The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers #354 with Frederick Dunn May 8th 2026

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

This is the audio track from today's YouTube Video:  https://youtu.be/aGPkkN3WYPo

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, May the 8th of 2026. This is back here, Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 354. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here with me today. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down in the video description below and you'll see all the topics listed in order, as well as extra links for extra information. If you've got a question or something, subject on your mind and you like me to consider that for a future episode please go to my website which is the way to be.org click on the page marked contact fill out the information and there you go doesn't mean it'll make it but that's the way to do it

so if you've got a question right now you want to know what's going on and you've got a condition or something you've seen you want to share a picture or video people ask me that all the time please go to the fellowship which fellowship the way to be fellowship on Facebook. It's pretty easy to join as long as you don't act up. If you act up, you're gone. That's just the way it works. But all friendly people 24-7 find out make friends,

make connections, and all the good stuff. And I know what else you want to know. Because I know things, because I can read your mind a little bit. You want to know what the weather's like outside? Well, it's not good. I can tell you that right now. It's 52 degrees Fahrenheit outside, which is 11 Celsius. Basically no wind, that's a good news.

We've had rain lots of it, including last night. The ground can't even absorb any more rain where I am. Speaking of which, I'm in the northeastern part of the United States, the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. 65% relative humidity right now, so that's good. The bees are drying out to the best that they can. And here's the other thing coming up. What is going to be the best day?

for a swarm here in my neck of the woods. Might be different where you are, of course. Saturday tomorrow, 63 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 17 Celsius. And then next Friday, a week from today, here in the Northeastern US, 60 degrees Fahrenheit, 16 Celsius. There's gonna be some swarm potential days.

Risk of swarming today, 70% because it's sunny, but it's only in the 50s, as I just mentioned. And, but when that's, they when they're ready to go they're ready to go so what else can we talk about i think that's it we'll jump right in with the very first question which comes from chris from spencer port new york which is also slant rochester here's an observation from the other day that i thought was interesting i have two hives hive one has been producing lots of drones for a few weeks hive two has had a few

if any drone's flying. So the thing is, this whole paragraph talks about why would drones come and go and does it indicate really whether or not your colony has just swarmed? And it doesn't necessarily mean that, but I'll give you the breakdown. First of all, when you see drones, which are male honeybees, and the general population doesn't see them because you don't see them foraging. They don't do anything except hang around from beehive to beehive because they hop, skip, and jump, skip, and and fly from one colony to another where they get fed. Drones can feed themselves, but they can't survive on that. They just can't.

They're a high-performance motor. They need to get resources from NIRSBs. So here's the thing. This time of year you might look at a colony and see a whole bunch of drones on the landing board, and it seems like it happened all of a sudden. But what I want you to do is look at them and see what their behavior is. Because if these drones are hovering around,

the entrance and there's a whole bunch of them all at once and they seem to be zinging around back and forth they do this less than workers but they might be doing an orientation flight they might not be taken off for good so what's happened is particularly early in the morning on a warm day they're just flying out and testing their wings they're giving themselves a shakedown cruise so then the other thing is and keep in mind it takes a lot longer to produce a drone that it does to produce a worker. It takes 21 days from egg to adult to produce a worker honeybee. Takes 24 days to produce a drone. So they're expensive to produce and this is why if you see them

coming out of a hive, the hive I can support the extra demand for food and resources to produce drones. So it means you got a healthy colony. The extreme other end of that would be little runty drones, barely making it lots of dead ones on the landing board early in the morning and that's a colony that has no queen and likely and the workers have just started laying eggs and of course they're producing drones by the time you see that of course remember look at the time it takes to make one the colony's been in trouble for a long time this is why i want you to look into your hives or at least assess the status of your queen within 21 days So every three weeks have a cycle where you're going to check in on your bees.

Now the last and it's my favorite because this is happening right now We have colonies that are splitting and what I mean by that is they're swarming and Some of you have already seen recent swarm videos for me and so the ones that have key activities or interesting activities I'm posting this year and on the thumbnail that I post I'm putting the date the time the temperature all the stuff that's related and to log entries if you're tracking drones and splits and queens and everything else that goes with it so what happens is after your colony swarms remember we have virgin queens coming out sometimes the same day or within a day or two part of this question is does that mean if you get a bunch of drones flying to a hive that they have new queens there generally does mean that but it doesn't mean

the drones can smell that there's a new queen, and they're coming kind of hanging out at the front door, hoping that they hit dating age. Because what really happens is your virgin queen, the one that makes it, and sometimes this is where it gets complicated because there isn't always just one virgin queen coming out. And you've probably been told the story

that the first queen to come out scoots around and chews a hole in the side of the other queen cells that are in the hive and kills them by stinging them through the side of their queen cells. It doesn't always work. Sometimes you get multiple virgin queens scooting around inside a hive at once. But let's say one of them finally gets to that age and that age is up for grabs. But once the queen emerges from herself, she has to finish maturing sexually. So the average is seven to nine days. So let's say you knew you had a swarm. That's your benchmark.

And you knew the colony that they came out of. So mark your calendar. seven to nine days after that you happen to walk out in your B yard and you see a drone rush on your landing board. Lots of drones. There's so much noise that sounds like a swarm. But then when you get close, you realize it's not worker bees. They're not leaving. They're arriving. And then they're going to leave a couple of hours later. They kind of trickle out. So what they're doing is your queen has flown to a drone congregation area. She's been mated. And when she came back, the comet of drones followed her. Now, do you think the drones that followed her were mated that they successfully mated with her? No, because the minute they mate with the queen, they lose a big part of their anatomy.

They also pass out and they fall to the ground and they die soon. So if they're still chasing her, they're still capable of mating. But once she hits a landing board and gets in, that's it. No more chance for mating. So you know what they do? They all do a rush on that colony and they demand. resources and they get fed and then they eventually leave. Those drones could be from all over the place. We don't even know. But that's what the classic drone rush is. And then so let's say you saw that.

Make another note in your, you know, I know you're going to keep really good books. So you're going to have a diary about what happens with your beehives. And so look those over and a week from that date when you see the drone rush. Check on the hive. All about you see eggs and larvae. in that hive. Check it out. And then write down the comment section and just let me know that I was right and then I helped you out. And then now you know things you didn't know before. But those are the real reasons. The drone rush. And that's pretty much it. Question number two. This comes from Julie from Dallas, Texas. Julie M. By the way, I picked up my nuke and a swarm. Newk is short for nucleus, which means it's a complete colony. Queen. All the brewed.

everything is in it it's established you're not trying to set it up but it's usually five frames picked up my nuke and a swarm of bees on May the 2nd so cut a swarm that's a colony out in the wild there and then I hurried I hurried and installed them in their new permanent homes in the AM on May the 3rd because a cold front of stormy weather was coming in anyway I quickly scanned for the Queens but did did note capped brood larvae in various stages of growth. Each hive has five frames which include brood, nectar, and some honey, along with five brand new wax-dipped frames. I watch from afar and I'm noticing foragers bringing back pollen.

So with this observation, I'm assuming everything is fine. I'm trying to patiently wait until May 16th to open both hives to monitor the goings on in each hive and hopefully spot McQueen's. am I doing and proceeding the right way? So when you've established, now this was a little vague for me because the mention is caught a swarm and a nucleus hive but then described, you know, brood in all stages of development. If you have a swarm, they have nothing. So the swarm has nurse bees with it.

They have bees of all ages that were flight capable. And then, of course, they have a queen with them, and they're easy to set up a new colony. But now we're talking about foundationless frames and things like that. So, but the nucleus hive has a good start and dropping them into 10 frame boxes right off the start is fine. That's what I've done for years and years. I only started using 5-frame nucleus resource hives within the past few years.

So putting them right in the final hive configuration, centering them up and keeping all of those brood frames in the same order that they are in the boxes that you receive them in. Because I think what we're talking about here with Julie is two, actual nucleus hives based on the description. So and we're going to talk about this a little bit more, but you just want to keep feeding them. But you're right to check in on them after a week. But when you see pollen coming in, uh, in line with what other beekeepers are seeing with their hives, then I think everything is probably okay. But we don't want to stress them out right off the bat. And when you do look in there, do we have to look for the queen? Do we have to find the queen?

No, you can just look and see that there are eggs and larvae that production. is still good and there's no reason that it wouldn't be with a nucleus colony. So expanding them out to the 10 frame, centering your current frames is just fine. Question number three comes from John from Annapolis, Maryland. Says, I use the B-smart insulated telescoping cover and the insulated inner cover. Is this overkill? Mid-aglanded region, Annapolis, Maryland. No, it's not overkill.

So here's the thing when you have insulation on top of your hive and I just want to get this across to a lot of back hair beekeepers I hear a lot of people saying that as soon as you know the warm weather gets here they're going to swap out their hive covers and things like that they're going to start venting and doing all these different things and what I would like to get across to you is that keeping insulation on top of your hive there's no such thing as overkill if you haven't already purchased that and of course you're considering alternatives maybe but since you're already have it be smart designs insulated intercover very good I do use foil tape to close up the upper vent entrance and things like that it's a great feeder shim it's a feeder sham because now we have to put a medium super around it or a shallow because we have to make space for that to be utilized for dry or liquid feed whatever might be necessary to save a colony someday you don't know and then on top of that to have

another insulated cover above that overkill no way definitely leave that on there keep that configuration and be smart designs has themselves what's called the duo which is the B smart designs insulated and cover then the B smart designs plastic it's a double layer plastic over cover that has drip edges and stuff like that I've done videos on that years ago so having that or even substituting a B max insulated cover or a lysine polystyrene cover perfectly fine you do have to paint those you don't have to paint the gear that comes from be smart so that's pretty much it for that but yeah i would keep it

keep your installation on summer winter all the same unless you've got something that wraps around the hive that is not going to hold up to years of ultraviolet exposure and by the way when it comes to the plastics from be smart um i've had them out in my apiary since they've been around as a company. And they look a little grungy, but they haven't broken down and you know become brittle so that when you try to strap down plastic or something that cracks or it just doesn't hold up to the years of exposure to ultraviolet. That's one company that it has held out. So just tossing that out there too, food for thought.

Question number four comes from Callie Pete. I've heard a few beekeepers say that they prefer some defensive behavior. behavior in their area because of the yellow jackets that attack their bees. They say that bees with more defensive behavior tend to go after the yellow jackets more. Obviously, any hive like the one you showcase here is off the table. But I do wonder if some defensive behavior is good or not. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Okay, so this is a comment that was left underneath my Africanized honeybees attack.

Why do they do that? So if you've never, you know, a lot of people write and say, I think I have Africanized bees. They're just after me all the time. And then when it gets down to the nitty gritty, well, how many bees are attacking you? It's like they're just all over me. It's like seven of them. Okay. That is not an Africanized honeybee attack. Those are just cranky bees. A true Africanized honeybee attack. In a lot of cases, you can't even see through your veil. They go, and in the case of this particular video, they killed chickens. Killed chickens. Think about that, all the feathers and everything else. One of the chickens had so many bees on it, you could only see the feet, according to the owner.

And the owners are beekeepers also. It was overwhelming. So they also attacked their hogs and livestock. And you can make observations about that, whether or not livestock should be in close proximity to honeybees and things like that. I wouldn't have fainting goats next to my beehives because if they get stung and they faint they fall over they can't run away the bees just keep stinging them and they just keep fainting so which is not a true faint anyway it's my itonia they just stiffen up because they're trying to run away in the can't

but you have to consider livestock you have to consider the temperament of your bees now this discussion seems to be fairly polarizing so I just want to explain what I personally would do when it comes to bees that are hot. If they're dangerous at all, I don't consider that this is going to be a huge factor in their ability to defend themselves against yellow jacket wasps. A lot of the really defensive colonies or flat-out aggressive colonies of bees are also very small colonies and it's because they reproduce so quickly. They also swarm a lot and they usurp other colonies. So what that means is a swarm of Africanized bees on the move can move right into a colony.

They don't even care if it's queen right or not. They move right in, kill the queen if there is one, and then they take over the colony of bees. They're the only genetic line that even does that that I know of. So do we want them in exchange for their ability to fight off yellow jacket wastes? No, I don't personally. I don't want them. the one time you know FedEx Amazon whoever has to come up to your property to drop off a package to deliver something you're going to hate your life if something happens to someone or a pet that's really important to someone and it's because of the genetics of the bees that you decide to keep honeybees kill people they certainly can

and so one of the parts in breeding selection one of the things I would look for would be temperament because I have pretty laid-back bees and I don't see them being wiped out by yellow jackets. Smaller colonies have a tougher time. And the yellow jackets, remember, peak near the end of the year because they're going to spend all summer building their nests and building up their populations. This is why at the end of the year, that's when you start getting all these calls. I have honeybees in my yard, come get them, and they're bald-faced hornets. And so, or aerial yellow jackets, which I've done a lot of work with,

and I like them. I don't mean I like them, like them. I mean, I like them because of their dynamic and how defensive they get and how interesting their annual cycle is. And so we've learned a lot about them. But this is why they show up in great numbers at the end of the year. They're trying to rob out your colonies and get the resources. So this is where you as the beekeeper, rather than getting hot stock, how about reducing the entrance on your hive at the right time of year? Because that's part of the problem. Near the end of the year when the temperatures get cooler and your bees aren't flying yet, the yellow jackets fly colder and access your hive while the bees are still in cluster because it's cold. So there are a lot of things that you can do aside from trying to get hot genetics. To me,

the trade-off is not even remotely worth it. So, and, you know, if you're one of the people that decides to keep, you know, Africanized bees or highly defensive bees, you do that at your own risk. There's enough evidence that they really hurt people that people lose their lives. And I don't want to be the one responsible for keeping those genetics around. So moving on to question number five. This comes from Roger. It says, oh, this is about the Apisalis. Roger was having problems. If you don't know what Apisalus is, it is the vape system that is for using to calm your bees. instead of smoke. Some people have a hard time with smoke and we like the switchgrass pellets,

which by the way I just used yesterday, you light them and they burned all night. I forgot about the smoker out there. Switch grass pellets burn all night. You want to find out about those? Go down in the video description, look for the link. You can support a nonprofit where we teach about bees. Best smoker pellets everywhere. Now off the smoker pellet thing. Let's say you're using the Apisala. So Roger used Abasolus, had a defensive colony of bees, did not react to it. So in other words, used that vaping system and it did not get those bees under control. And then there are a lot of questions about, you know, putting the coil in and all the other things, the bits and pieces that come with it.

So the reason I wanted to bring this up, this question for today's Q&A is just to let you know I'm going to create a standalone video for that because I asked Roger, is using the new formula that they came out with which is supposed to be more effective against your defensive colonies and because I don't have a super defensive colony right now I can't even test that out but I am gonna go over the Apisala so we're gonna revisit that and the new formula and if you've been using those let let us know how you do it and if you've got the new formula is it working just as well as smoke now I make a guess about that because I got that formula when it

first came out and it seemed to in fact it was so good that I did not light my smoker for the whole second half of last year and so that's it you turn it on you vape you turn it off you put it away there's no catching anything on fire I don't know if you've seen Kamen Reynolds video maybe a month ago where he burned up his B-suit but that was not the smoker itself I believe it was his igniter so there are areas that you're not even allowed to have a lit smoker to work your peas. There are countries in the world that are like that. And there are parts of this country. When

summer gets here, they're going to be so hot and there are going to be fire bans and things like that. You don't want to be that beekeeper that starts a fire in the back of your pickup or in your pea yard and sets. You know, because some people finish with their pellets or with whatever your smoker fuel is. And at the end of it, you know, you have to put your smoker away. So I like to put a cork in it because You can save those pellets for a long time and just keep getting use out of them. Some people dump it out on the ground and they think it's done. But then the wind picks up and those little embers start again and you can start a fire.

So we can eliminate all of that with something like a vape system. I know there are other companies making vape systems too where they're still trying to perfect the fuel for it and things like that. So it's an area of interest because we don't want to set things on fire. We don't want to burn things up. and if you're working with young kids as I am with my grandson I'm not handing him a smoker that has a fire in it he has to use the apisola system but he really likes it because it makes vape and it looks cool and it doesn't make you cough so it's not bad for your health so we're going to go with that there's another video that's going to come out on that but I

believe the new formula does work I just don't have hostile bees to test it on so I'd like from you if you did try that out how that went question number six comes from dallon d8 bees i don't even know what that means d8 bees get any food value for black mold has anyone tested it does it hurt bees at all bees don't react to things the way people do black mold might have lots of different kinds of mold that makes it black or there might be more than one kind of mold that is black. So all this discussion comes in response to the interview I did with Adam Strickland regarding the bleach in sugar syrup and what that did. But one of the big things that was described was that it knocks out black mold in your sugar syrup dispensers, containers, and feeders.

So the question is, the black mold really that bad? Well, it is. So I'll just give you the short line of it. I always say fail safe. And you don't have the means, nor do I, to look at black mold and know exactly what the strain is. So what I do is make sure I don't have any. So I've done that thing where I did the backyard test where I put sugar syrup one to one. And then, of course, did all the additives in it. Honeybee Healthy, bee keepers choice, bleach, hive alive syrup. All of these things plus the control, which is nothing but sugar syrup one to one.

so that's one part sugar one part water of course the thing it is once a black mold and it always starts showing up at the upper edge where the water meets air and uh once black mold shows up it should not be in your bee feeders at all so um i did look some things up just vaguely and often species within the genus aspergillus and other fungal contaminants and sugar syrup or hive stores negatively impact honey be health while bees can often neutralize low concentrations of fungal metabolites higher levels or specific pathogenic species pose significant risks to both individual bees and colony productivity so there are studies I'm going to let you search for those yourself I recommend you go to Google Scholar and then once you

get to Google Scholar you're looking at published peer-reviewed papers and things like that so it's scientific sources these are not just anecdotal. So now you can find out impact of black mold in sugar syrup or feeds on honeybee health. And then you'll find out there's a lot of publications on that, not even marginal. So the idea that we might be able to get something beneficial from black mold is not good. So that's a solid no on that. Question number seven comes from Scott in Sugg, Switzerland. I hope I said that right. So I built my own double top bar hive, which is big enough to house two colonies. One, at either end, both entrances are on the same side of the hive facing south.

I have put a swarm colony in it one week last week. As I was watching them fly in and out of the hive, I realized they had to put the entrances on the long side of the hive, which means it has a cold opening. What are your thoughts? opinions on cold or warm openings. Just wondering if I should close the holes with some corks and drill a hole at the end so that it turns it to a warm opening. So this isn't the first time this has come up. So I know that there's beekeepers out there arguing over cold and warm opening. And some of you are sitting there with question marks over your heads going, what's a warm and cold opening? Let's say I had a frame. Normally in your Langstroth beehive, Langstroth was an above average individual.

You have the end of your frames and this is the front of your hive and then there's an entrance here. And when the air comes in, it can go right between these frames and the bees can draw air up throughout the hive any way they like. That is considered the cold opening. Let's talk about the warm opening. It would be the equivalent of taking a Langstroth hive and putting the entrance to the side. that when the air comes blasting in what does it do it hits this face of this frame so it hits that comb and doesn't just blow freely into the hive so now some of the arguments are well now see the queen can build everything she wants on the backside of that blah-da-blada you know the bees control

the air better and everything else do not this is for scott do not redrill the holes you have a south facing entrance. That's a warm opening in my opinion. So I wouldn't change it. So I do see people, and for the reasons just described, and put it on the end of the hives, especially with long hives and things like that. Long-Langstroth, top bar, Lans hives. Take a look at the Lans hives that come from Dr. Leo Shirashkin. Those are cold openings. Those entrances face the end of those frames. So one of the things I like to do to settle arguments or disputes or discussions, which should go on, by the way, I welcome criticism discussions, constructive criticism. Anyway, what do the bees do when we're not doing anything?

Let's quote Dr. Thomas Seeley. What do the bees do if we were doing nothing at all? So you look at cavities and spaces that your bees occupy and the holes that they went through and how they oriented the comb inside because that tells us what they would do left to themselves. And see, I would reference people like Randy McCaffrey, who's Dirt Rooster or Mr. Ed, Jeff Orchoff, but it doesn't apply here because they're not cold weather people, see? They don't have the challenges that we do that our bees do

up here in the northeastern United States. So guess what the bees show us? They show us it doesn't matter, they don't care. So it's kind of equal. Like the kids were saying months ago, six, seven, made no difference either or. And so that's it. FACER entrances to the south, the southeast. That makes a difference. So there you go. And do not face your entrances towards, because I said south to southeast, because prevailing winds where I live come out of the west. So we don't want any of our entrances facing predominantly prevailing winds so that they would be coming and jamming right into your hive. That's much more valuable than the orientation of the frames inside the hive. So there you go. Takes care of that. Question number eight comes from

Sue S from northern Indiana says they had a swarm come into one of my hives on April the 24th and when I set up the hive to catch a swarm only had one of the frames that had some old brood comb on it. All the others were completely empty. All frames are foundationless and only have a wooden strip at the top. So the main question is how long should I wait after the swarm ride before opening the hive to give them some frames that had some combed drawn from a previous hive these are also foundationalists i don't want to disturb them too early and risk an abscond so one of the things not mentioned by sue did you take beeswax and rub the frame so this has clearly it has a foundation in it but if you had um just this back wall here or the back bar the top bar i run a line of beeswax right across the center of that usually it's grooves that you can put a foundation in it putting foundation in is a big boost for your bees but now I guess what we have

this is something I like to use swarms for so we're right on cue with this I got these wax on there we're right on cue because once you put a swarm in there they're dying to build comb I just had a bunch of bees and an everything be vac and the everything be vac has chicken wire in it The chicken wire is there so the bees can hang on it. I have honeycomb inside that be be back that's this big. One bit of comb that is shaped a little bit like Florida, Florida, we're fatter at the top.

So they did that right away, 24 hours. So that lets us know they're ready to build comb for you. So if you can align them correctly, get all your frames, in there and feed them sugar syrup out the wazoo one to one one part sugar one part water let them build out that brood box keep it coming because they'll keep building while the resources are there if there's a hiccup if there's a supply shortage they'll stop work and you're not going to get them back very easily so i use them for cone building and keep it going now if you want to a week out you're going to check their progress and if you're

you see that they're really building everything out really well there's no reason to put other stuff in there so if they're not building it out that so at the end of the week to answer the question for sue is that's when I would put in the frames that have drawn comb on them after the fact part of the things too though if you're setting up a swarm trap or using a hive to collect your swarms try to outfit it the way you ultimately want it to be so in other words don't try to put frames in there just to see if you can catch a swarm and then when a swarm moves in go yeah I got the swarm now I'm going to rearrange the furniture it's harder once they moved in it's not impossible but it's better to just set it up right

the first time or let them build beeswax which is what I like to do which is what they're doing right now life is good in fact update on my Bearsville bees long Langstroth hive they are going great guns in there and if you think for one minute I didn't fill up that rapid round sugar syrup container that came with it I did and I'm going to keep that filled and I'm going to keep them building it up because they're building all new comb for me in there and they're just doing fantastic they haven't even I think it's been a week good stuff put them to work for you now if you're a

purist and you don't want to use sugar syrup at all then you're just going to have to wait for the nectar resources to come in from the outside that's it And then you probably don't like foundation either. So you just wait and see what they build. And they build what they build. And then same thing. After several days, put in the frames that you already have in storage. So anyway, question number nine comes from Brian Bennett.

4374. It says, thanks Fred. Always enjoy your videos. When do you plan on doing splits? I'm doing splits right now. And that's because the bees are going to get away from me. you know here's the game the weather's been bad temperatures been cold you know foraging days are limited the trees are full of blossoms as you might have seen in the opening today and uh the beach just can't get out

to access everything so we think in our heads that uh yeah they're just not going to not I can overload things. Well here's what I had to do. I have to go to the zoo tomorrow. And so we're going to be at the zoo and they wanted bees there so that I had to load up an observation hive. Not like this one frame observation hive over here. I needed it to handle cooler temps. So it's the one that has the five frame space on the bottom and the single frame on the top. Now you can't wait until the morning that you're going to go somewhere to show people these live bees. You have to set it up ahead of time so that That's what I was doing yesterday.

So the reason I'm talking about this is how do I decide which colony I want to mess up to make a split and create this observation hive colony, which by the way is never going to be put back with the colony I took it away from. And I'll explain why. So I look at the ones that are really busy. They've got, in fact, they look like they might be getting ready for swarming. They might be a lot of orientation flights happening. So when we open that one up and this was the particular, nucleus hive three talls that's 15 deep frames twice last winter it fell off its hive stand and fell apart

didn't just you know lay in the snow laid in the snow in three distinct segments with snow wind sleet and everything blowing directly into those frames now that's a write-off you're just like yeah they're not going to make it but i'm going to put them together anyway because i'm an above-average beekeeper and I'm going to put them on their stand again and I put three breaks on top this time and within two weeks another storm came through to the exact same thing and we looked at the upper apiary not the lower apiary so we didn't even know that it had blown off again it was a part again and we had like four hours of rain in the high 30s really cold and so you go out there at the end of the day like 4.35 o'clock and there they are again with a middle box wall-to-wall bees just soaking wet.

You talk about something that would destroy the colony of bees. Put them back together. Put them back up. This time shipping strap. So now I strapped it down, which by the way is what it should have done in the first place. These nucleus hives are narrow and tall. They present a broad surface to the wind. You just don't anticipate a wind gusts coming through that peaks out. 70 miles an hour. That is a powerful wind gust. So long story short, yesterday I go to that same hive. They are wall-to-wall bees. I open it up. I find seven queen cells. They're halfway done. They're little half peanuts, right? Which means they're going to swarm. So I need to create an observation hive for the zoo. What do I do? Now I don't want to brag.

because you know I'm painfully modest overall second frame I pulled up had the queen on it with a bunch of brood mostly capped and I put her right in the top of that observation hive which is where the queen goes and then underneath of that is a queen excluder and then I'll put four frames below in a feeder frame so put that all together found all these bees and all of these queens and all these cells, every level was full of bees. So they need a split because I don't expand nucleus slant resource hives beyond three high. So 15 frames is the max. So I took them all apart. And of course I took all their nurse bees. See, shook them off into my observation hive

because last night it got down into the 30s again and they're out there in their observation hive, which is a five frame nucleus hive. So anyway, went out this morning, they're all doing fantastic, but so splits, when would I do them now? Yesterday. In fact, I'm a little late, but how I decide to split a colony is based on what I find when I'm looking at it. If they have started queen's cells, they're on their way. If you come across the queen, she is about to leave.

So you might as well collect her with a few frames of brood, decongest that colony, make another colony, establish an insurance policy if you need it, and then if they don't succeed, which that colony just based on their performance last winter, I don't know what it takes to take them out. The insulation on that hive was negligible. In fact, the storm was so bad, it blew apart their lid. And the lid was, you know, that two-inch pink, rigid foam board

that's all glued together. So, of course, when it blew over, it broke apart, and the bits and pieces were everywhere. I don't know who built that thing, but it was not put together very well. so moving on it has a new pink polystyrene cover and it has a feeder on top which is the afame single nucleus feeder which really isn't even the little flange part isn't wide enough so you have to tape it in place but anyway that's a good split so right now is the time and if you

split now think about it the entire summer is ahead the clover isn't even blooming yet so When the clover kicks in, that's when anything that's going to produce a surplus, any colony that is going to give me honey to harvest. And the supervisor, and yes, his hive is doing fantastic. Now he went around and put his name on a bunch of beehives that just happened to be really heavily populated. But I don't think he even remembers which ones those were. But it's going to be time to super also.

So splitting, super, and kind of happens in concert because when you're opening up your hive and you're looking to see if there are queen cells and things like that what the population is before you expand the hive That's when you're going to do splits and you can do something called Super splitting. Where does that come from? Well, I came up with it super split. It just sounds good You go around your apiary bring your hive butler tote with you put the lid on and You pull a frame or two of brood out of each colony you come across is borderline full and by the end of your walking around you've got 10 frames from 10 individual frames from 10 separate colonies in theory and then so now we've got a super colony that thing is going to be stronger than the colonies that you took it away from and so you're going to get a honey surplus so that gets a queen excluder on top of it right away and then your honey super's right away and of course you picked a queen and brought her with that once you have a queen you don't need other queens from other colonies you just need to seal some of their brew to decongest it a little bit, to hold them back.

Because keep in mind, I'm not a honey producer, even though the supervisor is trying to press me in that direction heavily. Something about things that rhyme with honey. What is it, money? I don't know. But he seems to want that as a 10-year-old, apparently his client base is putting pressure on him too. So splits are now in the northeastern part of the United States. but any part of the world where you are where you've got a nectar flow that's going to continue

and you're looking at your colonies and they're at max you know numbers and you know the frames are maxing out with capped brood in this case which is what i'm seeing everywhere this means as i mentioned before that even while it's rainy stormy and crappy outside your bees are building the populations off the chart and they're ready for the next swarm which is going to happen that i talked about in the beginning here it's going to happen either what did I say today and next Friday or tomorrow Saturday and then next Friday swarm days you're ready for it you can split them ahead of time and then be able to relax and stay inside while it's raining out I'm starting to rethink whether or not you know we should actually work the beehives if you really need them if you really have to

head off swarming you're you're going to have to set up some kind of tent or something and get out there when it's raining but warm so you can still work your bees and expect them to be cranky bees do not like it when you visit them on a cloudy day a windy day a day that's not sunny and nice they don't want to see you and it's an all over by the way let's talk a little bit about long or horizontal hives when you get into a langstroth hive when you pull the cover off and you pull that top super off you went from bees in the dark sheltered and protected to 100% open exposed and unprotected if ever there was a time that your bees were going to want to defend themselves it's that so you have

some choices ways to calm them down we've talked about in the past but I'll mention it again cotton duck canvas make it about twice the size twice the width of the hive when the when you open it and just drop it over the whole thing they calm down and then what you can do is roll it back and look at each individual frame and then cover the areas that you're no longer working or looking at. This is easier with these long Langstroth hives. My cover boards on my long length roth hives are four inches wide. So as I go through it when I decide which area I want to look at we pull those cover boards but the other cover boards are on

and so your bees are not stressing out. This is why I like the hive butler toots when you're pulling if you really have to manipulate things you're going to pull frames out and set them aside the way I do for the super split and while they're in that container look at that the wind isn't blowing through it you talk about your cold entrances and stuff like that when they sit in that tote they quiet right down and then you put other frames right adjacent to each other keeping them in the same order that they are with hive that you're working on maybe you have to replace an old deep box or something on your hive and what do you do with all the frames while you're doing that well you can set up the new box

next to your old box and transfer them one by one. And remember the bottom is open and the air is blowing through it and your bees are pretty darn upset and you might be moving brood and things like that where if you put them in a sheltered location like a hive butler tote, then they're much more calm and they're protected. And if you set that tote right on the ground, those frames are not in contract with the ground. So it just calms the whole thing.

In other words, you're not going to come back in an hour. and the bees thing out and get you because you messed up their lives. So the horizontal hives are cool. The Topar hive. I might as well mention that while I'm here. The Be Mindful Topar Hive went through its first winter here. No additional insulation, anything like that. And it swarmed on me. See, we always say, they swarmed on me.

Now they're reproducing. They're doing what they're supposed to do. as a super organism it's their job they need to make more bees if they didn't do that on their own then they wouldn't be making it because they make way more bees than they need so they swarmed on me so I'm I'm late I'm behind because you know what I'm doing I keep waiting for better weather and it doesn't come so what do they do they just go ahead of us and I collected the swarm by the way I got them they're mine but I was very surprised to see the top of

hive do that they have 17 frames 17 top bars they're not frames but uh that's it next number 11 comes from michael more thanks again for the great content how far away from my apiary should i set up a robbing station or a feeding station set up as far as you can still in your property in the clear where you can see it we talked about the robbing station last week also we have frames out there right now. What we did is a crush and strain from some leftover honey from the wintertime. And then we put it out at the robbing station. Actually, my wife did. She did a great job. She cleaned a debt out for me yesterday, which makes her my best friend on Earth. And we hang it out. It's beneficial if it can be upwind of your apiary so that your bees are the ones to smell those

resources first and go after them. There are bumble bees and honeybees. There's mason bees everything is after those but uh you just don't want it directly next to your bees or your beehive because what happens is wherever you set up your feeding and slant robbing station uh the bees that go to it memorize it right away these are foragers keep in mind here where we are it's been rainy and everything else what's going on at the same time the um you know the bees are kicking in with large brood which puts honey in high demand for those bees to keep themselves going. So they're really intense when they come after resources like that. I like it because they clean up the frame. If you want a frame not to be

sticky at all, let your bees go out there and clean it up. It's amazing. And then what happens, though, is if you have that right next to your beehives or right in your apiary and I've seen some people, huge mistake, set up a robbing station right on top of the beehive. They're like, I want these frames cleaned up, where you put them? right on top of the hive so I can just remember which hive it came from so I can put it back. No, don't do that. When the resource is gone, they have lost all logic. They hurl themselves at that spot and anything that has any sweetener on it, they just go after it. And you can have robbing this time of year.

So we really need to, if you're going to have a feeding station, make sure it's well away from your apiary. and where your bees can go get it. And then it should be in the same spot because these foragers check it out first. And if it's empty, you know, they scan the area and they go on to their happy way. But they definitely intensely probe and evaluate everything that's adjacent to where the feeding station is.

Don't let it be one of your beehives. So that's it for Michael Moore. There are a lot of questions today. Question number 12. At what temp will swarms start? This is the northeastern Wisconsin and must the victim of weather modification Northeast Wisconsin must be the victim of weather modification as we don't have any temps forecast above 65 for the next 10 days last year I got my first warm on Memorial Day

okay this is from Crago for DDS so it's all relevant your bees are just waiting for a clear day when the sun is shining to head out and they're not showing a lot of common sense this year. I was going to help my sister-in-law. She lost her internet, can you imagine? And it was seven at night and going down the driveway and I look over into my lower meadow which is where we grow all of our pollinator plants and there was a big black lump in the the middle of this field. And I'd go to look at that because I just can't believe that would be a swarm of bees. And it was. They probably came for me somewhere. Anyway, they were on a honeysuckle, bush, shrub, tree, whatever, and on the ground, because they bent it over and there were so many bees. So instead of

going to help her with her so that she could update her social media and things like that, I went and collected those bees. But what was interesting about that is the conditions were not good for swarming. So sometimes they just decide to go. If it happens between 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon, and you've had really cold nights, which we've had here. And that break is only in the 50s, but sunny, you're at risk of a swarm. Now, of course, when the temps get even higher,

that the risk increases so it's kind of like some bees are just full the colony's full they just have to go they have to reproduce they're done because remember it's nice when you get a warm spell after a storm so the saying i often cite is when it's warm after a storm expect to swarm but keep in mind the triggers for swarming if they've built queen cells inside the hive it's a disaster if they emerge from those cells while the original queen is still in the hive. This pushes them to fly out on less than optimum days and at a less than optimum time of the day. So sure, they're at risk. The chance of that colony making it with it dropping into the 30s, you know, is not good at all combined with rain. They're just plus around the ground.

Skunks can come by and just have a feast. So they will fly out in marginal days. But optimum days, 60s are better, sunny, low winds, you know, they'll go. So they have to because that Gwingian needs to survive. And I don't know overall if that impacts the number of bees that will depart the colony. In other words, if they're flying out against bad weather or something like that, do fewer bees leave or go with them. I would suspect that if they're flying out and it rains right afterwards,

it impacts their ability to follow one another's pheromone to the cluster and things like that. So there are bees that will fly out form that intermediate cluster on their way to some destination that they don't even have selected yet in a lot of cases. And they will just die there in a cluster on the ground. You can just find them dead. So they are at risk. but there's no absolute key. There is a book I would like to recommend

to everyone listening right now. The author is Steve Rapaski and the book is called Swarm Essentials. It's one of those small books. It's a paperback. It doesn't look like there would be a lot in it, but it is information dense. And it's useful information.

It's very practical information. So I believe it comes from Wicwas Press and I highly recommend the backyard beekeepers get that book Swarm Essentials. Now you can ask for the Frederick Dunn discount there won't be one but it's fun to ask anyway and it just occurred to me that that book has parameters in it just like what we're talking about. Best time of day, best season, indications for a swarm, how to manage it, how to prevent it. Good stuff. See if we're Okay, question number 13. This is from Sergio. You talked about two mated queens. This is talking about a swarm that combined.

How do you think that came to be? Swarms from two different hives that came together on the same branch. Thank you. Sergio from Portugal. So anyway, here's the thing. Because I did that swarm, which by the way, thank you for those of you are watching that video because it has more than 50 views. and uh swarm in a bucket so that was the first swarm i collected this year and it was a really large swarm and i did prime the branch on that tree with swarm commander no big surprise i mentioned it all the time so um and then when i got them together in the big bucket of course they wouldn't all go in a hive you may have had this happen before now i get a lot of pushback on my methods because they seem like time wasting. It seems like Fred just waste time stairs at bees getting out of work, whatever he's doing. But the thing of it is, unless you set the bucket outside the hive and let the bees walk into the hive,

you don't know what you have. If you, because I get the comments, open the lid, dump them in, be done with it, go on. Okay, no, first of all, it's not what I do. I'm a patient beekeeper. I have to stare at things. It's necessary. It's necessary for my health. I'm pretty sure. So I'm going to lean it there against the landing board and I'm going to watch the bees go in. Now it looks great. Oh, the bees are going in. Everything is fantastic. And then you realize they stopped going in. There are bees there. They're fanning their nas and offs at the entrance. What's up with the bees in the bucket? Now, what happened in this case was the swarm was equally divided. It's easy to figure out that you've got other queens, but they're just not mated when you see little clusters of bees on different

parts of a branch and things like that but you've got a big main cluster a mated queen is in the main cluster but this one was kind of 50-50 so what happened is when it's warm after a storm expect to swarm several colonies are the same idea at the same time and they went into the air and what did they do they climbed on to the exact same branch together and uh when i see that i can get the battle of the pheromones going the queen mandibular pheromone because keep in mind uh the colony is full of bees that all know their own queen sent and that's what keeps them together so when they divide up i have another queen so then when they wouldn't go in instead of forcing them in which being a big beekeeper i can do i can just open lid sam i'm through with this

dump them in and make them sort out their queen situation or set up another hive which i did take the bees to that hive set them in front and then you would have thought all of a sudden they woke up and then now they're all going in why because now they have a space that's not occupied by queen who has competing pheromones with their queen and when you get an unmaided queen in there half the time they'll leave her in the bucket nobody cares or she'll walk out and be in the grass somewhere or out on the side of the hive by herself or there'll be 20 bees on that queen that's an unmaided queen and she's not competing very well pheromone wise with the other queens that are in the swarm this is why i like putting bees in a bucket putting a queen excluder on top of the bucket and seeing what they do if there's

another queen still in the tree or something a bunch of them will join that in fact the bucket will empty if i didn't get a queen in the bucket or if it's an unmaided queen they'll ditch her like she doesn't even exist like she doesn't matter because they don't guarantee it but that's it two distinct colonies two separate hives had swarms joined together on the same branch That's what happened. It's pretty cool. The bucket method. Question number 14. Talk about methods. By the way, this was a lot of fun. What do you think I'm talking about? How to collect swarms? And if by the way, I hope somebody listening knows who this was.

At the North American Honeybee Expo, I gave a presentation there. There were more than 50 people in the audience. And at the end of my presentation, people come up to say hello, and I really appreciated that. one gentleman, an older gentleman whose name I did not get came up in a wheelchair and he told me when it comes to swarms get a bowler which is you know the old derby hat hanging in a tree and you'll get swarms in that so it took me a while to get around to that but that's what I did and the video is on my channel which is Frederick Dunn I hope you'll go and look at it because I surprised myself on I got a really good quality bowler hat which you know there they were fashionable like 1900 a lot of interesting facts about the bowler like it was supposed to be this

new hat that was aerodynamic like you could stick your head out of a moving train and have your hat not blow off your head and stuff like that anyway I hung it up less than an hour it had a swarm on it okay so we did a video about that so this is what this question is about and it comes from 21st B. Because do you think the collection on the hat was most likely due to it being a large enough dangling surface with grip for the swarm to collect on, the dark depression of the hat, mimicking a tree hollow with texture to grip on easily like a tree, or lure put in a known

prime location. I know there's no way to know with this one, but best guess from observing them. So here's the thing. and I have I have more hats coming by the way we're gonna have competing bowler slant derby style hats hanging for the same tree because we're gonna it's it works and it was fun now that hat by the way is a hundred percent woolen so they're made out of wool I bought it from eBay it was a used hat I'm buying another used hat that I just won the auction on got it for a bargain it was it's

actually a very nice bowler hat that brand new sells for almost $300 and they got it for $22 on eBay used. And so when it gets here, I'm going to hang that one out there too. Then we're going to see if the swarms prefer one over the other because, as I pointed out in the video, I did spritz it a little bit with Swarm Commander. Now, that draws more bees to the bowler, but listen, also the branches adjacent to that were spritz with Swarm Commander also. So and even my wife came home yesterday and said, you've got a swarm.

And I said, no, that's my bowler hat that's hanging out there just in case. So it even fools people from a distance. So here's what I'm doing. The beast went all over it and because it's woolen, they can hook their little feet in it. And the people that say, I just take the hat, shake them out of it. Have you shaken anything off of a woolen surface before? They cling to it like Velcro. So it is a problem.

It's not super smooth to do, but the novelty aspect is worth its weight in gold. It is fun to take some person's cherished hat from who knows when, hang it from a tree and have bees join it. Remember that your bees are not high resolution visually. They see objects, they see contrast. You're not going to get a greater contrast than having a black bowler hanging from a tree branch. And so when they're on the way, wing and they're looking for something to land on in their mind they must look at that black

round thing hanging on a tree branch and associate that with a cluster of bees and off they go and they join it that's what i think's happening because the other thing i want people to notice is they collected on the bowler they didn't go up the string that was connecting it to the branch and also spread onto the branch. Where if you have, for example, a bunch of bees that get onto a branch that they're attracted to, they generally involve a couple of branches together. They don't just like tightly stick to the one thing. So they really stayed on the bowler.

And then you have to think about the shape of it. It's like a bowl. And I don't think it's, I don't know if it's called bowler. Maybe it is called a bowler because it looks like a bowl. I don't know. But anyway, the inside of the hat, once they got in there, and I could only suspect that the queen is in there, because that's the most sheltered space.

Do you know how warm that had to feel? I mean, I don't think they were in any hurry to get out of it. I had a very hard time getting them out of that hat. I think they wanted to live there. But it worked really well. And it was worth all the time it took me to get them into the hive. So a good gripping surface smelled right. Now we're going to have competing hats.

So we're going to see what happens. We're going to see if the bees can pick out that one is more important than the other. Did you know? just because you need to, that the bowler was like the first hard hat that people wore. They used to like seal them up with something and it actually made the bowler hat kind of tough. And it was one of the things that wealthy people wore them and workers on railroads wore them. So it was like the first known hard hat that would protect your head. I thought that was. There's a lot of interesting history with these weird hats.

And the fact that we can use them as beekeepers. back to the guy in the wheelchair if you are at the north american honeybee expo and you have any idea who that was please tell me who it was please go to the way to be dot org click on the contact page and let me know who that old gentleman was because i want to i want him to know that it worked that did not land on deaf ears and then it was fantastic but all these things play yes prime location it's a tree that i I frequently get bees bivouacking. So we're in the fluff section now. We already talked about, oh by the way, hantavirus is in the news. And I want you to go to my interview page, which is on, you can just Google Frederick

Dunn interviews, but if you go to my page on the way to be.org and you click in the page mark interviews you can watch, I spoke with a small mammal biologist about the risks of pantavirus. So if you don't know what we're talking about, there was a cruise liner where people got sick and it's the strain that is, it will go from human to human. 40% mortality. That's high. So here's the thing. You don't have to be alarmed if you're in the Northeast because this does not happen up here very often, if at all. But I would like you to watch that interview, and here's why beekeepers frequently encounter in bee equipment that stored. They encounter this in hives that died out during winter you'll often have a mouse nest in it during that interview we

talk about the best practices for cleaning that out without introducing that material into your respiratory system which you do not want to do it is very potentially serious stuff so i want you to fail safe and so please listen to that interview with a small mammal biologist about what to do when you have to clean out you know a mouse nest from your hive or from your your tractor or your car engine wherever you encounter it don't breathe that stuff in it's all bad so the other thing is swarms i already talked about the nucleus hive the miracle high that blew apart still doing great and that's what i did my thing also for those of you who might be anywhere near the erie zoo tomorrow which is saturday the whole zoo is open and i'm going to be in the children's zoo part of it which years ago when the children's zoo was first put up,

I did a lot of the artwork in there. But I'm bringing live bees with me. Talked about the split. We have the observation hive. And so I will be in the children's zoo tomorrow. And if you're in the area, you want to pop over, bring me a cappuccino or something. I wouldn't hate you.

And then that'll be it. We talked about best days ahead. Don't forget Mother's Day. Sunday. Don't blow it. Do not forget Mother's Day. And the last thing before we close out on this Friday is Jeff Orchoff did a video yesterday, I believe. And he talked about his YouTube channel.

For those of you don't know, Jeff Horchoff, Mr. Ed is a YouTuber. He had 158,000 subscribers, he said, and someone stole his channel. So here we are three weeks in, and he did not get it back yet. But the good news is he finally got to. got back his Google account and so he is going to get all of his videos back all that stuff and so you will be able to get right back on board with Mr. Ed the beekeeper and so I think the channel was called Jeff Horchoff Bees so you'll be able to do that the good news is it's not live yet but when it is I'll put a link to it in my social post on my page so that others can share

it and know that he's back in Beezness and you can go and show your support to somebody that momentarily lost everything because of a scammer. Can you believe it? So I want to thank you for watching. I hope that you have a fantastic weekend ahead and that you're going to get ahead of your swarms. You're going to manage everything perfectly and that your bees will not sting people that they should not be stinging. I'm Frederick Dunn and this has Ben the way to be.