The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 333 Ross Round Comb Honey, Update on sugar brick backyard experiment, and more... Frederick Dunn

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/qpKVFW7Jj_g

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I'm going to so hello and welcome so hello and welcome happy friday today is friday November the 21st of 2025. This is backyard beekeeping questions and answers episode number 333. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. There's a lot going on. You won't believe where I was first thing this morning all the way down in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So I want to thank those people down there, by the way. The Northern Indiana Beekeepers Association, they invited me to their harvest banquet. Can you even?

believe it most of them didn't even know who I was that was really good news potential bad news for the person that recommended me to their club because that was Glenn Heil he put his reputation on the line and literally almost like five people in there knew who I was but that was good it was good news I think it went all right but I drove all the way home today and we left super early why so I could do this right now so you wouldn't be sitting there on a Friday evening without your fix from the way to be. So I'm glad that you're here. If you wanna know what we're gonna talk about,

please go down in the video description and look at all the topics listed in order, and there will be some links for you there. There's stuff that you can shop for. So, and I know what else you wanna know. How is the weather while I was driving up here? Thanks for asking. Not so much to weather driving up,

misty, rainy, the usual, not bad, but what's going on outside here in my neck of the woods, which is the northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. 44.2 degrees Fahrenheit, right now, right this minute, that's 6.7 Celsius. So not bad, we're not frozen.

The snow all melted away. That's right, we had a bunch of snow here. The winds aren't bad either, 2.5 miles per hour, but when it's really damp outside, any wind. It's not good. It doesn't feel good. 4 kilometers per hour, 95% relative, humidity so it's damp no big surprise zero pollen count you should not be surprised by that either

there's a lot going on out there and i know what you want to know what's going to be the best day coming ahead for you fred because um you know where you are it's going to be different but here on tuesday and wednesday you can it's a toss up six seven didn't say it either or doesn't matter tuesday on wednesday 55 to 56 degrees Fahrenheit that is 12 to 13 Celsius that's the best weather coming up in the next seven days and by the way that six seven nonsense i have to say it because my grandson says if i say that the video goes viral but i don't think there are too many eight to 12 year olds out there watching this video so there's that but i did my duty now the opening sequences today i just did that that's right

i've been very busy because the supervisor has clients he has customers and uh my wife says that she needed some comb honey so rather than dig into our stock of comb honey I decided to go ahead and break out one of the supers that we did ross rounds in and open it up right on the videos that was all today that's all fresh and so here it is a ross round ready to go we have 18 of these and the thing is you know they have their own super by the way so comb honey is the thing did you know and you also noticed that I showed some in the opening that weren't in great shape see that incomplete these are what you give to your friends or you could just cut it out

crush and strain it and collect the honey out of it so it gives people a chance to taste comb honey where everything is made by the bees we did pretty good because there were 18 finished ones like this I don't know you're wondering if we made those ourselves if we did comb hunting What are some of the ways to do it? Well, first of all, you can just have a shallow super with wooden frames in it Foundationless and then when you have that shallow super with the wooden frames in it once they draw it the comb and they cap it You can go in there and cut it out in four inch sections four inch squares some people do two by four squares and so you don't need anything and then you just put them on a cookie sheet and let the edges drain off

because you can't have that running around and inside the containers and then you can put them in Ziploc bag is then where do they go they go in the freezer you have to put them through a freeze cycle in this case I put the entire super in an area where it froze because we get freezing temperatures here so that can satisfy that requirement and why do we do it to make sure that there aren't any waxworm eggs in there that could still hatch nothing viable we don't want any critters in our comb honey when we sell it to people so that your supervisor can save all their college money while they're little so we're going to have that anyway it looks really good i like it it's fun to do and that's what the opening

sequences we're all about we got 18 of them and so here in the state of pennsylvania uh you may be wondering what is one of those sell for they're about eight ounces in fact i believe the weight is right on it that is one of the things you're required to put on your label here what the contents would be and in this case it's comb honey so it says right on it natural comb drawn out by the bees capped by the bees cells filled so the bees package it for you all you have to do is put the container around it this can be as elaborate or as basic because you want it to be zip-like baggies vacuum seal whatever you think you want to do but people need to be able to cut chunks of it out you might be wondering what's the best way to eat it now when i was a kid

and if you had a cough or something, and it is proven to benefit your throat, if you have a cough, if you're sick, then my mom used to cut off chunks of it and just track you down outside, because that's where we were required to be when I was little outside, notice indoor stuff that happens today, and she would give you the comb honey. And then I was talking with comb honey experts, people that eat it, like semi-professionals, people that judge comb honey. And so, then I was told to put the chunk of comb honey on a piece of cheese. What kind of cheese, the kind you like the most?

Then where does that go? On a cracker. So on cheese, on a cracker, all together. Now we have three things. Come honey, cheese, cracker. You eat it at once together. Chew it all up. Do you swallow the beeswax?

Yes, you're supposed to. And that's part of that. So if it's a trisket, if it's a ritz cracker, saltine i don't know whatever your favorite is but all those textures get together and form the best comb honey munching experience try it and then tell me how awesome it was so what do i looked up the current retail value of honey and so there are a lot of ways to sell it when i was okay so if you wanted to market it like for example here in the state of pennsylvania which is different from Indiana, I found out. Indiana only has one bee inspector in the entire state. I thought that was

interesting. Here in Pennsylvania, we have a bunch of them. And in Pennsylvania, if you want to sell your honey, whether it's comb honey, regular honey, raw honey, creamed honey, whatever you want to do, if you're going to sell it direct from producer to consumer, you do not have to be inspected by the state, which means, you know, your little stand at the end of your driveway or the supervisor walking around with his wagon and going door to door with his mom and dad standing out at the curb to make sure that there's no nonsense. If he can get someone to open the door, he has 100% sales. So, from producer to consume with the current price for an 8-ounce comb honey is from $12 to $15 in the state of Pennsylvania. Third-party retail. So now you go into a store. Now you're a producer.

You sell honey. You sell comb honey, things like that. but you're not the direct seller now you have to register in a different way and the facility where you process and handle all of this honey and comb and products from the hive has to be inspected so it's another level the other thing is if you're not registered in the state of Pennsylvania you're not allowed to post and advertise that you're selling honey because you have an unregistered apiary we don't need to talk about that too much but if you're able to sell through the local hardware store for example which happens here, where I live, $17 to $20 for eight ounces. Do you want to know what the most expensive honey

recently that have come across in the state of Pennsylvania that was produced right here? It went for over $200 an ounce. That's unbelievable. So a friend of mine, Jen Willard, was at the Pennsylvania State Beekeeper Conference. And at the conference, we had a honey show. The first time we've done that, maybe ever at the honey show. So they added all of that. She won the dark honey competition. So dark jar honey just means it's how it tastes. That's it. That's the whole thing. So that was really interesting. So you can compete with honey. They have comb honey competition. It's a lot of fun. So with 18 units, the supervisor can make some decent money out of that. So that's what we're doing. I also think you probably want to know what's going

on with wildlife in my neck of the woods. It's the usual. I was told today that our hunting is over with or this is the last day or something and then so the deer are running around everywhere and the bucks are running around everywhere and uh no unusual things i haven't seen our gray fox back recently very cool and squirrel wars are at their apex right now we have little red squirrels running dead on at the big gray squirrels and the fox squirrels which are really big and we went into one of the chicken coops and every single nest box was full of black walnuts as if someone was stocking a grocery store shelf full of black walnuts do you know how much effort it takes probably for a little red squirrel which they grab a walnut

and they run as fast as they can to the chicken coop and they get inside and they put their nuts inside one of the nest boxes huge amount of work it's going to be one very disappointed squirrel when it gets back in there finds out all its nuts are gone and they'll be blame other squirrels and they'll probably fight each other over it because they didn't see us take them. That's what I'm saying. I mean, I'm not saying it took them, but if I did, the squirrel wouldn't know. And the number one reason that squirrels lose their nuts, which is their winter resource, is because other squirrels are robbing them. So you know what else they do, which is very interesting, and I know you want to know it because you're here to learn about squirrels. They run some nuts over

to an empty tree when they see that they're being watched by other squirrels, and they stash a couple of nuts in there. So that squirrel thinks that's where their stash is. And then when they go to rob it, the joke's on that squirrel because the main stash is somewhere else. Squirrels are clever. There's books about squirrels.

I highly recommend it. Anyway, so squirrels, squirrels, mice are moving in. No great surprise. Getting colder outside, they're seeking shelter. So if your beehives are out there and they should be, three-eighths of an inch holds true

as an opening that squirrels and not squirrels mice do not get into that includes the house mice which you don't see very often and the deer mice which are everywhere and the white-footed mice which are also everywhere but more in the wilds they can run straight up things they move around like popcorn at night super fast three-eighths of an inch stops them even the young ones the juveniles that still have gray fur they're called deer mice because they have the color of a deer on their back and they have a white creamy stomach and they can't get in so keep an eye on that watch for chewing the other part that's in jeopardy is going to be your stored resources so if you've got you know drawn comb and things like that

that are empty and you've put them in your sheds make sure that you don't have rodents getting into those sheds and if they do you're going to have to cope you can have to deal with them so i highly recommend that if and when you trap rodents that you donate your trapped rodents to a local wildlife recovery center that's pretty much it that's fantastic if you want to know how to submit a question for consideration for a friday q and a please go to the way to be dot org and click on the page marked contact fill out the form you can submit your topic so one person that did that is Stacy from Russellville, Arkansas. And says, I am in central Arkansas going into my second winter with bees, one colony last year, and four this year. The setup is a deep brood chamber

and a medium of capped honey. My questions are around winter feeding. Rather than add fondant as emergency winter feed, can I add a few frames of capped honey centered in a box above the cover hole between the inner cover and the outer lid. What potential problems am I knowingly or unknowingly creating? Given that the bees do come out a cluster occasionally through the winter, is it reasonable to expect that they'll push this honey down from this box as needed? And if so, should I fill the dead space around the honey frames with bird, or more robust insulating material in the upper feed box.

If I were to insulate the fondant, let's see, if I were to instead add fondant containing essential oils, this early in the winter, will the bees be drawn up to the top of the hive too quickly and ignore their honey stores in that medium box? FWIW, that's what you wrote here. So for what it's worth, I am eliminating venting. up top and following the condensing hive theory, I think the hives are healthy. I treated for mites as fall, zero mite counts afterwards via alcohol wash, the entrances were very busy

during the late season golden rod flow, and they were pulling in pollen as recently as a week ago. So instead of emergency winter feed like a fondin or a sugar break or something like that, can you just put frames of capped honey up there? Yes, you can. And the box that you put up there should be insulated because we want the bees to go up and access it. Now, part of this question is, would the bees collect that honey up there and take it down below? More often, what is likely to happen is as to bees because it's honey and there's honey in the medium super directly above your deep brood box. Pretty decent configuration, which works here also where I live. if the bees as they migrate up through their honey through winter they're also back filling the

open cells with brood and so we want to keep them around that but the thing is they're likely to migrate as a cluster right on up into that space because there's nothing stopping them from doing that so what you'll end up with by spring is a cluster probably up inside that third box now right through the inner cover right through that hole because they'll move as a cluster and since it's drawn comb and it's capped and there's honey in it, they'll use drawn comb once they've consumed the honey to produce their brood, especially in the center. So one of the things I would like to suggest is that people wait. If you have a way of knowing where your cluster is located, maybe you've got a clear inner cover that you could pull off the outer cover, look at and see

if there are bees up there yet. Maybe you can do a thermal scan or you know someone who can do one. or maybe you could just listen with your ear up against the hive and listen to where they're making the most noise and find out where your cluster is. And then if they get up in that upper box and it's late in the year and you get a nice warm day, then you could add it as an emergency resource. But yes, insulation.

I'm a fan of the hive description here, the condensing hive, no upper venting and things like that. Burlap, unnecessary. I would recommend double bubble. so line the whole thing that's what i would do and uh but of course this discussion about they're being fondant and things like that uh when we do that too early before it consistently is freezing at night uh the bees do bypass honey that stored and they go right after the fondant uh this comment comes around frequently with the hive of life fondant in particular but nothing wrong with anything described there

Question number two comes from Wendy, Seattle, Washington. Let's see, I wanted to give you some feedback on your citizen science project. So we're going to update that today, by the way. If you don't know what we're talking about, you will by the time I'm done. So it says I wanted to give you some feedback, citizen science candy board project. I'd love to participate, not sure how I can, as I literally have in every hive, except my two lay-ins hives, Appamead dual feeders. some have two side-by-side feeders so i could conceivably do something there but they're all currently filled with fondant one observation i made was the bees bypass their honey reserves as described before

and even when the temps outside were still in the 50s to go up and gobble down the hive live fondant however when i noticed that what appeared to be kwing in some young dead bees in my hives in West Seattle, I get worried about tracheal mites. Now, this is key, K-wing in dead bees. That's much different than living bees scooting around the hive with K-wing. And I should explain what K-wing is, like the K. Their wings that are normally folded over their thorax

and abdomen straight behind them are spread out, and then there are four wings, because of course they're bees, they're separated, and they appear locked in other words you won't see the bee relax later and fold them they're locked open and the reason that this happens and the reason people suspect tracheal mites on a living bee this is key is because there's a spherical up front on the thorax right near that wing and that's the one first occupied by tracheal mites that then get inside the trachea and they reproduce in there and the bee is under severe distress so but I don't think that that's what's happening it could be but I don't think

that's the issue anyway so dead bees in my hives West Seattle got worried about tracheomites I fed them three to one grease patties three sugar one part Crisco when the fondant ran out so within a few days attempts Iives dropped and I got nervous but inspection revealed it was only because they don't seem to like the grease patties. So had clambered out of the APMA feeders with the temp probes in the syrup area. So in the case of the grease patty,

no added hive-alive honey bee healthy or anything else. Hive-alive-live fondant, they definitely prefer the fondant. So anyway, what I'd like to mention about this, and this is a great winter project, by the way, you have a chance because you are going to see dead bees on your landing boards. because at nighttime, it's too cold. They also can't fly out and self-evict because they can't see. It's too dark.

So you end up with bees dying inside the hive. Now, worker bees tend to self-evict. So during daylight hours, if it were warm enough for them to fly, they would just fly out and not return. You get a chance to collect them. So if you find bees that have this K-wing example that's described here, you can take them if you have a microscope. and you can put them on a hemocytometer.

And you might be wondering, you're not just, let's see, there's nozema counting. These are things you can do in winter. You can count their abdomens for nozema spores, and there's a procedure for that. It's not just grabbing the bees, squashed the bee, and looking at it. With the tracheomites, it's about pulling the head off

and looking at the trachea that I described, which are the first pair of trachea that you, get to when you open the thorax of the bee, removing the head. And then you'll see there are very good descriptions about it. And I'm going to send you to a site, scientific beekeeping by Randy Oliver. He's very good at displaying the procedures for both nosema checks and what you can do to find out if you have trachea. Both will require a microscope. And so for trachean mites, this is something a lot of people are kind of ignoring now because it's fallen off the chart. as far as things that people are mostly concerned about i was also counting the nozema spores which are

very easy to do and that's what the hemocitometer is for which is just a plate that goes on top of your it's to meter and measure blood cells for example but in this case we're looking for nozema and all this stuff is inexpensive except the microscope itself but a lot of people sell microscopes on ebay and places like that they're very inexpensive and uh look at the procedure first find out what magnification you need and then get something like that or you may even have access to listen to this a microscope at your public library because in our county the public library has resources like that that people just don't even know to ask for I don't think they let you take them home but they'll let you

use them there in their education room so you may have access to microscopes and things like that just locally but I don't think that was a big issue and the fondant that they're going for that takes care of the nozema because if it's hive live fondant that's really what their reputation is built on its effectiveness in reducing nozema in the microbiome the gut bacteria area of the bee so can really help them out but we're going to talk about the citizen science thing real quick some people have written to me and said they can't even look at it because there needs to be another for someone who's not participating so they can see the results.

And where do you find it? You get on my YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn. And there's a post there about the candy board tests that I want people to do. Some people responded right away, which made me highly suspicious. That's why I want to talk about this. As soon as I posted what the test is, and I have all the recipes there for you, if you want to participate, and I hope you do, because the more people that do that, the better off we are as far as the

statistics go, the more accuracy we'll have. And so I downloaded what the results are, and I'll just hold them up for you right here, but I'm also going to read them, of course. This is a small sampling because it's only been out for about a week. We have 56 votes, so 56 people are participating. But I want to make this clear. That's why I want to talk about it. As soon as I put it up, some people went ahead and logged in and made a pick.

but it's that troubled me a little bit because i'm trying to get i realize we have no control how everyone manages this backyard test or this home citizen science testing but we want you to be as accurate as possible and what i was hoping that you would do is first of all read all of the description of what the backyard citizen science test is because the baseline of what we're offering to the peas is straight sugar and water that's it so part of this is 10 pounds of sugar to one pound of water and you mix it up you press it down you dry it out and that becomes just a sugar break that you put out in your hive but it's a comparison it's not just to see if they'll eat the sugar break I want them to have the option

free choice so we're putting out three different methods here so three recipes the second recipe and these all need to be presented in your hive at the same time. So the second is the same. 10 pounds of sugar, one pound of water. And you're adding two tablespoons of Honeybee Healthy or another name brand essential oil that is offered as a stimulant, an appetite stimulant. And then just document which one you use. The third offering. So we're going to offer all three of these at the same time. We just want to be clear. It's the same mix as above 10 pounds of sugar, one pound of water, so that's your base material. And you can break that up, by the way. So if you did the 10 pounds of sugar, one pound of water, and you can just divide the whole

thing into thirds, and then you're going to mix in these additional materials. So then you mix one cup of AP 23, which is the top performing pollen substitute AP, since for artificial pollen, 23 is the 23rd recipe that came up with. If you use megableness, you use mega, you know, B, which comes from Better B, you'll need to follow their recipe. Also, if you use Ultra B, dry pollen sub, which comes from Manlake, you need to follow their recipe when you amend that into a candy. So then you'll put them all in your hive at the same time and we want to know which one the bees are showing a preference for.

All three, okay? So, and we're going to keep this going. This isn't, you know, just do it for a week. so I will tell you how it breaks out right now so these are your options for responses someone else said there needs to be a fourth response so that we can click on it if we're not participating and say don't do any of them or something like that but I'm limited by what YouTube allows me to do and they only allow me to post three potential responses so right now the leading response is 55% of

the 56 people that have reported their findings is they're consuming the sugar alone. So this is a sugar break by itself, nothing in it. Bees are showing a preference for that. The number two response is, all recipes are consumed the same with no preference. So that means 20% of the people that responded. So this is the second most popular thing that bees are doing,

is they're kind of just going out for anything that's got the high sugar and they're not showing a preference for the one that's got dry pollen sub in it? or the ones just got the essential oils added to it. And so the other two were divided evenly. So the sugar with essential oil, 13% said that's what the bees were shown a preference for. And sugar with essential oil and dry pollen sub, also 13% of those responding said that that's what their bees were going for. So a significant leader right now is just a sugar break with nothing added. 55% are saying that so the other thing is if you don't have a category that you can click on

here's what I recommend you do this is not tight because I'm not supervising exactly what people are doing or how they're responding but you can go on there and pick any one of these and as soon as you click that you voted for one you'll be able to see the current status of all of the different choices which one is the most popular then all you do is click your vote again and it zeros it out again and all those numbers disappear so you can click it to see it and then just take your vote away and just try to be as honest as you can we don't want skewed results one person did comment i don't i'm not doing it but i did comment just to skew your statistics method okay um but then again this is backyard science this is not you know university level

stuff because i would have to supervise it to know that everyone was doing the right thing So I'm just counting on you to do the best you can, participate if you want to. And for those that are already feeding hive-alive fondant and things like that, this isn't for you at all. You're going to stay with that. If you have hive-a-live fondant, there's no reason to do anything else. It's a high-end thing that you can put on your bees, hives, to get them through winter as an emergency resource. And they go for that. We don't need to find out if it's a stimulant or not.

They definitely will consume it. One of the problems was that they're, as described before, consuming it in favor of the fondant over their own stored-capped honey. So, we want to watch out for that. And so question number three comes from Susan. And it doesn't say where Susan's from, but it says, I am remembering those tall marigolds that were growing this summer. And so that the bees were visiting, do you have a name of the variety? okay so looking forward to next episode tonight thank you for all that you share and by the way

so this is summer okay and oh by the way did you see the smokeless smoker Kickstarter that was passed on from the keepers hive gentlemen so anyway her husband wants it this is the time to be looking at gifts black friday's coming up next Friday is black Friday I don't know if you know that. But anyway, the marigolds. The miracles were a lot of fun. And it's the first year I did it. So I planted a lot of marigolds last summer, all summer long. And the funny part was some of them were like four feet tall. I did not intentionally plant four foot tall marigolds. The rest of them are normal. Foot and a half, two feet, something like that. The bees were all over them. I don't know if we necessarily got noticeable marigold honey.

but they were definitely getting pollen. They were definitely getting nectar. And so I had the supervisor out there for scale to stand next to these really tall marigolds. And then I find out, and for those of you who are purists that don't want anything that's not native. I grew up, you know, with marigolds around me. So it's kind of a scent that reminds me in my childhood. I like them. And so you can get them on Amazon.

You can get them a lot of places. I have big containers of them this year. They don't winter over well here. In other words, what I mean by that is they're an annual, but they're seeds. When they shed their seeds, a lot of seeds can handle the winter and the damp. Marigold seeds don't do very well,

so I'm told. And so we have to buy seed and store it through winter. And then when spring comes, after danger of frost and all that, we would start to plant our miracles. So that's my plan. They're actually an African variety. of marigold. I'm going to put a link down in the video description of the ones that I purchased myself and I'll have both varieties. Because I was trying to deter deer, get the rabbits out of there.

The problem with the marigolds was that they were blooming and spreading that scent later in the year. So they didn't do a very good job of, for example, protecting my sunflowers that I wanted to keep the rabbits away from. So I had to go around and spray liquid fence this year to protect it and that worked. But the marigolds, the bee behavior on the marigolds was very interesting to me because sometimes a bee would just land on a marigold and fan. That was interesting. So it's not common. It's not like every other marigold had a bee on it fanning, but it was just there not collecting pollen, not eating nectar, just fanning its wings and spreading the scent from the marigold. That was new to me.

so I don't know what's going on there. I'm going to have to do a deep dive with some entomologists to see what's going on. But I am going to plant a lot more of those. The other thing I'm going to boost this year, and I'm telling you now because a lot of these places are putting their seeds on sale at the end of the year, and then when springtime rolls around,

you can't get what you want. I noticed that the sunflower varieties in particular seem to go out of stock. And I also use Eden Brothers, Ernst, seeds, by the way. they're the ones that also make our smoker pellets the switchgrass smoker pellets that are doing so well as well and so I need to plant more borage and we're going to do the marigolds and of course the cosmos and all the usual stuff but I'll give the links to those I'm still going to grow the short ones but after seeing how well the really tall ones did and how the bees were on them because I was also told honey bees don't pay any attention to them

well now I'm not going to pay any attention to the people that told me that because my eyes told me something different the bees were on it so I appreciate that Susan asked this question and I'm going to link it and you guys can go shopping on your own and get those so that was question number three and you'll be shocked to know that that's the last question of the day yeah I'm in a hurry I have stuff to do you know I don't want to let the cat out of the bag but I'm working on something for the Honeybee Expo in January I'm on the spot. I have to produce some artwork for the North American Honeybee Expo Hives for Heroes Group. It's just a teaser. I'm not going to show you what it is, but I'm spending a lot of time on it.

It's going to be above average. You're going to find out. So we're in the fluff section. I'm going to be at Edinburgh University tomorrow. And if you know what that's about, of course, I'll probably see you there. And outside, in your B-yards, plan of the week. just keep the entrances clean that's still the same thing going on right now be ready for snow snow loads keep the lids on

do shipping straps if you have those think about hives that are looking drunken the tippy hives that are going all different directions this is the time to catch up with that and make sure those are straight and squared away and think about mice rats and squirrels

the mice in particular here's what I want you to think about where you've stored your frames the mice roam all over them. I did a really interesting interview, interesting to me, of course. That's why I do all my interviews, is because I have an interest, and then I just share it with you. You might be wondering where you could listen to an interview, an interview with an expert or an innovator. You get on my website, The WaytoB.org, click on the page marked interviews you can listen to. So you get to see it, too. It's not just a podcast, but I interviewed a small mammal biologist, and we talked a lot about hantavirus and things like that now we don't have a lot of hantavirus issues here in

the state of pennsylvania you'll find out they're concentrated in the desert southwest and places like that but here's what i want you to think about with your stored equipment when a mouse is tooling around looking all cute with its big eyes and its big ears and its twitchy nose and its whiskers everywhere they go they're just eliminating and by that i mean they're urinating and they're dropping little mouse poo all over everything. They don't stop. They just keep right on just whatever they happen to be doing. And you don't want that in your bee equipment. So first line of defense, look for holes, entrances, chances that they might be getting in. Look for droppings in corners and things like that. Set out little bait stations to see if it gets

visited. If you're like me, you've got cameras everywhere because you have to know what's going on. And I see the mice. I'm going head to head with a mouse right now. That's right. It's me or the mouse. It's going places. It's bypassing every trap I set out. So I'm not playing games right now. This mouse is in trouble. So if they bypass all the things you're supposed to do, copper mesh, stuff holes with stainless steel. There's all these things that you can do. And a rat, for example, can chew a hole in a single night and get right into a building. That's full-on general quarters. Don't play with rats. They can do terrible things. They can chew. Listen to this. They can chew the wiring insulation in

your car. My sister-in-law had mice in her car, and I don't want to tell you what that ended up costing her because it chewed the insulation off the wiring. And then I found out that there's something to do with the insulation on the wiring not being plastic anymore. It's something else that mice actually like to chew and then it costs her for a whole new wiring harness and then it gets worse one of them was up inside her vent and what did i say they do everywhere they go they eliminate and that does not smell good imagine getting in your car turning on your vent and all of a sudden it's blowing that smell and that bacteria right into the cabin of your car so there's a war on got to take care of it emergency feeding for your bees we talked about this a lot today

please make sure that you have some kind of emergency resource this is a terrible thing the new beekeepers face often they may underestimate the amount of resources that your bees are going to need to get through winter which people have been keeping bees year after year after year they know when they ended up with a huge surplus which is not necessarily good and when their bees were starved out and all the bees were inside cells with contracted abdomens and they were just starved that's a terrible feeling because it was 100% in your control. Some people did not have a good nectar flow. Some people did not have an area or resources where their bees could store enough honey to get through winter. And so you need to

find out from other beekeepers how much do they need to get through winter with this hive configuration. With this venting or lack of insulation or however you're keeping your bees will have an impact on the resources they need to get through winter assuming your bees are healthy and that they are not challenged by varroa destructor mites and things like that so we need to have some way to do it for those of you who are using hive live fondant i'm just going to say it at the end here fred 10 discount code so if you and you anything you order wherever you order it ask them for the fred discount code and some retailers have just been making one up on the spot it doesn't hurt to ask so those of you also they're going to go to the north american honeybee expo in louisville kentucky there are a lot of vendors there

that are offering big discounts i have nothing to do with these people i'm just telling you uh they're only going to take so many orders you can show up there and save shipping if you're bringing a big item i was talking with someone last night who ordered an uh an observation hive from a company the hive itself was like three hundred dollars shipping was eight hundred dollars that's a hard No. I don't know what it takes to have something like that that would cost $800. I would drive that to you for $800 personally. That's a lot of money. But anyway, people show up with trailers and big trucks and everything else because this is a chance to load up on stuff that otherwise the freight would be substantial. So check it out if you're going. And it offsets

the cost of admission. By the way, you're going to get such good discounts there. I'm going to be there of course i'm going to talk about things i'm not telling you what i'm going to talk about but uh you have to go the website to find out and so next thursday is thanksgiving and i want to wish you all here in the united states at happy thanksgiving and uh if you can if you have comb honey and stuff like that this really makes a great thanksgiving gift because everybody's going to be sampling food and stuff and then you can demonstrate how they should eat it take a chunk of this and what are you going to put it on a piece of cheese there's always a cheese board somewhere And they've always got crackers and stuff out.

And then you put it all together. And then you can show off because you're the one who knows how to eat comb honey. You don't have that? Just give away your regular honey. Everybody likes that too. So that's it for today. I want to thank you for being here. I want to wish you a happy Friday.

I hope everything is well, where you are as it is here. I'm Frederick Dunn and this has been The Way to Be. I'm going to be able to be.