The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - We're FROZEN, Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 342 recorded during a LIVE Chat on January 30th of 2026

Episode Date: February 1, 2026

Frederick Dunn of The Way To Bee responds to questions LIVE, this is the YouTube link:  https://youtu.be/B75wOP06LLw SAVE your DATA, you can pull up the YouTube video, click on the cog (lower right) and select the resolution you want. Select 144p and you will not be using up your valuable phone data. Thank you, this helps with the YouTube channel visibility.

So hello, everybody and welcome. Happy Friday. I meant happy Friday. Today is Friday, January the 30th of 2026. This is Backyard Daykeeping Questions and Answers episode number 342. I'm Frederick Dunn. And this is the way to be. So the bouncers in the house, Keith Spillman, glad he's here. So if you act up, you're going to get yourself in a pickle. And I'm glad to see people are here. I know that you're dying to be outside, taking care of your bees instead, and it's probably very difficult to convince you to sit inside where it's safe and warm. And I know what you're wondering.

How cold is it there? Well, first of all, where is there, slant here? Northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. This morning, because this is more impressive, rather than telling you what's going on outside right to the minute. 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, and that's minus 16.7 Celsius. And then overnight, we had a really good chill here at minus 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is minus 22.5 Celsius. So it's challenging the bees. If you want to figure out if your beehives are going to handle these kinds of weather conditions, then we're definitely testing them out this year. And the winds aren't bad.

hour, that's pretty constant, which is 5.47 kilometers per hour. Relative humidity is 92%. So the problem is, normally I like to say, you know, for those that are in my neck of the woods, what the best day is for the next week that you can get into your beehives? Which day do you think is going to be the best? None of them. They're all bad. It's cold. We're not even going to get above freezing, not for a single day, not for a minute. So the deep freeze is going to continue. Now, that can be good. That can be bad. For those of you who are just joining us, if you have a question for me, and I'm sure Keith will remind people as the chat progresses, but type your question in all caps if you're trying to get my attention. Otherwise, I'm just going to think you're talking to one

another. So we did have questions submitted during the past week, and you may be wondering, hey, how do I submit my own question to be considered, or just a topic even that's interesting right now. You go to the website, the wayto be.org, and you click on the page mark contact, and you fill out the form there, and then it comes to me. You can be anonymous. I don't have to give all your information out to everybody. So the questions that I have written here, of course, we're submitted during the past week. We have some interesting ones. And if you want to listen instead of watch this. Maybe it's a later date.

We're live right now, but it's obviously going to be posted on my channel. And if you're wondering how to find past live streams, when you go to someone's YouTube channel, it doesn't matter whose channel it is. If they've done a live, you click on the little tab up there that says live, and then you'll go to all their past live stream videos.

So once we're done with this, even the chat that's over here to the right also gets posted so others can read it and see what's going on. So it's also a podcast. Pod bean, the way to be podcast. But if you just do a Google search, IHeartRadio, there's a whole bunch of carriers that carry this podcast. You can just listen instead of watching and wrecking your tractor or running your snowblower into the neighbor's yard or something. Anyway, so I have a question right about, ooh, what happened?

Let's see. I have Keep Faithful, 3980. What is your thoughts on the new OA dribble with no sugar? Okay, so what we're talking about is something that Better Be has just put on. It's got apobioxal in it. My thoughts are it looks good to me. Dr. David Peck certainly likes it, but of course he was instrumental in helping develop it and get it accepted here in the United States with the new dosage,

which is four grams per brood box with exhalic acid vaporization. the dribble is a different concentration, but the thing that's cool about it and why I think it's cool is it's pre-mix. So if somebody is challenged when it comes to chemistry or following recipes and things like that, it's pre-mixed for you. So the fact that it doesn't have sugar, like a sugar syrup, which when we make our own, that's what would be in it. This is a drier system. So also the bees don't eat it. See, it just gets on them. So they groom it off. And I don't, I don't. know any more detail than that but if you want to know more there is an interview that i did with dr david pack a couple of weeks ago now is it already anyway if you go to my page frederick done

youtube channel and uh you look at that uh interview with david pack he describes that in great detail and he almost falls over their varro my display which he was very happy that i left that in the video so i like to keep it real and it makes people more comfortable around you if you make mistakes and stumble a little bit. In fact, I encourage people to make mistakes sometimes intentionally, just so others will remain comfortable around you. But I think it looks promising. It's going to be great. There's no protective, it's not the same PPE that you have when you're doing acolyc acid vaporization, of course, and it comes fully ready to go. And there's a little delivery bottle that pre-meters it and everything. When you squeeze it, fills the metered dose,

and you dribble it on the seams, and seams are the bees between the frames. And that seems It's pretty clean to me. It's not going to annoy your eyes or your respiratory system. So Ross Wagner is here. Thanks, Ross. He gave me $10. Thank you for that. Anyway, Wisconsin took a debt out down and some great frames of comb

and full frames of cap tony have bee fecal matter, dysentery on them. Can you use the frames? Will it be fecal matter? You know what, Ross, I can't say that I've ever had this question. So if the bees, fecal matter, bee poo, goes on the frames, can you still extract the honey from them and would it be detrimental to the honey? I say no. I say it would not hurt the honey one bit. I say do your best to clean it off if you can. In fact, since it's capped honey, you could probably spritz it off, dry it with a hair dryer, and then take it into your

processing. Yeah, that's what I would do. And then you wouldn't have the diarrhea on your on your honey caps. So I think that's I think that's fine. Let us know what you decide to do. And I don't think that's bad, but you know what? I would not advertise that that's what that went through. I would just keep it just between like I wouldn't say it on a chat or something like that. so other people would know that might be in your honey. Remember, if it questions for me, it's all caps. Ross says, can I use it for another hive? Yes.

Okay, here's a thing. The fecal matter is dysentery. Now, dysentery often gets blended in with nozema. Okay, so let's say you're going to feed it to another colony. Do you risk spreading disease from colony to colony? And I say if that's in my own apiary in my own backyard, there is so much intermingling of all the bees in my apiary. I assign the same precautionary statement to it. I would just rinse it off.

I wouldn't go out of my way to just give it to them and expect them to clean it up. But I would personally say it's okay to feed that honey to another hive within the same apiary. These bees are mixing it up on their own anyway. So how's that sound? I think that's good. So use it on another hive. Let's see here we have homesteady farms. That's different than homestead, just home steady farms.

Is it true that anything above a queen excluder doesn't really count as more space in terms of managing swarming triggers? That is a great question. So when you set up your hive, there's the brood box, here's your queen excluder over that and the super's above. Do those not help in reducing the trigger for swarming? Yes and no. So here's the thing. You have plenty of space for your unemployed workers to occupy up above the queen excluder. So that reduces some congestion, but you really have to pay attention to the brood frames themselves in the brood box because when they are full and the queen is running out of room to lay her eggs, then you get congestion that could spark a preparation for swarming. So you still have to pay attention to both. So the queen excluder, it helps still.

It doesn't necessarily stop that. It's the brood concentration and the overall population of the hive that would trigger swarming. But I would say pay attention to the brood area. And the good news is having the queen excluder in there, you can pull a brood frame up, pull it up, put a honey frame that's not complete, that's just drawn out comb down below. Push the brood together and put that on the outskirts of it. That release congestion gives the queen more space. So that's how I would do that. But yeah, it's true if the queen excluders on there, the brood is not spreading out, therefore it concentrates the brood, therefore it increases the chance of a swarm trigger if they get full.

So what's next here? We have Huckleberry, 70, 69. Do you use five-frame nukes for resource hives? And if so, how many deeps do you go? Double. So for those you who may not know, nukes are nucleus hives. And it's usually just a tiny colony of bees. And the five frames, yes, I use them.

I use them for resource hives. And they fill the nucleus box fast. Now, I use all deeps. So I go three high mags. And once they get to that third frame and it's fully involved and they're building things out in there, I start taking away the honey resources or I start pulling brood and fortifying a colony that might be lagging a little bit. or maybe I want more honey production out of them. So the resource hive requires frequent management,

but right now we have them in triples and doubles going through this weather, and they're doing fine. So, yeah, we max out at three beyond that. I don't stack them any taller, but they do extremely well. Actually, these are the wooden nucleus hives, by the way. So here we go again. We have Jose Velazquez, Feliciano, 1613, what? frame feeder do you like that doesn't drown bees? None. I don't use frame feeders.

I'm going to answer too quick. For those of you who don't know, let's say this was a frame feeder, and it is. It has these little dividers in it. And this displaces frames inside the hive. Plus, you have to open the hive to get to it to fill it. This happens to be for Layans hive. They're the same. There's a frame feeder that's just sized right for the long length straw in their deeps. Mother L-O-L-L-O-D-E. Anyway, you can stuff this with cotton shoe strings, for example, you can put, there is this really coarse aquarium filter media that's really, really porous. It looks like obsidian, like pumice almost. You could stick that in there. Anything that helps your bees not drown.

Some people just stuff straw or hay or something like that, grass in it, so the bees can climb back out. That's about it. Just make sure they have something to climb on. And I position these if I were going to use one at the edge of the brood. So where they're beginning to store honey, that's where I would put this. When you're getting to the end of the year, you can also put solids in this. You can put dry sugar and things like that. You can put fondant in these and have that inside the hive again now at the farthest point from where you're brood and stored honey is going into winter but i don't personally use them i just have them so that i can check it out sometimes they use them as a placeholder but um keeping bees from drowning just give them plenty of stuff to climb out on

some people have been used hardware cloth which i think is probably pretty cool too you just bend it around and it sticks in there like a little lattice work that they can climb up to get out So those are the closest things I can think of. I will say something else about your feeder frames, depending on the time of year, frame feeders. If you can keep the syrup light, so in other words, if you mix up a whole bunch of two to one sugar syrup, do not, please do not put that in a frame feeder. It's so viscous. The surface tension is so high.

Once the bees get down in it, they have a very difficult time getting out. So when you're feeding light sugar syrup, one to one or lighter, and that's by weight, water to sugar. When you make that up and it's nice and thin, they tend to recover quicker from that. But if they get into a heavy syrup, they're in a pickle for sure. So Christy and Mitchell, have you tried the hive IQ? Now, I'm on the spot with that because I've had the hive IQ here for two years. sitting in my storage building. I have not put it together.

For those of you don't know what we're talking about, it's an insulated hive. It comes from Australia. I did a terrific interview with Sophia at the North American Honeybee Expo. If you haven't seen that, you should look at that because it's worth it just to hear her talk about her experiences in Australia and the insulated hive. It's a poly hive.

It has reinforced edges. And I think I'd like to see improvements in their feeder system on top. She broke out a big, deep well feeder that sits on the top and actually fits into one of their deep boxes. So I think they use all deeps, so they don't even have a shallow version. So I think we need some feeder options.

I don't know if there's compatible wood with that too because they're so unique. There's some proprietary design work going on there. So it works well with other Hive IQ equipment, but you need to do it all the same. And so right now I'm hoping that they come up with something more versatile when it comes to the feeding on top. So that's it.

But installation-wise, build-wise, quality is there. It looks great. It's another video you can look at on my page, Frederick Dunn, YouTube channel, and then you'll see she's on the cover. She's going like this, and she's introducing their equipment. So they're from Australia. It looks rugged, looks well-made. I just like to see some progress with options that they might be adding to it.

Next, I have Jonathan Stevens 9919. What is your thoughts on the new beehive they had at the North American Honeybee Expo that had an extremely tall brood chamber? You're talking about primal B. So there are a few people that have that. So I'm going to say that because it is a unique, deep, frame system, it is a huge amount of polystyrene, which I'm not 100% against, but ultimately everything that we will eventually use up has to find its way to a landfill somewhere,

and that is a huge hive. I guess since I haven't actually used it, I can't make really much of an observation about it or give my opinion, only that for simplicity's sake, I do like to keep the frame designs and the uniqueness of the different brood chambers in my hives and my apiary year as consistent as possible so i can interchange them and pass things around and so i already have conflicts when i do the land's hive which doesn't match up with any of the lankstroth equipment langstroth equipment is the most versatile that you can get i know the selling point for that is that it ideally matches the space that you find inside a tree well not where i live because we don't have tree is that big. It's huge. And so the spaces are closer to a 10-gallon space in old growth forests.

Or if we're talking about Tom Seeley, the R-Nodd forests. So it's a super-insulated thing. A lot of people bought them. So I would probably do a primal B search on YouTube and see who's got it and see what they like about it. So as far as I'm concerned, I can, you know, infinitely expand a standard. Langstroth hive configuration if I want to go vertical. So we can just, instead of having big giant tall frames, we can just keep adding boxes and it becomes a continuous run for your bees through the hive. That's kind of the genius of the Langstroth ability to expand and contract as needed, depending on the colony that's in it, how productive they are and things like that.

So I don't have a personal plan in the near future to even test one of those out just because, as I see it as I'm going to have more equipment in storage. And I understand the honey supers will probably use standard Langstroth frames. And it's the brood box. It has the deep frames in it, which is probably the thinking that it's easier for the bees to move up and down and expand. I just personally am not looking to expand like that right now where I am. And I'm sure other people will be happy to fill in those blanks. So here is John Lurianne's thoughts on the new.

Okay, so that's it. All right. So I'm going to go with one of the questions that was submitted during the week. Oh, Bekeeper Carmine. So hi, Fred. And thank you for all that you do. You are welcome. What are your thoughts on using Ziploc bags versus other types of feeders for use with liquid feed?

I love the idea. I can't believe I don't have any sitting here right now. So the Ziploc freezer bags, buy Ziploc, by the way. The freezer bags are the toughest ones. I like them a lot. I'll explain why. Remember I said earlier on that when we put feed in our hives, we talked about the frame feeder. If the syrup is really thick, your bees are going to get in it, and they're going to get stuck easily. Bees push other bees into the syrup, and they do not care.

Now, if you have a Ziploc storage bag, and I like the gallon size, you can set them in a feeder shim right on top of the frames, right on top of your inner cover. You can use a trivet. So if you had an inner cover with a hole through the middle, Trubit goes on top of that. Your Ziploc baggie goes on top of that. And there are some things that we need to address because you're going to poke holes in the top of it. Boop, bobobobobo.

I put the holes about an inch apart, kind of in a grid pattern, and I stay two inches away from the edges all the way around. So it's a one gallon bag. You never fill up more than half that capacity. So a half gallon of sugar syrup. you can even feed back honey to the bees safely with that because, again, they don't get into contact with the surface area. And so we've done a lot of testing with it.

I did a lot of samples to see if the bees are making holes bigger. Once the bees discover the holes, that's kind of the point. I just use a straight pin to poke the holes in it. And you can feed a really light sugar syrup in there. And I think it's a great way to go. And they're cheap. And you make them up. And you can even set them on the bottom.

If you've got clearance, if you've got a sham on the bottom of your hive, if you've got a long Langstroth hive, for example, you can set the Ziploc baggies right inside the hive on the bottom and the bees can access it. And it's just great. They take it right down to almost nothing. You open up your hive, you find an empty bag, and they are reusable. So there's that too. That's why I wanted to see if they were going to make the holes bigger when they were poking their proboscis in there. And I tested it also on outside bench. because yellow jackets and other things came to it.

And guess what? They couldn't access the syrup. So if you're open feeding and you only want honeybees to get their tongues in there, bumblebees can do it too. If you only want honeybees to have the access to it, poking holes in a Ziploc baggie is a great open feeding method also. So there you have it. And what happens if you feel it more than half of its capacity,

it does start to ooze out until it kind of levels off. So that's why we don't do that. So I hope that that was a good answer. The other thing is, so somebody else, Nate says I've used gallon bags a lot. Two holes also works very well. So what I'm getting out of Nate is 100% endorsement over what I've just shared with you. So it's good. All right.

So if you have a question, type it in all caps. I'll take a look. Okay. So this one comes from Ice Sancho. 46. It says, glad to see so many signs of life. And this is over the recent video we did where we did thermal scans and all of the different beehives that were in my AP area while it was freezing out there. And we just wanted to see how things are going. And we had a lot of really good surprises, by the way. So very encouraging here in Northeast Indiana. What Fleer would you recommend?

I see there are several. I have a Samsung Galaxy. And I see some are specific to iPhone. Thank you. Lori. Okay, so here's the thing. And the FLIR cameras. I have a new thermal camera coming tomorrow that I was hoping it would be here today. But for some reason, like when the roads are closed and the schools are closed and things like that, they have problems getting deliveries here. But there's another Fleer. It's not made by Fleer. So that's the other thing. It's also less expensive. Has high resolution. Has a macro magnetic lens that goes on it so I can get right up to the honeybees and I'm going to be able to measure the temperature the thorax when they're warming up before they fly and things like that.

But of the existing gear that I've already tested, you almost need to have fat stags to buy some of this stuff. There's a super cheap thermal camera that came out, the name I don't know right now, but they try to make comparisons with the Fleer C8, but it's only like a $200 camera. And I'm going to mess this up. It exterpolates or what it does is it artificially creates a larger image and enhances something from a very small sensor. Don't fall for it. If you have fat stacks, the C8 standalone camera handles all weather conditions.

It goes in your pocket, high resolution, will record videos and stills and does very good thermal stuff. I don't own one. They're too expensive. I have the C2, which is still functioning, but it's low resolution. as you saw if you looked at that video. And there is the Fleer 1 Pro, which comes for an iPhone or for Android. So like the Galaxy, the Samsung here. Plugs right into the Samsung.

It's fantastic because it uses your camera also and can video record onto your phone. So your photos, your images, your video sequences all go right under the phone. What do I hate about it? Well, the fact that if I go out there and it's under 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which is why I'm out there in the first place, it shuts down on me. I get maybe four minutes before it just congs out. So you look at the literature, it's not false advertisement because right in the specs, it says below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which is zero Celsius.

If you go outside with it, it will shut down. But it also, when you look at the parameters on these thermal cameras, it'll say stuff like, you know, it goes to 670 degrees. and you know 20 below zero. Yeah, that's what it will read, not what the camera itself can be exposed to. So you have to pay attention to that stuff, but if you have fat stacks, you got the C8, that thing will handle all of it. But the Fleer 1 Pro, very good camera. So if you're in an area where you don't have to get out there in the freezing cold, you're not trying to find your lost cat in wintertime. It would be just fine. So you can also find mice and stuff, even through their, like the little nests they make in barns and garages and

and stuff. You can see the colder it is outside, the easier it is to find them. They insulate themselves with a whole bunch of grass and stuff, but it still shows just enough thermal exchange that you'll see that something's living there. So the Fleer 1 Pro is my top recommendation right now, money, and then of course the quality of the image, thermal, and otherwise because it takes a physical image and it takes the thermal image, it overlays them so that you see the outlines of whatever it is as well as the thermal reading. So it's really good. That would be the one.

If they still made the C2, I'd recommend that. By the way, the thing is still kicking. And what else do we have here? Gregory says, are you trying the Honey Haven Hive heater on any of your hives this year? I have one and my hive in the SoCal Mountains, 6,000 central feet, working well. But so far, we get cold, we get a lot of sunshine too. Okay, so here's the thing. If you don't know what the hive heater is, it's also called the hive dryer.

I have two of them. I'm a huge frustration for the innovator that came up with that because they sent it to me at the end of November, and it's already too cold, so I didn't put it on any of my hives. you need one sunny day, according to the inventor, one sunny day per month, to dry out the hive. So if you're wondering what the hooey we're talking about, it is a enclosed system like a plenum that has a glass front. So imagine a two inch square that goes around that sits on top of your second to the top box in your hive. So you would have your top honey super sitting above it. It has a panel that hangs over the side.

That panel needs to be facing south or south by southeast so that when you do get winter sun, it hits this painted aluminum panel. So it's painted black, so it gets maximum thermal. And then it's sandwiched in between plexiglass. The cold air comes up through the bottom of it, and the hot air pushes into your hive, increases the pressure inside the hive because it has expanded warm air up there, which pushes colder, denser air down below and out the entrance. So it dries and warms the hive.

But then whenever equilibrium occurs and it's the same temperature outside as inside, there's no more thermal exchange because it happens at the bottom. And so in theory, it's very interesting. They've got over 800 of those units out functioning well. I just let them down because, you know, I didn't get it out there soon enough because it arrived too late. I'm definitely not going out. but I'm going to look forward to doing it next year.

The other thing is you have to pull it off your hive when things warm up. So I have not, but thanks for asking. Jessica Review 613. You have any connections to Pugsatani Phil for an early spring versus six more weeks of this miserable winter weather. So if you don't know, if you're not in the United States, for example, Huxetani Phil is a whistle pig, a groundhog, a woodchuck, and he lives right here in the state of Pennsylvania. And what do they do? On one day a year, which just happens to be this coming Monday, we have Groundhog Day.

And a bunch of interesting people dress up in tails and tuxedos and top hats, and they pull Phil out. And I think he comes willingly, but he obviously can't get away. They're holding on to him. And then they set him out and they look to see if he sees his shadow. If he sees his shadow, then we have an extended winter. If he does not see his shadow, we have, you know, an early spring. Paxatunty Phil, if my memory serves, is accurate about 33% of the time. So it's nostalgic and fun to do, but you're better off with a coin toss

than you are listening to or looking at a whistle pig that wants to see a shadow or not. So that's right here in Pennsylvania. So I hope I covered that ground well. And so we know about the Fleer systems. And I'm going to be testing out, then it's not a Fleer. It's a cheaper model, but the specs are better. And it goes in your phone. And so if you want to see that, I'm definitely going to do a video about it.

Because even though I like the one that I carry around in my pocket, it only takes stills. I want videos. I'm making a rig just so I can video the thing doing the video. So it should be fun. Now Nate says Pennsylvania logic. Okay, watch out, Nate. Pennsylvania, Keystone State. Nobody goes northeast without passing through us.

So watch yourself. Okay, so Jane says, Jane Baker 4058, is it okay to set up a beehive near a blooming tree? Will this cause robbing? Thank you for all you do. This is my favorite part of the comment. You're the best. Thank you, Jane.

So anyway, oh, it's Jana. I'm sorry, I said, Jane, it's Jenna. So is it a bad idea to put it near a blooming tree? No, definitely put it near a blooming tree. I think that's fine because it does not necessarily encourage robbing, and here's why. When the tree's blooming and these foragers come to it, they're getting resources from that. So there's no, they won't like reroute to your hive because during the bloom is also during a nectar flow, which means your bees, the robbing potential is actually pretty low. So having it near a nectar source, I don't think is a problem at all.

Now, while we're talking about nectar sources and the position of your hives, if you have, as we do here in Northwest PA, we have prevailing western winds. So they come out of the west and they blow to the east. So when there is an extensive or predictable or almost continuous nectar resource, and we know where that's going to be, You're way ahead if you can put your beehives just downwind of that resource. Number one, they smell the flowers that it's coming from early, and so they go after it.

The other thing is they're flying to it, empty, light. They're collecting their nectar resources and the pollen, which can add to their body weight up to, according to those who weigh bees. 90% of their original body weight, 30% in pollen, 60% in nectar. And so when they're coming back, they're heavy. So we're helping them with a tailwind, so to speak, coming back. So if you can plan the position of your apiary or if you're putting things out for pollination and nectar and things like that, downwind helps them in many ways. So I just thought I would toss that in there. But yeah, you can put them right there.

Kristy Ann Mitchell says, tempter environmental signs do you look for to start supering? Okay, that is a great question from Christy Ann Mitchell. Now, here's a thing. Temps or environmental signs. What do you think trumps it? It's the environmental signs for sure. Temps play, of course, when your bees can forage or can't forage. It definitely has an impact on your bees, days, and opportunities to forage. But here where I am, when the dandelions really bloom, that's the nectar flows full on. trees, of course, bloom and provide resources before that. And so once your bees have a high quality nectar resource in particular, they go for pollen, also, of course. But if they're going for nectar, specifically the high sugar content nectar, they will fly out in very cold temps to get to that once they know it's there.

Now, here's the other thing. A lot of these blossoms close at night, close when it's cold, close when it rains, and reopen. when it's not raining, when the sun is shining, and when the temperatures cooperate. So that makes sense from an energy conservation perspective on the part of the plant. Why would they waste their time opening and producing nectar, which can dry out, when the pollinators are not yet flying and accessing it? So it's the flowers and the nectar and the pollen resources that definitely dictate when look for start supering.

You have to already have your super's on when the dandelions. I mean, you don't have to. I'm not trying to bully you or anything. But I do know this. They get off guard every time a field of, I don't mean three dandelions. I mean a field of dandelions. And they just, they swarm and they bring in nectar and pollen all at once.

They do it all to you at the same time. So that's where that comes from. But environmental signs over time. Absolutely. Temperatures all over the place. We don't even know what's going on. I'm studying ornithology right now. I know you wanted to know that. One of the things that's messing up the birds is the birds timed they're nesting and raising of young with the insects that are coming out and the insects often are timed with the plants and temperatures and things like that. So with the birds doing things seasonally that don't match this shift in weather patterns, They don't have the resources that they need as far as eating insects and stuff like that. It's kind of interesting.

David Miller, I'm on the fence. What is it about APA that you would consider makes them worth fat stacks? So, Appame, that's hard, man, because let me tell you, Appame is expensive stuff. I think it's $80 for the top feeder in the lid. How do I justify that? and I buy it. By the way, I could call up Hohan and say,

hey, I want to review your stuff, send it to me. They sent me one early on. All the rest of them, I bought myself. They also have a discount. I found out, if you mention me, if you go there, I don't get paid anything, but it gets you a discount. I heard it was like 15 bucks. Anyway, this is how I look at the Alpamahe Hives,

backyard beekeeper. So I don't have to worry about buying 400 of them. That would be a big deal. if I were some kind of sideline or a commercial guy, which I am not. We're at four to three colonies. I'm good. They're going to last the rest of my life. When you get to the age that I am and I'm over 30,

I'm looking at a lot of equipment out there that is going to outlast me already. So what I see from the Appamehive build is that it's durable. It's weather tough. It's critter resistant. I don't have to worry about I do strap them down. but you know the way they clip to one another and that new bottom board they have which i saw the north american honeybee expo has its own clamp too so now you can swap out bottom boards and they clamp together nothing's getting into it a tree fell on one and didn't smash it uh not me that was

somebody else that happened to those things are tough now i've asked them over and over how long will they last because it is plastic it sits in the sun well i guess they're i'm going to mess this up they're in Arizona or New Mexico or something and they've had them out in that environment. I don't know of anyone who's complained yet that one has degraded to the point that it's not usable. So we don't know how long it's going to go, but I think that's the justification. Insulated, versatility, great functional gear. We're going to talk later today if I ever get to it about their entrances because

when it comes time to clean the entrances out oh look i just haven't have this here they have these little mouse cards on the entrances i don't like them just to be honest i like you know i like the people that invented stuff if i don't like something it doesn't mean i don't like the people i do i want that entrance redesigned because we have these little holes so you go out there you want to clean the bees out of it so i take a vacuum and suck the bees that are at the entrance get them out of there but then all we're doing is poking them with round stock so i'm pushing it in there. So the bees are getting ventilated. And now this is what I told my wife also, because she was all up in my grill about the fact that those Apamahe hives, we can't get into them.

They have upper entrances. So if we had a warm up and it was clear that there's bees and they're trying to get out and you just can't clean them, you would open one of the little dials up above and let them use that access for now. But we have to remove the screws on the front so that we can just lift up those entrances, which are, again, it's a multi-perper. purpose entrance that slides different ways you can open one side of the other close one side you can close all thing up vent it ship it move it around all this great stuff but i want to be able to get my clean out tool in there and so that's the one thing if you could help me lean on them about getting a three eighth inch opening a little slider that comes out you know but leaves a

three eight inch opening we can clean out the dead bees mice still can't get in it functions as a mouse card and we'd be all set So I think they are, they're expensive, but it's going to last a long time. And they're working on compatibility. It's compatible as your woodenware too. So there's not a lot to hate about it. And they're making changes for the better based on input from people just like us. So I think that's great.

Oh, this is Rainey Acres 6523. Fred, how do we know the bees don't stuff the entrance with dead bees to help regulate temperatures? Has it been studied? I don't have to study it, and I'll tell you why. When I poke the bees out of the way, the bees are flying out right away. They wanted to get out of there. Now, it's well known that bees definitely use bees to block airways and control airflow. They can absolutely do that.

As far as dragging bees over and using dead bee bodies up against the entrance as an insulation material, I don't have any evidence that says that they would do that. So there are Undertaker bees that are in there that are not outside doing cleansing flights and things like that, but they are dragging dead bees to the front and leaving them there. Now, let's think about that behavior inside a hive that we don't manage. Let's talk about buildings that they move into and trees. that they live in, they would not intentionally let dead bees fill up and block the entrance if they could help it. They need live bees that are animated, workable, movable, and they definitely

do. They block areas. They can fill an entrance. They can prevent egress. They can do all kinds of stuff with living bees. But I don't buy that they would be piling dead bees as a tool that they would later have to physically get out of the way just so they can fly out. And again, the reason that I think they're not doing it intentionally is when I do clear it out, they come out right away. So even cleansing flights on cold days, I was out, we had a crew here from a TV station, and I cannot believe that when we demonstrated that and showed them the dead bees, that bees flew out right away into the cold. So they were just needing to do cleansing flights, and they couldn't do it.

So here's my take, because I like to fail safe on these things. please clean out those entrances, clear the dead bees on the bottom of the hive. If they need to use bees to block it for airflow restriction themselves, there will be living bees down there that will do that. So that's kind of my point, counterpoint on that. Dead bees, let's get them out of the way. On the bottom of the hive in a tree, it's rare that the entrance is all the way at the bottom. So they have an area that detritus and stuff can build up.

And then as soon as the first order of business is cleansing flights, then they get water, then they go for resources. Their last order of business is housekeeping, dragging out the dead bees. So they kind of do what is essential for survival. And the dead bees are also a source of moisture, source of bacteria. So I can't imagine that bees intentionally want to keep dead bees around. If they could, they'd just get them out. So let's see we're here with David and he says,

which of these frames would you spend your money on if you had limited funds Better come 21st B or Premier. Those aren't those don't even don't match up. So that's almost not a fair question. So let's think about it. Which of these hives are you spend your frames, you spend your money on if you had, limited funds, better comb, 21st B or Premiere.

We'll see now Premier, by the way, is a foundation. So it goes in wooden frames. And if you had limited funds, that would pretty much be it because it's a waxed foundation. That's what you need as a minimum. 21st B is the Cadillac of frames. 21st B is a heavy, indestructible frame. it's going to cost you more.

And it has a high temperature tolerance, which I'm really excited about, because when it comes time to clean things up with steam and stuff like that, that's very good. But if you had limited funds, you know, and again, I like the people at 21st B,

but that's the Cadillac of Frames. So now we're down to economy and function, and I'm going to have to, based on this list alone, you missed Acorn. I would throw Acorn in there and when it comes to funds, function, you can get a full frame. Acorn is a pretty good bet, too.

So it would be a toss-up between Premier and Acorn and Premier Foundation wood frames. Acorn gives you foundation or a complete frame. And those are very good, heavy wax, get the double wax. And when it comes to Better Combs, see, that's an entirely different thing. Better comb is synthesized beeswax with already drawn cells, and you have to either install it yourself in a wooden frame. And you're talking, if you get it from them already installed in the frame, I think they're up to $10 a frame.

So that is something that we use at the end of the year. If we have a late season of swarm that we're trying to resuscitate and we want to help them really get going, we start feeding them with light sugar syrup so they can draw their own comb. but in the meantime, we want the queen to start laying right away. And Bettercombe is something that we've put in there. I've used that for years. I have it in, it's an emergency reserve because I consider that then also a premium material.

And the bees work that just like other honeycomb. But these are very different things. So for the person that's listening and those of you who are watching right now, best bang for your buck is going to be between ACORN and Premier. heavy waxed that's it all right let's see now we have gg here curious on the app i may gji i thought you were in a meeting you said you couldn't make it here but we'll take your question anyway curious on the app of may with the holes at the i'm going to think that was entrance large enough for drones to get out i left my upper

entrance is open so the drones can get out yes drones can get out of those so to answer jiji's question man you know what i should even have one of those sitting right here but um yeah the little mouse guards on those are big enough for drones queens too by the way so queen flights can be done drones can get in and out uh let's go again somebody early on mentioned my shirt i think you're talking about this shirt right here yes and yes that is you can there's a link in the video description to go to my store to get that and you can get it on a t-shirt or a sweatshirt these were really popular at the North American Honeybee Expo I was really excited to see people wearing them but yes on my website too there's a page

and you can go there if you want one the whole so we did that whoa Do you use specific varroa mite treatments depending on the time of year, i.e. spring, summer, fall. Why, if you do use certain treatments based on the time of year? Thank you. And this is Lori. All right. You may not like my answers. So keep in mind that I am trying to keep my bee management as organic and holistic as possible. I follow the genetics of my bees. And I've never gone, I've wasted a lot of money on other treatments. So when I have a colony that requires treatment that has varodistructor mites in abundance, and I know I need to do an intervention, it's axelic acid vaporization.

And this year, I did. I bought the stuff from BetterB, the new dribble, the RTU ready to use avioboxyl. stuff right after I did the interview with Dr. Peck, I went over there and loitered around a little bit to see if they would just, you know, maybe give me one, but they didn't. And then I did the thing where I pretended I was going to buy it and they just took my money like I was a regular customer and they sold it to me. So that's my new backup, by the way. So if I don't get things under control with brood breaks, axelic acid, vaporization, or in this case now, we're going to go to dribble. I was looking into the extended release sponges that Easy OX had that we talked about.

They're supposed to be coming out in May. That's on hold. Sad news right there. I really wanted to use as extended release exhalic acid sponges. Super promising. So the dribble, ready to use. Now, here's a thing, and I buy Formic Pro. And I, like, there's a whole box of Formic Pro right there.

I never end up using it. I buy a lot of other stuff because they're my backups. If I'm starting to lose control, the varroa mites and things are out of control, then I'll go to my next level and I'll hit them with Formic Pro or something like that that kills them underneath the caps and the whole nine yards. I've never had to go that far. So, like, salic acid vaporization and brood rage. and bees that hate mites are my leading weapons.

So, haven't had to go any farther than that. Bill Robinson, glad to see you, Bill, and thanks. He's talking about my shirt. By the way, I rendered this myself, and that is available. So I'm glad people like it. So reducing environmental over mites using other products like SuperDafm. Okay, now SuperDFM, this is Sawmill Charlie. So when we're talking about SuperDFM, that's strong microbials,

and we're talking about direct-fed microbials. So this is a big part of it. So stay with me, don't unsubscribe. We talk about bee health, overall forage diversity, genetics, everything else. The bees, when we're paying attention to the stock, that has low mite loads on their own. Those are the ones I want to reproduce from. those are the ones that I keep their drones by the way I let them produce their drones and off they go

if I have stock that has a more difficult time with the varro destructor mites and there are a number of mites in there and they require a lot of treatment then I use their drones as part of my varroa mite control and I don't want those genetics out there anyway so I realize this is tiny it has like no impact in the big picture with bee genetics but if I could get beekeepers to get along and in concert with one another in a region, if we all did just that and stuck with our survivor stock every spring, we would be way ahead. But we can't get everybody together.

People want to buy their bees and bring them in and start all over every year and end up treating everything. So that's it, the viral load, the mites, products, SuperDafm. SuperDafm helps to keep my bees healthy, which means they can fight off. Aside from just the, see, why do we hate varomites anyway? Suburdy FM, direct fed microbials, supposed to boost your immune system,

your gut health and everything else. But you know what? If you're not sick, it's like with people, people that take these huge vitamin supplements all the time. That's great, and they would work if you were sick. If you're not sick and deficient in some way, that's almost money wasted. I like the people that strong microbials.

It's great research and stuff. So the other thing is they can help you deal with pesticide loads that your bees are going to be exposed to during their forging trips. So they can now break that down and make it less impactful on your bees, but you have to know what pesticides are in use where you're living in order to get the right DFM to help your bees. So if they don't need it, and it's not something that they're facing and challenged by, it's kind of wasted.

And if you do need it, very effective. So healthy bees handle themselves, but one of the problems is the varomites are carrying, they're vectoring diseases, pathogens. And so we have to get rid of the mite because it's the vehicle for the pathogens to get to your bees. But did you know that not all mites are carrying the same pathogens? So it's another level. Not every mite is the same.

So they're feeding on the fat bodies of our bees and they're spreading disease, but on different levels. So healthier bees can cope with that disease better. That's why we have these varroa tolerant bees. They're not getting rid of them completely, but they're thriving, even with bro-destructor mites present. So you have to kind of look at the big picture all the time. I realize for the backyard beekeeper, this seems cumbersome. This is a big mess. They don't want to do that. They just want their bees to be happy and healthy and just treat for the mites. And you can do that. That's fine. but I try to be aware because I like to, I'm focused on mites right now.

I've had pet mites. I like to see what they can take, what they can't, and I like to pay attention. Somebody else wrote here, I'll mention this, what's a brood break? So a brood break is just that. It's a break in brooding.

Now, this happens naturally in the wintertime. For example, right now I suspect that a lot of people still don't have new brood in their hives. I think that the bees are really in survival mode. They're in a deep state of torpor, and they may not brood up the way they normally do. When you have a brood break or low production of new bees in the hive, so that means your queen is not laying a bunch of eggs.

The stimulus for her to lay eggs is good nutrition coming through the entrance of the hive. You can boost that also artificially by putting proteins inside the hive that have been proven to benefit or encourage production. When you have a brood break and there's low reduction, you have more access to the mites, which means a soft acid, as soon as you say acid, put acid inside a hive. People get very upset about that. It's exhalic acid. It is not burning up your bees.

It isn't. Mites can't handle it and they die. So it needs to get on the mite. So when we don't have brood under cappings, we have access to the mites. They're in the dispersal phase, and oxalic acid vapor wipes them out. I probably should add something to that right now. I don't know if you get the American Bee Journal, but the February edition is out. February 2006, Randy Oliver, scientific beekeeping just put out his two cents on the

exhalic acid vapor temperature impact on how much of the exhalic acid is getting on the hives, on the bees, which means it'll also get on the mice, which means it kills. mites. I'm going to mention that right now. It's 230 degrees Celsius or 446 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have an instant vapor or something that you can modify the temperature with that had far higher efficacy. So I'm going to leave that there. That's really good. Let's make sure I'm going to back up here. Man, I hope I've answered that question. That's what a brood break is. And you can force it too just by removing the queen or putting the queen. And we earlier on mentioned resource hives and nucleus hives. You can pull a frame of brood, just one frame of brood,

one frame of cap, honey, and resources, put your queen with them in a nucleus hive and set up until you get all of the bees that are in the hive that they left. They're all open. They're all emerged. And then you can treat them with exhalic acid vapor. Then you can bring the queen back to a varroa free hive. That's oversimplified, but that's pretty much what it is. And so let's see, D.G. Ollinger is the Nova Terra for the Aposolus smoker worth spending money on? Is it effective enough for more aggressive bees? I cannot find many reviews on it. So now we're talking about, man, where is that thing? Apisalis is that vaping system. One of the criticisms that came out early on is the formula that had for

vaping your bees, it was good for bees that are kind of almost already passive anyway. I had very good luck with that. They came out with another version. In fact, it was early this year that they came out with that and that came available. And it was supposed to be as potent as smoke. And then we have to talk about which smoke, because smokers have different fuels, different fuels have different responses from the bees. And I'm going to highly recommend if you want to burn fuel in your smoker, use switchgrass

pallets in your smoker. Dense smoke bees react. Great. Now, for those that can't be around smoke, and there's a lot of them, you have respiratory challenges. The Apisalis new formula did get a response from the bees, which was the same as smoking them. So even if you had the little hot bees that were giving you a tough time, you could push them back.

You could get the guard bees that were staring you down, ready to go. You could back them off with that new formula. and it does not irritate our lungs. It doesn't make you cough. You don't come home smelling like smoke. I think it's worth it. It lasts a very long time. You turn it on, you use it, you turn it off, you put it away, you go home.

I didn't even feel, keep in mind back here to beekeeping, and I used it on all of my inspections for the whole, after that new formula came out, that is all I used in place of a smoker here on my property. So for last year, it worked perfectly for all of my inspections. I included it in the videos that I did. Just so you can see how they react to it. Clears the bees off the edges of the boxes and stuff for me. And the good news about this, Apisolus, by the way,

A-P-I-S-O-L-I-S. Good news about it is you're not contaminating your honey with smoke particulates. Smoke particulates are the number one contaminant found in honey. you're not smelling up your clothes and you're not challenging your respiratory system it's kind of an easy uh call on that so the other thing is there are areas where uh lighting a smoker is banned we had fire concerns so you could not light even a smoker and there are there's just a handful of beekeepers but it's happened enough that they made it into the local news when their pickup truck catches fire on their way home from the bee yard and things like that so it eliminates all of that and it is

as effective, but it doesn't put your bees in the same response for the extended period of time that smoke does. So it's a very strong case for the Aposolus new formula. So that's all I can say about that. That's all I know. It did work. Next one is Flower Street Farm Bees. Besides selling nukes, what strategies can a beekeeper use to keep their apiary from growing beyond what they want. We'll see that is a wide open question. What do they want? Bekeb is used to keep their apiary from growing beyond what they want. You can join hives for heroes. This is going to be a plug for them and donate surplus bees, make them come and get them. And then that's what I did. This past year, I gave away a whole bunch of beehives. And that's how I kept things down, because I have too many

colonies now. When I'm done with them, I like to give them away, and I pick those mentees that I have and give them my equipment. So I think that's a great way to go. So find people that are trying to get into bees can't afford stock, can't afford the equipment, but they're earnest about the desire to manage bees, learn about them. I would say pay it forward if you're expanding and you're trying to get things and keep things under control down to a certain number. That's well worth it, I think. So that's just one way to do it. The other thing is you can combine colonies.

You can just do a lot of stuff just to keep them down. So that's it. You don't have to sell everything. Give stuff away. People will remember you forever if you are the reason they started beekeeping. And if you really gave them a leg up. Did I get to see this is from comment? Is did you get to see the tech bee smoker at the North American Honeybee Expo?

No, I did not. The Honeybee Expo was a big problem for me. There were 100 and I don't know how many vendors there are. I think I talked to 15. So some people were not happy with me because I made the mistake of telling people that I would come by and see them. They were on my list. That was one of the ones I wanted to go and visit, see what's up, see what's going on. I heard that they were working on their own formula or they were even using Apisalis formula.

I did not get to talk to them, didn't get to see it. And so that's one of the many that I just didn't get to. So I have no comments good or bad about those. Let's see what else. If it's for me, remember all caps. I'm just going to let's see. Okay, so this is from Keith Spelman. with all the cold weather, talk about torpor a bit. Describe a cluster with brood versus no brood. Does the queen go into a state of torpor? You know what? That's a great question. So how do we know when they're in torpor, by the way? And their activity basically comes to a stop. It seems that way. But in the center of the winter cluster, what they call the mantles, the outer cluster, those.

usually are older bees leftover foragers. Those are the expendables. We have fat-bodied winter bees that are nurse bees that are, they're already, their metabolism is set for them to be sustained through winter as long as they're sheltered in a cluster. Torpor is not like carbonation, for example, because they're still functioning. They're still moving around. They're still doing things. They're just doing it at a much reduced rate. Now, the brood, as they go to the end, because remember, bees are conservationists, the brood break here, the real brood break. And how do we even know that they're doing that unless we pull them apart? We know it through thermals.

Okay. So, and there are things like, and it's going to pull this up, this is a brood minder, this lets you know the temperature. This thing is thin. This can sit right on top of your brood area inside your hive. It's got a little battery. and you can read this with your phone. When they are broodless, they don't need to keep brood temperature.

So what is brood temperature? Well, that is regardless of what's going on outside, 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit. So 95 is the middle zone. So when you get into the brood area, if they're brooding up, they also heat up more. That's when you'll see that 94 to 97. The absence of brood, there's no brood to present.

There's no eggs. There's no open larvae. There's no pupa. Then it can drop into the 80s. So when you see that, whoa, broodless, especially if you've got pre, if you've got a series of temperature readings, days and weeks ahead of time, you'll see this dip in temperature, and you'll see that the brood gets very small. And that's the time, of course, when we have access again to the varroa destructor mites. But then you'll see it build up. So February, we're coming into February next week. Historically, February is when we start to see the temperatures rising. So we will start to see brood increase. And you might be thinking, whoa, what are they doing that for when they don't have new resources coming in? Well, by the end of the month, they actually will have new resources. This is the jeopardy that your bees put themselves in. They start to use up those resources that they have stored in their bodies. They start to use up the leftover bee bread that's in the hive, and they're using up the carbohydrates.

Do you want to know if your hive is in trouble just by looking at the landing board on a Nice warm day when they begin to fly and can do cleansing flights. If you see a whole bunch of bits and pieces of pollen, and it's definitely pollen because you can rub it with your finger right on the landing board. And what that means is they are just trying to get the carbohydrates out of that. They're trying to get the nectar out of it. And they're just dispensing with it. Those are starving bees.

So they're not brooding up because they're starving. If the bees themselves are starving, they can't afford to take care of baby bees. So the temperatures, the size of that, we start to see their numbers increase. That's why when you get late February, you start to get a warm up or a nice clear day when the bees can actually fly and you see what sounds like it's warm, but it's really cleansing flights. It's their first chance to be out. And so if they're doing cleansing flights, then you've got bees that have already been in development for four weeks.

So you've got bees that are out and emerged for that long. The other thing is when you start to see drones, you know that you have to go back 24 days. This is why keeping logs is so important. When you see drones on your landing boards, you know that 24 days before that, probably longer, they were laying those drone eggs. So that's a strong colony unless it's gone the other way, which is rare in spring. Queenless colonies tend to die this time of year. those that have queens are going to be producing drones in spring, but that also means the colony had the resources to do that.

I hope that makes sense. So temperature is really what shows us while they're interoper, whether they're brooding up or whether you may have lost your queen altogether. Now, in a ditch effort, and you find a tiny wad of bees in spring, and they're all drones. Well, we know that they lost their queen, and they ended up turning into laying workers, and they couldn't even sustain themselves.

They were just trying to ditch effort, save their genetics. And that was a Hail Mary, and they just died out. But Torpor is a state of conservation, so that the bees can minimize movement and maintain the life of the superorganism, which is that colony of bees altogether. What else we have here? Kilinus Kyle Nis 3685 says

Hi Fred, do you have plans to add another horizontal hive lands or Langstroth to your apiary Why or why not? Yes, definitely going to add more horizontal hives And I'll be building the new Long Langstroth for sure out of redwood Because it just came into some redwood

And I'm going to use it And it's going to last forever. The other thing is And this will surprise a lot of people people, the top bar hive, the be mindful hive, that thing is a surprise package. And if they continue to do, even if they, you know, they've made it this far on their own without installation or anything, and I'm very impressed it was a late season startup. I'll be adding another be mindful topar hive also. That is the most inexpensive way intro to beekeeping that you can imagine.

No, frames, top bars only. someone with basic carpentry skills can build one. So I'm adding that. The lay-ins hides, I have two. I'm going to keep those. Just let them continue doing what they're doing. I don't have any plans to expand the lay-ins, but long length-roth for sure, top bars, for sure.

User-friendly, easy. Great way to teach kids, by the way. If you want a high reward for little kids that want to pick up frames and stuff, getting them into a top bar, for example, just because they have to be very careful. They can't damage the comb and things like that. I think it's a great small investment on the part of materials

and great investment in beekeeping if you're trying to teach kids that annual rhythm. So that's it. And the long langs are, they're just fun. It's just a lot of fun to get into a hive like that. It facilitates teaching, learning. You know, it's like going up to a, a buffet and just pulling frames.

It's very easy. Instead of adding boxes, we add frames, we move a follower board. They're not good for people that want to move their hives around to different places. So there are people that have top of our hives that have hundreds of them that move them around for pollination services. That's not what I do. So I can set up a hive that is super heavy, super robust, because I don't have to move it anymore. Once they're set, they're set.

So long hives are just great. Aaron Shelton 2454, Fred, where do you suggest makes the best observation hive? Your own wood shop. Okay. All kidding aside for Aaron here. The observation hives that I want, that I build, the person that built the best one for me is not building hives anymore. and their company was horizontal bees.com. I sketched out a hive that I wanted that had all my dream features,

and he built it for me, and I have one of them. So my plan is to put the plans on my website. So I have a page that smart plans of prints. There are PDFs, downloadable. Ross Millard finalized those for me, so I do the technical drawing, and he formalizes them through a CAD system and make them available to people that want to.

to build their own stuff. So that's my plan to put plans out. And then you have to have somebody build it. Now, so then we could go to, if you knew what you wanted, but you don't have the skills or the resources to build it yourself, who would I send you to? I would send you to Bearsville Bees, B-E-R-S-V-I-L-E-B's.com. He builds to spec. In other words, when you get a long, Langstroth from them. They were doing lay-ins before. They were focusing more on Langstrass because a lot of people are asking for them. He builds insulated hives. If you wanted an observation hive and you knew the specs that you wanted them built too, but you didn't want to do it yourself, it would be somebody like him that I would go to.

It was a cabinet maker. He has very tight tolerances in the work that he does. And they source her own wood and everything else. So very good stuff. The reason I don't find what I want in observation hives is because very few, if anybody, is building them in triples. And by that I mean, your frames need to be in triples. And I've heard all the arguments, and I reject them out of the box. Because there are people that say, if you put three frames in an observation hive, you don't get to see what's going on. Well, guess what? Every one of my observation hives is in triples, and they're in stacks of triples.

And eventually you're going to see brood. Eventually you're going to see the queen laying. And I have multiple hives. I don't need to see everything they're going to do. I will trade off seeing what they're going to do in exchange for a healthier colony of bees that can survive cold weather in a building that's not heated. That's what I have right now. So having them in triples and the ability to go four levels high.

So triples, four levels, all Langstroth deeps. what I would like to add is the ability to compartmentalize those off. So when you're starting with a swarm and spring, I only want to put them in and have them work these six bottom frames. So then I would be able to close off the next levels up. And then as they say, fill those frames, they will pull that out and then they can go to the third level and then ultimately the fourth level and the top of the hive.

And you only have to do that through the first year. after they're settled and all the combs drawn out, then you can give them full access to the whole thing, and it's my favorite way to keep bees. If you ever need to access your bees, it's not great at all. But as far as the teaching tool, being in the company of bees, being able to look in on your bees at any time, the other thing is the woodwork all the way around it

is almost three inches thick, so no insulation necessary, which is why I can handle that. The glass panels are your heat loss areas, and this year I built double bubble panels that stick to the front of the glass, and then it's insulated over the top of that, and over top of that, I have a hot pocket, which is like a double bubble pillowcase that goes over that. And that works great.

So don't go looking for those drawings right away. I have a lot of other things on my list, but that's there. and I've handed off, I gave my drawings to Beersville Peace. You should, if you want one, reach out to them, ask them about the prints that I provided at the North American HoneyBXO. I drew them out for them and gave them to them my dream observation hide because I think they were setting one up for a public building somewhere. That's the one.

He already has the prince. Go there, tell them I sent you. Get the discount. probably isn't one, but you'll pay the same, at least as everybody else. You won't feel you've got any special perks out of it. Because I know my friends are modest and don't want to be given concessions. Let's go to Glenn Perkins for it. I'm going to set up.

Oh, that's the same one. Sorry, Glenn. I just answered that. And I got $9.99 from Mara Braski. Thank you. Always very generous, by the way. Every time I see him, he's giving away money to people. And I'm not proud.

I'll take it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. Oh, here's something that just had an idea I wanted to throw out there, talk to some of you about. I know we're on overtime, but this is worth it. We're talking about mice, getting into your hives. And so I've been, I hope you know this already, I get obsessive about knowing what mammals can do. And that means I reach out to small mammal biologists. I interview them and I set out cameras everywhere. I want to see what the deer mice can do. do. Deer mice, house mice, shrews, all of it. I need to see them. I need to see what's up. Sometimes, because I get called out on this all the time, that three-eighths-inch entrance reducer, okay, three-eighths-of-an-inch entrance reducer. That keeps mice out, but then somebody

will raise their hand and go, yeah, I have a mice, chew through that overnight. No, they don't. First of all, they're outside. The beehives are outside. It's wintertime. They have cameras on and they're not camera shy. So what I do and what you should do to? Question everything. I think it's the best.

So we put out a bunch of cameras. Get really obnoxious about it. Wherever you see the slightest chew on the entrance reducer of a hive, anything that's chewing on it, set up a camera, see what's going on. Motion activated cameras. Gerimouse shows up. They'll eat dead mice, not dead mice. They'll eat dead bees.

on the landing board. That's fine. I don't care. We had, and this is last year. So what is important is that you continue to make your observations, continue to make your studies. So one of the things we were thinking about is, how long does it take amounts to chew through that entrance reducer? Well, all winter long, for starters. And then you know when they finally get in, but they've worked on it all winter to get there, and that's fine. So listen to this. How can your entrance reducers are made out of pine because it came that way they came with the bottom board i want you to make your own and listen to this because i have some red oak so i looked up some stuff on red oak because i thought why don't we just make our insurance reduces out of tougher material like maple oak walnut they're insurance

reducers you can put those on any hive three eighths of an inch three inches wide that's the opening so even pine let's stay with that first it took them all winter to ultimately get gain access. And what did that help them? It didn't because what happened when it warms up? When it worms up, they come out of torpor, they break cluster and they sting the mice and the mice don't want to be in there. So it works. They don't get through it. But let's say let's fail safe. Let's say you're in a warmer climate. Let's say the mice have more time to sit because while they're chewing, they're letting owls and stuff know that they're there. They're basically saying come and eat me. So, but what if you, I have red oak and I looked up some stuff. Did you know

there are all kinds of specs on material density. Red oak is 3.4 times harder than white pine. Red oak has much more dense interlocking grain than white pine. So here's the thing. We even slow them down. It might take them years. And that means they have to, first of all, want to get into that hive. And the deer mouse doesn't make it in.

3 eighth inch openings. Red oak. maple, walnut, or pine, because the other thing I wanted to know, if Greg, you know, burns at Nature's Image Farm cares, maybe he would treat some pine with that, that Endora hive stuff and see if they'll chew those entrances. Maybe they won't choose, chew those, maybe there's copper in them or something. He had that one copper treated hive, and I don't know if that's good for the bees. But I would think that the mice, again, wouldn't want to chew that.

either. So anyway, if we already know it's taking them all winter to get through just three quarter inch pine, what's another thing you can do? Because we want to keep it open. I don't want you not to put other stuff on there. I want you to be able to clean out the dead bees. What if you just made it a little thicker from front to back and still had the three-eighths inch height, three-inch width? That's all the more chewing that mouse has to do. They're not getting in. I have had no mice get in. None. zero. So keep questioning it though because it makes me

get a little worried that I could put out some bad advice so I continue to test and evaluate this and document it because you can't argue with videos. You see exactly what they're doing. Okay. Let's see here's

thanks for your advice. I appreciate very much. Thank you. That's why I'm here. And I want to thank you all for being here for the live stream and we're going to wrap here pretty soon but since i have questions by the way i'm not even going to get through my stack of really really good stuff i was going to talk about but since you're here you deserve a hundred percent of my attention says can you use t posts as hive stands for horizontal hives i have bad go for problems yes you can i have t post go to my go to my

youtube channel and type in hive stands build your own I show you how to use T-posts, metal, electrical conduit, and U-Boltz. And they're holding up even now. Excuse me. Some of my oldest hive stands are that way. They were. They're great. Just hammer them in far enough to make sure they never settle.

So that's good. And then we have Hyperad just put together the keeper's hive. Two, any suggestions for what type of feeder to use for this hive? hive top feeders. I think when I initially set up my first Keepers hive, that one brood box I did put, excuse me, a frame feeder in there is a spacer. But I use hive top feeders for those. I think George, who's the inventor, innovator there, they are working on better hive top feeders for that.

because it is a nucleus-sized hive going up. And if it's the two-queen system, I put the APMA feeder on top of that. So as far as that goes, while we're talking, you could put an APA single. They have nucleus hive feeders for wooden nucleus boxes, which would already match up with the Keepers' Hive. So they're already in existence.

You could get the feeders from APA. but just to give you all the options, I think they're working on that themselves. So they're also doing that. Let's see what else. Is cedar less appealing for mice to chew? Now, mice, no, mice chew cedar just like anything else. Not just that, the cedar is really soft.

It does not deter mice. It deters bugs, but mice don't care. Let me give you, like people that bring up cedar. Just for example, go to a little. pet shop. Look at the bedding that they're selling for rats and mice and all the other pocket pets that they have in there. Cedar chips, very popular. So the mice and stuff don't mind, and their chew toys are often even made out of cedar sticks and things like that. So cedar is not a deterrent at all for mice. It is a deterrent for the moths that eat woolen. So it's not even a deterrent

for all insects, and it does not deter mice. And it's soft stuff. Now, we have flow hives out there. They're made out of Western Red Cedar. And I've not there already at 3 eighths of an inch, the full width of those hives, just the way they come. And no mice have even tried to chew any of them. But I don't know if that has anything to do with the material being a deterrent or the opening is just so small they don't even try to start.

So, but nope. Do mice get in on the longer opening than the smaller openings? I have not noticed a, they don't need the width so much. If you've already got a two inch wide opening, that's more than wide enough for the mouse. Remember, the stopper for the mouse is the skull size. They squeeze their little bodies for all kinds of stuff, but the skull is not getting through a three-eighths inch opening. So width makes no difference as far as that goes. Somebody said, try locusts.

It lasts. There's lots of good woods, and, you know, locust is tough wood. do-to-do-do-do-do so how's your deer making out this is from glen perkins 61-54 they're everywhere out there waiting through the deep snow and they're staying off my holly bushes i can tell you that because i disturbed their brains by being out there at two-thirty in the morning and i have uh baling twine spread out with cat bells on them they don't like that so that does not look good if you live in a neighborhood or something, but if you don't care what things look like, deer do not like to walk through baling twine that's strung out around things with belts on them because they test the string

over here and a little tinkle happens over here, that disturbs their mind. And they move off and I have lots of video of that. It works really good. So the deer this year, I'm good. Now, as far as out you know in the area where they munched all my trees last year they're still doing that i have if i had to do an opening this q and a which i didn't because it's live i have video after video of deer walking around on their hind legs reaching really high into the trees to eat the crab apples and stuff like that i have a bunch of it i have cameras out everywhere this year they're trudging through the snow want to see what they're doing they're eating the trees for sure not a lot he can do about that but I'm just keeping them away

you guys done or you want to keep going are we done it's almost 526 I feel like I'm am I keeping you up because I don't know we talked about the hardest of the entries what are we talking about here what I'm going to say is if you still have questions when we close out from this I'm going to keep these questions that were submitted during the week

because I don't want to let anybody down and I'll add them to my stack for next Friday. And if I have too many to get through next Friday, I'll, of course, maybe I'll do an additional filler Q&A because guess what, we're stuck inside. And I'm learning to do science illustration and stuff like that. So I'm inside, I might put out more videos. So we'll answer these, but I don't want to keep you past an hour and a half.

It's 27 minutes past the hour right now. But I do want to thank everybody for being here. If someone has any other questions for me, I'm going to give you 30 seconds to type that question, or we're going to say goodbye. So in the meantime, while you're thinking, you want to clear your entrances. It's time. I have bees right now that if we do not put emergency feed on those hives, they are. guaranteed to die. They're just going to. So when the weather warms up, when there's a break, when it's sunny and 35, please check your feed. If you're getting fondant, if you don't already have it,

you can use sugar syrup, not sugar syrup. Don't do that. You can use dry sugar. Dry sugar is, it takes a lot more for them to process and work with, but it's better than nothing and you can, you know, provide them just enough. All we're trying to do is give them just enough to live and get out and forage when the trees start blooming. And when the skunk cabbage in the wetlands starts to bloom also, so while it's freezing. So anyway, I want to thank you for being here. If you have any questions, go to the way to be.org. Go to the page mark contact.

And while it's fresh on your mind, go ahead and type in that question and see what's going on. and it might show up in next Friday's Q&A. So I want to thank you for being here. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has been The Way to Be.