The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A with Frederick Dunn, It's World Honey Bee Day

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

This is the audio from this YouTube Video:  https://youtu.be/qUSf1Osmj0c

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, August the 14th of 2026. This is back here beekeeping questions and answers episode number 367. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here and if you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down in the video description and you'll see all the topics listed in order right along with timestamps that help you get right to it. So you have to waste your time listening to every single thing. And also, if you have a topic that you'd like to suggest to me, you have a question that's on your mind. Please go to my main website, which is the way to be.org. You can fill out the form there on the contact page and submit it, see what happens. If you want to make a comment or share with your peers on social media, you go to the Facebook group, The Way to be Fellowship.

And you can post photos, video samples, whatever helps you get your point across and get your questions. answered by your peer groups. Guess what's going on tomorrow? Tomorrow, Saturday, the 15th of August, is World Honeybee Day. That's right. World Honeybee Day. So you want to be up to speed on that because if you're a beekeeper, a lot of people may be wondering if you knew about it. If you don't, you'll be embarrassed because it's kind of your thing. So get on social media and share stuff. And I know what you want to know. What's going on outside? Well, I'll tell you. It's 80 degrees Fahrenheit right now, which is 27 degrees Celsius. and zero mile per hour wind. So in kilometers per hour that's also zero.

68% relative humidity which is pretty darn good considering how bad it could be and the bees are drying out there honey because we're in the middle of a nectar flow right now. And by here I mean we're in the northeastern part of the United States, the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania, 1,300 feet above sea level. So I will run down the list of things that you need to be worried about probably if you're also in the northeastern part of the US, how about swarm risk right now? It's high. It's very high. Why? Because the population of your colonies is pretty high, assuming that they're healthy and have been in those boxes for a while. And we have an influx of resources, pollen and nectar, which is everything

they need to really expand. An expansion for honeybee means reproducing on the colony level, which is swarming. So yes, I've dealt with some swarms recently. The honey supers, by the way, right now where I am of course where you are will be different 70% full so what's that mean it means within the next couple of weeks we're going to be pulling honey off of these hives so we're looking at those pollen in flux is high right now really high so that means also they're getting the proteins that they need you don't have to supplement anything right now how about for people when you go outside what's the air quality do we have forest fires and stuff still putting particulates in our air noob not

where I am because we're in the green zone right now which means the air quality is really good and I hope you enjoy the opening sequences today by the way they were just videoed so all that's going on right here on my property all the sequences that you see what the bees are tending to happens right here on my eight and a half acres so things are good it's not at the point yet where you walk out in your backyard and you smell the honey in the air which is it's going to happen soon so just it's coming but I will run down the list of things we saw the bees on I was out with the supervisor which is if you don't already know my 10 year old grandson and of course his little brother seven year old grandson and we were looking for bees on flowers and then identifying the flowers

that they're on and deciding whether or are they getting pollen are they getting nectar are they getting both so proboscis out pollen on the corbicula they're getting both so goldenrod top of the chart right now they're all over it you hear them before you see them So the golden rod is just teeming. There's something called bone set too. It's an off white flower. It's a fringe plant that's on the edges of our woodlands here and is covered in honeybees. The other thing is when we want to know if the resources they're getting for these plants is substantial. You look at the amount of time that the bee spends on each blossom. If they stay put and they work them over for an extended period of time and for me that means 10 to 15 seconds, then it's producing really well. When you see them skipping along from one after the other, then it's a very light resource and they move really fast across it because they're trying to hit as many of those blossoms as they can. And they may, of course, be competing with native bee species. So that's when they find that things are kind of gone by. Anyway, or used up. Napweed is out there. I know it's an invasive. Honeybees are

all over it. Clover still. White clover and some red clover. The bees are on primarily. the white Dutch clover though. Maximilian sunflowers are starting to come into bloom. Those are going to bloom all the way until the first frost. So they are a fantastic late season resource, not just for honeybees, but for all pollinators. So thistle, again, they're on the thistle, Joe pie weed and ironweed. They look very similar. One's more pinkish. One's a little darker, burgundy looking. And they're all over those blossoms. So they're getting a lot of nectar from them. I've not seen them come away with pollen on their legs from that.

And Hyssup, of course, top of the chart for me. I love the smell of Hissup. I love the nectar and everything that they're getting from that, but it's just teeming with bumblebees. So that's what's going on outside. And while I'm talking today, so that you don't get bored, I'm going to do something for you in celebration of World Honeybee Day. I'm going to put a little video up in the corner that's going to show you

honeybees emerging from their cells. You might be wondering, when were those videos taken? They were taken today, which is the reason why I'm late getting this out, because in the Way to Be Academy building, videoing the emergence of these new worker bees. And you might be wondering, you know, with it being 80 degrees Fahrenheit, outside, what was the temperature inside that building? Well, I can tell you it's 100 degrees Fahrenheit in there, and I did that for you. I sat it out. So here's the good news though. If you're in a building like that and you're trying to look at brood

and you want to see what the bees are doing, you want to see an emerging worker bee or even an emerging drone or something like that. Normally, if it's cool at all in the space that the hive is in, the bees are all over. They're going to cover the brood and keep it warm. So then you can't see them. So if you go into a space, it's 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And you will notice in these video sequences that there are some bees passing by

that are fanning their wings and keeping them. the air circulating there and keeping the brood alive because it's actually warmer than it needs to be finally in the brood area so that's good news if you're trying to take their pictures make a video we want the workers out of the way and so that we can see the action so we can see what's going on so that's what's happening in the corner top right of this video right now so all the questions and topics that we have have come in over the past week and i want to tell you that i really do appreciate those of you send those in and let me know what's going on. So we're going to start right off with Learhod, L-E-E-R-H-O-D-E-E-1021.

That's a YouTube channel name. I'm curious why are beekeepers reluctant to deal with bee swarms this time of year. There is a saying here in the United States. Swarm in June is worth a silver spoon. Swarm in May is worth a load of hay. Swarm in July, let them fly. Now this comes from a time and from people who are depending on the resources they get from beehives to earn an income. So as you may already know or you may not, so I'm going to share it right now.

My income from honeybees actually comes from the information that I provide. I don't gain my income from products of the hive. I don't sell bees. I don't sell hive equipment. We do sell honey, but it's not the focus, not my focus. My wife and my grandson ask me. me on a daily basis. When are we going to have honey? So if you're trying to make a living from it, you don't want to be feeding or nursing your bees. You want bees that can take care of themselves.

So that's why kind of the end of June ends up being the time when you could expect a colony of bees that set up brand new and maybe have a resource that you can use by the end of summer. Now if you're collecting bees for kicks and giggles, which is what I do a lot, and if you've been watching these videos for through the years. I will pick up a bee colony in September. I don't care. If I have a box to put them in, I'm going to put them in. And here's the fun of it. Because again, I don't have to back feed them. I'm not worried about it, costing me sugar syrup. You see commercial beekeepers with trucks with giant totes on the back on special pump systems and going hive to hive to hive feeding them and filling them. Most of my hives I don't ever feed. So that's interesting.

too and some of them I do and recently someone asked how many colonies do you have well right now my goal keep in mind is 10 and we have 45 colonies focused in one apiary which is too many bees so the other thing is you would have to invest in your bees it would cost you money to keep them alive to build them up in time for winter to come along but you know things have changed probably since those things came out and as back our beekeepers, we don't mind maybe spending a little extra to keep them going or get them kicked off. So of course, swarming in the middle of a nectar flow is no problem. So I forecast 30 days out because by the time the swarm gets into a hive and the queen starts laying, assuming that the swarm includes a productive queen,

then when she's laying her eggs 30 days out, we're going to see a decent increase in the numbers of bees. so we're forecasting. So what's going on right now? We're in the second week of August. And if we forecast out into the second week of September, if they were having a brood boost at that time and their numbers were on the increase, is there still time for them to get resources where I live? Yes. So you may be wondering, how do you know where you live if the resources are going to provide for your bees at the end of the year? And when do things go lean? When will there be a dearth period

where your bees will depend completely on you to survive winter. You go to B-Scape, and it's B-Scape, B-E-E-E-S-A-P-E-S-A-P-E-E-S-U-D-U. That's right. It's under the care and control of Penn State University. So there you put in your location, you find out what's going on in your area. It lets you know a lot of great information, not the least of which, finding out what kind of pesticides might be used where you're thinking about keeping your bees. In fact, for me, that's pretty high on the list of qualifiers for an area that you want to keep your bees.

Is there going to be a dearth? Does the environment provide for bees? Is there plenty of forage? When is the strongest nectar flow for where I'm going? What is the source of the nectar flow? And are other pesticides that potentially could impact my honeybees? Those are all great things to know. So now that I've told that whole story, beekeepers are reluctant because they don't want to invest. If you're a commercial beekeeper, every penny counts. Some commercial beekeepers are certainly not doing well. And in my state, where zone one, if you look at the charts of honey sales for the national honey board here in the United States, my state is one of the highest when it comes to the cost of honey.

I think a quart of honey right now is $25. bucks. So that's pretty high, which means you can get decent money for your money for your honey. So, but if you're a commercial beekeeper, of course, you don't want to be investing in new equipment and your hives are not going to make grade. If you're one of the people that has to, they go through making grade, by the way, means that you have an adequate number of bees in each hives that you can take on pollination contracts because that's how most commercial beekeepers make their money. Some do make it from honey. but the honey market is not great here in the United States.

So I think that's about it for the question number one, coming right out of the gate. Question number two, let's jump in with Keith Faithful, 3989, YouTube channel name. I have a swarm trap that has caught swarms. This year I had two swarms with Virgin Queens about two weeks apart. Both times, scouts checked it out, several bees. The swarms flew off both times.

Was it because of the Virgin Queens? I say no. The fact that you have a tertiary swarm or an after swarm, which is what usually happens with virgin queens, primary swarms have the laying queen, the queen that usually runs the colony at the time that they decide to swarm. So oftentimes you do get even multiple queens that go out with smaller swarms and clusters. And so their propensity to move into a hive box.

or a swarm trap. Doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not the queen that's with them is mated or not. Now I do know this. The worker bees are more motivated to build infrastructure and start a new colony and invest resources in it when the queen that they're with is mated and productive. If the queen that they're with remains unmated

for an extended period of time, you're gonna suffer a dwindling colony of bees. And by that I mean foragers are gonna go out, You're going to get resources that that new colony really, really needs. And then on their way back, if they just happen to, which happens in my apiary, fly near another colony that has queen right status. And by that I mean, there's a productive queen in there. The pheromones coming out of the colony are great.

The colony is settled. And it starts to look like a good investment. So foraging honeybees are oftentimes not faithful to their primary colony and their queen. And if it's a virgin queen, they don't have a lot of incentive to bring groceries home. So they drift. So I had a colony in my hive IQ hive, by the way. So this is the first year I've set that up. And every time I inspected it, activity was more and more reduced.

And then I collected a swarm off a tree several weeks ago. And I brought it over. I sat it right in front of the hive IQ hive because activity at the landing board is almost nothing. And the bees went in, inspected, came right back out and blocked the rest of the swarm from moving into the hive. Now I know it's a brand new hive. I know that I've got drawn comb in there. I know that I've got a lot of foundation that needs to be worked. That's why I wanted to put a swarm in it. And the first swarm that was in there that had the unmated queen, she never started laying.

So there are a lot of reasons why she may not begin to lay. she didn't get mated. The fact that she didn't get mated, also, she didn't have a lot of workers around her. And I caught that particular swarm in the bowler hat hanging off a tree, which, by the way, it's in storage now. I'm not using the bowler hats for a while because I'm moving on to other things, testing other things. But so the swarm, I thought I would usurp the queen. Because there's only about 400 bees in there with a queen and no brood at all. I thought, well, I'll just put this collection of bees in front of it is queen right and they'll go in and there'll be this hostile takeover which is usurpation that one queen will replace the other and then the existing residual

workers that are in there will just join forces with the rest of them they don't even have the heart to launch a defense because they just know their future isn't good so they wouldn't go in lost that swarm they just rather than go into that hive which had a queen in it they just took off on me So that's kind of predictable. So that's why this time of year, see, it's time to play, to learn, to take risks. We don't need the bees. So let's find out what they do, what they don't do. So then, a couple of days ago, I went to the same hive with another swarm in my everything

bee vac. And then I opened it up and I found the queen right away, of course, because there weren't very many bees around her. I put her in my queen pipe. If you don't know what that is, I have. I added around here, but anyway, it's a clear pipe that you collect the queen in, and I took her away. That's what this is right here. And I put her in a shaded spot inside a building, and I gave them about 20 minutes.

Guess what happened? Within 20 minutes, the queen being removed, those bees changed your attitude. Workers started leaving the bucket, going right into the hive, coming back out, fanning their Nazanov glands, and by sunset, all the bees moved in. So by removing the queen of a low-performing colony or a doomed colony, I made them susceptible to another colony moving in. So swarms that are coming up. And the reason I'm telling you this right now is because you may be facing late season swarms. And this is one of the things that could keep them from going in.

I also posted another video where I had a swarm in a tree and put a pro nuke, which is one of the big plastic nukes that holds five deep frames. It really was an undersized space for the bees that were on the tree, but I put it on top of a ladder and waited for the scouts to check it out, and they did. Scouts were coming and going, spending a lot of time in there. That's the other thing. When you have a swarm trap or any kind of box or hive that you're trying to get bees from moving to, when the scouts show up, make sure there's no resources in the hive. We don't want robbers.

We want residents. So, when the inspectors came, they showed up, they went inside. if they go in and come straight out, it's kind of a bad sign. If they go in and disappear for about 10 to 15 minutes, which feels like in eternity while you're sitting out there staring at things, then they're kind of taking a look. And then when they fly away, they're going to wherever possibly a bivouac,

possibly a colony that's about to generate a swarm. So before a colony swarms out in the first place, they already have scouts checking for potential locations to move into. So it has to meet their requirements. It has to smell right. If you've got any dead bees in there, forget about it. Don't use a swarm to clean out old-brewed comb that still has dead brood in it. I know some people do it.

They dump the bees inside the hive. They close it up. They make it so they can't get away from it. And then they force them to clean out a dead out. That's not the way to attract bees, but I understand that people do that by force. So I don't think that's a good way to go. So dead brood, old brood, anything that looks off that's covered in mold, something like that, just get rid of it. Don't let that be part of your swarm trap. Old brood comb that's nice and clean is fantastic.

Put that in there. So anyway, it's an undersized thing. That swarm flew away on their own. So I've moved that swarm trap out. It has to be sized right. So statistically, about 10 gallons, 10 frames is about right. So five over five nucleus arrangements are fantastic for attracting swan. Now, late season, swarms that are going to come out, those little tiny ones, you know, goose egg softball size, whatever they are, those look doomed. But I found out if you stick them in a really tiny space, they tend to manage it. So, and also they move into odd things that you wouldn't think bees would occupy stored equipment. So give a shot, size it right. So, yeah, by the way, the swarm that I put into the, you know, the swarm that I put into the,

hive IQ hive has now a deep and a medium together right off the bat because it was a lot of bees can't let those go and there's and the way the hive IQ is configured I do have a frame feeder in there but there's nothing in the frame feeder because they don't want to kick off any robbing and there are a lot of frames that they have to draw out but the colony is so big and they show up ready to work so they're going to start drawing out that comb they stayed it's going to be good it's going to be great stuff It's fun just to watch those things continue. So the next question comes from Ross Wagner. I've seen a few videos where keepers have euthanized an overly aggressive hive.

My question is, what do you do with the hive cleanup wise after the hive has been dispatched? What do you do to all the frames to get them ready for the next season? Obviously, you're freezing the hive in time and so on. Okay. And I asked this other supervisor because I like to test him. ever now and again. You know what? His answers were pretty darn good. So the first thing is how do you euthanize the colony of bees? I mean, let's talk about how dangerous they are. If, you know, for killing animals, if you've got livestock, if they're like some people I've met who had so many

bees go on their veil, they couldn't even see through the veil. That is a red alert status response. That's general quarters. You want to deal with them with everything you have. So, but you also have to think you've got this colony of bees and if this happens to you this time of year, although I notice that a lot of people are getting cookoffs, those are the colonies that even though you're using smoke and everything, you pop the lid and they just come after you, which seems really out of character and you're just wondering, is it personal, what's going on with these bees? Why are they after me like that? Well, overcast day, rain on the way, windy. A colony that otherwise could and would be passive will often show aggression. Defensive behavior is really what it is. But I know there's

times some colonies can be flat out aggressive. They can come at you before you're anywhere near the colony. So let's say you had to kill them. So if you've got really hot days ahead and this is why I say be prepared in advance. You don't want to be running around trying to get stuff. I'm a big fan of having staged equipment for emergencies. So what you might have is industrial 55-gallon drum-sized bags. And by industrial, I mean they're almost for hazmat. They're pretty thick. Dark colors are better.

So you've got a couple of choices. Dark or clear. So I have both. But I prefer the dark ones, and I'll explain why. If you want to kill the colony, suffocation can happen pretty darn quick, provided you seal off 100% of the airflow to the hive. So the big industrial 55-gallon drum bags, you have to cover them, top, bottom, sides, shipping tape, everything, double layering. You can reuse these bags, so don't be sparse with them. And then the following day, when you've got a nice hot, sunny day coming along,

they'll reach a temperature that's too high for them. It's just like what they do to a queen. When they're trying to get rid of a queen and they ball around that queen and create so much heat and they pack themselves so tight, they overheat and suffocate the queen to kill her. This is what you're now in effect doing to the entire colony. And one of the reasons that this is a good idea is for exactly what Ross is asking about, What do you get of it? What happens to the resources in the hive?

And my grandson was spot on. We want to harvest that honey. Now, he's thinking like a capitalist because he's 10. He's got bills to pay. He's got clients to satisfy. So he wants honey to sell. So if you're going to kill the colony of bees, you might as well not use chemicals that render the resources unusable in the future. So he alone can really do it. Now, ditch effort, knock down force.

I've got one of those really big fire extinguishers. That thing is heavy. So a classic handheld fire extinguishers, like a 15-pound CO2 extinguisher. There's 25-pounders. There's 50-pound CO2 extinguisher. So I have a 50-pound CO2 extinguisher. And that's ready to go. For a lot of reasons.

If you had a fire inside a building, that's going to really knock it flat. Although I'm telling you, you're not a firefighter. Get out. Save yourself first. but CO2 works to knock down bees right away. Often people say, well, it freezes them. Well, not really. CO2 is not a chiller.

What's making the cold is the expansion out of that bottle. When it goes through the nozzle, you see the nozzle frosts up because there's so much expansion going on that it causes the drop in temperature. CO2 itself does not chill anything. So you're not freezing a colony out. Every time I see that in an article or somebody's posting something in social media, I think, uh-oh, they don't understand that CO2 is just displacing oxygen.

So you would be knocking out your bees. And then as soon as oxygen comes back in and replaces the CO2, then they're going to come back around and they're going to be feisty again. So that buys you time to knock them out inside the hive while you get them all bagged up, taped up, snug as a bug in a bag. And then, once you're sure, there's nothing else going on in there. So when you look out there and that temperature gets up to 135, inside that bag, pretty safe bat. They're done. So, because they just can't handle that kind of temperature.

The other thing is you don't want it to get much hotter than that. And I don't think there's a big risk of that, but, you know, I could be talking to somebody in the desert southwest. You definitely don't want to get it up to the temperature where you're going to melt the beeswax and stuff like that inside the hive, because now the honey's going to run everywhere the beeswax is going to melt and you're going to have a huge mess on your hands so that's not the way to go now let's say you don't want to do any of that you don't care what happens they've you know they've killed your pet ants or whatever they did now you really want to get them so you go out there and you mix one tablespoon of don ultra free and clear per gallon of water you mix that all up you put that in an industrial sprayer pump it all up. You can have this pre-mixed. See, you can have this on the shelf, ready to go. It has no shelf life. So you could even set aside one of those inexpensive, you know, two and a half gallon garden sprairs and mark it carefully. Don Ultra and water bug killer. This works on wasps, hornets, insects of any kind. If it's got spiracles, if it respirates, if it's got a cuticle, you can kill it with this stuff. And it's 100% safe for the environment. So you can pump that stuff right through the entrance, lift the top lid, spray it right through the top

All that says the soapy water goes down through it increases the wetting ability of the water Which means it penetrates into little tiny openings their waxy cuticle is defeated because it's dawn and dawn ultra free and clear destroys wax breaks through grease So they'll all be dead now you have to use copious amounts of cold fresh water to wash out the whole thing and then it's up to you to decide what going to be usable after that. But that will knock stuff down. Coming up pretty soon, you might be coming across hornets nest. I got somebody that messaged me today that has European hornets in the soffet of their second story of their house. And European hornets, those are the biggest ones. I said, those are general giants? What are they really doing? Are they, you know, is, is it where somebody

needs to go? And they worry about the height. And often people don't think about this. If you open one of your upstairs windows, is that reachable from right there? You don't even need a ladder. You can just reach out. I don't want to kill the European Hornets personally. But if they're really treacherous, we will go and do that. Because my grandson wants to take part. He has 100% confidence in his B-suit.

So we can see how that goes. I'm not going to put him in jeopardy. He's definitely not going up on ladders. So anyway, you can even spray the reason. I bring it up, you can spray that with Don, Ultra, free and clear, mix with water, one tablespoon per gallon, mix it up, doesn't it? Hot, cold, makes no difference. And if you suds it up a little bit, even the suds, they just struggle and drown. They drown fast, by the way. No reason to buy a pesticide. None. It works. It's good stuff. So, and don't put yourself at risk.

Dangerous bees are no joke. But that, again, you'd have to rinse it with everything else. I'll say the next question is, and this is just this YouTube channel name, I think they just made stuff up. EMQ, C, V, KU, DQ, you get the picture. Says I know there's a good nectar source within range, but one colony seems to be flying in a different direction and filling the supers noticeably more slowly than the others in the same apiary. Would it make sense to catch some foragers from that colony? Transport them to the good forage in a ventilated box with concentrated sugar syrup.

Let them fill up in the box and release them there. Would they recruit enough nestmates to that source or would the colony's existing foraging patterns be difficult to change? Okay, so a couple of things going on here. Number one is we're trying to get them to fill their honey supers. What are the honey soupers for? Are they for the bees? Or are they for you to harvest potentially sell?

So the sugar syrup should be out of the picture if you're going to harvest. If it's a late season colony that you're trying to boost, then I personally wouldn't even go through the effort of trying to reroute them. So the one thing that's going to happen, if we collect a bunch of the bees from a colony, we put them in a container, ventilated as described, and we have sugar syrup in there that they can fill up on, and then we take them out to a location where we think the forage is fantastic

because we see bees from a very productive colony going in that direction. And then we turn them loose out there and they fly back to their hive. Do you know what they're telling their colony mates when they get back? They're coming back loaded with sugar syrup, not the floral resource where you took them. So the bees back at this hive, if they decide that that's what they want. It's very rare for honey bees to turn down, straight up sugar syrup. They would fly back to the same location looking for that sugar syrup,

not the forage that you're trying to get them to visit. So their memories are as long as their lives. So the foragers that you have in your hive, once they go out, start going after a resource, find the resource is suitable to them, and then they get back, and it gets the approval of the nurse bees, storekeeper bees, and the bees inside the hive. and you're doing a waggle dance and everybody seems very interested in your waggle dance and the resources that you're providing and off they go in the same direction, curbing them or directing them to a targeted plant is very hard. So one of the things you could do leaving the sugar syrup 100% out of it,

collect a bunch of your foragers as they leave the hive. So you're going to have to have a cage or something a screened in thing like this ventilated carrier that you're talking about. it would cover the whole. Bees that are departing would go into that. Those are your foragers. Take that whole thing full of those bees to the source. This is just a fun backyard citizen science thing to try out. And you take it to that site and then you release them on the plants or adjacent to the plants that other bees are getting nectar from. I don't think that's going to work, but that's a much better way to try to get them to discover new resource. Would they be lost? No, because they know where they live. they've memorized the landscape they know what's going on and they're going to come back now the problem

with those bees is they're already foragers they've already been somewhere and they're probably locked in fairly well to the resource that they've been getting what they think they need from pollen nectar whatever it happens to be because remember they're floral constant bees so bees that are on clover right now don't jump from clover to daisies black-eyed susans for pollen or joe pie weed or something like that they go only to clover clover clover until they get back to the hive and that's nectar and pollen for the clover so the bees that have been out foraging that resource are very unlikely to suddenly shift and go to maximilian sunflowers for example so that's very hard to do It's an interesting question though, I don't want to stop you from trying, but I don't think they're going to do what you want them to do.

Next question comes from Derek Campbell, and its spotted lantern fly is in Chambersburg, though not in the numbers I saw two years ago. Less last year than two years ago, and I'd say less so far this year. So they may have found some predators that enjoy them. Now if you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about the spotted lantern fly, which is really a big, kind of like a leaf hopper, which they use her proboscis and they cut right into plants into the floam, and they get the sugary, watery, resources from plants, and they're concentrating the solids in their digestive system, and they're filtering out the excess waters and sugars, the sucrose that they're getting for those plants and our honeybees are getting that honeydew

from those bugs. Now, there's been a lot of graping about it. Danger, especially grape farmers, for example, which in my neck of the woods, that's not their biggest problem right now. They have contract issues where I live. But the spotted lanternfly, if we look at the chart of its distribution

here in the state of Pennsylvania, which was ground zero for the spotted lanternfly, I haven't seen them. All the time I've been here, I'm not actively going out to other areas trying to find them, but the spotted lanternfly is not showing up in huge numbers the way we were kind of told they would move across the state like wildfire. So the question is, is something else eating them? So I had to dig in, do a little bit of research before I responded to this, and guess what I found out?

Yes, things are eating them. So just right off the bat, spined soldier bugs. I don't know that I've ever even seen one of those. But they, this is identified by Penn State. Penn State is very interested. Dr. Robin Underwood has been giving lots of talks about the spotted lanternfly. And so they're a star predator. It says the native predatory stink bugs gang up in groups to pier spotted lanternflies and drain their juices.

That's just one. That's discovered that this new bug in town, the spotted lanternfly, is tasty. Now we all know praying mantises. The praying mantis, apparently, there's both Native Carolina mantis and the introduced Chinese mantis. Now I had a mantis named Mildred. It was female. And so we kept her because she joined us when we went to a garden center and was in our car when we got home. So I decided, hey, I'm going to let her grow up and see what she eats. That thing grabbed a hold of a bald face hornet and ate its face off alive.

I'm sorry for the graphic description. But the idea that that thing eats a spotted lanternfly. it gets a chance to nab one is not at all surprising it's an opportunistic feeder so it's all over them so praying man it's no big surprise wheelbugs and assassin bugs have you ever seen assassin flies they'll grab a bug and just drill right into its thorax and start eating it right there i have videos of it that i haven't shared yet i'm deciding when and where to share those because it's a grisly scene they feed on the living bug they just kind of consume it so anyway wheelbugs lay egg masses right alongside lanternfly egg masses and because wheelbugs hatch earlier they wait for the lanternflies

to emerge and then they consume them immediately so they're eating the lanternfly larvae upon emergence isn't that sad for the lantern flies and spiders or weavers no great surprise jumping spiders are nabbing them right and left opportunistic hunters they've decided they're not dangerous their colors don't any alarm bells for these things and so they're just munching them wots yellow jackets ants predatory beetles they've all been documented to feed on them so anyway birds Penn states look at the birds too now i have free-ranging chickens my are free-ranging chickens have been eating every bug they can find and if they came across spotted lantern flies no matter what state they're in my chickens would eat them they're like that I was making macro video

of ants that were in swarm mode. So all the queens had wings. They were getting ready to leave, and I was really close, like this close to the ants, coming out, flying everywhere. And all of a sudden I saw these giant feet walk into the field of view, and by giant feet, I mean chicken feet. My chickens walked up and they were eating ants by the hundreds

as they were coming out to swarm away. I've never seen them do that before. My chickens will eat, baby mice. My chickens will eat small snakes. No great shocker that they're also top of the chart. By the way, single most frequently reported predator, along with ducks and turkeys that eat the spotted lanternfly. Spotted lanternfly, it's not the new kid on the block anymore. They've figured it out. Northern Cardinals, Blue Jays, great catbirds, tufted tit mice. Also eat the spotted lanternfly. Woodpeckers and others. Red-belled woodpecker. American Robbins.

and visiting warblers, they all eat them. But I think they're still around. I don't know what the overall impact is, but I think it's kind of funny, and we can go into the amphibians, toads and frogs eat them, raccoons, chipmunks, and squirrels have been eating them, which is pretty funny.

We don't think of squirrels eating anything besides a bunch of nuts. But those little red squirrels, the little jerks that are antisocial that run all the other squirrels away and hoard all their stuff and rob everybody and stash things, in your shed they're actually eating along with sometimes they eat baby bird eggs baby bird eggs

they will move right into a bird box this year is the first year i found a red squirrel in one of my bluebird boxes not happy squirrel was happy i was not happy so there's a lot of things that are eating them and of course you if they landed in the water anywhere fish of course they're going to eat them too So spotted lanternfly has predators here. And they're on the rise. I guess they must be tasty. So, yeah, and I'm interested. So if you're in an area and you're listening here, of course,

you would be or you couldn't hear me ask the question. Would you please put down in the comment section if you have, in fact, had spotted lanternflies in the past where you are, and if you're noticing a decline or likewise, are you noticing an increase? I'd be interested in both. We've all seen the viral video of the little elementary school girl that discovered this magical way to collect spotted lanternflies And she takes a clear plastic bottle and she sticks it over an adult lantern fly on a tree and it pops into

Because that's their defense remember they're like giant leaf hoppers When they get surprised they just boink they just pop off into her bottle and that has been circulated everywhere as a fantastic way to collect and control The spotted lanternfly We would need elementary school kids everywhere all the time with their clear plastic bottles. But it's a lot of fun to catch them to see what's getting them. So here we go. Next one comes from Yvonne Wagner, 5322. Again, YouTube channel name.

It's been so humid for weeks in Maryland. But I saw honey was capped. I extracted, then thought, hmm, bit runny. Refractometer then said 19% water. Dang. Per online suggestions, I bought a mini humidifier. See, now this says, I know this is a typo, but it says it bought a mini humidifier and wrapped it with a tarp and a bucket of honey.

You want to get a dehumidifier. Humidifiers add moisture, dehumidifier removes it. A week later, still 19. I think I'm going to be feeding the honey back to the piece. Oh, you know, that's an option, but I'm going to take this opportunity. talk about something because they have another question about it later today. But this description bought the mini dehumidifier, wrapped it with a tarp and the bucket of honey a week later. So wrapping it. Okay. I don't know if I like the sound of that. Having a small space designated for dehumidifying

anything. Okay. So I have my, and I've talked about in the past, and there's another question about it today the Vivo Sun enclosures are under $100 you zip them up they're completely closed dust and particulates don't get in there and so I have a dehumidifier in there which by the way when it's closed up like that this is floors walls and overhead it's 100% self-contained when you zip that shut it's a closed environment this is really important now inside it has bars so you can hang those little clamp fans they're very low wattage you just run them all the time they circulate the air remember this is how your bees dehumidify their honey they're not generating they're not they don't have a dehumidifier they're just moving a lot

of air which gets the water off of the honey because it's hygroscopic and it will release its moisture and then condenses down and so then they're fanning it out of the hive but if the humidity levels are really high it's very difficult for them to do that. So now what we're doing is creating an environment that we control the climate in. So the dehumidifier not only blows air because my dehumidifier has like a squirrel cage, you know, a hamster wheel looking fan in it, and that blows a lot of air. Good for that. And it is also a dehumidifier, but I've never seen water collected in its bucket. And here's why. Because when that thing goes on and the fan's blowing and heat's going out,

something else in there that removes moisture from the air what do you think it is it's a desiccant and i'm not talking about one of those little mamby see this thing right here this is a wise dry desiccant pack and it's orange which means it can still take on moisture and uh it's reusable this isn't going to do dilly if you're trying to dehumidify the honey that you've got in buckets and stuff like that so what will dehumidifier fans warm So the other thing is just the temperature of the dehumidifier running in that space and the fans running It comes up to about 105 degrees Fahrenheit So when the temperature is warmer the water becomes more evaporative more volatile so the water's gonna come out

And I wish I had something to show you here and I do this is called damp rid now Compare this to this this thing is serious if you have a musty basement or something like like that and you're trying to get the moisture out of it these damp rid buckets which you can get at any home center these are the big ones by the way this is the four pound bucket and I buy boxes of these and they last for years so all you do is take the bucket when you pull the top off I'm not doing this one yet because I don't want to activate it but I have two of these inside my Vivo son tent and they sit right on the floor when you pull this off there's a

fabric coating on it that allows moisture to go in but not escape. It's kind of the reverse house wrap. House wraps like Tyvec. Moisture escapes but can't come back in. This one, moisture goes in but can't get back out. And it's got little pellets on it, and it's got a full marker built into it.

So when the moisture gets up to this level, right here, when it all turns black from here down, then you know it's full of moisture, and you need to swap it out. that combination is how I reduce by at least 1% of water every 12 to 24 hours. And the warmer you get it, if you don't mind, you know, heating your honey up even more, 115, 120, it happens quicker. But you sacrifice some of the flavor and aroma of your honey,

the more warmth you introduce. So the other thing is, once we've done that, and we've dehumidified it because I have a humidity and a temp sensor that sits inside the space and the readout is on my weather station. So I get to see right there exactly what the temperature and humidity is inside my Vivo sun dehumidifier tent. And there's a rack in there with wheels. So just think of the carts that people roll down the halls, you know, that have all this stuff on them. Those things have a nice heavy capacity, 150 pounds per shelf. and so you can put a lot of honey on that you can put a whole honey super on that and my recommendation

there is also have a type of drip pan underneath the honey super bigger than the honey super because sometimes the honey that is inside but not capped gets so warm when you're blowing everything and stuff that it actually can start to leak down and trickle into your pan if you don't have that it's going to be all on the bottom of your Vivo son or whatever you're using. I highly recommend buying a drape system like that. They're designed to grow plants, but they're perfect for this purpose. They have a metal frame. Everything, it comes in a box.

It's easy to get. They get them on Amazon, wherever you want to get one. Give it a big one. Four feet by eight feet by 80 inches is only $100 some dollars. And that's as big as any backyard beekeeper like myself. we need to have it. So now the other thing is up to temperature dehumidified. What's next? Go straight from that to your uncapping and processing while it's still at that temperature. Everything goes so much quicker. It's easy to scrape off the beeswax. You can spin it out right away. If you're doing crush and strain because you have foundationless comb and it's all capped and ready to go.

And you can put the whole box with the frames in it or make your own rack just for the frames and then set that in there. dehumidify it for 24 hours just as a general practice which at the same time serves as your warming room so now it's up to temperature and when you crush and strain it all you crush up all of that honey out of the comb and drip it through a paint strainer some people are using i use a 200 micron honey sieve and you can go all the way up to 600 if you don't mind a bunch of particulates 200 is kind of the smallest the finest mesh you want that's because it still permits the pollen to go through and so it's still honey anyway that's my response to that don't give up on it if it's not fermenting 19% by the way for a lot of inspectors is acceptable 19 and lower

19 to 20 likely to ferment over 20% water it's going to ferment for sure you got problems so the next question comes from ed shell it says be question let's see a YouTube channel Hype Tool Anyway I find that occasionally winter bees

will get themselves trapped up against the insulated cover can't move to more resources that are close by and will perish

does it make sense in winter to have bee space between the insulated cover and the frames so the bees can move in the warm space

to other resources so this is something that comes up time and again and for as long as we've been keeping bees you always come across that one colony that clustered really tiny late in winter couldn't move anymore didn't have access to emergency resources and two frames over full frames of capped honey and it just couldn't get back to it so bee space is three eighths of an inch you'll find that a lot of people a lot of beekeepers are just putting, if you think of the migratory covers, those basically are sitting straight on the top bar of your frames.

There's no gap above them. Some people put a canvas down over that, heavy dot cotton dot canvas. I'm a big fan of that too. Some people have taken a putting double bubble right on the top and then that migratory cover on top of that. And that's working for a lot of people. So what I personally do is my insulated inner covers usually do have a little bit of bee space. And we know it's there because when we take the cover off, we see burrow comb lined up with your frames

that is right about three eighths of an inch. So when we peeled it off of the top of those top bars of the frames, they had room. We also see that they leave themselves little travel corridors. Now without that, your bees have to go around the ends, which is very unlikely. or underneath and then back up. Now with larger clusters of bees, with larger populations, this is not a problem because they're covering the whole frame anyway.

And they tend to just kind of ooze their way through to the next frame, and they're pretty good to go. Insulation of your inner cover is very, very important. So what happens is sometimes they move up too soon. They even leave honey down below behind them. And this is probably a good time to even talk about it. Because a lot of people, what were we talking about at the very beginning, these late season storms,

people want to help them, boost them and things like that. Where are you going to feed? Top of the hive? Where the beast is going to cluster then, also near the very top of the hive. And then you end up going into winter with a cluster already at the top instead of down at the bottom, ideally working their way up through honey resources as they go. This is also one of the reasons, and Dr. Thomas Seeley included that people have gone from 10 frame boxes to 8 frame boxes. And it's because, and I think most of you would agree that with the 10 frame boxes, which I use, so let's say that, to fill up the number 1 and number 10 frame and all the frames in between, that's kind of rare.

They usually leave these outer frames on a 10 frame box partially done, and they focus their resources in the center. So when you go to an 8, you get a more thorough use of all available space. and so we've taken two frames away. And then you have a narrower box going up, and the bees tend to utilize that space more. So Dr. Seeley, one of the top minds in beekeeping and honeybee behavior, bought into that, and I say that's great too. But what happens is you size your box wrong for your bees,

or you put resources up at the top too soon, going in a winter, the bees tend to cluster up there, and then they run out. They almost never will go back down during winter in a colder climate until warmer days come and spring comes. And if they haven't survived to get to those warm spring days, they expire right there in a little cluster in a corner. Often the northeast, the southeast corner of the hive where the morning sun warms the side of the boxes where they tend to end up clustered. And then they get a little moldy and then they get damp and they life is not good. So the B space above, I have not seen a correlation with or without it.

And I can make arguments like, you should sit down and argue with yourself on every point you try to make. So I argue with myself. You know, does that work? What proof do I have that that works? Where there are ways for them to migrate through the frames, 21st B, for example, the company that makes these heavy-duty plastic wax foundation frames has holes already through the corners, the centers, and I see my bees because I just spent my time looking at them all afternoon today, the bees utilize those holes that are already there. So if you've got plastic foundation in your highs for the honey soupers, and most people do, punch a hole in the center of each of those. If the bees want to close it up with bees wax, they can do it. But if the

bees want to make a hole through a food-grade plastic foundation that's heavy, wax they can't it's up to the beekeeper that's why I made videos called cutting corners in bee frames which was literally taking the plastic inserts that are heavy wax and clipping the corners all four corners off and then leave the bees that left the bees the corners to do but a center hole is much more meaningful for your bees particularly when they need to access across several frames saving them having to go out into the cold down below if it's a smaller cluster now they just slowly push their way through onto the next frame through that center hole and the bees themselves are creating the barrier and keeping themselves warm while they move to

unused honeycapped resources so think about that it's good stuff so punch the holes yourself check out 21st b he's not giving me anything to say that i'm just telling you that's a very interesting frame design it is the most heavy duty frame if you're a backyard beekeeper you're not migrating yourself anywhere, I think that's a forever frame that you could use in your hive. A forever frame. Pressure washing, high temp dips,

everything, it holds up to all of it. Okay, so, so it's not just that space. Oh yeah, one other thing. I don't deal with small high beetles. I don't have any. Don't want any, don't send me any. But when I'm looking at the way it's set up, we want to eliminate hiding places for these.

small high beetles because when you see somebody pull off the lid of their hive and the inner cover that gap between the inner cover and the outer cover little small high beetles go scooting everywhere and running off that would bother me a lot so by taking the outer cover off removing the inner cover going straight to a single cover insulated that rest directly on the backs of those frames you took away a major hiding place for those small high beetles. I would look heavily into a single contained closed up lid for that. Now if you ever needed to feed them, you can have to put a feeding shim on above that, but it makes really good sense to me, just thinking because I don't have the small high beetles

to mess with, but I would think that by not having a space above and not having an inner outer cover situation, you know, which is very convenient for me here, but I don't have small high beetles. If I had small high beetles, I would look heavy at insulated single covers that draped down over the sides of the outer cover so that you can still remove them and stuff. But I would look heavy at that stuff to help get those small high beetles under control because they're creepy. All right. I don't want them in my hive.

They're not invited. So this is for Mike Major, 7226. It says, hello, do you have any videos or photos of your honey drying setup with the grow tent? Thanks. So this is what we're talking about earlier. What am I going to do? I'm going to make a standalone quick tip video that's going to show you how I dry the honey because, like I said, my grandson has clients.

We have to do things. So I told him today, this is how you lock yourself in. Tell the 10-year-old you're going to do something. 10 minutes later is going to ask you when you're going to do it, when you're going to do it. You told me you're going to do it. When are we doing it? So I know this is how I'm going to absolutely have to make this video. So we're going to show it.

We're going to show the grow tent how I use it. You're going to be very underimpressed because it's going to be exactly what I just described. It is a very simple tent with zippers on it that you put your honey in and do all the things I previously described. But I know some people like to see it. So I'm going to show it. And then you'll know it. So that's it for today. That's it for my Q&A.

For tomorrow, don't forget, World Honeybee Day, Saturday. So if you're watching this on Saturday, just start telling everybody that it's World Honeybee Day and wear the shirt, whatever you do. And that's it. Remember, robbing potential is very high, swarming potential, very high, and get ready to pull some honey. We're at over 70% capacity on these supers. and if we pull the honey at just the right time, it'll be early enough for them to reload the exact same super that you just pulled.

So rather than putting a bunch of boxes and stacking it really tall and taking your picture next to it and posting it to all your beekeeping friends to show how super productive your beehive is, and it is. It's very impressive, the Leaning Tower of Pizza with honeybees. I think that's great. However, if you're a backyard beekeeper and all you want to do is pull a few frames at a time because you don't have a big system to turn on and employees to bring in, all you're going to do is sit out there,

hand your grandchildren tools to uncap, and then you're going to extract honey, and then you're going to have them clean all the stuff up for you, which they'll happily do. I hope you understand. That's dry wit, because what they end up doing is getting honey all over everything. Every surface you're going to be touching for the next two weeks.

We'll be sticky from honey. Their little footprints will be everywhere. They're going to eat honeycomb right in front of you, and they're going to touch everything. Honey's coming. So, be ready for it. And if you cycle it through, give it back to the bees,

let them clean up your frames, then they will go right back into restoring that honey all the way into September. Now, my practice is to stop in September near the end of the month and then let them just backfill themselves after that. So deep in a medium, although last winter, the deeps by themselves.

If we let them back fill in time, came through winter, remarkably well. So my old standard of a single deep brood box full of honey and bees and all the stuff they need to make brood and then a medium box with nothing but honey on that the medium box has been wasted now that we've gone to these heavy insulated inner covers and outer covers with a feeder ship in between. Since I've been doing that, that 47 40 pound box of honey the medium box has not been necessary where I live. So I hope you're working it out.

I hope you're keeping records of everything that you're doing with your bees and your beehives so that you're not forgetting season after season. What's working well for you? And I want to thank you for watching. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has Ben, the way to be.