The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers #344 with Frederick Dunn why do large colonies starve in winter?

Episode Date: February 14, 2026

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/wikh2TpWVXU

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today's Friday, February the 13th. That's right, Friday the 13th of 2006. This is back here at bekeeping questions and answers episode number 344. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please go down in the video description and look at all the topics listed in order and there'll be links there to give you extra information other places to go things to read stuff to learn so I want to talk about what else what's going on outside the weather 9.1 degrees Fahrenheit do you know that Monday this past Monday right here in the northeastern part of the United States northwestern part of the

state of Pennsylvania it was minus 20 minus 20 degrees that's not wind chill that's a straight up minus 20 and on the same day by the end of the day we went up I think it was a 4060 degree change in temperature you probably don't care about that but one of the reasons I bring it up is these yo-yo temperatures super super cold zipping up to hot afternoons with by hot I mean above freezing at in the sun you get condensation a lot of it because the dew point gets achieved. Anyway, so 9.1 degrees Fahrenheit is minus 12.7 Celsius, 2.2 mile per hour wind.

So that's the good news. It's not too windy because if it's too windy, of course, now we add in the wind chill. Does the wind chill apply to your honeybees? No, because they're out of the wind. You have to be exposed to wind to get the wind chill. See, so inside the hives, they're okay. They're better off than if they're exposed to the wind.

So 2.2 miles from. hour, 3.5 kilometers per hour, it's 97% relative humidity. It was a heavy fog out there, like really dense. And so what's that where you are? Also would be 97% relative humidity, and you realize these parameters would be different where you're located, unless you're right in my neck of the woods, and I mean within three miles of me, because 10 miles through the north, it's entirely different. They're actually warmer than I am. Really interesting. I know what else you want to know. How about that opening the deer are everywhere they're walking through the woods or chewing everything they've learned to walk on their hind legs nice and tall and they're reaching things as high as eight feet off the ground so when you go out there you can look and see all the twigs are chewed off not all of them a bunch of them and of course all the little fire crab apple trees and things like that are just disappearing I don't think they can eat them all at once I don't think that's good for them but I got something for the deer I'm I've succeeded I've tested something and it works 100%.

We'll talk more about it at the end of today's Q&A. So all the questions were submitted during the past week. How do you submit your own question? You go to the website, the wayto-be.org, click on the pagemark contact, fill out the forum, and there you have it. You might be on next Friday's Q&A. There may not be a Q&A next Friday right on time. I might have to pre-record it.

Why? Because I'm going to be in Wisconsin. Central Wisconsin specifically for a B conference. There's going to be people there, and I'm going to be among them. So that's going to be fun. There's a possum roaming around outside because I know you want to know what the wildlife is up to. Deer, of course, everywhere causing trouble. And squirrels are still having squirrel wars, gray squirrels, fox squirrels,

and those little red squirrels that are not social that chase all the other squirrels around. It's a mess. And the wild bird populations are looking strong. So Cardinals, we don't have many blue jays. We've got a lot of woodpeckers out here, the Donnie, the hairy, the red-bellied woodpeckers. We've got the tufted titmouses around. The nut hatches are all over the place, cruising the trees constantly, probably trying to make sure that we don't get any of those spotted lanternflies in spring,

and we're a long way off from spring. We're in a pickle. It's really cold still, there's a lot going on. So that's pretty much it for the wildlife. We don't worry about bears and things like that. And I think I told you that a screech owl starved to death and was just sitting on a robin's nest. Had to call on the Gaming Commission.

Anyway, so that's it. We're going to jump right in. And if you've got a question, of course, you're watching this at another time. You've got a question. You've got a video. You want me to look at a video. I have to be honest, I don't have the time.

A pint can't hold a court, as they say. And so I can't always do a personal review of someone's video and give you my feedback on it because I tend to go from one thing to another all day long and I run out of time. So what can you do? Where can you go? To share your picture, to post your idea, to get some feedback, the way to be fellowship. It's on Facebook.

And I set that up for that very reason. So you could have conversations with people at any time. There will always be someone there to give an opinion. about what you have presented or coming up with or some innovation that you're working on. You cannot self-promote, you cannot sell things there, and you cannot be political or anything like that. But you can, of course, say, hey, I have this idea, what do you think about it? And get feedback. It's going to be fun. I'm telling you right now. It's going to be lots of fun.

So we're going to jump right in with the very first question from Emil Amil Andruski. Okay, that's the YouTube channel name. It says, hey, Fred, need your opinion on. why a strong hive January 22nd would starve by February the 10th the hive had a very large population of bees and fondant on top of the inner cover directly above the cluster there were classic signs of starvation bees heads in cells bodies contracted in cells and bees all clustered together so this is something that this time of year we hear a lot about. And that's because people think they're out of the woods, you know, starts to warm up, sun starts to shine snow, starts to melt icicles, fall off your eaves and soffets and gutters. And then people think, yes, we're good to go.

And then your bees are dead. Worse than that, they starve out. Now I want to caution you, because this isn't just for the person who posed the question, but anyone who thinks that maybe their bees are completely dead because we've been collecting bees. You know the random ones off the landing boards, off the snow, stuff like that, where you find them outside the hive. And we put them on plates, we put them in bowls and in Ziploc bag as you bring them inside and you set them aside and you wait and see if they come around. Now the reason I bring that up is bees go into something called chill coma.

When they do that, when they're challenged, because remember they cluster together for communal warmth in survival and bees are constantly dying they can appear dead so when you open up a hive why we're opening hives right now i don't know but let's say you're opening a hive and you find a cluster of bees up in the corner and there are some signs of absolute death of course if they're soaking wet usually that happens after they die 99% of the time and but if they're not soaking wet and they're just clustered tight and seem to be not moving it doesn't hurt you to close them back up check to make sure they have food and resources

close them right back up seal everything up but let's say they did die bees do odd things this time a year and I want to tell you this in particular not every bee is suited for cold climate beekeeping yeah so bees that tend to do extremely well sometimes during the year and I'm not saying this is what happened this is just one of many possibilities for why a large colony could die out in the past early on and I've been keeping bees since 2006 making this my 20th year of beekeeping I got Italian bees and that's because a lot of commercial people use them why because they're highly prolific they're very good pollinators they also produce large amounts of

honey and you would think that colony by colony under the identical circumstances environmental circumstances specifically, that they would all kind of perform the same and they don't. The Italian colonies that I had were the ones that were going through 70, 74 pounds of honey through the winter. And there were several contributing factors to that. One is they brewed up when other bees, like Saskotrasse bees, let's say, Caucasians, carniolans, things like that, where they would be retracting some of their egg laying. They'd slow down and they'd have a smaller cluster of bees going into winter. The Italians were just brooding up continuously, just big numbers.

Which is okay if I were commercial, I understand the appeal because they're also willing to feed them full on all winter long. And that's not something I personally want to do. I've gotten in the habit, of course, they're providing emergency resources on the hives. We have another question this later on today but these larger colonies don't know when to respond to outdoor cues and cut back on the brood now this is specifically for backyard beekeeping we are not commercial we do not need to build up our colonies I watched a recent video another YouTuber and I was looking at Bob Benny and if you don't know who that is if you just kind of Google or YouTube Bob Benny commercial

beekeeper in Georgia So every hive they opened had like three different kinds of feed on they had AP 23 patties on there They had some pollen patties on they had hive alive fondin They had at least three different resources for those bees in that particular B yard that they were inspecting and this is within the past couple of days And so that represents when I was looking at that that represents a big investment and so I was A little bit wondering about why do you want such a big population or bees? But of course, commercial beekeeping. They're about to make nucleus hives.

And they were rearranging frames and things like that in a 50-degree day. But that's not something you have to do as a backyard beekeeper. We're not depending on our ability to produce nucleus hives so that we can sell them to people and make splits or expand an apiary operation in spring. So we're actually in a sweeter spot. when it comes through just wanting to care for our bees, getting them through alive and in the spring, letting them follow hopefully the environmental rhythms. Now, it can look hypocritical when I go out and put

fondant packs on my hives and this year I have fondant on almost all of my hives. And the fondant that I'm using is hive alive fondant. You're probably sick of hearing about that. Everyone seems to use it. I was kind of surprised to see Bob doing that because when you get to an operation, scale it would almost be worth hiring like you know a like a nutritionist just for your bees that would have a little corner office in your operation and they would do nothing but come up with the best formula to feed your bees to get the results out of them you want but for the rest of us we buy what's available or we go the minimalist minimalist route which is just to provide them with carbohydrates to keep them going and so that at the most basic would be

sugar, dry sugar, you hear the mountain camp methods. So if you're watching this right now and you're out of loss, you don't know what to feed your bees and you just realized they're starving out and you need to give them something. Well remember that emergency feed doesn't restore them 100%. It kind of just holds the fort. It's kind of like putting them in the ICU. So you know, put them on an IV and give them the minimum of what they need to stay hydrated in some minimal nutrition so that later when they do have the opportunity, to build up they will so emergency feed is just that it's a ditch effort to keep your bees from dying so these larger colonies can surprise us because I've seen it

myself you get all excited and the bees have opportunities to fly and they you know trigger reproduction for spring and they can do this out of sync because we're way here in the state of Pennsylvania we're way back from real spring build up here because we're going to get plenty of cold days. We've had snow in April here. So we're not ready yet. So if your bees are already at the top of your hive and if it's a large colony of bees and all they're eating now is the emergency resource, that may not sustain the colony because I've seen them lay up an entire frame of with eggs and open larvae only three, four days later in observation hives to see that completely empty again, which means they consumed all

the resources they had. They couldn't provision those nurse bees that then had to care for those open brood, and they ate them. So they ate the eggs, they ate the larvae and got rid of them. So you go from this bustling, apparently strong and vibrant colony down to something that's dying off in large numbers because they have the ability with large numbers to consume. their resources in a very short amount of time. So that's why, and let's go back to the beginning of why I brought up the Italian thing. If you live in the South, you can have Italian bees. They've got forage down there right now.

There are bees in the South that are getting pollen and everything else, right from the environment. So then those become supplements that people have on their hives. Where here in Pennsylvania, if your bees have consumed everything and they're already up under that insulated inner cover and I hope that's exactly what you have they're on life support so for the beekeeper that doesn't want them to die and we all don't want our bees to die I hope you need to keep some kind of sucrose available to them all the time once you start feeding you have to stay feeding so this large population

they can die out all of a sudden because they consume all the resources And if someone has been feeding them pollen patties or some kind of supplemental protein that allows them to continue brooding up, once you start that, you have to continue doing that. If you go light on the proteins after you've started them off with something like AP 23, I was impressed that Bob Benny was using that because it is the top performing pollen substitute and the bees can brood up on it. So, but once you start that, if you go lean and go to nothing but sugar, syrup after that then again they start to starve and what are the bees do they also remain clustered over their brood and this is the most frustrating thing

when it comes to feeding and getting your bees to do what you want them to do is that they starve out a frame away from a fully cap frame of honey and so that's one of the things that we just hear year after year after year so what are the solutions for that you would think what can we do to fix that well improve insulation well then you might say well Fred you're kind of a hypocrite because I look at your hives and you've got uninsulated hives and that's true I have uninsulated hives and I have insulated hives I have three quarter inch pine I have three quarter inch cedar I have hoop pine which comes from Australia so I have all these different varieties and I have insulated with lambs wool insulated with polystyrene insulated with polystyrene that's clad between plastic like the apamate hives. So now I should probably tell you, if I were forced to go with one style of beehive,

would it be insulated or would it not? If I had completely finished all my comparisons and I don't need to see anymore if they can survive in a thinner hive and just be stronger, healthier, and well fed, what would I go with? I would definitely pick an insulated hive or a hive with very thick hide walls.

So for example, the long Langstroth hive that I have out there that is made of dimensional stock, full two-by stock, that does really well. So could it do better if it were sandwiched with some other insulation and then clad on the outside? Well, I think it would. So we're going to test that again next year. And so this testing is ongoing here. That's why they see when people come here, all these differences really thin, are really heavy, fortified, not vertical, or horizontal barrel shaped it's because we're looking year after year season after season to see what makes it what does not and what would have helped those bees make it in that style of beehive including the small nucleus hives which are the most vulnerable out there small colonies thin sidewalls three quarter inch pine well fit that's very important because remember what I said about windshield you don't want gaps and airflow going through the side walls of your high you want them to have a single entry and ventilation source which is the main entrance of the hive

so that's why I'm doing that and some people are just going to be frustrated and it's going to seem like potluck because you're going to have bee gatherings and bee meetings and you're going to get the people that are brand new to beekeeping 100% success I figured it out I know exactly what to do all my bees are great your bees are dying mine are better genetics place locally adapted bee stock. Very important. If you don't have access to that and you're starting with bees, then get your bees from someone else who has bees that have good winter instincts. That is going to be very important. And the other thing is when some people put on pollen patties, it seems like the right thing to do. And I plan to put

some on, not now. When would I put those things on, by the way, pollen patties? If I were going to because I said I would because there are some colonies that I'm still trying to save. But I can't put a bunch of pollen patties on them right now because that puts brood demand on there assuming they accept that as a means for building up their brood. So I'm going to be putting that on end of March. So think the last week of March for your long-term planning. So up until then we're just trying to keep the bees that we have alive and the kind of skeleton crew in there.

Keep them going. and 1st of April so last of March 1st of April and that's it once you start feeding keep feeding question number two comes from Loria northeast Indiana I have hive alive fondant on now and I understand the sugar syrup goes on when it gets in the 60s when does the pollen go on okay and it says I plan to check my hive next week we have a 54 degree day originally put to 2.4 pound fondant packs on added a third in November I've cleaned out dead bees but have not checked on food again I have frames from last summer with comb and so on okay so when do we put on the pollen this is something that a lot of people

want to know and let me just explain as a back-haired beekeeper you may never have to put pollen on if you don't have to meet any commitments and you can just let them bring in their own pollen because what's going to happen is on these warm days you're going to see them accessing pollen at the end of the month kind of at the latest around here you'll start to see some tree pollen coming into your hives so then we naturally because we're taking care of our bees we want to add to that and so i don't ever put now i will be putting pollen patties on a few hives but i don't put you know pollen substitute or anything like that directly on the hives if you want to put it out and make the investment

you have three choices so you could do that and when i say we have three choices that's just based on science uh and the studies that they've done and which ones actually cause your colonies to brood up well ap 23 was at the top mega b was number two from better b and of course um ultra b which comes from man lake so in that order so ab 23 and so on so what i do is is put them out in dry egg cartons, you know, an empty paper machet style egg carton. I dump it on there. I put it out there when I see bees foraging and once the bees go into it. But here's what happens. Once the bees find actual pollen, because remember that's a substitute, it's not real pollen. Once they find actual pollen, then your substitute's kind of wasted.

So do you need it? You may not. Now, if I wanted to put patties or if I was really adamant, and I just have to put pollen on my hives because it just makes me sleep better. Then I would put hive alive pollen patties on, the 15% ones. On colonies that you're hoping to build from, maybe you're trying to get into the sideline gigs. You want to build up nucleus hives and sell them. Maybe you want to make a bunch of splits and start to turn your backyard beekeeping operation into a sideliner operation.

Then those are examples of when I would definitely boost them with pollen. Once you see them bring in pollen on their own, and once you know that they're brooding up on their own, you can actually boost that and compound that, why would you do it? Since they're already bringing in pollen through the entrance, you see it, you know that they're brooding up, you know that they're doing well, well look at the forecast. It's going to be rainy and cold for the next six days, let's say, hypothetically.

Put pollen patties on, you don't interrupt or disrupt their production inside the hive. Those nursebeats can continue to get those proteins into those brood that are still in growth and development. So that's when you do it. But if you didn't do it, then you can have what I just described earlier on. You'll have bees that have laid up, the queen has laid up a bunch of cells, and then when there's extended rain and the food and resources drop off, you'll see them clean out an entire frame of pollen in a matter of days. Then they're in survival mode, which means they go after their brood first. That's how it works. and you could have supported that and kept them going artificially with adding that extra feed.

So when do you put on, when does the syrup go? Serp in the 60s, right? Because your bees need to be able to fly and they also need to be able to dehydrate it down. And the pollen will go on only if you need to build a colony like that. Or if you've got a colony that you just want to nurse along. And then there's a bunch of people that will argue about that saying, if they weren't making it on their own, where are you going to artificially sustain them?

Because this is your backyard apiary and they're your friends. You want to keep them alive. And you have the means to do it. Very inexpensively. You can put fondet on for an emergency carbohydrate resource along with the vitamins and nutrients

to come with it. And you can also put approved and verified protein patties that will help them keep going and keep the brood from being cannibalized by their own

nurse bees. Question number three, moving on. This comes from 21st B, which is the company that makes this really cool frames with holes in them. Anyway, hey Fred, I have a hive IQ. If you guys don't know what that is, it comes from Australia. And hive IQ is an insulated hive very well made as far as the insulated hives go. And it says, in my apiary of hive mixtures, I have an issue with my large grasshopper population. This is the best. It says they like to chew off everything resembling a 90 degree corner on it. I have a coat of primer plus two more coats of quality paint on top of that and they chew the sharp corners off through the paint. Have you ever heard of this happening to polyhive owners? And this is pretty funny because grasshoppers, by the way, they're not smart. I also want to know do you have grasshoppers right now? That's weird. We clearly have nothing up here. I got the grand kids to get inside real quick, tell them there's no spiders out there. Anyway, so grasshoppers chewing polystyrene.

Now polystyrene, for example, I use BMax and lysine covers because they're insulated for the tops of my hives. And if you make a mistake and take one of those off and leave it leaning on a building or a shed or a fence or something like that while you look around at things, or heaven forbid you're cleaning out of dead outs you're no rush to put everything back together you come back and the things half eaten you know it did that here free-range chickens because they're smart to you chickens see one chicken packet something and they start eating it too now it doesn't result in insulated eggs or anything cool like that they just eat polystyrene because it's soft and it seems feels good

when they're eating it but it's a testament to the fact that chickens are not geniuses So the grasshoppers, why are the chewing? Keep in mind, just the corner, just a 90 degree corner. So what happens there? It's thinner. And I would be interested in, and I didn't get this information, what time of day are the grasshoppers chewing on these 90 degree transitions? And the reason I ask that is if it's early in the morning, because there's moisture on it, and grasshoppers being not terribly bright and stimulus reactant to whatever they happen to be next to, they chew things just for good measure. They test things out.

Just like chickens. They see something funny. They pick on it a little bit, and if it is fun to keep pecking out, they keep doing it. Grasshoppers sometimes find moisture even in corners of polystyrene and materials like that, and they will chew it. But then they stop at the corner. So you could say let them chew your corners and let that be the end of it, but I know it's frustrating. So let's say you want to stop them. HVAC tape, this is my answer for everything. days because there was a gap in one of my hives when I did my bees doing

cleansing flights video recently we find little gaps and holes this stuff you just tear a piece by hand and tape it right on then that becomes your temporary fix you know what these temporary fixes become permanent after a while because I see them on a lot of my hives and it's not coming off so you can do repairs so if you don't care about the cosmetics how great it's going to look you can even by copper foil tape by the way and so you can tape those corners and then i would just because it's me and i want to see if you have these grasshoppers predictively chewing on corners like you can find them doing it i would cover half the corner with copper and leave the other half just as it is

and see what the grasshoppers chew see what happens i guarantee you they're not going to want to chew that aluminum they're also not going to want to chew copper so i think that's funny I also don't think they would chew the whole hive up. It's just unsightly because you went to all this trouble. The hive IQ polystyrene hives all require paint. You can't just put them out there. You could, but they won't last. But grasshopper is very interesting, and that's a first, by the way.

And I already responded, of course, to 20 first be about my ideas on using copper tape. And then I was going to order a roll of copper tape for kicks. and I found out I already had one. You ever order something because you need it, then when you get it in the mail and you go to put it away, when you go to put it away, there you find what you thought you didn't have,

which is the exact same thing that you just ordered. Could just be happening to old people. I don't know what's going on. Question number four comes from Michelle Pruill. And it says, is it not the case that if I leave them an entire medium, honey-filled soup,

that it should be enough to get them through winter how much do you leave them and still give them sugar this is a great question and it's logical okay so through the years I've reduced the amount of honey that I leave on for the bees and I've also stopped doing something I used to do which is we start up with a deep brood box whether you have a Langstroth 8 or a langstroth 10 frame so 8 or 10 makes no difference that becomes your brood box let's say this spring you're setting up a hive for the first time you start to populate that first box so here's an example of what I used to do let them fill up that box get it well populated they're storing a combination of resources so they've got their proteins in there which is the pollen they've got their carbohydrates in there which of course is going to be the honey and they've got honey that's not yet finished that has open cells and so on so that fills up that whole thing then I would put on a medium super directly over that box. Now I did that for a lot of reasons. One, of course, is to make sure early on that they are already prepared for a dearth, let's say.

So let's say mid-July, there's a dearth. Well, I let them build up in spring that fall resource are ready ahead of time. So that's what I used to do. Made sense. And then they would fill that up and then anything above and beyond that. Once that was full would be my search. or harvesting boxes. Now that's after I started insulating the inner cover. That's after I started closing off top venting. What did I do before that? So before that I had double deep boxes.

So I had the brood box, eight or ten made no difference. And I let them fill that up 80 or 90 percent. Put the second box on and let them fill that up all the way. Now I had 70 pounds of honey on there. On top of that was an inner cover with a little vent notch in it. On top of that was an outer cover and it was not an insulated hive. And then I would be all excited in spring. They would go through. There would be a couple of frames of honey left over.

And you start the cycle again. And that's where rotating boxes is what a lot of people do because the broods up in the top. Put them in the bottom, take the bottom box, put it on the top and so on. But I shaved that back when I started putting my own feeder shims on, which also provided insulation. They had a built-in intercover and they had food and resources. Then I had that directly on the medium super. So now they could get through winter with 40 pounds of honey and be just at the point of not making it when spring arrived. So it was kind of a game to see if we left on.

just the right amount for them to sustain themselves until meaningful nectar flows started coming in in spring and then so you started to find a balance and you find that balance through the configurations that you use the amount of honey and resources that you leave on the genetics that you're working with when it comes to the bees themselves these are all the things that you know become kind of the core of what your rhythm is year after year so it is in fact the case that if you leave a medium honey super on and that's why this year i did some test because i'm trying to play around with a friend of mine who is a commercial vkeeper who does only single brood box management puts emergency feed on and gets them through winter then they save a lot of

time because they know the queen is in that first bottom box and everything above that is uh surplus and they remove the surplus they provide emergency feeding all the way through winter commercial people commercial demands pollination and stuff like that so for the backyard beekeeper couldn't we just do that yes we can and it does work now the one or two colonies that you get that are dead in spring clustered at the top consume most of the resources the tell-tail number one and number two frame number seven number eight frames still full of cap-tunny out of range of the cluster that's now in the middle or they've moved into the northeast corner for some reason they like that corner and they consume the resources immediately around that but they don't spread

out and consume the other resources are still available and yet they die at starvation because what did they do they started brooding up and they anchored themselves over the brood if i had had emergency resources on top of that hive and given them a fondant now which i used to just put sugar on that's what i did just put on sugar and And you have to have, in my opinion, something to save you from the disgrace of going to a beekeeper meeting and having people ask, how is your survival? What happened to your bees? Oh, they starved. And so now I say to people that tell me that their bees starved to death, I always tell them the good news is that that failure was completely under your control.

You decided not to put supplemental feeding on there for whatever reason, whatever the conviction is. You want to be completely holistic or natural or whatever, and you want your bees to have what they have and let that be it. And there are people that harvests or collect nothing from their bees. They just want bees, and they leave them on with their honey, and they never take the honey off. And you can do that.

I call those observation hives. They build up, they swarm out. They build up, they swarm out. I never remove. the honey from my observation hives so those are natural cycles those are natural colonies they also have no feed on if you went out there right now uh two observation hives that are live right now do not have any supplemental feeding period everything there is what they've collected through the year and i let them just be bees and they have cycled out and swarmed throughout the year and one of them was such a

late season swarm I just thought they were dead in fact I was already planning for my new hive that's how much you care about them I miss them so bad I was just about to unbolt it from the wall and in my sadness in my darkest moment I checked it out and of course they're alive again of course they took it over their glasses all grunged up with bee bits and dirty footprints and brace comb and propolis and all the other stuff bees seem to need to have inside their hive. But that's an example of leaving them to themselves and not taking any honey off.

And these are very small. They're groups of three, so at three levels. In one case, four levels high, deep frames. So that's 12 frames. And they just do that on their own. So that's kind of a natural cavity for bees, and that's a natural cycle of what they would be doing. So yeah, you can leave it on and you can do that.

but I put emergency feed on so I don't have to face a bunch of dead bees that are under my control and care. That's all. Yep. I probably took the long way around the barn on that one, but it's important to explain that these are all methods and convictions that people have about how they want to care for their bees and letting things go. I could be feeding a colony right now that I'm not. I could be insulating a colony right now that I'm not. that may or may not make it. They're teetering right now, and that's my top bar hive. This is my first year with them. And guess what I did? I bought another one, and it's here. So I'm going to expand my

top bar hive collection. So, because I like it. I have a feeling about them. They're fun. And they're scrappy. They're kind of hanging on. They're working. You know what an advantage that colony would have had if they had started back in June of last year instead of, you know, midway through the year near the end of summer. The fact that they're alive at all is a tiny miracle and something that's really fun to look at. So you have a lot of management options at your fingertips. That's all I'm saying. Question number five.

Michelle got away with two questions on me today. All right. Well, scraping up the inside of a hive help encourage them to apply more propolis. If so, you recommend any style of scraping or any specific tools, or is there something natural I can add to the inside instead of scraping? That would also encourage them. This is a good question. And kind of like the leading entomological lab is University of Minnesota,

what we call the, you know, the B lab that started all the propolis. So that's Marla Spivak's lab. She doesn't like it when we call it Spivak lab because there are other entomologists. that work with her there. But so they did all this fantastic propolis research. And that's where the propola hive came from. Propolis is the propa part. And then la was the marla, this BVAC thing, in partnership with Premier. So they have, I'm just saying this, I'm not saying you have to get one, but they're the ones that kind of came up with a patented interior surface that stimulates your bees to put propolis on the interior surface and you may be

listening to this wondering what is propolis what does it matter where do they get how do they make it the cool thing about propolis is something that your bees collect from the environment its plants protecting themselves usually in spring there's a lot of it whenever there's budding going on and the propolis that gets collected by the bees the bees can't even work it on their own when they get back to the hive with that stuff it looks like little shiny amber beads on their corbicular, their hind legs, where the pollen would normally be carried. When bees fly in with pollen on their hind legs, they can scratch it off themselves and get it into the cells,

and that's for the consumption of the bees. Propolis is a different thing. When they get into that gooey substance, they get it onto their hind legs, and they come back to the hive, they need help getting it off. And the other thing is, it needs to be warm enough, too, so they can work it, and they smidge it around. and you'll even find in some cases what look like very viscous little puddles of it on the bottom of your hive just super stiff and kind of gooey think tar consistency so the other thing is how much of they even modify it or alter the propolis right apparently not very much it's not like bees wax that your bees are making right propolis is a found material that they bring in that they instinctively not know it's going to benefit their hive and it is like the chinking that you would have where they seal up all the little crevices and cracks and joints and corners and of

course they glue down even bee frames and things like that so the reason I bring this up is you can also scuff things yourself because when the bees think that something is too porous or damaged or in some way it's going to hold moisture let's say that is not a good healthy environment for your bees so they propylized it they seal it up with this gooey substance that they get from trees and other plants sometimes primarily trees so anyway uh so if you scuff up the interior surface i like to just use rough cut lumber so you can buy lumber if you have access to amish people for example you can get what's called s3 s and that stands for

surface three sides. So it's milled, top, bottom, and the exterior, but the interior is left rough cut. And when you do that, and I had a bunch of rough cut lumber for my, my hive top feeder shims that I was making, the videos are still on my channel, of course, to show you how to make your own. And that was before companies started actually making insulated intercovers, which made my innovation obsolete. So, but they were rough cut lumber. And, uh, the bees propolize that now the bees it's been my experience will propolize even smooth surfaces especially where joints are any place where it's overlapping where corners are and things like that they like to propolize it so you can take 40 to 60 grit I think it's called garnet paper it may be sandpaper

but 40 to 60 grit and they sell that stuff a lot of different companies make it and you can go to any home store and some of it already has adhesive package I recommend you get that. And you stick it on to a short piece of two by four, some piece of lumber that's nice and flat, and then you just scar the interior surface of your hive. Now you're way ahead if you have purchased an unassembled pine hive box. Because then while it's still in pieces,

you can go ahead and kind of scour it, scar it, rough it up before you put it together. And of course, don't do the box. box joints out at the end you want those to come together and glue up really nice but the interior surfaces and if you did two sides by scouring it up that way or scuffing or scarring it and then left the other two sides empty you'd have an experiment on your hands so then you can see that two walls on the interior of your hive get propolized right away and the other smoother more sound material does not get the attention of the bees

and they do not propolize it up the same. So yes, you can do your own, and I just wanted to give a complete description of that. If you want to get the best material that's ready to go right now, you get the propola boxes. And I would recommend if you're looking at equipment that you don't ever have to paint, I'm told, see, I don't know.

I haven't lived forever. So I don't know if the forever hive claim works. But it's called an endura hive, and it comes from nature's image farm and you can order those and those are already finished already scuffed and so what's the advantage why would anyone want to encourage propolis when actually believe it or not historically commercial beekeepers have avoided bee genetics that overly propelized spaces because when you get into a colony that is propolizing everything it is like glued up

especially on a cold day you get in there on a nice hot day everything's gooey propolis goes on and sticks to everything your hive tools everything your smoker the bellows on your smoker your be suit everything so they didn't want it so they started to avoid

bees that had a habit of propolizing everything But now we know better. Now we understand that it has a lot of healthy benefits and creates a healthier hive environment that helps your bees deal with many other challenges. And I was talking to the people at Premier at the Honeybee Expo and he kind of hinted that there was a study

in the offing that might be published soon that had some descriptions about impeding varroa destructor mite reproduction in high propolis environments. Didn't get any details. I don't know. You could go to Google Scholar and look up. Propolis and varroa destructor might impact or mitigation or however they want to say it. But that was interesting too, but at the very least, it is, in fact, and proven by science to be a healthier hive. So, it's enough from Michelle's question.

Question number six comes from Lamb. Number six comes from Lambbrook Farm. Morning Fred, 12 degrees Fahrenheit and dark here in central New Hampshire. At 608 a.m. snow is falling with three inches called for today. That is on top of the 24 inch snow packed already on the ground. Okay. By the way, I'm not in competition to have the coldest temperatures or the deepest snow. but we beat you. So anyway, moving on. Says on anise oil, I think it's used because it's the unique scent. Okay, so anise oil, here's what we're talking about.

Last week, it was in the thumbnail, the bee lining, the bee lining box. And so in the kit that was being sold by Better Bee, they had anise oil. That's what this is, as part of the kit. So you would mix it in with your sugar syrup, and I kind of suggested that maybe that wasn't necessary because you're finding your bees on the plants and then you're setting up your kit right there and

you're feeding the bee and you're watching it go and you're getting other bees to come back from its nest, of course, from its hive, wherever it happens to be, and getting into your box and then you're closing that up and moving that direction and shortening the distance. So you finally get them. But here's the thing. So if you were setting out, remember that bees, when they go back to the hive to share and tell the others that they found a resource that's valuable to the hive, and in this case it would be nectar, how do they tell the other bees about it? Well, they dance.

They do a waggle dance. And the waggle dance is famous. Von Frisch is the one who decoded the waggle dance and interpreted it. And so anyway, when they go back in their waggle dancing, the bees are on that specific area. Because, by the way, the waggle dancing inside your beehive occurs over and over on the same frames in the same area it's almost like a designated dance floor and so once they have that set up and it's fun to watch everything is relevant to the position of the sun at the time the waggle dance is

occurring and so other bees are let me get this right antenating antenating their antenna are forward and they are touching and sensing the things that the bee is doing guess what else the antenna keep in mind that comes straight out of your face right where your nose would be. So that is a sensory organ that they can smell with too. So what they're doing is they're not just interpreting this waggle dance to find out where all this came from, but what came with the bee?

Sometimes they extend their proboscis and they get a taste test of the nectar that was out there. And they're also smelling it. So if you had put anise oil in your sugar syrup, for example, and we're going to get down to the sugar syrup too because this is also a great observation and a great point. Then when they go out to find that source again, they're following, of course, the waggle dance instructions, but then when they get in close proximity, they've never been there before. So now they're using their sense of smell to verify that they're in the right spot.

So that's where that would come in. So that actually makes really good sense. Now the other part of this too, it says, is to mix it with a light sugar syrup so that you don't get bees from really far off. Your goal when bee lining is to find a feral colony of bees in an abandoned building or in a tree or something like that. You don't want to go two miles. I don't want to go two miles. I want to go a thousand yards. so by thinning down the syrup and making it one-to-one or less then you won't get returning foragers from far away

you'll only get the foragers that come from nearby to make that reward level of sucrose worth the trip so then when they go out and you're using this light sugar syrup mix in there the are coming back are closer plus your kind of timing the amount of time it takes them to come back and you're moving in that direction too so i like that idea too so that explains anus oil and so lambbrook farm 4528 great thank you for recapping that instruction because i think that's really interesting stuff and so now okay yes use anus oil get the good stuff whatever this is that's from laran oils.com L-O-R-A-N-N-O-I-L-S dot com. This is the top-rated, suitable for human consumption. So you know, it's perfect.

You know, it has to be really good stuff. And we're in the fluff section already today. So I want to reiterate. I'm headed out for Central Wisconsin for the end of the week next week. And I will see a lot of you there. That's going to be fun. And so I guess the number. number one order just based on the comments and questions that I'm getting daily now are all related to why do my bees die

how do I keep them going how do I tell if they need food what is the deal now here's the thing a lot of people from all over the country if you've got local beekeepers where you live they're actually your best source of information if you're in the northeast you're here in in my area and things like that then the standard checks are pretty well established. We check to make sure that the entrances are clear. We check to see where the bees are in the hive. When you pull the cover off to check your fondent pack, and I'm going to reiterate the hive alive fondent packs, you can get a discount if you use Fred 10. So there you go. Wherever you shop, whatever you're buying, always ask for the Frederick Dunn discount. And you'll pay the same as everyone else, but it'll feel good to ask.

in the off chance that they give you free shipping or something just out of the blue just because you happen to catch them in a moment you know build a sandwich compliment them about something ask for a discount compliment them again and then there you go you never know but um so we want to keep our feet on so if they're all up in the top when you open the lid they're depending on you now what you've got now is a colony of bees that have positioned themselves to where if they don't get a fresh fondant pack or sugar or whatever you've been giving them. The other thing is if you last minute shift food resources on them, they can be very slow to take it up. That's something that's odd too. They will ultimately do it.

But it's like once they've started using and metabolizing a specific resource, they continue to seek that out until it's exhausted. And if you've been feeding them, hopefully it's not exhausted. So do not run out. the stuff has a two-year shelf life. If you're mixing your own, you're good to go. You're okay. And several people have asked me for fondant recipes,

cold fondant recipes, I don't have any. But I'm sure you can find them. I'm sure somebody out there, you know who did a fondant recipe? I just thought of this. Who made fondant, but I think he cooked it. Jim at Vino Farm. So Vino Farm has video.

on that or a video he's got a culinary background I would trust him to do the right thing with his fondant so but for me personally I just don't and hold off on the sugar syrup which can resuscitate a colony like that when the weather's really warm and you see bees that are they can appear to be sick or poisoned they're coming out they're trying to fly off the landing board and they're zipping off but crash landing to the ground and here it is 55 degrees and sunny what would I do with that colony I would put they're dying by the way they're starving to death I would put sugar syrup on that colony in heartbeat because the sugar syrup and not a lot will go B to B and you'll see a big shift in that colony in the space of an hour

and the reason I know this is because in an observation hive one spring they were doing just that falling off the landing board like they were sick like something was wrong with them and then i thought huh what if i just put a jar of sugar syrup on this hive would i revive them and it did immediately they were scooting around inside that hive passing on sugar syrup bee to be through trophlaxes to those bees that appear like they couldn't move anymore like like they're on their last leg. And it went through the whole hive and they all started picking up and moving around.

And it was such an easy and inexpensive thing to do. That gets criticized by some people. Well, I'm just suggesting that if you don't want them to die, that a little mix of a quart of sugar syrup, half water, half sugar, would light a fire and allow them to kick in their metabolism and come out of their death, then I think it's worth it. All right.

Tilt your hives, by the way, because winter can shift things around. You can get frost heav and stuff like that. So try to make sure that your hives are tilted toward the landing board. I try to illustrate that very well in my last inspection when we were cleaning out the hive entrances with snow and things like that melting on the landing board. if your hive was tilted back all that moisture is going in it was tilted forward it's staying at the entrance or going out it's uh it doesn't have to be much of a tilt but your beehives could have shifted so check that out clear your entrances and once you started feeding keep feeding and let me check what else

just wanted to make sure that's it that's all i have for you today so what's the best weather day coming up starting Sunday here in the northeastern in the United States and going through all next week we're going to be above freezing so it's going to be a big snow melt-off and you're going to get a chance to meaningfully assess and evaluate if you get a sunny day and it's 50 degrees definitely look in on those heights just at the top just get the information that you need

but when you pull the top and they're all up there you better have some feed with you that's all I have to say I hope you have fantastic weekend had I want to thank Thank you for listening and I'm Frederick Dunn and this has been The Way to Be.