Amish people up here all over the place. Well, you know, on Amish farms, not all over, but when you go to country fair, whatever, to get gasoline, they're always in there getting treats and stuff because somebody's driving them around in a van. Anyway, moving on. The way the top bar hive works, it looks weird to me. And if you recall last year when I put one out there, of course remember snow belt. So you've got these side panels right here and then you've got just the top bars. In other words, there's no other lid. There's the top bars. They're exposed. They're right there. So side, bottom, top bar, comb comes down and fills the space.

Now above the top bars, there's a roof. and the roof extends past the length of the top bars and then the side walls of the hive are such that rain and stuff doesn't even hit on it because it's going under so that it's dripping off on its own top bars drip down nothing drips onto the top bars because of this roof and there's an air gap between it which is weird but it worked and just to be you know faithful to the design last winter i didn't do anything to it so it didn't you know instinctively I wanted to put insulation on it maybe some of you would want to be wrapping roof felt on it or something but it is thick material this is full two-by-stock so these are two-by-tens and I don't know if you know about Amish carpentry but when they make a two by ten it's oddly two inches by ten inches when they make a two by four it's two inches by four inches that's it's it's when we buy lumber we don't get that full two-by-four everything is an odd number

some different dimension because now it's finished it's surface four sides s4s so anyway and that's how it works so anyway you've got this gap of air you've got this roof you've got these top bars and the weather just blows through spiders live up here have a jumping spider named jasper that comes right out if i'm picking something up he tries to catch the bees that i'm looking at which is pretty hilarious anyway made it through winter just fine so there are some things that you know I'm not super excited about because the supervisor and I we just inspected all of the top bar hives because we're looking for honey for come honey because apparently there are people that want it come honey who knew we didn't get any they you know they're actually there's more brood than anything else

in these top our hives and everything was pretty decent but I noticed that the top bars themselves they warp a little bit and then the bees fill the gaps with propolis so that's not the end of the world but i'd like to see them stay truer than they do but we're definitely not getting any honey from any of the top bar colonies this year they have what they need now now last minute you know we're in still in a big nectar flow maybe last minute they'll supercharge their production and all of a sudden end up with a whole bunch of honey somewhere but frame comb after comb after a comb because they're not frames they're just top bars comb after a comb there is some brood on almost every single comb in there and they came through winter ready to go in fact they generated swarms this year

now what would you do to help reduce the swarm generation you would expand the colony but we can't because they're a finite length so that's what we end up with not enough space so if you're going to build one of those by the way no they don't need all this comes from the fact that do they have rain guards so No, they don't. They're exposed to the weather. So driving rain could actually get right in there. The snow never piled up in there, even though we had blowing snow. But keep in mind, we face the short end to the prevailing winds. It's broadside to the southern hemisphere. So that way it gets that winter sun that we were talking about earlier. And so we can talk about ways to insulate it, but there again, what did I say before?

What is the condition of the bees when we get in the springtime? do they seem to be barely making it? Would they have benefited from more insulation or more space or better construction? So if they're coming out fully loaded, busting with bees, ready to forage, the minute skunk cabbage shows up in the wetlands, then why on earth do I want them to do more,

build faster, bigger, better, sooner, so that I have to get out there like some of these people that I've seen in 45 degree weather working their hives because they're going to get away from them and by get away from them I mean build too fast and swarm at the very moment the weather breaks because beekeepers are waiting for the moment the weather breaks to go out and work with their hives so if you get out there and the swarming is already happening realize they've been planning that for quite a while they can't make a queen that fast just from egg to adult for a queen they need 15 days and then the queen now

are mature so there's another nine or 10 days to mature and get mated so they plan that way ahead they knew what the weather was going to be better than your weather people whose job it is to know but so what i'm saying is um does it need improvement if it's not broken what are we fixing so bonus to be mindful that thing worked contiguous work and i bought another one of course it's out there and it's full all right so the next question comes from mickey carvalo that's a youtube channel name what size hole to use in the center of the super frames boom okay this is a super frame extra it doesn't mean like it can fly or anything it's just it's an above average frame that goes in your honey super this hole right here this is acorn

foundation which by the way I use a hollow punch to punch these holes out and I used to cut corners who doesn't in life but anyway these corners are perforated and I spoke with people at a recent bee breakfast that said they have no problems just grabbing these corners and snapping them off they didn't come off that easy for me and one of the reasons that we realize that is this is a cut out from one of the plugs I know you can't see it very well but I want you to see how thick that material is it is way thicker than you might expect. But that's acorn, heavy waxed foundation in a wooden frame. This hole right here is one inch.

I have a hollow punch that's an inch and a three-quarter inch. And the thing of it is, when you punch this hole out, and we have a whole bunch of these frames side by side, and they're doing their work. If they don't like this hole, they're going to fill it with beeswax. They go right to work. problem and some people ask if they could use different saws and things like that to cut these holes and my point of it was keep in mind about the particulates which are made out of plastic

if you use a saw and stuff that cuts away material as you go uh or a scroll saw something like that it's going to create a bunch of little microplastic particles i don't know where they go how they know what's going on but when you use a punch it's just a clean cut through and you have the piece that you take out so when you put a whole bunch of them together these holes line up the bees go through here they don't have to go up and over the top they don't have to go around they don't have to go underneath to get bike up because if you look at way when they're building comb they'll build the comb out away from the face that's what the heavy wax foundation is for so spring for the extra get the heavy wax and then they'll start to build it out

through the middle and then they gradually spread out spread out until they do all of these so then while they're working through the middle they also work the back side the comb through the middle first and then the adjacent frame through the middle first we're saving them steps by having these holes here now i've been cutting corners and beekeeping for a while and uh that works really well but i want you to know of course there's a company that's making frames with these cutouts already and that hole looks like it's about half an inch it's really small and then the corners are all cut which i used to take 10 snips and clip off every corner but i noticed the one that seems the most useful to the bees is the one that's in the center and a little down from the top and the reason we see that and know

that is because when we're using foundationless frames which you don't see in honey super's because foundationless it's hard to spin it out unless you're going to make cut comb so when it's foundationless it's usually your brood frames but by having the hole just a little down from the top right there and what they'll do is they'll fill it in until it's about the size of one or two cells in fact from the side profile it starts to look just like any other honey or brood cell the difference is you see a bee come out of it and then you see another bee come out of it and when I say see it I mean it's because I have these also in my observation hives because that's how I learn how bees use stuff so the size of it isn't critical so if you get a

three quarter inch punch or a half inch punch or something like that and I recommend that you take a four by four stand it on its end it could be two or three feet long two feet's probably good and you set the frame on top of the four by four on the end grain and then you hold your hollow punch and you hit it with your hammer and you cut one of these out and you move on to the next one and they work really well so if you don't want to do that yourself and you want a frame that's going to last the rest of your beekeeping life you get it from 21st B and you're probably thinking do i get something for that am i getting kickbacks from 21st B for mentioning them no they're the only company that sends you or sells you a frame with the punched out

holes are ready they're heavy frames by the way so that's the size i use three quarter or one inch the one i just showed you is one inch works great no problem at all so uh oh and this is another question this is related to the keeper's hive and if you don't know what that is i did several videos of the keeper's hive setting it up myself assembling it myself installing the colonies and of course interviewing george dotto doctor george dotto who is one of the innovators and then they have other people working with them that do great thanks but the question here from quentin's is i'm not sure i understand the point of this hive as a double nuke maybe and i think the double nuke reference comes from people in the northwestern part

of the state of vermont um like michael palmer let's say who winters double nukes It's not like that. So here's the deal. Here's what it is if you don't already know. The Keepers Hive, the single Keepers Hive or the double colony Keepers Hive, which right now is kind of in demand because of its high productivity with honey production. You put two colonies together. They share the common honey.

I had questions about that myself. This is why I asked these questions because I like to grill people. I like to ask them all the questions that I have. that come to mind that's why you should go to conferences because you meet the people that come up with the innovations and you can pin them down with all of things you want to know so i said you've got a queen over here in her colony queen over here in her colony there's a queen excluder here so they can't go past and there's a divider board inside the next box up from the bottom box and so each side is separate until that point but then there's a queen excluder above that and now the workers all are

working on the exact same honey storage area the honey super why did they get along so the answer i got was they just get along i didn't think that was a very good answer but it's true they just get along so my colonies are proof of that they're still doing it and so what's different about it couldn't i just do this with any old i could get two 10 frame boxes put them side by side create a shim that covers the exposed area when i shift them over to to a single riser beyond that because now I have roughly half of each box going up. The way theirs is built. There's the center column or support box in the middle of it and then they build out from there. And they've got these little rails. This is the difference.

There are these little rails and glass over the top of it. So you can pull open one side and you can see the number of bees that are in it. Kind of see what the activity is. They upgraded the glass by quite a lot from the first keeper side that came out, which I also got. And they didn't give me the two queen system. I bought the two queen system. I know that's important to say because some people might think maybe I was swayed with presents. I wouldn't have refused one if they wanted to give it to me, but I bought it as part of the fundraiser campaign because I like to support innovations that I think are interesting. So then you can go to the side, flip it open, see what your bees are doing. You want to see more than that. You pull the glass off. After you've pulled the glass off, you pull the sides off. The sides are shaped like this and they cover.

the wings or ends of the top bar of your length roth frames. And when you pull that away, now we slide them along because the bees didn't have access to heavily propylized them. So you can pull them out to the side, look at the brood. I highly recommend you have a hive butler tote sitting next to you. And you can put the frames in that while you're looking at these frames. Look at them all, see the status of the queen, see the brood status, then line them all back up,

push them all back in put the sides back on the glass on top of that close the lid you can insulate that lid in winter time which i just put rolled up a double bubble in there and they both came through winter not surprisingly just fine now you have to put your own bottom boards on there so that gives you a chance to do it and uh that's it improved honey production but the difference between any standard or double nuke system or something like that is your brood area without having to pull off these upper boxes to find out what's going on and you need to by the way get into those brood boxes every one to two weeks if you want to make sure that proplice isn't still connecting those things together I have the standalone hive no problem

the two colony system one side no problem because I'm not getting in them every one or two weeks I'm just not. And the other side, my western side colony, had really propolized everything in there. So I had to spend quite a lot of time sitting there and scraping it all off. I could still get it moved, but it took some effort. So you're supposed to get in it routinely, inspect the brood, know the status of your queen, and the same people that built that, highly recommend your Demerie control method for reducing congestion in your brood area and keeping your colony from swarming. So I just wanted to say all of that.

So again, it's supposed to help you not have to lift everything, but then you are lifting again once the time to harvest honey comes. And if you're getting the double colony system, get ready. You're going to be lifting heavy boxes full of honey. And I highly recommend that if you have flow supers, that would be a great candidate for a colony to put that on. And right now, if you're curious about that, my flow supers are at roughly 70% finished. So by the day, I think it's Wednesday that I said, was going to be the best day next week.

We'll be looking at the flow supers too and getting some honey off of this. It's time. We're at the end of the year. So we're in the fluff section right now, if you don't already know. And I want to caution you, robbing risks are going to increase rapidly here. Because the nectar flow is going to wrap up, colonies are maxing out. and hopefully you've been watching a video up in the corner here that has the it's just a landing board of one of the hives starting at nine o'clock this morning and I videoed it for roughly two hours just to make sure I would have enough and clearly have more than enough but it shows the amount of pollen that's coming in that translates into what brood building because what they're going to start building right now are going to be the fat-bodied winter workers those are bees so don't live your standard six weeks they live six months months and your bees are going to depend on those to get them through so nutrition has to be at

its peak right now that's what you're seeing the colony waking up doing its foraging bringing in really cool loads of pollen hope it's not ragweed although ragweed pollen is supposed to be really good protein by the way which is why the deer eat the tops of it too so robbing just be concerned and by that I mean it's it seems counterintuitive but you can still reduce your entrances and your bees can defend themselves because coming up soon is not just a robbing from other honey bees you're going to start to see more and more vespits you're going to see wasps they're going to hum they're going to be pinging your hives because keep in mind what I said it got really cold last night the bees aren't flying immediately in the morning but guess what

is the wass are they fly colder in your honey bees and so they try to get in my magic entrance size is 3 eighths of an inch high by 3 to 4 inches wide and it's also time to start closing up those flow hive entrances too which are 3 8s completely across by design which i thought was pretty cool and the other thing is the license hive that it just set out there also 3 8s of an inch and there's standard opening good stuff why 3 8s mice can't get into it so that's good news keep an eye on those mice and i'm doing a conference too not this weekend but next weekend what state in ohio it's gonna be fun i'll tell you more about that next friday okay so uh taking honey wednesday so that's coming because you want to take your honey early enough that you can put the

supers back on have the bees clean it up get your stuff in storage and the bees now had to back fill for the remaining weeks to make sure that they have what they need for winter time and here's the tight rope we walk because we want to do that just in time and we want them to be back filling but not enough to where they become honeybound and actually kick off another swarm too late in the year to do anything so don't forget about the seed bargains and uh yesterday is wednesday if you have questions for me don't forget to write them down right in the comment section of this video you can also go to the way to be or click on the page mark contact and submit your topic there and don't forget to i know i'm saying this at the very end but this is also a podcast now youtube has a podcast

So you can look up the way to be questions and answers on YouTube for the podcast. You can also go to the way to be podcast. Just Google it. You'll find it. So many carriers have it right now. Even Amazon has it, which is funny. Because you don't get a dime for that. It's just totally free.

You just do the podcast. So I want to thank you for being here. I hope you got one useful thing out of today's Q&A. And I just wish you all the best with your bees. And I hope you have a great weekend. I'm Frederick Dunn. been the way to be.