The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 369 LIVE Chat Edition with Frederick Dunn August 28th

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

This is the audio track from the  YouTube Video:  https://youtube.com/live/Mot5QIhMtp8?feature=share

So hello and welcome. Happy Friday. Today is August, the 28th of 20206, and this is Backyard BKBK Questions and Answers episode number 369. This is a live chat edition, so questions and topics will be coming in from the live chat. And if you missed it, sorry, I did my best to let everyone know. And I'm Frederick Dunn, by the way, and this is the way to be.

So I'm glad to have you here. If you want to know, we're going to talk about. later please look down in the video description here and you'll see all the topics listed in order with time stamps going along with them so you'll be able to find exactly what was discussed and leave your own comments later so you may be wondering how to submit a topic for consideration in the future you can go to the way to be dot org and click on the page marked contact and you will be able to submit your own topic or question by filling out the form there and then you never know might show up in a future way to be presentation. So I'm gonna let you know that my bouncer today is not here. It's going to be replaced by Ross Wagner. So Keith Spillman of Half Tracks and Honey normally is here, but we're gonna pass that on.

So these in the abyss, wildwoods beekeeping, are here in the chat section. And you're more than welcome to just go ahead and talk with one another. Ross is here. He's the announcer for today, as I just said. And if anybody acts up, he's going to expedite their exit. So that's good news.

I don't know you're probably wondering, by the way, what's going on outside and where is outside? Well, we're located in the northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. And it's pretty sweet out there. In fact, it's so nice outside that I really, you know, hesitated whether or not it should even come inside because there's a lot to do with the bees right now. And you might be wondering what the temperatures are. It is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 22.5 Celsius. So 1.8 mile per hour winds is a perfect day.

That's low wind in kilometers per hour. That's 2.8. So 62% relative humidity, which means what? That your bees can now dry their honey down. That's really, really important. And we are in a nectar flow now, and we've drawn some honey. and I recently posted a video. Oh, this morning recently.

So how to dry your honey in a pinch? Because somebody asked about it and wanted to see my setup. And so I did that. It's a four-minute video, and hopefully you can dry your honey if it needs to be dried out. We've got topics about that today. And if you've got questions in the chat, I see that Grayson has already posted a question. It's in all caps. It's not considered yelling.

You're not rude. That's just so I notice it because you're also welcome to just talk with one another in the chat side here. So I'm just going to finish giving you the rundown of what's going on here. So drying things out, that means little bearding and it gets cold at night and it's hot during the day. And we have days ahead where it's going to be in the 80s. So it's still going to be great for the bees. And we've got skunks making their rounds. I like the skunks.

Let's be honest. They're digging things out. They eat voles and moles. They are omnivorous and they can't reach my landing boards because my landing boards. are 17 to 18 inches off the ground out of skunk reach. We have lots of videos of them. Swarming risk right now is just medium because all the swarms that are supposed to happen happened.

Now, the robbing risk is also medium, and that's why when we took the honey off of the hives over the past couple of days, they almost didn't care. They didn't get feisty, they didn't go patrol in the driveway or anything. So that means there's a lot of honey still coming in and they don't feel desperate yet.

The final honey pull for me here is going to be wrapping up over the next week. And then we're going to let them backfill everything in preparation for winter. And so what are the sources outside right now, golden rod, is about halfway done. The tall golden rod is still there. Astors are coming on. Clover remains solid. That is the standard Dutch clover, white clover. And sunflowers are finally blooming here.

They were slow. Maximilian sunflowers. flowers not in bloom yet so there's plenty of stuff ahead for the bees ironweed joe pie weed in the wetlands here uh it just goes as far as you can see across the meadows and everything so the bees are set really well i'm going to jump right in here and talk with grace near wildwoods beekeeping already posted the first question if you tried veroxan any thoughts well i can say that i bought a bunch of Varoxan when it initially came out and I didn't use it. But what happened is I ultimately just gave it away to someone else who I thought would use it.

So I have thoughts about the mechanics of it. And some of you may be sitting there going, what is Varoxan and why are we talking about it? It's an extended release, axelic acid. It is soaked into what feels like really dense cardboard strips. You have to, if you're following the label, and I hope that you do, you have to put them down in between the frames of brood. And you alternate, you stagger them so that they're spread out. Just follow the label.

If I describe it in great detail, I may say something wrong. But I do know that when you stick them down in between the frames, you just violated their B space and Bs cannot work under the rocks and strips. So if people in the viewing audience here in the chat or those later that want to make comments down in the comment section, you're more than welcome to share what your experience is then. And so my response here is going to be the feedback from others. First of all, it's a safe way to introduce exhalic acid. What's the purpose of it? To kill varodistructer mites. And is it doing that really, really well? The feedback is kind of neutral, really. It might be serving as an extended

release placeholder that keeps your varodistructer mites kind of at the numbers that they're at. it hasn't proven to be according to those who have given me feedback a big knockdown force and because you have to put it in and then come back and pull it out later i'm not a huge fan of that and the fact that the bees can't work in close proximity to the strips so then people did things like laid it across the tops i can probably tie this in and just give a shout out to another channel and pass the buck a little bit so i could say go to bob benny's channel and uh look at the different tests they did with veroxan strips and they try them a lot of different ways i don't know Randy Oliver also has done a lot of extended release research and that's scientific

beekeeping you can go there too sorry to pass a buck but I don't have direct personal experience with it and as I said one of the things I gave it away at a beekeeper breakfast where I was given a presentation just because it has a limited shelf life I didn't know if I was ever going to use it so I thought now I just pass it on so it is safe to use you can use it with honey supers on. So it's an organic treatment. Exalic acid has a proven track record. The variables with exhalic acid are really how it's delivered and how we hopefully get those varodistructer mites in contact with it. But that's the best I can say about it so far. My preferred method, if anybody's asking, is exhalic acid vaporization. I realize that it's a

high risk way to deliver exhalic acid, but it's an immediate knockdown for any dispersal phase mites. You find them dead on the landing boards in numbers within the next 48 hours after you deliver that. And that works really well, but it is a safety issue. So my number two, and I'm still waiting for it to get approval. The extended release sponges that are coming out for Mike's B's, which also sells easy ox. So you don't know about that. Those sponges are held up for approval. So this is from Ross Wagner.

Thanks for being here, by the way, Ross. I really appreciate it. What do the nurse bees do different to turn normal egg into a fat, bodied winter bee? So just like, this is really interesting because it deals with diet. And think about this. Your nurse bees can take an egg, any egg that's for a worker. So we also, Queens will produce an infertile egg that's for drones. But it's a worker egg.

They decide how they're going to build their housing around her. They're going to draw the cell. For example, if it's going to be a queen, it becomes the only vertical cell in the hive, and they're going to change a worker to a queen through diet alone. So the same thing happens when it comes these fat-bodied winter bees, or what I like to call dearth bees. And so in preparation for the lean times of winter, and when things get cold, a worker bee lives about six weeks, this time of year.

Fat-bodied winter bees are completely different. they go for six months in some cases. They are physiologically different. And this happens just for the diet that the nurse bees decide to give them, and it's triggered by the time of year and the fact that the environment is reducing resources being provided, shorter days, cooler nights, blah, blah, blah. And so what happens is those bees, those workers, and that's what they are, store fat in their heads more than a normal worker bee.

their thorax and of course their abdomen. So they become a walking resource for the hive. And this enables them then to also be able to produce brood. So not that they can lay an egg, but once a queen lays an egg in wintertime, even without resources in the hive like the pollen, bee bread, those are the proteins that are essential for the nurse speeds to consume so then they can cycle it back out.

It's nutrition for developing larvae. they have it within their body already to maintain a minimal reproduction group inside the hive. So I know that was kind of a long answer, but the difference really is simply the decision that the nurse bees make when the environment is leaning out. And so that's also why I said they're sometimes considered dearth bees because there has been some evidence that they'll produce these fat-bodied winter bees, even in a period of dearth like midsummer, for example,

when there's no forage out there. And then a lot of beekeepers respond with, providing a whole bunch of resources to the hive in hopes of keeping them nourished and cared for so that we don't have to get into that. So there again, if it's a question for me, please type it on all caps. Otherwise, I might miss it.

So there you go. And I hope I gave the right answer. So what's a good beginning audio recording device to record what I see during hive inspections. Just a decent Amazon purchase. I'm horrible at taking notes of what I see in my 20 hives. And that's honey and the coop.

I like that. So honey in your two-door coop. I think that's great. Is it a thunderbird? Anyway, moving on. Digital recorders, and I did a video about this, we've shown them before,

and I have them. They're voice actuated. You drop them right in your pocket, and you set it on voice act, and I've tried to myself just to test it out and you can take notes by talking to yourself in the B yard. I recommend you do it. It's also good at not just triggering and recording until you're talking. So it was very accurate. And so at the end of today's talk, I will put the digital voice recorder that I use in the video description. And there'll be a link there so you can go and look at it. It's the top rated one. It's really small. The battery lasts for days.

you can carry that in your pocket. I highly recommend you let people know that you have it on because when somebody comes up to you and starts talking, they're going to be recorded. They may not know it because it's inside your pocket and they can't see it. So you don't want to record somebody without them knowing. So don't set people up. Anyway, it works really well.

And if you just go to Amazon, by the way, and just look up Digital Voice Recorder, and it's the one with the most, they're inexpensive too. It's got the most reviews. So they're outstanding. So that's all the, I already got all the questions out of the way. That's good. All right.

So we're going to move on to questions that were submitted. And I don't know if I mentioned it. I hope it did. Yeah, I did. Go to my website, The WaytoB.org, click on the pagemark contact, fill out the form. And there you have it. This comes from W. True, Bafee. Anyway, says they have a few hives that brought in nectar and filled the honey super,

but never fully capped all the frames. I live in Miami, and heat and humidity is really high. I think I should have put more supers on to help the bees dry the capped honey. And I have instances where one side of the frame is fully capped, the other side, not at all. My question is, how wet can I extract honey and use the Vivo Sun, which is the tent that we talked about this morning? That's what this is in response to. To dry it out. What if there's some fresh nectar on that frame?

I'm afraid it would damage the honey. Thanks. Miami backyard beekeeper. So we probably should talk a little bit about when does it become honey, first of all, because Apis Molifera, melifera, transporter of honey, honey transporter. Anyway, they're transporting nectar. So when does the process begin when they're actually collecting nectar from a floral source? When does it start to become honey? Well, first of all, one of the things that turns it into honey,

honey is their ability to create invert sugars. So they have an enzyme already in their body with them and it's called invertase. And so when they put the honey in their honey crop, then they are already starting to invert the sugars there. Now different from pollen, for example, when they bring pollen back from the field and they get it into the hive, a forager can actually go straight to a cell, scratch off the pollen from their hind legs, from their corpulula, stick it right into the cell and then there's bees take over turning that into bee bread and breaking it down by mixing it with other things. But when it comes to nectar, the forager that comes in with nectar in its crop passes it on to another bee inside the hive through trophlaxis. Now that may or may not be

the final time that nectar gets moved around. So every time they pass it, one to the other, so the tongue that's out, that's the receiver, and then the bee that's brought it in, they just open their mandibles and feed them the nectar that they've brought in. but it also is undergoing change. So I guess the reason I'm bringing that up is even when you have uncapped honey to say that it's just nectar or unripe honey, unripe usually means that it's just not dry enough.

And by dry enough, it needs to absolutely be lower than 20%. I prefer 18% water. So depending on the source, where they got it from, it could be 50% water when they bring it in. So there's a lot of evaporation that has to happen. This is also why, as mentioned here, maybe another super would have helped them spread it out more so they could dry it.

It takes up twice the real estate inside the hide. This is why some new beekeepers get alarmed. They see the frames are full, they're not capped, but the drawn comb is full of nectar. And then they check it in a couple of days. It's about half that space, for only two thirds of that space full of nectar. And then those bees are eating it all.

But what we're forgetting often is that they're drying it down, and they're condensing it because they have to get it below that critical water percentage so it doesn't ferment. So they are using twice of real estate and then condensing it and they're fanning all the time. So if you go out at night and listen to your apiary on these hot nights, it sounds like a dryer vent

on the side of somebody's house. They're just blowing away. And so when I was creating stock audio for videos and things like that, of course, I record all of that at different distances from the hive, different behaviors, day, night, sounds, all that stuff. So I keep stock recordings of all of these behaviors. And so they're drying it down. So my thing is, it really is some level of honey already. So it's not like you're just getting

nectar from a flower that's now in your hive and it can be dried down and turned into other honey. But here's the thing. You can and probably should take these little pipettes. I'm sure you have them laying around wherever you are. Oh, look, here's one. So here's a little pipe hat. This is a glass one, which I really like, because you can wash them and sanitize them because we don't want to use them on a bunch of different hives. So you would take a frame and with the open honey that's in there, you would stick this in there and draw some out and put it on what? Your refractometer. And then you're going to find out the moisture content.

Often when we find uncapped, unfinished honey, it's not that it's not dry enough to be considered honey is that they're still working on adding stores to that. So you might find that it's already at 18%. It's good to go. So your number one move there to find out if you should be drying out the whole frame with a bunch of open cells in it, find out what the water percentages are ready, might be ready to go. So, and it often is. And on the flip side of that, just so I can throw some monkey wrenches around and confuse everybody even more, you can have capped honey that you uncap and find that it's at 20 and a half percent or something like that. it can ferment. So always, always, there are no capped, uncapped rules about whether or not it's ready to be stored and will hold up and not ferment. Yeast is everywhere. It's free flowing in the air.

We have a local meatery here. They're a bunch of Viking kind of people. And they don't even add their own yeast to make mead. They let the wild airborne yeast, it just happens to be around, introduce itself into their mead and create the fermentation. that they need to develop that beverage. So it's everywhere. So right here we have a question. This is from Kathy Skrles, S-G-U-R-L-S. Hi, Fred.

My question is regarding the use of the queen pipe. Does the QMP get on the sponges? And if so, can you reuse the sponge again without having an issue for the following queen? You know what? That is a great question. I wish I had one of those queen pipes handy. So anyway, this is what it looks like.

This is the sponge we're talking about. The queen gets in here. I use these all the time now. So the queen gets in here. We close it up. She's scooting around. We have attendance with her. This sponge right here,

very porous, which is why they can breathe through it. They're not suffocating. Also, these are badly made. So the joint here leaks a certain amount of air. And so the question, QMP, what is that? Queen mandibular pheromone.

This is how the bees know their queen. And so I have noticed that when I've had a queen in here, first of all, how long is she even in the pipe? Usually not very long. And the workers spread around her pheromone. And I have noticed momentarily. So I've already taken off this end, introduced her into a hive, for example. And sometimes I'll just set this on top of a hive.

There will be bees that come around and scope it out, but it's not for very long. So five, ten minutes, and they're done. So I don't think residual queen mandibular pheromone. in the sponge is a big deal at all. So it dissipates pretty quick. But if there's an absence or to nor the queens around at all, a real queen is going to draw them. They're not going to be redirected to the sponge

unless we put a QMP noodle in there. And then it's mated queens are number one, virgin queens, nobody cares about them. And the pipe would be third in that lineup of real queens. So made it number one, virgin number two, residual pheromone on a branch or some other material like this would get the attention last. So they're fantastic. And I don't wash it. I probably should say I do wash it because we don't want to I wash it so I can see better through it. So these clean up really easily. Anyway, Don Ultra

free and clear is what I highly recommend. So again, if you have a question for me, type it in all caps and we'll go from there. So what I want to do is some people have asked about the surveys that I do and they never seem to hear back about them later. So here's the thing. On the YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn, you can go there and there's the social segment or something like that. That's where you see surveys. So I had a survey, for example, the most recent one was, do you like these live chats?

Or would you rather we just stick with the Friday, pre-recorded with the opening sequences and all that stuff, Q&As. And then the third option was, of course, don't like the Q&As, I only like videos with substance, real things. So actually, people really like the live chats once a month. I know some people do them weekly. I do it at the last Friday of every month. So for those of you say, you missed it.

You didn't get it last Friday. It's because it wasn't live. Last Friday it is. So anyway, these are the surveys and responses. I'm just going to go over them real quick. I'm giving a lot of live presentations. I don't mean live chats. I'm going to different places.

Ohio uses me a lot. I'm going to go to Missouri. I'm going to go to Wisconsin. I'm going to go to Washington State. I'm going to go to the North American Honey Bee Expo in Louisville, Kentucky. And I'm getting around. Now, here's the thing. I wanted to do a survey because I make jokes about spiders.

I know that we probably should not make jokes about spiders because some people are really afraid. And so he did a survey. I was given a presentation. I mentioned a spider and said that a picture of a spider was coming up and someone got up from their chair and went and stared at the wall. That is real phobia. So I put here, spiders, how's your tolerance? When it comes to a presentation about honeybees, you, number one,

never ever wanted to see an image of a spider. 5% of the respondents said that. And there were 393 respondents, by the way. The second option is, I have anxiety about spiders, but I want to know more. 7% said that. Expect a warning if a spider image is included in a beetot. 3% of the respondents wanted to see that. I want to know about as many living things as possible.

83% of the respondents chose that one. See, that's why you're my people, because you like to learn everything. It happens to me all the time. We go to a beat talk somewhere, and somebody knows something about something else. I want to know that too. And the last response is, we'll leave any presentation if spiders are a part of it.

2% of 393 people would actually leave a presentation if somebody mentions that there's a spider. That is interesting stuff, and I know that I recently interviewed a gentleman in Australia about using spider venom for what to kill Varroa destructor mites and some people do not even want to hear the word spider. Okay, so another survey that was done is, what are your favorite honeybee publications that you subscribe to?

So in the wintertime, we get up to speed on what's going around everywhere. And you know what's really interesting about this is depending on the groups that you're in, people read more or less. People are interested in publications, periodicals, or not. So this is very interesting to me. I'll just say the top response, 273 people responded to this. I don't subscribe to any B-related publications.

63% of my viewers do not subscribe to any B-related publications. But if you did, if he did, because this is the most common question, would you do the American Bee Journal or Bee Culture? The American Bee Journal, 19% chose that one. 14% chose bee culture. And 4% have another publication that we don't know about and subscribe to that. So 63% don't subscribe to any. You may think from that that, well, maybe they don't read.

Maybe they don't know how to read. Maybe they don't like reading. Or they don't like ads. Or they didn't think that the articles are well vetted or something. Who knows? Oh, here we go. I have Michael Armstrong, 46. See, do you use some kind of paramedoth product to keep moths out of frames over winter?

No. Okay. So for those of you who want to know what that is, when you put your stuff in storage, I've done a lot of different storage methods through the years because we don't want wax moths laying their eggs and then having wax worms eating all their stuff. And then in springtime, when you go to use your frames, they're chewed up and there's a bunch of webbing in there from the wax moths that eat every. everything. Wax moths, by the way, can eat plastic. Okay, so let's talk about what wax mods don't like.

You know, specifically waxworms themselves too. They don't like airflow, so you could increase some airflow moderately. They don't like light. They like dark. So if you have an illuminated area, they won't want to be there. And the other thing is you can use these big industrial trash bags, which is what I used to do. So if there were medium supers and most of the people's, most people's honey supers are mediums. We would put down the first box, lay this big 55-gallon trash bag over the top of it,

put the next box on, flip it back over. So between each box, there was a layer of plastic from these big trash bags, totally reusable, never had a wax moth issue with any of those. So we do have a wax moth question in today's Q&A that was pre-submitted. But like what attracts of wasmoth in the first place. And see, I can explain how to get rid of wax moths. Get a photo assignment or a video assignment of that you have to shoot wax worms doing their thing. The minute you have that assignment, you won't be able to find one anywhere because

that happened to me. Okay. So, but as far as if you do have a problem, paramoth, the big thing is clean up your frames really well. Let the bees clean. them out really well. Before you put them in storage, dry frames for storage, and then do the things. Some people do the 90 degrees, every box. So there's airflow through everything. You could get mice then. They get in there and get them too. But I personally have not had wax moth issues doing that.

So Mark Wensel says we have experienced triple digit temperatures for several weeks. My queens have slowed down. They're broodling. How many weeks will it take to generate enough bees to survive winter. Okay, so we can take it down to the core of honeybee biology. 5,000 bees are required to have a use social functioning colony of bees. So that magic number, 5,000. So if you have a frame of brood, deep frame, one side, that's a little over 3,000 bees ultimately. So when we talk about how many do we need, you need two or three frames of brood to get over the 5,000 mark and then they have to be in a hive that's sized right this is critical it has to be sized right for the population of the bees uh even small hives nucleus hives have gotten very small

clusters through winter because they weren't stuck in a big vacuous space um and so they can do it uh the question is time right so how much time do we have before they can build up so we know the biology to the bee, they're going to lay when the queen has enough nutrition to lay, this is critical, to put her in full lay, she's going to need full reproductive resources. So your foragers have to be bringing that in. If you're desperate, you're going to have to be putting, I personally wouldn't put pollen patties and things on like that at the end of the year. A lot of PhDs entomologists question how effective that is at all, but I understand the need to try to get them going. I think the biggest boost we can do for them is when we give them the carbohydrates, they need to perform every function in the hive.

When we put pollen patties and things like that in the hive, sometimes we're challenging them to remove something they don't even want. Because let's face it, we don't know unless we're doing dissection and microscopy, whether or not they're ingesting it or just getting rid of it. Just because it looks like it's going away doesn't mean the bees are eating it. So dry pollen substitute outside the hive would be my indebt. number one go to if I had starving colonies that needed to brood up. And we know through studies that AP 23 has performed the best. However, getting your bees to track down to EP23, dry pollen substitute outside, not easy. Getting them to find mega bee, a little easier. Here's what you can do. You can do a cheat. Now, realize, this is not a medication. This is a food resource. This is a

supplement. So I can go off label. You can take ultra bee by mannly, dry pollen sub, mix it in with megabee. And then what it does is because, see, even though ultra bee performed the lowest in scientific studies in brood production, and AB23 was number one, it attracts your bees quicker. When you open a bag of ultra bee, it smells strong. Bees find it while you're walking across the bee art. So there, it's a magnet. And then you can mix it and we can pull the old swish-a-roo on them, lure them into the Snickers bar, and then feed them broccoli once they get there. So that would be my number one thing.

If I needed to boost colonies, if they were really deprived of resources, dry pollen, substitute, fed, outdoors. So they fly to it, find it, bring it back. And that way we know that they're consuming it. Don't see. And again, backer beekeepers want to make it convenient for the bees and would put that inside the hive. you won't know if they consumed it if you're just putting it inside the hide. If it's outside and you can watch the landing board, they're bringing it in, that's the way to go. So the triple-digit temperatures, though, are a big deal, by the way.

There are some studies that honeybees, by the way, they overheat when they fly. If you're in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, their ability to fly distances and do their work is profoundly reduced because they're physically overheating, because their engine, the thorax, is doing all this work and generating all this heat, and the wind has to pass over their head. Their head becomes the radiator for the bee. And if it's 100 degrees plus outside, they can't cool down, therefore they can't fly the distances they need, and they definitely can't handle the heavy loads to bring back to the hive without overheating

and ending up grounded somewhere. Super interesting. So I would, me personally, sounds a little desperate, if as soon as the temperature is scheduled to break, that's when I would be putting out dry pollen substitute for those bees and making sure that each colony also has the carbohydrates that they need. So you may have to back feed sugar syrup and things like that too. Here we go. What are we doing?

So you are looking. Next is Michelle Armstrong, but when you put the plastic over the frames, it is now dark. Good catch because I said that they don't like light and they move away from it. But when I put the plastic over the boxes, there is no access to it. So these plastic trash bags that we're talking about now keeping your wax maws from laying eggs and getting those wax maws in there.

It's a sealed container. They don't get in because by stacking them that way directly on one another with the plastic in between each level, they can't migrate through. It is a closed space. It is dark now, but I've never had a single successful wax moth incident when I used that method. So yes, it created darkness but closed off access at the same time. So that worked. And that's a great question.

Question everything. Those are always my rules. Fred, could you give more info on your trip to Washington State time and place? Oh man, I know I go into Seattle and then I drive three hours. I'm not driving, getting picked up. Jeff Ott from the podcast is picking us up. And I'd have to put that information somewhere else because that's all I know right now. My wife does all my scheduling and that's where I'm going.

I know I'm giving a presentation and that's it. Dr. David Peck will be there. Kamen Reynolds will be there. There's a whole bunch of us going together, and I'll do my best to update my video description here and explain where I will be in Washington State. So the Bekeeping Today podcast, Jeff Ott, he's the one that contacted me and asked me to come.

So there's a whole group of us. We all know each other, and we're going to be giving presentations there. So, Be But, This was another survey. What do you figure in my viewership? By the way, I have very sharp viewers because I get information and ideas

and fortification from you often. And I think it's really important to have this interaction. So anyway, it was about B books. I know this will shock you, but I've been asked to produce or author a book about bees and I always say no. And the reason is, I always feel like there's too much going on still.

There's too much to learn. and who wants to read a book by me, for starters. It would just have to be a whole bunch of photos and stuff, too, to bridge the gap. But anyway, so when you survey people, would you or have you purchased a B book, B-related book within the last five years? 328 respondents, by the way, which is pretty darn good for an online survey like this. 72% have purchased a B-related book within the last five years. I really enjoy interviewing authors of B-books, by the way.

And 20% said I've not purchased any beekeeping books within the past five years. And 3% say, I check out all of my books from the library. It saves money. You got that right. And I like having beekeeping books, but they were given to me. 5% of the people take books only if they're given free. So St. John Coleman, there's some jittery going on it. Hey, Fred, aren't you giving a talk at the VA meeting?

I think I saw an ad for it. might be going. Okay, yes, I am, and I don't know when. So I'm being terrible at this. I started a list on my website that showed all the places I would be going, but I also realized that I'm telling everybody that I'm not going to be home

and come and steal my Cheerios or whatever. So I don't like to tell people when I'm not going to be home, even though we have security at the wazoo here. I don't know exactly, but yes, I'm going to that one too. And I know that this coming Wednesday, I'm in Ohio. And, yeah. So I know for sure January, I'm in two places in January.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So January, the first week of January, I'm at the North American Honeybee Expo. And then after that, I'm in Wisconsin west of Milwaukee. So for that. It's going to be fun. It's going to be great. But if somebody says I'm coming, they're right because I'm just doing what I can. So I'd be happy to see you there. And by the way, I just saw you at the North American at the Honeybee Expo two years ago. Anyway, Kathy Skrill says, would hive a live syrup be a good additive when mixing sugar bricks for emergency feed? Okay, so it wouldn't. And here's why. If you're mixing sugar,

bricks. See, Hyvalive Fondin is the best. The fondant, 10 to 1. In other words, it takes 10 times the energy for a B to get sucrose from a sugar brick than it does to get it from fondant. We know that by the amount of time they work on it and how hard they have to work on it and they need a lot of moisture to do it. But it makes sense that you could put the Hiveolive Syrup in your mix to make your sugar breaks, but the problem is you're making candy boards. If you could do it, but without violating the temperature restrictions. Because the high of live syrup can't be over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. See, I was thinking fondant and stuff, there's a cold process.

So if you can do the cold process, you're good. If you're going to increase the temperature, though, some people do when they're mixing heavy, heavy sugars for sugar bricks and things like that. If you exceed 120 degrees, you defeat the nutritional value. So maybe you could. I don't know anyone that's done it or tested it. because the hive alive people themselves offer hive alive as a fondant a pre-mixed easy feed syrup and they also provide it as a little bottle a concentrate that you two teaspoons of that makes a gallon

of finished syrup and that's how i use it and when it comes to wintertime sugar bricks i used to pour let's say let's say i had a wrap it round that's what this is so we used to just take a four-pound bag of sugar and pour it in here and fill this thing all the way up take this out and then the bees will come up here and because this has a cover and there's this channel on the bottom the warm humid air goes up inside and on this plastic interior surface it condenses so it hits the dew point and then it will drip down the sides and turns the dry sugar into sugar breaks all on its own and then the bees would get up in here and they would consume two-thirds of that that work. However, is there a better feed for the bees? And the reason I made the shift, by the way,

is because when the fondant came out from Hive Alive and everybody was using it and talking about it, they actually had published scientific studies, which I question everything, and you should do. And we did nozema spore counts. We wanted to know if when they were consuming that, did it impact the nozema spores in the midgut of the worker honeybees in wintertime, and it did. So it has a medicinal value plus the fondant was easier for the bees to utilize. And now that they went to the, I think they're four pound packs, I shifted everything last winter to the four pound packs and I never had a hive, finish one of those.

So that meant I had food security for my bees all winter long until springtime. And then I just threw away what's left over. I know a lot of people, and even the company says, take the leftover font it, mix it with water, and you'll have your sugar syrup or whatever. I didn't do that because it's actually a lot of work. So you can put it at a robbing station in spring. And again, you don't put any of that on until later in the year.

So we talk about that feeding and stuff much later. And so let's see. So the sugar breaks. And by the way, we had a survey about that where you put a bunch of stuff in your sugar breaks and see what the bees preferred, and I'll just cut to the chase on that. The bees went for the sugar that had nothing in it. So if you want your bees to consume something, dry sugar by itself,

even if you do a cold process and you make a break and stuff, we just need them to have the energy. So bottom line, we don't want them to starve. We don't want to lose the ability to generate warmth and hold that cluster in the wintertime and protect that brood. So dry sugar, the candy board test. We did, this is like the survey real quick, but bees consumed the sugar-only recipe the most. Hands down, 53% said that.

Bees consumed the sugar and essential oil recipe the most. Only 13% said that. My bees consumed the sugar, essential oil, and dry pollen sub. Only 14% said that. And others said all recipes were consumed the same, no preference at all. 20% said that, but 53%. And this holds true when you're feeding them syrup or anything else. They go for the stuff without anything added to it.

And this is proven time and time again. So we can say that they're not getting full nutritional value that way, but we do want the bees to consume it. The reason that you might think, well, why don't we just put out sugar syrup by itself anyway? Well, because it goes bad so quick. Remember, high moisture content, it's going to spoil. It's going to cause mold. and the mold is definitely detrimental to your bees. So any of these additives,

pro-sweet, bee keepers' choice, pro-health, honeybee healthy, all of that extends the sugar syrup and reduces the mold. So then the bees can have a longer time to consume it. But when it's all fresh, bee preference, sugar with nothing. So even the dry sugar that turns itself into a break would have been preferred by the bees and one that's got all these other materials in it, and they get their energy from it. So, okay.

Yeah, this is a wood. I'd like to be an additive. So the sugar breaks, I've never tried it. So, but I definitely would make a fondant. If you can learn to make your own cold or low temperature fondant, I would definitely go with that. So let's move on. Remember if it's for me, it's in all caps from skipping over it.

At least I didn't miss it. until I find it. Okay, right, you didn't miss it. So St. John Coleman. If starting today, which hive form would you use Langstroth, Lans, top bar, or other? I have an immediate answer for that. It's not even a close call. If you think about being older, and let's chase back, some, I mean, I don't know about it myself personally, but some people are older when they get in a beekeeping cell. So the Layans hive, topar hives, long lankstroth hive are in my top three for what I would be doing if I were older and frail, let's say. And the long lankstroth hive is winning out for me personally.

When we're teaching about bees, when we're accessing the bees, when we're drawing honey off of them, my top are hives, and they're great. They handled our winter last winter. they're the B-Mindful top bar hives are like them, but there's no frame. So every time you pull it up, if you want to extract honey from it, you have to cut the frame off. Not the frame. There's no frame. There's a top bar. So you're cutting the honeycomb.

You're crushing and straining. And of course, you get beeswax and things like that. But the other thing is with the top bar hive, it's not big enough. So it's full end to end. And now, so we just did a recent. inspection because my supervisor was here. That's Quinn. He's 10 going on 11. He was very upset to find that their productivity for honey was down and there were just a bunch of brood everywhere. So the brood extended through most of the length of that hive. The layens hives, okay? I kind of like

those, but they also have limiting factors with their design. So insulated layens hive, the bees perform really well in them. There is some sagging issues from time. to time with these deep comb frames and also if you need to supplemental feed for some reason because the top of each frame forms a continuous cover unless you spread those apart and break that open you don't have a feed option although dr leo shirashkin gave me a frame feeder for the layens hive and so again big a little bit cumbersome but they all work topar works layens hive works insulated with sheep's wool, of course, and now my favorite, hands down, the long langstroth eye. It has all the frames. It has all the frame options. I can have a queen excluder in the lineup,

which keeps my bees at the first 10 frames. When I need to pull a honey frame out, and also I make it too big. So for those of you are wondering, where do you get the one that you use? Well, if you are buying one, because I don't sell them, my number one choice is an insulated long langstrotth hive by Beersville Bees, no great surprise. He makes them really well. The lid is insulated. Side walls are insulated and it's big enough. Now when I build my own, if you want to know what is involved in building your own, and this is 100% free, you go to the website, the way to be.org, you click on the page marked prints and drawings, and you'll see the PDFs produced by Ross Miller. I drew him out and he formalized him. And it

PDFs and you can see exactly what's involved in these large long Langstroth hives. That's my number one. By far, in fact, we were just talking about it, modifying them a little bit, but you can make them as big and as heavy as you want. The biggest storms come through here. Blizzard conditions. 60 plus 70 mile an hour winds come through here. And you know what?

Never moves? The long langstroth. And it's not even strapped down or bolted down. It's just a beast. It's heavy. It's a two-person carry when it's emmer. So you can make them big and heavy. They're static.

Perfect for the backyard beekeeper. So if I was starting, that would, I like lots of hives. Observation hives, don't get wrong, love them. But if I could only have one, let's say Fred, you got to clear out everything. You can only have one style hive. So then I would have the long langs or the high, but I would make windows in it or something. So it could double also as my observation eye, which is not very good because the windows look at the end frame. frame. I need to see the face frame. But that's it. You could, there's their endless

modification. You can make them as fancy or as basic as you want. And they handle all the frames around the market. And because it's also your storage area, all in one big thing, you can make that thing 10, 10 feet long. If you had somebody to build it for you, 2x12 lumber, you could get 10 foot lengths. You can make this thing and then have braces going down the line that keep it from, of course warping in or out but it's almost endless what you could do with it you get have multiple colonies and one big think of it as a log that fell over and with insulated tops and stuff it works great in the snow belt okay so i know that was more than a lot of you were wanting to listen to uh kathy says i was going to do the cold process you're in yeah do it do the cold process

add it just like because by volume it's two teaspoons per gallon so the same displacement So that would be it. It's not something that the company recommends, but I don't see why you couldn't try that out. I would try it on a hive and see how it goes. Because it's definitely good stuff. Let's see. There's another question from Be Amazing Hives, Dave, Fred.

Now the question, it seems like the girls are opening and consuming the pupa. Can the deformed wing virus, just as DWV here, be transferred by them being eaten. So this is called chewed brood, which sometimes they do. And there's bald brood and chewed brood. And I highly recommend that people look that up.

There is a book. If only I had it handy. Honeybees and their maladies. Oh, look. I'm going to recommend this booklet. Because what happens is when we get into brood disorders and diseases, chewed brood, ball brood, sack brood, all that stuff. And heaven forbid, it should be foul brood or European foul brood, American or European,

American is the worst. But all these conditions are in here, and yes, they do pass that on. And so you need to know what it is, what the remedy is. So deformed wing virus is prevalent, by the way, and can be passed on. Not just to the honeybees. This is why it's bad too. It gets passed on to native bees. Bumblebees in particular, the University of Vermont did a field study

really adjacent to a commercial operation that had a bunch of deformed wing virus. But I personally was, again, doing video and photography of Vespetei. So I was doing wasps. And I was pulling apart their nest and photographing them and getting videos of them emerging from their cells and things like that. And didn't you know some of the wasps came out and had deformed wing virus? So your bees are not living in isolation. So it is very important to have all that under control.

But I'm going to highly recommend honeybees and their maladies. You need to get your own copies. This is a publication from Penn State University Extension.psu. tsu.edu. You can also go to their website, get access the information right away, make sure you see what you're doing, and find out how to cope. So, yes, we don't want that. So, whoa, whoa, getting away from you here.

This mutin says I have with signs of PMS, several girls with only, okay, so this is paracetic mite syndrome, PMS, and several girls with the form of the complete cycle of OAB month treatment, zero mites and a current wash, have a ton of hygienic, uncapping. Okay, so if there's also a bunch of hygienic behavior, so that's the difference. If you're seeing exposed brood and you can actually see them and they uncap and they actually recap and you can look at that closely and see there's a ring around the capping and sometimes they're even leaving them uncapped of finished development, which is a little weird. But if you have these hygienic bees that are doing this uncapping to kill Verodostructormites at different stages of reproduction in there and it works really well, those are keepers. You might even not have a problem.

So especially with zero mite loads. You kidding who wouldn't want that? So there again, stay on top of it, see what's up. Be amazing again. Now the question, it seems like the girls are opening. Okay, so we already did that. Brace in my 30 frame long laying and the bees built comb on it, making it difficult to inspect.

And that book is the best. Okay, so here's what I've learned about making you difficult to inspect, propolis let me tell you this is why you get into your hives on really hot days because propolis is big glue for a reason you have to get into your hives

more frequently if you've got a colony that does a lot of propolizing and you have to move stuff around because it can be a huge challenge so the braces and stuff there might be a lot of room for improvement there I don't know but yeah I ran into a lot of

Propolis. Probolus is so beneficial to the bees. We like it, but we don't like it when it comes time to pull things apart, access frames, and hopefully you're not pulling your frames apart. I'm lucky enough my frames do not pull apart when I pry up on those top bars. But that's it. You think it's best to introduce kids to beehives and beekeeping. Now this is from Ross. What age? You know what? I have to tell you, it's almost not an age thing for kids to get into beehives, of course, with adult supervision, it's about their interest level. Because when you talk to my grandson, he was two, and I got him a B-suit just to turn him loose so we could go out there and not get sung because he would just go from hive to hive and stare at landing boards without knowing what

he's even looking at. It's a curiosity level. I'm very, I don't want to say I'm disappointed. I have three grandsons. One of them is big on bees. The rest of them, eh, six-seven. They don't care one way or the other. So the granddaughter got all excited about bees. Ran out super excited, got her bee suit on. You know, she loves them. I have high hopes for her. So the age is, really, there's no set age.

What there is is we need to know are they potentially allergic to bee stings? We really need to know that. There is a test for it. They can find out, let you know. You don't have to get them stung and see if they have trophlaxis to figure that out. So it's really about their interest level. So when you have little kids to just spark up, we've had, groups here, whole families, where they dragged a bunch of kids along with them,

and I say dragged them along because it was clear that a bunch of those kids had no idea where they were going, and it took me a good 10 minutes to win those kids over. But there were little pee-wees in the group that were so into the Vs. They were so excited. First of all, the excitement of putting on a B-suit. Some kids like that, some don't. But once they put on a B-suit and once they have confidence in the B-suit, and they know that the bees can get on them and not sting them,

and they can see inside hives. Some kids, if they're just looking at other things and don't care at all about what's going on, that's the cut, not the age. So there's no minimum age. Now, turning them loose on their own, letting him mark a queen. So the 10-year-old who's been keeping B since he was two

marked his first queen this year because they don't let him play with stuff that could harm the hives. Handing him a smoker. You've got to be careful with that. They go smoke crazy. So it is like the puff every. everything. So again, you know, it's amazing what they can learn and what they know at early ages.

And I remember being 10 and 11 and 9. And I was capable if I was interested in something, I wanted to know everything. So it's really just, you know, what the kids are like. So, so introducing them, let them all, they filter themselves out. We've had Girl Scout troops here. And three members of the troop all of a sudden get so absorbed in bees. And I know I'm dealing with a future entomologist because of this one exposure. And so we just never know. It's like anything else. So moving along, AZ Hives, Missouri.

Did you say you were speaking in Missouri? Yes, I'm speaking in Missouri. St. Louis. Maybe it's St. Charles. I'm St. Louis. But yeah, I'm coming to St. Louis. So that can be good. I think that's next year.

So they had to schedule. They've always asked me too late when I'm already booked to go somewhere else. And why do I want to go to St. Louis? I want to go to St. Louis because I'm from there. I was born in Missouri. I went to high school in Kirkwood. I am a Missouri guy. I was born in misery, as they say.

So yeah, I get to come, get to be there. So really excited. Could the uncapped be Bald Brute? It could. This is why I mentioned this book. I want people to look it up, see exactly what that looks like. know what the traits are and get deep on what it is. It's really going on.

And by the way, one or two here and there, not that big a deal, but they can spread disease because remember, the bees do chew the brood. That's, they're going to spread that around. Not good. So anyway, Jessica, Jessica reviews says, congrats to the supervisor, marking his first queen this year. Yep, he did a good job. He was very happy.

that's we can't even count the number of drones he marked in preparation for that in golden honey we trust okay so we're on we're on overtime here really soon anyway David Hershey says if the hive has no bees in it will the wax maws lay eggs in the empty frames of the honeycomb also many of the empty frames will likely still have residual honey and pollen in it from previous use So at the end of the year, when you are pulling honey frames, honey supers, it is really important to have the bees clean those up. They do a better job than we do. So we can put them back on the height that you took it off of.

It's ideal because they'll clean it up. They're familiar. They don't start storing new honey late in the year. So they do do a great job cleaning it up, much better than we do. But the bottom line is, so we have frames of drawn comb and we put them in storage. Will, wax maws, lay their eggs there, And will they develop on comb that has no resources in it and no bees on it? Well, with bees on it, they keep the wax moths out.

So that's kind of off to the side to begin with. We do not want to store frames that have bee bread in it, any pollen. All those cells should be cleaned out. So by putting them out, if you don't have a hive to put them on for some reason, you lost your queen, they dwindle, they died, something like that. If you're cleaning up, you definitely want the bees to clean those up for you at a robbing station or something like that. But you need to clean out the cells,

and here's the thing, with just, let's go bare buns. Let's say it was cleaned out perfectly and we have a frame of drawn comb, will wax moths go after it. If it's brewed, without a doubt. They go right after old brood comb. It is rich with everything that they want.

Now let's be a moth for a second. Lay your eggs on an extracted frame and all it is is beeswax. Could she lay her eggs there? and with those eggs hatch, they would. But they would not have the nutrition necessary to sustain reproduction of those wax worms. So it's not good for them. So your chances are greatly reduced, but don't have resources in those cells.

That's number one, always. Clean yourself up. And another thing that I do to deter it is I spray down the frames with a light mix. Think of swimming pool water. Think of the chlorine level that you smell in a swimming pool. So if we spritz off the frames of the cells with chlorinated water afterwards and rinse that, it has that kind of chlorinated smell, and that's a deterrent also to wax moths. So for storage, and it doesn't hurt the bees.

The bees will use it fine next year. Bees go right after water and resources that still have a chlorinated smell. What I want to move against is sometimes we use chlorinated water, 10% bleach solution, as a disinfectant. If you use that on a high equipment and then you need to rinse it off really well because that residue is not good for the bees. So light, chlorination, okay,

heavy residue, dried out, not good. Okay, so the next one here is from 52Crew 88. It says, I've read off subject. What kind of gloves do you like? You're not going to like my answer. These nitrile gloves right here. See these little Mamby-pambi, nitral gloves that sometimes you put them on and they come apart what i want you to pay attention to

is the cuff on this see how small that is does this prevent you from being stung no but the bees don't seem to recognize this as your hand and so they almost never sting unless you trap a bee under it and they sting through it so this is not what i like this is what i like what's the difference look at the cuff on this so if we hang them up by the cuffs look at the hand on one And look at the one on the other. This is better because this goes right up inside your bee suit. You don't have that exposed skin on there where sometimes there'll be a bee that stings you right there. Then once that happens, a whole bunch of them sting where the other one stung because the alarm hormone is there.

But if you have these gloves, these nitral gloves with a long cuff, the thicker ones, these work really good. And when you're pulling them on, they don't pull apart. That's my favorite bee glove right there. That's it. And if I had to go to one after that, any goat skin glove. Yeah, goat skin. Any goat skin glove along that long. Long cup, nitrile gloves, definitely.

Next one comes from Joe Bianco. It says, I'll try one in tar paper to experiment. Okay, so this question was about wrapping hives and tar paper for wintertime. And the whole discussion, this is coming. up for winter preps. We're going to be talking more about winter preps, of course, in the future. Right now we sell plenty of heat ahead of us. But tar paper doesn't last very long, does not provide any insulation properties at all, and we'll pull passive heat from the sun on the days when the sun is shining. If you live where I live, you'll go weeks without seeing a good, strong,

sunlit day. But my point is, if you're going to wrap a hive with anything, let it have some level of insulation to it. So those of you have roles of double bubble. I know I overdue the double bubble. But anyway, if you're going to wrap a hive with it, wrap it in double bubble. It's reflectics. I know. It reflects the sunlight.

I know. It won't take that passive warmth, but here's the thing. It keeps the hive a little bit warmer. It's like adding another layer of wood on your hive with a single layer of reflectics. So if you wrap the hive with that, that provides an insulin. installation and a wind barrier day and night all the same. Where if you have tar paper on it, it gets hot on a sunny day on one side, the side that the sun is on, and then the minute that sun goes behind a cloud, or you get extended overcast days, which

happened in wintertime, it's just as cold as anything else. And please look at the material that is impregnated into that tar paper. It comes from a time way before we had all the other options. So now the good news is too when I don't wrap my hives. The biggest change was insulating the inner cover outside of that, wrapping the hives. If they're already coming out in spring with too many bees and swarming the minute I can get out in the bee yard, I don't really think I need to improve anything on that. So with the vertical hives, even the nukes, we had a state inspector come out.

It was her first time coming here. and I went over a whole bunch of unique hive configurations with her so that she could see kind of what we're dealing with. And I had this little nuke that had volunteers that moved into it, five-frame, deep nuke, no feeder, double bubble on top, and a migratory cover on top of that, and nothing else. They were live in spring. So the reason I use them as an example,

I'm not saying put all your bees in that situation and test them to see what they can take. We don't want to put every hive through a shift. shakedown crews. But I'm just saying what the bees do on their own in spaces they occupy and the extremes that they manage to survive lets us know that they're very resilient, provided they're healthy to begin with. That's the key. So well-configured hives fit well, don't really need a bunch of extra material on them. They do improve with insulation. But my question is, how much more, because I don't boost them in spring. I don't do all

the stuff that a lot of other people do. And when we have the first few really warm days and sunny days, you see all this activity in hides that looked from the outside like they were dead. Now, I knew better because we do thermal scans on them. But that's it. You don't really need it. But if I were going to wrap it with something personally, it wouldn't be tar paper. It would be something that actually has some insulation value day and night. So Francis Moore says, Fred, can you tell the difference between a winter bee and a summer bee? Question two, do you do anything to get the queen to lay more of this type of bee? Okay, so the second part, no, I don't do anything.

I let the environment dictate when they're going to make the fat-bodied winter bees. So the difference, we can't tell the difference. You just can't. The people that the entomologists that do deep studies on them mark all their bees. the difference, the biggest and most conspicuous difference between your fat-bited winter bees once they're produced and your regular worker bees is that they don't leave the hive. They don't do any foraging. If you're flying, you're dying.

These are valuable resources for the colony, and they stay inside the hive, and they forage not at all. They're much too valuable to the colony. They're kept in the core in the cluster, and they're protected. And the last time, maybe the first time they fly is the last. time they fly. So those that have made deep studies of them, but looking straight at them, you can't, you can't tell at all. It's behavior-based. They only do nurse duties all the time. So very interesting, but you can dissect them, but then, of course, you kill them just to see what the, because of course they've been dissected. That's how we know where they store the fat and how

much fat they store because they get dissected and put under microscopes to see the difference you're a normal worker, but the biggest tell is the fact that they don't fly and they don't forage. So what do you think about Be cozy from BetterB? Okay, I think personally to be cozy, I don't need it. If I were it now, see, let's look at the difference. Let's say I lived in the Klondike, someplace really cold. What would I use? I wouldn't use the Be cozy.

I would use the Hive Hugger. So those are the insulation value on the top for the hive hugger and the sidewalls is unmatched by anything else out there. If you're in an area of extreme climate where the bees will not survive without insulation, my number one thing to put around those hives would be hive huggers. Or if they're static and they're going to be in one place all the time, I would build hives that have insulation built into them, heavy duty weatherproof. But we know that people have to pick up their hides and stuff. So what I'm thinking about?

The horizontal hive again, the long Langstroth, insulate the wazoo out of it. You don't have to lift it. It doesn't have to go anywhere. And once you're in it, there you go. But if I were going to wrap something seasonally, hive hugger, hands down. Let's see. And there's nothing we can do to get the queen to lay. more that type. So I just, the winter bees. So double bubble available with one side black,

one side silver. I've used this product for three hard Utah winters and like the results. There you go. Double bubble. Where do the winter bees started? What month? That is regional. It's absolutely regional. Has it to a diet, length of day, and temperatures. So there's no set exact month when that happens. One shoe says, Hi Fred, were you an investor in the micro honey harvester? I was an original investor, but the bees

never filled up the cassette, and the flow ended. We'll have to wait until next year. Yes, I was. Yes, I'm in the same boat. And that was one of my surveys. Oh, dang, where's my survey sheet? We did a survey to see, because what we're talking about is that microhuntered harvester,

and we wanted the bees to put honey, of course, in the microcassettes, and we wanted them to use beeswax. So then we did a survey about if you rubbed beeswax on your plastic foundations, or if you painted beeswax onto them, or if you dipped them. Now, when they came out, he said not to dip them, not to roll it on, but to rub the wax on. The bees removed every bit of that. And they did not fill a single cassette. It's a huge frustration on the part of any innovator when things don't work like that.

So I haven't checked them recently. They're on my list for this coming week. So we'll do a follow up. It would make my day absolutely if they filled those. But to date, they had not. And they cleaned up. Again, we had wax all over it. They cleaned it up and removed it and used it on adjacent frames.

So that's a pickle. We need to do something about that. and I hope that people have a solution. Okay. Oh, so here we go. This is from Joe Bianco. Bulber Rap says, do you find having an insulated cover

makes a significant difference in winter honey consumption? And it does. Here's the thing. When I first started beekeeping in 2006, everyone told me, so I did it. I put venting on the top, and I kept 74 pounds of honey. on to get my bees through winter. And they used almost all of that to get through winter.

So what's that mean? It meant you didn't take much honey off because you needed it for the bees. When I put on the insulated inner covers, and I made my own feeder shims, they're called. And you can look that up how to make your own feeder shims. So they had an integrated intercover there. And then we could insulate inside of that. We put rapid rounds in it. And then we boosted them up. And so that increased efficiency going through winter. removed the risk of having moisture dripping down on your bees in wintertime. So the dew point was not achieved directly above the cluster of bees. Then after that, bee smart designs came out with their insulated inner cover.

And I shifted to those. Of course, that came out right after I built my big heavy feeder shims. And so same thing. Insulated intercover, no condensation, and a hole for the bees to travel through. And then, of course, to feed up in an insulated, enclosed environment, which later we shifted to fondant from what was originally dry sugar. So that changed everything. And now it takes them less than 40 pounds of honey to get through a full-sized colony to get through winter.

And we end up with a bunch of leftover honey in spring that they didn't need. And this is why they swarm because they have all this honey still in the hive. Spring kicks off. We talk about the dandelions as an indicator. Dandelions show up in the fields. They're bringing in all this nectar. What are they doing? they're getting honey bound and they're swarming out

because they still have a huge resource of winter, honey, still on. So it made a significant difference. So Joe Bianco, yes, it makes a difference. Huge difference. So the next question is from bee-cathy. Fred, do you keep three-inch-wide and three-eighths-inch-tall entrances year-round? A new beekeeper is asking what entrance for a wood double E-pie should have for Southwest Michigan? That is what a 3 eighth inch by three inch wide entrance looks like.

And yes, you can do that year round. I have several different configurations because year after year for year for year. We want to see this one better than the other, it's one worse than the other. Can they dry out their honey adequately with this little opening? Sure can. Can they defend themselves from was, which by the way are going to be on the rise really soon here in the Northeastern U.S.? Yes, they can. And this one's a little deeper.

This one's built by Ross Miller. He's the one that does my, of course, the drawings and everything. He's a huge innovator. And this is a really good entrance. But the 3-8s by 3-inches-wide works. Now, if it were a brand-new colony, would I do that to them? Like, let's say it got a swarm next week and nobody wants them. I would use this.

So this shows what a 3-8-inch by 2 inches would look like. that's the little opening, easy to defend, even for a small colony. And it is amazing with these tiny openings, what amount of honey finishing they can do in there. Unless we have incredibly high humidity, the bees can dry things out even through these very small openings. So here's another one. Is there a way to have bees finish capping flow frames in a partially harvested flow hive?

I harvested four frames, but instead of finishing the last three, they started filling the already harvested frames. Man, that's frustrating. I'm going to say the same thing. Now, with flow frames, if they don't cap wax them, when you go to harvest out of those, you have to tilt it back roughly two degrees. And when it's draining out, if you open them too much at once and there's no wax caps all over the front of those cells, it's going to run down into the high. So if you're at the end of the year, this is what I recommend. I have friends that keep flow supers now too. At the end of the year, leave your flow supers on, let them finish out what they finish out,

and then, because you're going to pack down anyway, you're going to take those off. They don't stay on for winter. So if you've got the physical strength, because you're going to deal with over 60 pounds of honey in most cases, you're going to lift that flow super off and just take it away and finish it inside. And by that, I mean the open cells of stuff that are in there, we talked about the honey dryer that I posted a video for this morning. I have a friend that puts his flow supers right in the honey dryer,

and for any unsealed cells, they just dry it down right in there. And it also serves to warm it up so that when they go to drain it out, to collect it. So they treat it like an off-hive super extraction, only instead of extracting, you're opening it, draining straight in a jar. right from that. And so you can heat it up and expedite that. But so with the uncapped frames or cells, I wouldn't try to harvest that in the hive. But the fact that they're probably off center because you're refilling the center, the bees are reworking those instead of finishing out to the outboard edges. Those outboard edges, don't put your bees in jeopardy the way they would if you were doing that

to the center frames and they drip down because where's the brood directly under it. And honey can really wipe out brute. So if you have it over number one and the number two, because they're only six or seven frame flow supers. So the number one and number six frame and stuff, those are the ones that aren't quite done. You're definitely going to check them for moisture content, but there will be a lot of runoff into the hive. The good news is also there's a tray at the bottom. You should clean your tray really well before you even start that because the honey that makes it to the bottom and into the tray, you would want to then, of course, recover. from that removable tray.

Let's see, Atlas 4-2-2-5. I often see bees walking away from the hives. For me, they are often going west, which is also in the direction of their water source. Is this an honorable sending off or something else? So walking away, we do find bees as they get to the end of their life. Remember, they're only living six weeks on average for foragers. and that last two weeks is foraging,

and we see their tattered wings. We see them often, even on plants and stuff, they just sit tight and just kind of wait. So walking away from the hive is not something I've seen a lot of. Mostly they fly out and just don't come back. So they self-evict when they get to the end of their life. But when you see bees walking around on the ground, if we're talking about big numbers,

you might have an issue. This also can happen if a colony is starving. out. So we need to kind of do an investigation to find out what's going on with a bunch of bees on the ground adjacent to a hive. Walking all in a specific direction, I don't know if they're going after a water source because they would just fly to that. If they're unable to fly, they like energy. If they like energy, they might like carbohydrates. And that would be an in-hide situation that you could remedy with sugar syrup or something like that, if that's the case. Okay, so I'm going to to wrap up today's Q&A because it is 519 right now.

I wanna thank everybody for joining me and for those who came and joined the chat and contributed. I also wanna thank you all for talking to one another. I wanna thank Ross Wagner for being the bouncer today. I hope you had nothing to do because everyone was absolutely perfect. If I did not get to your question, oh, I do wanna hit on one thing. Better comb.

I don't know how many of you have used this stuff. This is Bettercombe. You talk about the end of the year, drawing out beeswax being a challenge. I always went to Bettercombe and put a couple of these frames in a late-season nuke to get the bees working straight away. This saved so many colonies of bees for me.

Now that I've said that, do you know what, you know what's happened? They're gone. It's not available. This is from Laurel Doherty, 93. Better comb is no longer being manufactured. I also found it useful, but I used my last frame. See, that's what I did.

I got a big order. And so I wasn't paying attention. And I went to Better Be, which is where I used to get it. Better Be, Better Combe. And discontinued. So then I jumped on Hexasel, which is the company that makes it in Hungary or wherever they're from. And they're out of business, too. You know why?

The U.S. market. Shut them down. So there is no more better comb pre-drawn beeswax. And this is a beeswax that was developed. It's an imitation beeswax that materially is very close, as close as you can get to actual beeswax without being made by bees. The advantage was that we could put that in a beehive at the end of the year at a time when the bees did not have time or temperature to draw out new comb.

And they could also go straight to work storing resources, repairing it, and then brooding up in it. And I did a lot of videos about it. It performed incredibly well, and it's now unavailable worldwide. So I'm going to close that off with that final, no more of a good thing. And so now I'm going to treat it like gold. I'm going to keep hold of the stuff that I have. So that's it. Thanks again.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. I want to thank you for being here today. And if you have questions still, after this is over with, of course, put them down in the comment section. Or go to the way to be.org. And so that's it. You can submit your questions. Thanks for watching.