The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 267 smoking VS vaping and much more.

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube video:  https://youtu.be/1RyR2uLZNzQ

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. This is Friday, July the 19th, and this is back here, bekeeping questions and answers. Episode number 267. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here with me today. Beautiful day outside, by the way, in the northeastern part of the United States, northwest part of the state of Pennsylvania. Beautiful weather, no rain, no thunder, no challenges. Why are you sitting there? Get out and stare at bees. Anyway, I know you're wondering how warm it is outside,

so let's hit that, 76 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 24 Celsius. The wind is moderate, three miles per hour. Might as well not even be a wind, which makes it really hot. That's five kilometers per hour. Anyway, 61% relative humidity, which is fantastic because the bees can

dehydrate their honey that now they are taking in pretty heavy in this part of the world. Now, where you live, you may be in a dearth, I'm sorry, I don't know what to do about that. We are not in the earth here. 0% chance of rain today. 0% chance of rain tomorrow. 0% chance of rain the next day.

So for those of you who are local, this is a time to work your bees. Opening sequences, by the way, we're shot yesterday. And that's just what's going on in the environment right now and what the bees are on. Things are looking good. And the hives are gaining weight.

So that's fantastic. What do you think is going to happen this weekend? Well, the supervisor is going to show up. up and that's my grandson eight years old and we're going to checkerboard pull some capped honey frames off of the hives for two reasons one prevent congestion and two because he's got a waiting list of people that need honey so we're going to do that and we just reorganized our honey processing area so everything is fantastic we're ready to go and I hope that you are too so thank you for being here and if you want

to know we're going to talk about please go down in the video description here on YouTube and see line item by line item what we're going to cover as far as topics go. This should be a short one. I've said it before and sometimes it doesn't end up being so short. Now, you don't have time to look or you don't want to use up your data. This is a podcast. In fact, the entire series is a podcast titled The Way to Be podcast. Google it, you'll find it, you can listen to it and not wreck your car while you're driving down the road somewhere. So we don't want any of that to happen if you want to know how to submit your own question. for consideration or just a topic

which some people submitted this week. Very interesting. You can go to the way to be.org and click on the page titled The Way to Be. There's a form, you fill it out. It's that simple. If you've got something pressing, like you're listening later and you can't wait a week for your topic

to be potentially discussed, then please go to the way to be fellowship on Facebook where everyone's friendly, zero politics, and we accept beekeepers from all levels you don't want spam you don't want somebody marketing to you that's the place to be okay moving right on with question number one the first

topic was submitted by Janine in it doesn't say the city but the state is Indiana so what's your final verdict on the Apisalus vapor smoker I've been waiting for your video if it works as reported it would be perfect for my indoor apiary of value your insight. Okay, so that's interesting. I have been lax in talking about that particular thing. And of course, if you looked at the thumbnail today, that's what I was puffing away.

Now, it looked like, it might have looked photoshopped, but it isn't. Now here's the other thing, I'm in a confined space, and I would never light off a smoker in a combined space. So I'm not gonna give you the pitch about it right now. now but this is what we're talking about why are you holding it upside down Fred well because this is the storage position because here's the reservoir that holds the oil and it uses essential oils and it atomizes them much like an e-cigarette or a vape machine

now this little electronic vape things that people use it works the same way it's been well researched and the bees respond to it so there are some good applications for it cost money that's the other part if you're operating it this is the right side up to But anyway, I'm not going to talk about it in length or in detail today because I have my video. It's done. I'm going to launch it this week and I'm going to take it out when we pull honey supers and we're going to test it. One of the things that, so I can just tell you ahead of time it works. It's expensive, so it may not be for everyone. Plus you have to buy the oil bottle that refills the reservoir that gets used for the puffing.

But the good news is you can use it in a place where there are no fires. where there are no fires or where no fires are allowed and like me if you've got little ones running around he loves to light his smoker he loves to puff away with it and we use our switchgrass pellet fuel for the smoker fuel and there will be a link down the video description to that fuel too for those of you want to light stuff up and uh that leads me to something that one of our members of our beekeepers association at a breakfast last Wednesday mentioned that Her name is Pat, by the way, and she takes toilet paper rolls and cuts up just regular paper towel rolls, and then staples one end together, fills this with the pellets, and it would work with whatever fuel you have. But then just lights this, drops it in, and this is all she needs to do her whole apiary with the pellets.

So it was really handy lighting thing. I'm going to test that, too, coming up this week. at the same time when we do the Apisalas Vap system. So you can hand it to kids. They don't have to light it. For those of you who are like me, have a backyard apiary, and I hope that's the bulk of my viewing audience.

I don't imagine we have many commercial people listening to this. But how many times have you just wanted to run out in your backyard and open one hive and look at it real quick? You had something that you were curious about, and something that's electronic like that could sit on the shelf. It has to be inside. though you can't put it outside or have it in a space that gets really hot or really cold and uh you can just turn it on and go out there and do your test flip it over hold it turn it off and it's done so not like a smoker where you had to light it

get it warmed up get it puffing get it going and then go out all of that to do a you know a two-minute look see so it has value for a lot of different reasons the other thing is i smoked up this whole room as if it were some kind of atmosphere for a cinematography and it does not bother my breathing at all. I would never have done that with a regular smoker. So we're going to talk about it. It's going to be more going on, but I thank Janine for bringing it up because I was already working on it.

So I'm, you know, I am late because where did I learn about it? I had seen it before, but I actually talked to the people at the North American Honeybee Expo in January down in Louisville, Kentucky and I hope I said that right Louisville. Anyway, that's where I met him. That's where I talked to them about it and I've had it all this time and I did have some problems with it. So I'm going to be honest. I'm going to go over that and we're going to talk about how to fix things too. So thank you for that question. For those of you who want to know, pay attention for the coming

week. Jumping right into question number two comes from Gigi. Since you are going to be since you're going to be hearing about milkweed in your beekeeper meeting. That's right. We had a beekeeper meeting, as I just mentioned. We gather at IHOP. There's nothing better than that. Anyway, you're going to find out, can you find out if gophers like to eat milkweed? So here's the thing.

We are fortunate enough that in our bee association, we have someone with decades of experience as a perennial gardener for one of our local garden centers. It's a really big garden center. And so she's a fantastic resource for information. for plants for pollinators and perennials like milkweed. And I can tell you, here's the safety thing. Safety, here's the real scoop.

I don't like voles, by the way. I'm going to say that up front because they took 100% of my blue giant hyssop this spring. 54 plants 100% consumed in less than two weeks. So what about the milkweed? Nothing ate it. Milkweed defends itself. Devends itself really well. And last week I put up my list of,

it's a variety of milkweed types. And I'm trying to spread them out so the milkweed lasts longer. My milkweed comes up in two cycles here, and I have a lot of land committed to it. So milkweed is a robust plant for preventing predation because it produces that milky substance that makes it toxic to a lot of animals. And woodchucks don't munch it.

and volus don't eat it and I'm sure that it says here in the question if gophers like to eat it well as far as I know gophers won't eat it either so once you get it started perennial it's going it's good stuff get milkweed and we talked about swampt milkweed butterfly milkweed showy milkweed these are all native by the way and milkweed is particularly fascinating for me because I use it a lot in my photography and videography and I like to creep around and photograph the milkweed and it's just a lot of fun. Anyway, there are milkweed varieties that go well into September. So I'm trying to culture those. Getting them started for me is hard, but it's not because something ate them. For some reason, some of them just start out. They get like three or four inches tall and then

stop. I don't know what's going on. Maybe those will come back the following year. But they're also direct sown, and there's a method with milk jars, milk chugs. The one gallon plastic milk judts that cut them in half, fill it with a soilless mix, put your milkweed seeds in there, and then just let it flap shut, you wrap a piece of tape around it, set it outside. It's got drainage holes cut into the bottom of it, and you can set those out in the fall. And then in the spring, they come up on their own, and then you'll be able to open that up, and then, of course, just separate them out and then transplant them early. So it's pretty cool. So it was very good.

No one is smarter than everyone. So joining an organization, a group, a fellowship is always going to provide you with someone who's got expertise in an area and has knowledge that you want. It's really fantastic. So thanks a lot to Pat for that. And gophers can't get them. Next question is number three, and this comes from Brad. Looking for some clarification, I had always thought up to several months ago that larvae hatched from the egg. but was watching a time lapse video that included the egg evolving into a larvae, not actually hatching.

What are your thoughts on this? I have started referring to the egg evolving and the pupa emerging. Apparently, there's no hatching going on, which is another unusual trait of the honeybee. Okay, so this isn't just the honeybee, and I'm going to put myself on report. Because I used to sit for hours, day after day, and I, I wrote with grease pencil on my observation hive. I had them in another building. Now I have an observation hive building.

It's got three of them in it. So they get to spend a lot more time out there and it's more comfortable. Anyway, I would look at the eggs. How long is it an egg? It's going to be an egg for three days. Whether the queen lays it or if a laying worker lays it, it's going to be there for three days. I wanted to get the moment where it hatches.

Because that's still the term. We would say it's biology. So we say it hatches from the egg. And here's the thing. I wanted to get that moment where it hatches out. And it was Dr. Tom Seeley who pointed out to me that, well, you're not going to get to see that because they just consume the egg. So it's not really an emergence.

It is still hatching. So if we're trying to get, because I'm teaching you, so I want you to have the proper terms. And so they hatch from the egg. They emerge from the cells. So anyway, you're right. It just kind of dissolved away. see that it cracked a little bit like the outer skin just started to dissolve away and it gets consumed by the larva so there it goes no drama it just consumes it and it's done that's why we don't see

little eggshells from newly hatched bees when they're in their larva state laying around in the cells because the larva itself consumes it so you're right it's anaclimactic nothing cool happens and the time lapse things show that very well and the cool thing is there are a lot of time lapse videos these days showing what's going on inside the cells. I don't do the cellular level, you know, like the cutaways of the cell and do time lapse so I can see these things happen. I wanted to catch it in real time. So it is fun. If you have an observation hive, you can use those whiteboard markers. They work really well and they clean off really easy. And so when you see that you've got an egg in there, let's say this is the cell,

the egg that's standing straight up on end. The egg, by the way, is not the same diameter through its length. It's shaped kind of like a little eggplant so it's skinny at one in and kind of rounded at the other. And when it's standing straight up on the bottom of the cell, your queen just laid it so you can mark that. It's a great thing to do with children or adults that are just learning about the biology of the bee and we mark the date, the time, and everything else. And then we see that the following day, it's laying over a little bit. It's on a tilt. The third day before it hatches, it's laying flat against the side wall or the bottom of the cell that the egg is in. So it's a lot of fun. It's still fun to learn and the proper term is still

hatching. So but you're right it melts away. I have no video of it. You can also mark the date and calendar. It's just great science for the kids that are learning the biologists be. It's one thing to show them a chart and say on this day this happens and then so many in stars and things like that. Here's the thing. Getting kids to identify it so they're actively seeing it. It's practical. They're hearing the bees, they're seeing what's going on, and then they mark it, and then they're cataloging it, and they're making sure because also one of the things that happens is they can circle those areas that have eggs or freshly hatched larvae, and they mark it on the calendar, and then they come back and they want to see it when it goes into the pupa state, so we want

to see it being capped over, right, but then they find empty cells. Because sometimes, depending on what's going on where you live, the environment can stop providing the resources that the bees need, the nurse bees realize that the resources are not coming in, that they need to sustain the brood, and they cannibalize them. So you can end up with empty cells, but it's another valuable lesson, or they cannibalize some of them. Or if the nurse bees determine that some of the eggs that were produced are too close genetically to the queen, right? So in other words, maybe she mated with one of her own drones somehow, because the drone took off and went into another colony and so on and she ran into it a drone congregation area and was one of the 20 that

she made it to however many she made it to when she was at the drone congregation area on remaining flight and then came back with a closely related genetic stock when they do that they sensed that they remove and consume that and it can result in a shotgun pattern during the period when the queen would be laying eggs that come from that particular drone those close genetics that's why we want lots of diversity of the genetics out where we live and the queen goes out. But they can end up with empty cells. Anyway, lots of opportunity to explain some of the variables there. But thanks for bringing that up.

And then question number four. Usually I only allow one question per person, but I think Brad snuck one in on me. And that's okay because I did a sketch today based on Brad's observations. We're talking about, by the way, be a good neighbor. when it comes to being a beekeeper. And one of the ways that we can be a good neighbor

is we find out that our honeybees are in someone's grape jelly. Welch's grape jelly in particular. That's what I'm talking about here. But anyway, who cares about grape jelly? How the bees get into it anyway? How are they going to get in the grape jelly? Unless you got a Welch's factory near you, which my grandson happens to live very near a Welch's factory.

But what happens is, So what happens is the bees are getting into the grape jelly. Well, who are these people that are putting out grape jelly and why would they do it? Well, they're feeding orioles, the Baltimore Oriole in particular around here, but we also have orchard orioles too. One of their favorite resources for bird watchers and bird enthusiasts to put out for them is grape jelly. So the problem is the bees go for the jelly, the bees mob it, and the Orioles cannot feed at the jelly feeder anymore.

So Brad had this great idea. I don't have orioles, but a feeder to keep bees out while allowing the orioles access would be the reverse squirrel-proof feeder. That is brilliant. Anyway, a baffle would normally sit over the access port to prevent bees from access to the food when an oriole lands on the perch. Its weight will cause the baffle to slide down, allowing them to access the food. I like evaluating different bird feeders and so I've done that for many years and to do video reviews and things like that squirrel proof squirrel resistant and all this stuff and this is just genius so I want to thank Brad for that and I did a sketch here's what that might look like

Brad gave me no parameters but I want him to be 100% credited for the way this looks if you look at this particular drawing it is just like like the squirrel-proof feeders only, as Brad described, there will be a transparent shield over the area where your grape jelly is. It needs to be transparent, so plexiglass, whatever. Orioles that have been fed at a station before will jump around, land on different surfaces,

and of course they'll find that they can see through and see where the jelly is, and when they land on the perch to look at it, I've drawn a counterweight here. So the orio lands on the counterweight, which causes the plastic shield to go down, and the orio can then feed on the grape jelly when they fly away. It's closed, so guess who can't get in there?

Those frustrated honeybees that I've shown flying around. Haven't built one, but I can tell you this. If Brad's not going to make one, the first person who, because, by the way, there aren't that many beekeepers. I mean, we think there are a lot of beekeepers. If you have, you know, hundreds of thousands of beekeepers, someone told me there are 200,000 beekeepers in the United States.

But, and those are the registered ones, so there might be a lot more. There are way more than that, that are bird watchers and people that feed birds and watch birds. And that's why it's such a huge market. If someone came up with that particular design, and you can have it, by the way. I don't know about Brad, but what I just sketched out is a concept. And if you want to elaborate on that and take it as your own, you go right ahead. and if you can make a or even because my wife suggested just taking one of the squirrel-proof feeders are ready and just modify it and you know move the shield that's all you have to do so instead of closing when they land on it

of course it drops lower and opens the area but I didn't like that idea because not because it came for my wife but because the configuration of the feeder is to hold a whole bunch of feed and we don't really need that we just need a tray with like a like a sneeze shield over it like when you go through a buffet and then you can see the food and then when you stand out you get close to the food the sneeze shield goes down the food is there and it's that simple i don't think it would take a lot of resources to make one but the person that makes it markets it they're going to sell it it's going to be great all because brad wamsley said hey how about this this is why you have to have a fellowship of beekeepers if you think that you're the end all and be all for beekeeping you have all the answers you're going to miss out because

listen to everyone even the people that have just taken a beekeeping five months ago they can make an observation that is so keen depending on who they are and how well they notice things and they can come up with an instant solution listen pay attention to them don't uh don't be mean let the new people speak moving right along question number five this is from devie eden utah i started two resource hives this spring four frames by four frames over four by four a shared wall okay oh it says four by four this must mean four nukes okay shared wall all my colonies are doing well i am optimistically researching how to care for the resource hives through my long northern utah winter i've read that you can put a shared honey

super above the queen excluder on a twin colony without conflict the two colonies and my question is can i put a shared feeding source i.e. winter candy board or top feeder liquid and so on and have the two colonies peacefully access the shared resource. Now um those common systems and better B sells them too because I've licked at them I didn't really want to do it but you put they have five five frame deep new boxes and they're wooden I like that idea because it'll will last a very long time. And when you push them together, guess where they develop their brood along that common warm wall? So they're sharing its community warmth that generates back and forth. And so they concentrate their brood there and then it tapers out to where they have their honey stores

on the outside frames and then you can stack them up. And I'm glad this was brought up because putting a food resource directly on top that is shared by both colonies, I don't think it would be necessary. You could have a feeder because it's designed, of course, we have five and five. then you would have like a 10-frame feeder shim that would go on top of that. Queen excluders, and this is why I think it's important to mention it now, for new beekeepers, queen excluders should not be on your hives in the wintertime. And the reason is that we don't want our workers or our cluster to migrate through that queen excluder and end up next to a resource while the queen is trapped outside of that

and left behind. So, and only a desperate colony would do that. The really large colonies have the resources to send workers up through it and back down. But what I really like to see is the ability for the cluster to move collectively all the way up. And in spring, of course, be right underneath the inner cover, which I'm hoping is insulated and protecting them. But that's also where your emergency resources are. So I see nothing wrong with having independent emergency resources in winter. And even though the mention here is for, I think it said, sugar bricks or something like that,

my number one candy board, it says. Candy boards are not as efficient as fondant. So fondant over candy, but if you just want to do sugar bricks and things like that, you can. Your bees just don't resource that. Don't gather those resources as easily as they do when it's fondant. And fondant can be used through winter. There are recipes to make your own. You can also buy it.

So what I recommend is having some kind of access directly over without, you know, a queen excluder. So let your bees cluster right up against it. And don't try to make that a community feeding situation. And that's just my opinion. You can, of course, do whatever you want. This isn't a new method. I believe Michael Palmer up in Vermont. Also, Winters double nukes next to one another. So it might be worth taking a look at how he configures his hive top feeders if he uses those in the wintertime for his resource nukes. Might get through fine on their own. So I like to leave individual width feeders, inner covers, and things like that on those.

So I don't cluster them together. But I also don't have the weather that you may have there in Utah. So I hope that's helpful. But the queen excluder, I would find a way to work around that and remove your queen excluder for winter. Question number six. This is from Kelly. and it's about sanitizing says i can't remember in all the years of viewing your content

if you have ever taken on the honey jarring process specifically sanitizing the jars i usually use a one-step sanitizer designed for home brewing and i'm curious to know your thoughts and considerations so that brewing by the way i've used that too because i've made mead meat is super easy to do but the sanitizing requirements are very low for honeymakers for honey collectors, honey robbers, whatever you want to call a beekeeper that takes honey from bees, puts it in jars, and then sells it or consumes it. The reason is because the honey that you have, you want your jars. Me personally, I never give out a plastic jar of honey. I don't have the honey bears. I don't have any plastic jars of any kind. I have all glass. And that's just

personal preference. But when it comes to sanitizing, right, you can boil it. So you can also put them in your dishwasher and some dishwashers have a sanitization mode so the temperature is the sanitizer you can put it in boiling water for 10 minutes things like that that's overkill what you really want is a nice clean jar nice clean lids and a lot of people when they sell their honey they charge a deposit I think that's a great idea I also think it's a great idea to swap out the lids if you have canning jar lids it can be sanitized great cycle them back but when you go to your own state, you'll have the requirements for selling honey. You'll find most of those

requirements will center around labeling, packaging, the weight of the contents, the producer of the honey. What the contents are, straight honey, nothing else. If you add something to your honey, you created a food product in the state of Pennsylvania. That's a whole different category for labeling and for being authorized to sell it because now you're making food. What I do is I collect honey from the hive. It's in the jar. The jar gets labeled and then the jar gets sold or given away to whoever. But so sanitization, if your state has a requirement, it would be really rare. They're not good at defining that. And so just it comes down to personal preference and practice.

And you want to present a clean product. So there should be no evidence that that jar was ever used before. So we use heat. So hot water, sanitize the whole thing, clean it up. dry it out keep it upside down and then you're ready to fill them for honey which we're doing this coming week and this will shock you that was the last question for today it's too quick wasn't it anyway here's the fluff section so i want to talk about some things because i had some issues recently uPS dropped off some hives with foundation in it plastic foundation and i talked to some people

at the bee meeting too um they parked those boxes right in the sun and it got really hot. And what happened is the plastic foundation that was in that box warped. And I don't just mean it warped in one direction. It looked like a piece of bacon. There were ripples in it. It was cupped. It was domed. It was all over the place. And that seemed really annoying and it looked like unstable plastic foundation. And then it occurred to me, man, that thing was sitting out there. It was also in a FedEx or UPS truck. Who knows how hot it is in the best. of that thing and then they park the whole box right in the sun and so here's another thing by the way our fedx drivers and our uPS drivers are fantastic people you can meet them and talk to them and when

they drop something off don't follow them around i just you know it's if it's a new ups driver cut them a break if you happen to be in some outbuilding and you know they're occupied they're busy they're working and they're carrying boxes and mine goes the extra yard brings it right into the garage and sits it there sometimes, but that garage faces south, so it gets really hot in the opening there. And if you close follow them, I'm not saying that I did or that I would do it again,

but I just walked right behind them. Because I waited for them to put the box on, then I was going to say, could have scared you? And he was scared, so he jumped. Anyway, close following the UPS driver and then announcing yourself after they put a box down

and turn around while they're updating that little thing they're holding. It's a great opportunity to scare people, don't do it. Don't startle. Your delivery people. You depend on them. But anyway, I was talking with others that had stuff delivered, and even when they leave these boxes of foundation out, because this makes me think, and that's why we're talking about it now. Early in the spring, I like to leave dead outs that have been cleaned up with the frames and everything in them, and then they are perfect swarm lures, self-hiving swarms. Number one activity around

here in spring swarm season's over now it's just hot and I'm not in the hottest part of the country so this is important for other parts if you're going to leave your bees wax without bees in it right no bees in the box this is a swarm trap or whatever you've put out now here's the good news most swarm traps are put out on trees 10 12 feet up they're shaded by the tree but if you're setting them out on a deer stand or something or you're putting them out and they're just in direct sunlight and there are no bees to continually cool the interior. It's going to get really hot, and the wax can actually melt right off the frames

or right off the foundation. So if it's foundationless, it can drip down, and then you get that bright yellow, new-looking wax that's melted all over the bottom there. That's what that came from. It got too hot and direct sunlight and melted away. And so the individual that I was speaking with on Wednesday, all the wax that was coated onto,

the plastic foundation, dripped off and collected on the bottom. So, talk to your delivery people and just let them know that you would like your packages to be delivered in the shade. That seems instinctive, right? It seems just normal that you would put things in the shade. But they're in a hurry. They're providing a service. And if you tell them about it and how it ruined your foundation or made it look like

a piece of bacon, then they'll pay attention. years ago I had a UPS guy pull up and there were packaged bees from Man Lake. They were laying on their sides inside the truck, even though there's big red and white labels pointing up. So if you take your time to explain, hey, that's not the way to transfer bees around. They don't do well like that. And they're supposed to have syrup in it.

That particular year, they had the gel in there and those bees were 90% dead anyway. But it was a terrible year for delivery. Those of you who remember that, I was trying to get Saskatras, and the only way to get them was to get a package. Otherwise, I would have just bought in a queen and made my own. But the packages came,

and the UPS drivers were very lax about how they handled those packages. They don't like transporting bees anyway. Anyway, moving on. Coming up, there's going to be the Hive Live interview. So I already interviewed the owner and developer of Hive Alive, which is a syrup that has been proven to work. They have a new product coming out, so I interviewed them. We're going to post that interview probably sometime this weekend. So if you want to see that, part of my interviews with Experts series.

If you've been missing that, it is a series that can be listened to on Podbean as well. It's a podcast and also, of course, a YouTube video. So we're going to talk about that. it's important stuff. The other thing I want to talk about, smoke or pellets, we're going to do talking about smoke. I talked about filling these rolls with pellets and putting them in, but the smoker pellets that we're selling as a fundraiser are performing really well. So I want to update that again too, because one of our beekeepers, he's, I don't know if he's considered a sidelineer or commercial. If you looked at, you know, the Be informed partnership,

they used to classify sidelineers worth 500 hives or less. So this guy has well over 100 hives, and he loaded up with the switchgrass pellets that we are selling as a fundraiser for a non-profit organization. The intent is to perpetuate honeybee knowledge for beekeepers and everything else. So we're getting zero profit. It's a nonprofit. The switchgrass pellets are sold as a fundraiser for the Northwest,

Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association. Anyway, he left his smoker smoldering. He thought it was out. It burned for almost three days. Now that sounds ridiculous. But believable guy, credible people. And a lot of people have told me that they get 24 hours out of the smoker. Just say leave it out and it still goes.

Now, if you're puffing away. But here's the other thing. How often have you picked up a smoker and gone to puff it a little bit because you've ignored it for an hour or two, and you go to puff it when you really need it, and you have to find that you need to relight it. So those switch grass smoker pellets, and they're made at Ernst Seeds.

You can't get them from Earned Seeds. You can only get them through the Northwest Pennsylvania, Beekeepers Association. You can go to their website. You can look. You'll see a picture at the bottom of the website page that has smoker pellets. You click on that, and you can order Smoker pellets.

they last a really long time. They create a very dense smoke that your bees react to, and they run very cool. That's the result of the slow burn. There's moisture content in there. This is very different from pellets that people use in pellet stoves, for example, that are designed for what? To generate a lot of heat.

To burn clean. So in other words, they don't generate as much smoke as switch grass pellets do. I don't know if you've ever been to. if you've ever been around when I was a little kid, neighbors used to rake up grass and leaves and stuff and just burn a leaf pile right in their yard. So if you get a bunch of grass and sweeping into a pile, remember all the smoke that used to generate? It was incredible because it was still almost green grass. And so these smoker pellets generate that dense white smoke. They

smolder for a very long time. And then we just put a cork in the end of your smoker and it puts it out right away so that's really interesting too it's working really well and i want to thank all of those who did buy them and uh and then shared about how good they were how much they like them and so if the backyard backyard beekeeper one order that stuff is going to last you a year it's i have more than i need i'm not going to be able to i use the same smoker over and over again and i just light it now i would like to say something else while i'm on that um as the pellets burn down replant them so add more to the top because one of the things that can accelerate the burn of your smoker pellets is the amount of air that passes through the amount of air that passes through the canister of your smoker why not get the smoker while I'm talking this is my preferred smoker okay smokers have spark arresters on the top if yours doesn't have one it might be worth making one out of something they have a basket inside the good smokers do this is what you fill up with the smoker pellets notice half the basket is

solid half the basket is vented so the air comes through here and passes through the material if you get down to the bottom third or 20 percent right you get down there more air passes through and it can accelerate the burn so by restoking it with your pellets it slows down the burn slows down the smoke and you don't want to hit your honeybees with a blast of super hot air. You also don't want to really puff it like when things are getting out of hand. Let's say that's happening for you. People tend to really puff it. Kids especially like to puff and make piles of smoke for no reason whatsoever. But that's where that spark, a rester, comes into play up here in the top. So that's my thing. You want to fill the smoker right up. Now if you jam it all the way to the very top, you might get it so slow that it almost won't generate smoke

on the density and in the amount that you want. So not all the way to the top, but three quarters away would be great. So keep your smoker up. And that's whatever fuel you're using. If you get down near the bottom, you notice it picks up, it burns quicker, it burns hotter, and then consumes the remaining fuel faster. So if you're trying to extend it, keep your smoker full. And that's it.

For that, just wanted to mention it. And again, thank the people that have supported that because it is translating directly into our educating the community and new beekeepers about beekeeping. So moving on, bottle your honey as soon as possible. This is for the backyard beekeeper, obviously. I don't even pretend to tell commercial people how to do their business. But I see some Facebook posts. I don't have a lot of time to interact with everyone.

But I do see some posts where people like to talk about the amount of honey that they got buckets of honey and they're so excited and they're showing their white buckets five gallon pails three quarters full of honey and they've got them all stacked up with lids on them and the first thing that i want to i don't get started in conversations because then it's rude i seem rude because they don't have the time for all the follow-up that happens after that initial contact so if i made a comment about oh get that in your jars as quick as possible but this is my advice for the people that pay attention to me or want to do what I do. I definitely put it in the buckets and let it sit in the buckets overnight. So I give them 24 hours in a bucket and the reason for that is it's still warm. If you have a place

that can stay warm, then it lets the bubbles and stuff get out. And any detritus or material that got into your honey while you were processing or uncapping and so on rises to the top. So now you can drain out the honey the following day. And I'd like to get it into the jars as quick as possible because what's coming up not very far in the distance, we're going to have golden rod and we're going to have Aster's. Somebody said that they saw golden rod blooming already. I hope that's not true. I found one golden rod variety.

There are many varieties of golden rod that is already starting to bloom, but the rest of it looks totally dormant. It's not budding at all. So one plant. But the reason I bring it up now is preparation is everything. So try if you can. to get the honey out of your buckets and into your jars as soon as possible because of it sets or starts to crystallize you've got issues with it you can adjust the individual jars and here's the other thing that I do

if you find test your honey as you go so if you don't have one already a refractometer is what you're looking for and you want to get that so that you will know the water content of the honey that you're harvesting because that's another thing we don't want to happen so by having it into jars is like the honeybee spreading it out into all the different cells. The more cells they spread it out into, which they do when they first bring in that during the nectar flow, they spread it out because that creates more surface area and allows them to evaporate it down and then they re-concentrate it into the cells in the honey super areas, right?

So you're doing the same thing. You have multiple little jars. You can set them out in your, I hope you have a drape or something where you can run to dehumidifier if you've got a high water content in your honey and you can evaporate that off with fans blowing directly on those those lids so multiple jars with their lids off and let the fans blow and you will find that you can reduce that moisture content by 1% every 24 hours so that's another thing that I'm mentioning since you can be prepared just in case you end up with honey that has too high a moisture content and for me personally I would like to see it at 18. Point

something at the highest. If you're hitting 19% that's probably still allowed but you run the risk of fermentation so we don't want that. So get it into the jars for multiple reasons and then of course of it solidified then you could put it in hot water and reconstitute it just in time to sell it to somebody or have it as a liquid. So bottle it ASAP anyway the way we're going to be collecting honey this weekend because my grandson needs honey right away we're going to pull individual capped frames of honey we're not going to pull entire supers the reason that we're doing that by the way there is a lot of there are a lot of resources in the environment and so the bees are active they're bringing it in and they're gaining weight

so we want to pull the capped frames and then we'll put new frames right away so when you go out bring a tote or old hive boxes which work really well for this have all your frames with you And then what I do is pull the frame that's full of capped honey, get the bees off of it, whatever your favorite method is, and then put that and then put that in your container. I like to use High Butler Tots. Some people don't like them because they're expensive. They're going to last you.

They're easy to clean. Mentioning back to the sanitation here from Kelly. You can clean those up. They have lids. So the minute they're in there, you cover the lid, bees aren't going to be jumping in there after them. So having the replacement frames with you to put in as you take them out means that we're not pulling a whole super And they can continue working on the frame that you put in. It's also with a big nectar flow on a great opportunity to get them to continue to draw out

As I just described, it had some new heavy wax foundation delivered and I'd like the bees to draw that out for me So as we pull a frame of cap tony, replace it in the exact same spot with foundation that's heavy waxed not just plastic foundation You can also get them to draw up foundationless frames. We have those two and they are pre-waxed around the edges. So that's another thing that can boost that. And we're going to be running out of time for them to do foundationless because it does draw a lot of resources for them to do that, but you can do it if that's what you want to do.

So have frames ready to go in. Don't try to come back to it is what I'm saying. The other thing is the frames that you draw out from each hive to extract your honey, mark the frames, color code them, whatever you do. decide to do but I highly recommend that you get those back or store them with the hive number that they came out of because we like to put them back in the hive that they came out of. And one of the reasons that we do that is if by some chance one of your hives was building up a case of foul brood, European foul brood, American foul brood, and so on, we wouldn't be spreading that out

into other hives by transferring frames from one hive into another. And there again, backer beekeepers have the time available to track into individual frames and which hives they specifically came from. The other part of this is please keep records. I don't care if you have two hives. Which of those produced honey, when, and capped it, and so on? Because hive by hive, they may be performing differently. So when you're pulling out, pulling capped honey,

then you're not necessarily searching through the whole hive to see what the queen's status is, if they've got eggs and brood and so on. You want to be as low in your disruption as possible. and I think I'm going to mention this thing again the least disruptive smoker that you can use is going to be I realize most people don't have it but the episollos smoker is the low key entrance in there how much do you want to puff it how much do you want to do to your bees so when you're puffing smoke real smoke from a smoker with you know whatever your choice fuel is pine needles pine shavings whatever happens to be, when you puff that in there, you are putting particulates into the hive. Now, a lot of the cells are open. So if they've been bringing in a lot of resources, and you smell that honey in the air, and 50% of the cells on a frame are open, and you're doing

a lot of puffing there to get the bees off of that, when I see someone that tries to use their smoker as a means of clearing bees from a super, you're putting so many particulates in there that are also going to be in your honey. So it is the number one thing that is found in your honey, particulates from the smoker. So something like an Apaisalus, vape smoker, which, by the way, a year ago, I was not interested in a smoker where you had to buy

some kind of essential oil mix to put in there so that it can be atomized and used as a smoking vape. But gradually I'm weighing the benefits and the potential negatives of that, and the benefits are outweigh. weighing it the biggest negative is the cost the cost of the unit so and again i'll talk about that but we are going to be pulling individual frames and then leaving plenty of honey for the bees in the event that the weather is perfect right now in the forecast but it can turn bad and you can

end up with a lot of rain and if they're taking care of a lot of brood which they are this time of year where i live we want to leave them with enough honey to keep those resources going so High-puller toats are fantastic. I recommend those. They still offer a discount at that website. Fred 5. I don't get anything for that. I don't have an affiliate agreement with them. They just did that if I sent my viewers to them. So anyway, top performers outside right now, the borage, I'm so happy I planted borage. It started slow. But now, here's the thing about borage. It's holding its own with the other weeds in the same. stuff because the weeds are taking off and are really dense really heavy because in this environment they we don't use herbicides here so we don't use any of the anything to suppress weeds so whatever I plant and I planted the Borge by seed in spring so I did till for that but when you till you also disrupt all the storage seeds in the soil and what happens is they all come up in concert with what

you're hoping will prevail so the voles took care of my Hissop for me I'm to bring that up again but as an insurance policy i didn't just plant one plant there i planted a bunch of borage along the same strip and the borage is producing so many blooms it's fantastic and here's the other part of it now i know this you know a lot of this happens based on rainfall the amount of sun that you've had and soil quality and all of these other things but here's something that's fun to do for people with time on their hands. If you can sit down and stare at the borage flowers, and because I was talking to another friend who's photographer, if you set up your equipment, you know, take a picture of a honeybee on a flower and the honeybee flies away. Should you go following the honeybee around? No. Stick around.

These borage blossoms will replenish the nectar on that flower in a matter of minutes. So what happens? Other bees are going to come to it. So don't go hunting them all over the place. Set up your camera, set yourself up, get a lawn chair, whatever you need. Sit right there and stare at that flower, and pretty soon another honeybee will come and land on it, and you can take your picture, even if that's with your cell phone, whatever. Don't chase them around. They'll come to you.

But here's the thing. They're replenishing those flowers so quickly that there are frequent visits to these flowers over and over, and the boorage is just getting started. So the other thing, milkweed, fantastic, heavy hitter. White clover, heavy hitter, bees are all over it. So we are getting a lot from the environment. I'm sure that there are a lot of other resources out there. I'm also tracking the soy. The soy plants in the field right next to my apiary, they are producing the white flowers now. They're tiny and I see the clusters where they will eventually have clusters of flowers on each soy plant. So my goal then is to get out there and share how the bees visit that too.

So the soy plants are in competition with all the other things that are in the area that are providing those resources. So the other thing is washing up your gear. How much better is it to wash up your gear with hot water? So I know I've mentioned this before. I'm going to mention it again. I lay out the garden hose in the yard in the sun. So if you've got garden hose on a reel, I pull the whole thing off the reel, I zigzag get back and forth.

and I can get 125, 130 degree water right out of the garden hose. Just from letting it heat up. So the longer the hose you have, the more heat you're going to get from it for a longer period of time. And then I just take high equipment or whatever I want to rinse off and I have a nice hot water rinse right there. Solar powered, you can say, because the sun warms the hose, the hose warms the water, the water does better cleaning.

So it's just a quick note for you. Now, here's the other thing. Know your mite levels now. Don't wait till the end. Don't wait until they're tearing up all your bees and have spread their diseases and done terrible things. Know your mite levels now and it would be a good time to pay attention to the colonies that might be extra burdened by the Perraultistur mites. So learn to count mites. I think it's a really good thing to know. If you want to use a sticker board or some kind of removable tray, something like that, understand what the limitations of that are. Sticky boards aren't cheap, by the way. And at least know which colonies early on might be getting into trouble with the varodistruct or mites.

Because you still have time to treat. There are a lot of treatments that are available that are suitable. They're considered organic treatments. Suitable for honey supers being on your hives. And I really want you not to wait until, you know, the end of September, the 1st of October, when all honey extraction is done. And then you start looking at mites. because the problem is these are the bees that then will be making the resources available for the queen

to produce fat-bodied winter bees. The nurse bees need to be in prime condition. Everything in your hive needs to be in prime condition to prepare itself for the upcoming winter because that's what they're doing right now and you can help them by helping reduce the mite numbers. The good news for me here is my mite numbers are extremely low. That worries me because I have concerns that I might just be missing them, that I might not understand what's going on. I had a life might in one of my observation hives when I pulled the tray underneath, and I didn't get it, it got away, didn't have any way to catch it. I wanted to get videos of it to see what it could and could not climb on, things like that. See if you could make a really smooth surface that once the mite falls in,

can't climb up. So I'm using something down there called micro mist, and it's a silicon product that's a dry, it goes on dry, but it creates such a low tension. surface, a high, slippery surface, the closest thing to ice to ice for things that slide. And so if we could get a surface that the mites can't climb back up on, then I don't need to use cooking spray or something like that in the tray underneath. Instead, we have slippery side walls that mites can't climb, but I need live mites to verify for sure. That's why I'm not telling you about it, because I need to know, I need to see that with their little feet, they can't get back up the sidewall's there. So I'm looking for a really slippery surface

that prevents mites from getting out of the tray. I want to look at those. So that's it. And enjoy the closing sequence today after the standard credits go. You'll be interested to see what I saw. So thanks for being here with me today. I hope that you are doing well with your bees and I hope that you have the decent resources in the environment and that you're not having to supplemental feed your bees and that you're not getting too hot stay hydrated so thanks for being with me today please submit your own questions at the way to be dot org if there's something you want me to discuss next Friday and watch for the videos that I mentioned earlier thanks again