The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 272 with special guest response!

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube video:  https://youtu.be/XAwe5YUGbcY

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, August the 23rd, and this is back here, beekeeping questions and answers episode number 272. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here today. Lots going on. Great weather outside. The opening sequences, of course, shot this morning right here in the northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania. And those are Cosmos and Ragweed, by the way, that the bees were on. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please look down in the video description below and you will find out all the topics listed in order. So I'm really glad that you're here. And what else? What's it going? What's it doing? What's going on outside? 67 degrees Fahrenheit right now, but that's going to change. It's going to get a lot warmer. And guess what? For those of you in this area, my neck of the woods, it's going to be in the 80s all throughout the coming week with very small percentages of rain potential. So that's 19 degrees Celsius and the winds are low. As you could also see that, 2.2 miles per hour,

75% relative humidity which is great because guess what? Yesterday was the first day at the end of summer now where you could walk outside and actually smell the honey in the air before you even get to the apiary. So what's that tell us? It tells us the nectar flow has begun. Cosmos are something that I've planted, but in the environment we have gold.

and the second tier of golden rod is kicking off and what else we have aster's starting to bloom so this is it is your chance if you're in the northeastern United States your last hurrah is coming in so the dew point is that 58 degrees Fahrenheit that means when it gets that cold you can have condensation so I don't think it's going to get that cold we're good and I think the bees are going to do a great job of drying out there honey and it's time to keep up with things so if you want to know how to submit a question of your own for consideration for a future episode. Please go to the website, the way to be.org, and pick on the page, click on it. And it is also titled The Way to B, and you fill

out the form there, and everything is great. You will be able to submit your topic. You don't have to disclose who you are if you don't want to. So let's see, that's pretty much it. We have kind of a long one for you today, so settle in. It's going to take a while. This entire series is also available as a podcast. So if you're driving or doing work, you just want to listen, it's at Podbean, and the title of the podcast is The Way to Be. You can also just Google the way to be podcast, and you'll find out what carrier it is available on, probably something that you already use. So I think that's it. I think we're all caught up. Let's move on with the very first question, which comes from Stephen out of Detroit, Texas. I did not even know. There was a Detroit.

Texas so anyway says I have five colonies that I gained by removing bees installing the comb in frames as carefully as I could and still resulted in a messy uneven and some stuck together frames what is the most efficient way to have the bees move from this irregular comb into new frames I'm not in a hurry but I know I will be better off in the long run okay so here's the thing I'm not a person who does a lot of cutouts. I have my own ideas about it, but I thought that I would use this opportunity to phone a friend. So what I'm doing today is we're going to reach out to one of the people that not only keeps bees, but does a lot of cutouts, over a thousand career cutouts. So we're going to ask Randy McCaffrey, you may know him as 628 Dirt Rooster. So here's Randy. So here we are with Randy

McCaffrey and I used my option to call a friend on this particular question. So Randy, are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. So first of all, just in case there's one person watching who may not have heard of you, who are you and where are you located? My name is Randy McCaffrey. I go by a 628 dirt rooster on social media and I'm in South Mississippi, Gulfport, Mississippi, right on the coastline as far south as you can get in this state. So Randy, we are at 67 degrees Fahrenheit here in the great state of Pennsylvania. I'm sure it's, are you any warmer than that? It's 80 degrees right now. 80 degrees.

What's it going to get to you today? 92 or 93 is a high projected. Okay. So are you ready for a question? And the reason that people should know that I've reached out to you and why I'm not just feeling this question myself. First of all, I don't do cutouts. There's ripouts, there's cutouts, and there's swarm colloquial. that's the easy stuff they're out there they're available they're ready to grab but you uh are pretty

much you're high on the list it's between you and jeff thorchoff when i was thinking about who to reach out to but i know that you've got them beat by i don't know career wise a couple hundred cutouts anyway right yeah probably um what did you lose me no you just did a little little blink there but you're good yeah that's my dad trying to beep you know how to shut him down you know you need to shut your dad. Yeah. Okay. Send a voicemail.

Okay. Yeah, career-wise, I'm probably, I think I'm about double what he's done. He's probably in the neighborhood of 600 or so, and I'm somewhere around, 1,200. 1,200 cutouts compared to 600.

So just in case he watches this later or makes some noise about why didn't I reach out to him, that's why, Jeff, that's why. Well, I have to say, you know, there's some nuances that you can figure out over time, but by the time you've done 600 cutouts, you're an expert at it anyway. Okay, well, that's why you're here. That's why we're talking. So I'm going to read my question to you.

It comes from Stephen from Detroit, Texas. Says he has five colonies that he gained by removing bees, installing the comb in frames as careful as he could, still resulted in messy, uneven, and some comb stuck together. What's the most efficient way to have the bees move from this irregular comb into new frames? What would you recommend? First of all, explain it as if the person watching or listening doesn't even know what we're talking about. If you're doing a cutout, that means you're removing an established colony from a structure of some type.

And that's a good example. Those are good examples of cutout pieces that I would like to, if you have a deep frame with you, that would be even better because that's what most people try to frame into. So if you're doing a cutout, you're removing an established colony that has built natural drawn comb off of some structure, and you're having to try to remove that comb, those bees, and put that into a blank straw or a long, long hive, or whatever your worry, whatever your setup is going to be. And so you have to either move just the bees or the bees and the brews and the breeder. and some food.

My preferred way is to remove just the bees. But you can move brood combs. You can move some honeycombs. It depends on the time of the year. It depends on whether you're in a dirt or a flow. There's a lot of factors that go into. It depends on the temperature. If you have bees off of brood for long enough and cold enough temperature,

you're going to lose a lot of brood that way. anything that's uncapped is dead. You can forget about it. So you really want to primarily save capped brood. And if you're saving any uncaps, you want to keep the bees on it as much as you can. It needs to be older larvae. You're not going to probably ever save much eggs or young larva. And so some of that stuff can become food or hive beetles. And that creates a bigger issue in itself. But back to just framing it up. So I guess we should start out as simple as possible. Just framing it up, there's always an orientation.

So as you know, Fred, cones are the cells are oriented opposite to each other in about a 14 degree upward angle. And so you have to keep that upward angle when you frame. So you can't just frame them however the best they fit. You have to keep them at an upward angle. And so those pieces, why they're such a good example, is that they're rounded on the bottom. And so when you're framing up comb that is sometimes kind of heavy and it's rounded on the bottom, it wants to try to rotate. It wants to try to lay over.

And so you can, that's a good example right there. You can stick anything. You can take a little twig and stick through it for structure, for support, I guess the rubber bands, or you can flat cut the bottoms. But what you want to try to avoid is you want to try to avoid. is you want to try to avoid damaging as much of the brood cells as you can because the more damage you do to the brood cells, the more it stresses the bees, the more they have to repair. The longer it takes them to recover and the more opportunity that gives for anything to come in and damage the combs. So you can, so I've pre-banded one right here.

So banding vertically like you have there, I think. I think is that how you do it? Yeah, you have banding vertically. That's real common. I do that a lot, but you can, this is a way, as you can see here, I've got these rubber bands all on one side. They're wrapped around the corner, and they're all on one side, and you can lay this down, and you can lay your cones down

and situate them how you want them, and then band across the top to hold them in, and it gives it a lot of support, kind of like across. cross your heart bra, you know. So, and then if you have smaller pieces, you can do your rubber bands, the, the way you have them there, just to hold them in place. But the reason I ask you if you had a deep frame is because most people are going to use deep frames when they do a cutout.

It's rare to see somebody come along with a shallow frame. And so if you take those short cones and put them in that deep frame, they're stopping. right here. And so there's not a lot to grab them to keep them from rotating or rolling. And there are also this much space between the top bar and the cone that has to be something done with it. And you can't slide it up and make it stay. You slide it up and just go fall or roll over or something. So the best is, and you can't always do this. It really depends on the configuration of the hive and where they're built and everything. But the best is if you can get cones that are the full height of the frame. And if you have to go with shallow frames or medium frames, that's great.

If that works, and you can see, you can put those, you can start those in a deep box. It don't hurt, or nothing, but if you get full-length frames that fill out, top-to-bottom, flush, top-to-bottom, and of course you've got to cut them. And again, you want to be careful where you cut because you're trying to stay off of a solid cat brewed or good old larvae. And you know, the less of that, you damage the better. So if you're, you're not, you're can get that full. They'll tie that in a lot better. They won't cross cone as bad. And you know, some of those combs are wonky and you can't straighten them out really. You can kind of press them and you think they're going to stay, but they're always going to curve. So the straighter your

combs that you can insert in those frames and hold the better, the better your results are going to be. And in the end, you want them to fit next to clean foundation frames. eventually you're probably going to want to rotate them out because there's not a lot you can do with them. It's brood cones. If they ever, it's relegated to a brood box from now on. So you can't run them to an extractor. There's nothing structurally holding them because those rubber bands after a week or so, those rubber bands are gone.

The bees, chew them off and pull them out. There'll be a few that will survive and you have to go in and just take a knife and run across. Okay. there's there's elizabeth in the background she better not hide better say hello she she thinks she's hot yeah so when they lens wasn't wide enough to see me yeah for those you don't know that's randy's wife elizabeth so so ralbert said um did you give him some honey that's a prop was, I am, I just, as I told you beforehand, I've got to go to Florida and do an inspection after we're done here. And I was trying to wait to leave. So I got my new camera in. And it's,

the new Fleer, C5. C5. Okay. I just loaned out my C2. And I was, on Wednesday for a cutout. it was not supposed to come in uPS doesn't run until four or five o'clock around here but yeah so she called him we're we're personal friends with the uPS guy so she called him and got it to run by it early and drop it off so i could take it with me so you better get that on charge right now yeah it's got a built-in battery right well i got a i got an inverter in a truck i'll charge it while i drive we got two and a half hour drive to get down there okay all right because that C2, by the way, the C2, and this is good, it ties in because this has to do with cutouts and so on. And so the Fleer, do you prefer that standalone camera over the Fleer that mounts to your smartphone?

I do. A couple reasons with me. And I just upgraded my smartphone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. I had the 11 before. It's a different port, lightning port on the old one. USBC on this one. The, the Fleer 1 pro that I had for the old phone won't fit this one.

So I gave, I passed it down to my brother. But in the meantime, I bought the V-VOR that Jeff has, the Mr. Ed has. Okay. And it's, it's not as precise.

I don't think as even the, as even the old Fleer one. I think the old Fleer one was even more precise than that V-V-B-B-W-R. It does the job. It's, it's a cheap tool. And it really, it absolutely was saved a beginner time. But for me, it was costing me time because I was used to see in more detail and more.

Right, because it has like a parallax lens on it where it shows the physical outline of what you're looking at and the thermal overlay. So you've got those. And the V-BOR seemed to pick up. It didn't differentiate between how much heat. It showed a bright orange for whatever was hot. And so I was having a hard time differentiate in between. Is this a hive or just an uninsulated space? space.

Okay. So it was, it was costing me a little bit of extra time. So I went ahead and spent the, these are, these are 800 bucks new, but I got it off of eBay for $450. 450.

You sure that didn't fall out of the back of somebody's truck? What, what just happened? You know, you never know. There's also, so people know, there's also a gray market,

but Fleer is an American company. It's still got the least. All right. Okay. half off. Heck yeah. So. $4.50 plus tax.

So it was like $4.80 something, I think. By the way, while we're talking about that, have you ever checked the accuracy of the thermal readout? Like when it says something is 97 degrees Fahrenheit, is that pretty spot on? Because we're reading surface temperatures, so people should know that.

But how accurate is that? I never have checked it because that was not anything that really was important to me. It was just the heat signature itself and the size of the heat signature was more of what I was looking for. All right. But I haven't checked that. I haven't even really thought about it.

Okay. I don't think like you, Fred. I don't think about every little detail. Okay. All right. I'm going to hit you with some questions. You mentioned the rubber bands. Okay.

So in my sample here, I have this is all natural rubber by the way. And these are more the rubber bands you get at your staples or anything like that. Do you have a preference for the. the brand of rubber band that you use, do you find that the bees have a more difficult time removing one over the other? Or how do you decide what to use? I don't, but these were, I think, maybe dollar general. And it's the thick 64s. I prefer the, I prefer the thinner ones, really.

And Office Depot, whatever rubber vans they have seem to be a better quality. they seem to be stretchier. Okay. These I really, I had my eyes closed when I was doing this because I just knew they were snapped. Yeah, you don't want to get snapped. Yeah. So have you noticed the bees ever having problems getting the rubber bands out of there later?

Sometimes they'll build them into the cone and just leave them. Because they will chew through them. I've never seen them have trouble chewing through them. But sometimes they don't snap loose and they're already kind of. built into the cone so they'll just leave them there and they'll be hanging and just go in and just kind of pull them out like baloney strings okay so i know these are big jobs to take a lot of time and often you're tired and hot and working in a cramped space and so on uh jeff has a template that matches when you cut things out do you use a template or any kind of pre-measured outline

i just use the frame if i'm the frame itself yeah if i'm saving cones i just hold the frame up and cut within the okay right and my other question is do you see anything wrong with maybe using a

portable heat gun and melting some bees wax on your top bar and then putting that on that bees wax as a way to stick it to the top bar underneath. I don't say anything wrong with that at all as a matter of fact if you

if you have some wired foundation I mean some wired frames with no foundations in them you can push it on do them. Press those combs in there and put the rubber bands. That'll hold it in place long enough for them to repair that and build it onto the wires. But yeah, I don't see any problem with that at all.

That's a lot of the way that I make queen cups sometimes. Yeah. Will that work? So for those who are just listening in the podcast, this is fishing wire. It says for hanging, ultra-thin diameter, super tensile. It has a tensile strength of 48 pounds, which is 22.5. kilograms for those who don't do pounds. But have you tried monofilament line instead of your rubber bands?

And if not, why is it not a good idea? Or why is it a good idea? Either way. I was going to want up you. I've used spider wire. Okay. I don't know what spider wire is. You're going to have to explain it. the spider wires is this uh braided fishing line it's braided fishing line so yeah i think some of us braided well one of the reasons i was saying the ultra thin monofilament not braided

would be because later you could just pull it out like you could pull it through the comb and remove it all together you can do the same thing with this stuff it's just okay i'm not a I'm not a great fisherman. Yeah, that's a 150 pound test. So I get things hung in trees, so that's why I use spider whack. Okay, all right. So you think better than rubber bands, take it or leave it? What's your opinion on that?

Stronger than rubber bands. Riverbans were just the quickest and simplest. Quickest and cheapest. And cheapest. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because you'd have to tie a pretty great. if not to get that stuff to hold.

But you're going to, chances are, unless you're, unless you're doing this quite regularly, you're going to buy a bag of reprimands every time you do it for a couple of bags because they're going to sit in your truck and they're right. And then by the time you go to use them, they're going to, they're all going to be snapping. And those are the ones that hit you in the face when you're trying to put them on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Or, or worse, you've got them wrapped around some cone that's covered in bees and they snap and it just sets the bees off. Yeah. Okay. So what else do we want to know? The question was, if he's got them on these combs, do you ever transfer them to the other foundation that you showed? Do you checkerboard when you're putting them in the hive to keep them from going wonky? What do you do? I usually put all the cutout cones right close together. If I'm going to, if I want to be cutting something apart, I want to be something that I'm probably changing out later. okay you know and and i pretty kind of always count on some cross-combing so i just take them a little take a little bread knife and hanging down between the cones and and work it out but most of the time

you know we're we're doing a lot of these and we're when we show up the homeowners not interested in us hanging out all day and it and it takes time to do to frame up comb and get them established in a box on site. And a lot of times you want to leave that box right there at the entrance to the hive until late in the evening or, you know, a couple days later or whatever. So give some time to find that and move into that instead of in whatever structure you cut them out at. Some of these things are hours away from me.

I don't have time to go back for them. And, you know, you just cost yourself an extra, maybe an extra 45 minutes to an hour on a job to put stuff in combs as opposed to dispose of the combs into a melter where you can you know render it all down and wax new foundations and then in the end you you can stick them on brand new foundations and start them over again as long as you've got the time as long as it's early enough into the season start them on new foundations that you can manage much more easily and you can run them through an extractor and they're easy to put out and inspect and they're not falling out of the frame because a rubber band broke and you

didn't have it tight or whatever. So I just, I don't hardly save combs unless somebody just wants out. And sometimes I'm kicking myself because you're pulling it. You're cutting out brood that is so nice and it's got so many bees in it. You just, you hate to lose that. But right. It becomes a time issue for me. Let me ask a question about orientation of the comb. Let's say you did that you put it in your truck the direction of the frames in the boxes in the truck do you pay attention to that you run in parallel with your line of travel do you worry about them being 90 degrees of that's when you hit your brakes they all flip into each other or do you does that even matter for you i don't even think about it will you think about it now because it is actually a thing so now

You mentioned early on. The only thing that I do think about is sometimes when I do want a safe comb, and I don't have time to or don't want to frame it up on site, if I have an ice chest with me, ice chest will, you know, kind of cold or hot and it will kind of preserve the temperature. So I'll put them in an ice chest oriented like I want them and stack together for them to keep each other warm.

The stacks of brood combs will keep each other warm. And so I'm careful about that and careful not to have them where they're flopping around or sliding around the ice chest. So I can get to home or wherever I'm going to frame them up. But, you know, there's sometimes where I pull out enough brood that I'm just like, I can't let this go to waste. And I've got extra time, so we're going to frame it up. But it's rare.

Okay, and let's sit on this. And some people are listening and thinking about their first cutouts and things like that. Why would you not put your piece in with free was full of money? Well, a couple of reasons is that it's messy, for one. if you have black ants or sugar ants wherever you're setting up, it's an attractive for them because it's going to be running and the bees can't clean up everything, especially if you've got like screen bottoms or small cracks in your bottom board

or something that's going to be dripping out where little ants can get in and that attracts that. On the other hand, you got robber bees that are going to come in for an opportunity because they sense a food source and there's a weakened colony here that's trying to rebuild and you've framed up a whole bunch of honey. all you've created is a food station for the neighborhood. So you can lose hives that way.

So a lot of it is just trying to keep it clean, but a lot of it is not trying to stress the bees anymore. If you want to keep that honey and give it to them later on after they get established, fine. But to put it all in with your cut out is not a good idea. Those are fantastic points. The other thing is there's a risk of drowning your bees in the honey, right? There is.

There is a risk. They don't do very well. Now, you said in the very beginning that you much prefer just to take the bees and not the comb. What's your favorite method for doing that? What's your favorite gear? Oh, that's a good one. Oh, I guess. He's talking about vac wise?

Yep. I'm putting you on the spot. Yep. Okay. Well, because I know you use several BVACs. and do you have a clear favorite or does it just are there circumstances or one's better than another I have two favorites so I didn't you tell me I had egg in my beard for it I didn't see it that nobody would know it if you weren't saying it right now nobody would know Elizabeth picks me eggs and I was like ah ha ha ha ha ha you got to see for it I have two favorites actually one and they they both have their strengths of weakness is not

Not really a lot of weaknesses, but they both have their streaks. But I've got the everything be bag that I use quite a lot. It's a battery powered cordless back. It's just simple, quick, light, fits anywhere. On a full charge, I can do two or three cutouts if I'm conservative with the use of it. That is, man, for swarm captures and everything else, that's just the easy collection method. My other favorite is that big wooden.

Looks like a stereo cabinet. Real nice box that was built by John. Is it up in Maine? I can't remember his last name off top of my head. Is it the Colorado BVAC or is it something? No, no. It's so that this is a back that only he has built. Does he sell them?

Like if somebody's watching right now, they want to lick into it. Does he sell them? I don't know if he would or not. He was going to at some point. And I don't think he had a lot of demand for it because it. It's costing a lot to make them. They're beautiful. When he first sent it to him, I told him I couldn't use it because it was too nice.

I don't want to scratch it up. He said, I'll beat it up, money. He said, I'm telling you, it's tough. And it has been. It's been a real good back. And it's super durable. It works faster than everything back. And both of them have, you know, practically no loss of life if you use them properly.

Yeah, low, low B's flat. Yeah, yeah, very low. Both of them. But it does work faster than everything back. Well, if you reach out to him and if he is, you know, willing to accept someone that's looking for one, just give the information for those that are watching and listening. It'll be down in the video description. And if it's not available, you won't find it. If it is available, we'll have that information down below.

I'll send you his email. Okay. I'm sure if he gets enough demand, he'll make some. He's made quite a few over the years, but he was going to turn it in. to a business and it didn't pan out, I don't think. Yeah, I wish people understood that paying for quality is worth it. It's not like you're going to buy another one later. Absolutely, absolutely.

Okay, and have you tried the Colorado BVAC or you didn't or you don't care for it? I have, I've used the Colorado VAC with a yakie B-Man has one and Mr. Ed has one and Jake Pee, the B-Man has one. I've used all those guys' backs. it's cumbersome problematic heavy let's talk about the problems the problems that the problems that I've seen has been with JPs

and I don't know if it's just because of the age of the equipment or how much it's used it but it was every job that I was on with him he was having problems with it sealing and losing vacuum and motor burned up because there is that gasket around the top Yeah. However, if you don't get it just situated right, and then it has a blast gate.

Okay. So, but that's the one that he uses? Does he? That's the one JP uses. Now, do they not like the everything BVAC or? He's never tried it. I offered, offered to let him try mine and he refused. You would think as many cutouts as he does, he would be trying new gear.

Maybe he just doesn't feel like he has the time to do it. I don't know. Well, I think, I think he was personal friends with the guy that created a Colorado back and he feels obligated to use it. I don't know. Even though that guy doesn't own it anymore, I think Man Lake has it now or somebody.

No, Better be bought it out. Yeah. So. Yeah. Okay. It's not a, I mean,

it works. And it has to be plugged in. You need power source for it. Yeah, you need a power source. Yeah. And so the everything BVAC is self-contained. For those who you don't know what that is,

it goes on your back. It has a built-in backpack. I haven't worn out the battery yet. And like Randy says, it lasts through several removals. For me, it's just open-air swarms because I don't do cutouts. Yeah. But it is handy. It's great for, I mean, who else can show up to catch a swarm out in the middle of nowhere without a power source?

And climb a ladder or go into an attic. And they're on a limb this big around where you can't shake them. Yeah. and you show up with your little everything back, suck them up, and you're gone in, you know, five to 20 minutes. Do you have a spare bucket? So do you swap them out for a really large removal? I have several spare buckets and several spare motorheads.

Oh, you have spare motorheads and all that. Because the buckets I found, if you fill it too much, you'll actually kill your bees. Yeah. Yeah, you can ever eat them. Yeah. All right. anything else you think people should know about transferring from a removal or a cutout to the hive

and aftercare? Aftercare, watch them. Give them a small entrance, give them something they can defend. Don't overheat them if it's in the heat of the summer. Don't put them in the direct in full sun. Don't do that because they'll have to come off. They'll be bearding instead of inside repairing combs and tenting the bruce. you know like I said I prefer I prefer not even saving the brood but when you do this those are some good tips but I prefer just taking the bees treating them just like a package insert them on new heavy wax heavy heavy wax foundations and let them run and you know you have a do you have a preferred foundation I don't because we wax all of our own okay so but you find as far as the plastic goes are pretty consistent between different companies.

Yeah. They are. Okay. But you wax your own. You dip them, you said, or you roll them on? We roll them. You roll them. Okay. But I do like this pura frame. I'm not going to have one of these. I don't know if I have a pure frame. I do. And that's from Premier, right?

They had them at the Expo and they were passing them out and they've got all the printing on them, showing what they are. Yeah, prevent hanging extract. Yeah, I did not. I might have got one. I don't know. You know what? You pick up so many things.

And if you don't know what Randy's talking about, it's a North American Honeybee Expo, which will be coming up in January in Louisville, Kentucky. If you want to go to any B event where you're going to see new stuff coming out and find the vendor that you've heard about or seen a catalog from, they're all going to be there.

Highly recommended. Okay, there's a plug for cammon rails. All right. You need to. Yeah. Oh yeah. They're booking already.

But yeah, so you like those frames. I do like that frame. It's a good heavy frame. All right. I like heavy duty stuff. Do you make your own woodmower and stuff? I used to years ago, but you know, it got to the point where it's

cheaper to buy it pre-cut. If you want to assemble it yourself, It's cheaper to buy a pre-cut than to buy raw materials at the local big box store. Okay. And, you know, when we first started out, we were building our own woodenware off of some siding. We were stripped. My day was buying some tax lien properties, and we would strip siding off of these houses and built our wood andware out of it. Wow.

And, you know, it's, it did the job for the time, but you get busy and it's time consuming. Okay. while I have you and you're in the south and I'm in the north where we get lots of snow and everything. What's your preferred? You mentioned premiere there and they have, I think Greg Burns has a firma. What's their hive treatment called? That's an Indura hive. Yeah.

Endura hive, is that it? Anyway, what's your preferred finish for your woodenware for your beehives that lasts the longest? exterior finish just whatever the cheapest exterior paint exterior paint so latex exterior or semi-gloss or gloss house paint yeah it is like okay so let's give let's give a tip on that it's usually a huts paint from oops paint okay yeah that's good stuff and so um if you go to any paint store you're whether it's home depot lows or anything like that you go up to the paint counter you find out who returned their exterior paint and they didn't like it.

They'll have gallons that normally would cost you $85 and I'll give them to you for five and in some cases hand them out to you for free because they have to get rid of it. So always check in with your paint mixers to see if they've got stuff that's returned exterior that's semi-gloss or gloss. Do you have a difference? I don't have a preference, but an extra tip on that is Cheryl Williams down here. if they find out you're a beekeeper, they'll give you some sweet deals.

Nice. I like it. Okay. Sherman Williams. I wonder if that's just down there if that's anywhere. I don't really know. But my dad capitalizes on that quite a lot. He gets free buckets from sure,

free five gallon buckets from Cheryl Williams. Okay. Now that you said that, everybody's going to meet. But that's a good tip. You definitely talk to these people because, you know, the color,

mix it all together. you end up kind of with a gray or a dark brown paint anyway. Yeah. Or a pink or, you know, peptopink or something. Yeah. So now you're, when you're transporting your bees, do you have them open air in the back of a pickup? Unless it's the heat of the summer.

I put them in the cab with me. You put them in the cab and run the air conditioning? Yeah. And outside, it's just the air conditioning for that is force draft 70. Is that? Yeah. Okay. And if I stop, if I stop for gas, if I don't,

everybody's got for drinks, I park under the gas can. and make sure they got shade on them. You park outside and leave them in the direct sun and you come back out after getting your cold Coke. They're probably going to be done. It's amazing how fast they overheat. Okay, well, Randy, I want to thank you so much for joining me today and answering this question for Steve from Detroit, Texas. And I think you gave us a lot of really good information and shared some of your experience. And I hope people found that valuable.

And if you did, don't forget to visit 628 Dirt Roost. YouTube channel and you'll see a lot more cutouts and detail see what Randy does and how he does it and you're going to be very impressed so thanks a lot Randy I hope you have a great for it yep looking forward to seeing you in Kentucky yeah same here looking forward to seeing everybody so I hope you enjoyed that interview I did with Randy McCaffrey 628 dirt rooster and I hope you'll visit his YouTube channel if you've never heard of him before and I'm really glad that he was able to share time with us today and talk about cutouts, a lot of great information. No one is smarter than everyone, and it's great to have these people as friends that you can

reach out to and get more information. Let's move on to question number two. This is from Jason Seward 8506. That's a YouTube channel name. It says you pick queens up by hand. I really like a tutorial for that, and I do believe you would do the best job and so on. So here's the thing. I do have videos where I've grabbed queens and picked them up with my fingers. I will just put those links down in the video description. I don't have a video just about that, but marking queens, transferring queens into cages and things like that. There are a lot of ways to pick up a queen. And I think it's a challenge for people that are new to be keeping to get up the courage to just grab the queen.

Because, number one, she's incredibly valuable to your beehive. So you want to know how to do it correctly. And this is why my grandson, the supervisor, only gets to pick up drones and mark them, for example. He's demonstrating that he has the dexterity and that he can carefully grab them, and he grabs them only by the thorax and the wings and doesn't grip the abdomen or risk damaging them.

And then ultimately he'll be able to pick up a queen. Now, there are ways to collect queens and mark them without ever touching them, and one of those is the one-handed queen catcher. And I have a video about that and how to mark them. So we demonstrate that. Sometimes I get so caught up into tools that we use to collect queens and keep them safe so that we can mark them.

That I forget sometimes, even with the queen scooting across in front of me, that I can just reach out and grab her by the thorax and the wings. That's my personal preferred method. And she will curl her abdomen around, and it will kind of be a mock-stinging action. but I've never been stung by a queen and I've picked up a lot of them so I will just explain that you get them by the thorax and the wings and it holds them nice and tight and if you did some damage to a wing it's not the end of the world but I've never done that so we want to not damage their feet their

antennae their abdomen and those are areas to avoid and it's very easy to do it so I will put a link for question number two to a video that shows me picking up the queen with my fingers One of the things I want you to know is you want your fingers to be grippy. We want to get a hold of the queen. So if you rub your fingers on beeswax ahead of time, it'll add a little tack to your fingers, and then you'll be in a good position to grab the queen. You can also wear nitral gloves, but when it comes to handling queens, you want to make sure that they're very tight fitting on your fingers.

You don't want a lot of loose material. We don't want to roll the queen between our fingers. It's a pickup and hold her. while you put her into something else. And this is the reason why some people will grab their feet, hold them from underneath, and that's so that they can put a mark on the thorax of the queen, which is the purpose for handling her in the first place most often.

But I like to put the queen into the one-handed queen catcher. So I don't use it to catcher. I use it to hold her. It's got a little plunger in it. If you want to see the video on how to do that, that's my preferred method for marking the queen. then I don't have to risk grabbing her feet or doing some, you know, unforeseen damage to the queen. I think Kamen Reynolds had a video once that had a queen with a leg missing, and she was still doing great,

which was very interesting. But the goal is no injury to the queen, and I think it's very easy to do. So practice on drones, but I prefer grabbing them from the thorax and the wings, and then get them into a container or underneath a screen or something so you can mark them. rather than holding their feet or anything from underneath. Never grabbed the queen by the abdomen. Never. So question number three, moving right on. Nate from Fort Scott, Kansas.

Sent you a long question early this week, and I had a realization about that. When the new queen arrived that I had ordered, I noticed it seemed unusually small. I had a hard time differentiating it from worker bees in its cage, and I ordered a maided queen. Is it possible they sent me, an unmated queen. So for Nate, anything is possible, but remember that a lot of the queens that

were buying that are mated and get shipped through the mail, they're not in full production. In other words, they've been mated and they hopefully have demonstrated that they can produce eggs. But when they're banked or held in awaiting shipment, their abdomens do shrink up quite a bit. So it is not unusual to get, because I've received them from B. Weaver, that looked very small. And within a week, their abdomens were fully extended and they're back in full production. So not unusual. And I don't worry about that at all. But of course you want to make sure that the queen that you purchase, you should see production. You should see eggs and some open larvae, assuming they have the cells and the infrastructure to lay those eggs in within a week. So install her week later, check up on her, make sure that there are eggs and

then you'll know the result. But I think ahead of time that she's, She's just small because she's not in full production and not being fed constantly the way a queen that's in production does get fed by nurse bees. Question number four, moving on. This is from Donna, Herodzburg, Kentucky. I have a thriving hive, eggs, capped brood, etc. I lost my queen today. Is there time for the colony to raise a queen or do I need to buy one? All right.

So for new beekeepers, this is devastating. to realize, but it is important to realize that you have lost your queen. So a very careful search. So it says that there's eggs, capter root, and everything. So that means there was a queen in there within three days because there are still eggs. So first of all, verify that the queen is in fact lost. If not, we have full production going on. So if you bought in a queen right now, you would have almost no interruption. Now let's say you don't want to buy in a queen, a late season queen. Most of the good suppliers of Queens are out of stock right now. But if you can get one and it's a person that's reputable and they sell very good

mated stock, then that's going to be your fastest recovery because, now this is down in Kentucky, you probably have a longer available time for them to recover than we do here in the state of Pennsylvania. So for me, you have to think 30 days out if you're going to let them make their own and there's the risk. After that time frame, you don't know if, for example, after, 21 days, right, that they didn't produce a queen that got made it. So you need to pay attention to the production of queen cells. Usually there will be multiples of that and it is a great time for them to do it because there are lots of drones here where I am and we're in the onset of a heavy nectar flow. So again, that's going to be a colony then that you would have to nurture and take care of. But

here's the bonus side of it it takes uh since the queen is absent they will be building queen cells on their own 15 days out you're going to have a new emerging queen 9 to 12 days after that it's likely that she'll be made it and in production and at that point you've still got all of those workers that are in development and they're pupating and then there are constantly replacements emerging so it's at a time of year where a lot of colonies are reducing their numbers anyway. So to some degree, it's a toss-up, and it depends on what you want to do with your bees. But the guaranteed method is, of course,

to buy a queen that's already in late, and you'll know those results right away. And in the meantime, I would not stop them from producing their queen cells just in case the queen that arrives is dead on arrival, or she's been exposed to a lot of heat in transit, or she is not in production when you put her in the high. hive. So you kind of need an insurance policy. Now let's say you have a hundred percent confidence. You're going to buy two queens instead of one. You're going to do all kinds of things to ensure

that this colony is going to have a laying queen. Then you can suppress their reproduction on the colony level and reproduction to make a new queen by putting queen endobular pheromone noodles in. But if you don't have them already, if you don't have them in your refrigerator, ready to go, they put a queen mandibular pheromone in the hive and their purposes it's called temp queen they sell them for better be there might be other companies that sell them too but when you put that in there knowing that you're missing your queen it suppresses their instinct to make new queens it also suppresses laying workers from becoming laying workers 21 days down the road from the time you're missing your queen so there are a lot of So I already did respond to Donna and said that I think that personally I would just buy in a new queen right away

Or you get one from a friend that has extra queens and this is also the value of Resource colonies and hives and things like that so that you could just grab a queen that you know its production level and keep one of your thriving colonies right on track and then let the resource hive replace the queen So there are a lot of options there and so it's just a matter of kind of what your personal preference is but there is time here where I live but then you would have to feed that colony because by the time the queen gets mated we're late-season drones and things like that so and you would not know those genetics because you only know the colony that produce it she's gonna fly out she's gonna mate with drones in your area and she'll come back if everything works perfectly and I

think depending on where you are there are pressures at the end of the year that kind of work against you when you're trying to replace queens and colonies at the end of the year. The predators are at maximum numbers. This is where, at least where I live, we have squadrons of dragonflies flying around just nabbing bees. A queen is very conspicuous in the air. There are birds that will eat bees. There are a lot of options for predation. We have bald-faced hornets.

They're European hornets. They are all brooding and they have maximum numbers at this time of year. So what I'm saying is it's much more challenging for a new queen to navigate to the drone congregation area and getting maided and coming back at the end of the year than there are at the beginning of the year. So once again, I gamble on just getting a mated queen from an own source. So question number five comes from Katerina in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You mentioned using Lysen 6-frame nukes a couple weeks ago. How do you like them? Any drawbacks?

So Lysen is a polystyrene hive company. And they're very tough polysyrene, by the way. And mine is three tall. So we have 6 frames on each level. So 18 frames all deep. So it's more than a single deep Langstroth 10 frame box. And it's in a vertical configuration. I like it overall. They don't hold up to a lot of abuse. So if you're going to move your hives around a lot,

and they have to deal with a bunch of stresses in handling and management and shipping and things like that, they wouldn't be my top pick because their strong suit, though, is the fact that they're well insulated. They also have a hive top feeder, which makes them pretty darn convenient for liquid feed. They have removable inserts on them, so you can also put solid feed up there, so fond it, and things like that. It's not as well configured as some other plastic hives, but the installation alone makes it a very desirable hive. You have a mouse guard already built into the front that you control, and it's pretty decent. You know, for the money, I think that they're very good. And I like it as a nucleus, as a resource hive. And lison, of course, makes my favorite hive stands, those lison,

adjustable metal stands that adapt to all kinds of terrain. Those are really good. I like a lot of things from Lysen. And the nukes, if you're not going to be putting a lot of wear and tear on them, I think it will last a long time, polystyrene. But there again at the end of the useful life of that hive, you do have plastics that we're dealing with. And I did find out there are some companies that will recycle polystyrene.

So that's very promising, but none are low. located in my state. So it's another thing to look into if you're thinking about polystyrene products, end of life. What has to be done to the hive to make it suitable for the recyclary? And then is there a recycling center for that material? So longevity plays. We want it to last a very long time, but we are disposing of someday plastics. And I'm a little bit of a hypocrite there because, of course, I have one because I wanted to see how well it works. Works great. It has very good. latches and it's very secure. If I had the money and I were making the comparison between a licein hive and an apameh hive, I would go with the appamee 7 frame nuke over the lison. And that's

just based on durability alone. And also it's very practical as far as the way it's featured. It has entrances that you can open and close all over. It has better hive top feeders than the lice and hive top feeder. And, uh, but it costs more. So, but one of the things that I think about between Lysin and Apame, Apame appears to be rugged, more durable, and I think it would last a lot longer. So if I'm buying an apame hive now at my current age, it's probably going to last the rest of my beekeeping life. The polysyrene hives have to be protected to some degree. Plus you have to paint them.

It says that right in the instructions when you get it out. So you do have to preserve it. So just food for thought. and that's just a personal preference, but good insulation is a winner for sure. So question number six comes from Dustin Bolverdi, Texas. Hey Fred, not a question today, but in one of your recent episodes you mentioned you liked getting some follow-up, so I figured I would share two things with you. First, switch grass pellets.

Truly are the best smoker fuel I've ever used. I'm in Texas, and we have a little spicier bees, so smoke is critical for us. says I lit the pellets yesterday morning at 8 a.m. I worked about 30 hives and until 3 p.m. And the smoker stayed lit the whole time and provided excellent quality quantity of smoke. I went to lunch, came back, expecting to have the lighted again and gave it a few puffs. It was back in business. Second, I wrote you at the end of June and plan to remove all capped brood for my hives and make large 10-frame splits with all-cap brood and treat the donor hides immediately with a OAV. OAV is exhalic acid vaporization, which is an organic treatment for varomites. Later the splits with OAV before giving them a new queen, this plan worked excellent. All queens

were accepted. All hives are washing between zero and three mites at mid-August. Looks like we're going into winter in good position. So thanks to Justin for that update on that. Question number seven, I do like updates because often people pose a question, we offer some resolutions, and then we may never hear from them again unless things went really bad and I'm very thankful that I've not given someone advice at some point that came back and I ruined their life or something. So it's always great to get feedback, follow-ups, and know that recommendations that we're making are working well. Question number seven comes from Mike, Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Queens. I heard them call. sister queens we recently inspected a strong hive two deeps two supers being filled found and found an

unmarked new queen large and healthy looking we marked her green lots of brood in all stages and lots of resources in all forms while putting the hive back together we came across another queen marked red so that means if there were green this year for 2004 last year year would have been a red queen, 2003, so she's a carryover. Assume it is the original, looks very healthy, not slimmed down like she was going to swarm. We already have two resource hives, five-by-five nukes, as suggested, and we decided to let her remain in the colony and see what happens. What do your thoughts on our actions? Thanks, Mike. So me personally, if you came across a new, unmarked queen that was nice and healthy and vibrant and being attended to by a retinue of nurse bees and things like that.

And then we came across the red painted thorax on last year's queen. I would remove last year's queen. We run the risk at the end of the year of that queen still swarming out because you have a replacement already. Normally the bees will swarm out with the old queen before the new queens emerge from their queen cells. It doesn't always happen, and there are instances where more than one queen work as sister queens in the same hive. Generally, one of them tends to be a better producer than the other. But with all things equal, and there is a risk with that queen that has the red thorax dot, I would pull her.

You have nucleus hives. I would check them to make sure that one of them doesn't need a queen. I would try to bank her if I could on a frame of brew. and then of course verify that the other one is laying so there are things you can do one is the queen isolation cage since you found the queen I realize now we have to go back and find her again but the one that's got the painted red thorax I would put her in a queen isolation cage on a frame of brood this gives us an opportunity to do two things one assess whether or not she's still laying and we've

prevented her from leaving the hive with a swarm the same second part is all those frames remaining outside of that are now free range for the unmarked queen that you found this gives you an opportunity to see if the unmarked queen is producing because a week down the road you should not see any eggs out there if the only productive queen is the one marked red so if you do find brood in production eggs and larvae at the end of the week then we know that the new queen that you saw that did not have a painted thorax or now is painted green, then you know that she's in production and we can get rid of the old queen with the red thorax, right? That's what I would do, just an insurance policy to make sure,

and they sell those isolation cages at Better Bee. So question number eight, this comes from Richard Clifton, Colorado. And a second year, first harvest. I love beekeeping and have three strong colonies. Last year, I bought a nuke to start, did a split last summer, and got them both through winter. This last spring, I caught a small swarm in my yard, which very quickly expanded into two deeps. I'm just finished extracting three medium supers, had earlier extracted one plus a flow super. The flow super is full again. Now my local club says put the empties back on because we're still in a heavy flow and we risk plugging the nest with winter bee production around the corner but i've got bottles and jars of honey everywhere i'm 72 and my hobby is becoming work i don't really want to market my

honey i thought i wanted more bees so i could tinker with queen grafting but now i feel the three-year curse is coming i've been following your advice successfully but now i'm in a quandary help so A lot of people would not consider Richard's situation to be a quandary. You have too much honey, you're going into a big nectar flow, and there's a lot of production going on, and you don't want to deal with the honey. I don't know what advice to give other than flow hides are easy, because when they fill and they get capped, you can, of course, draw those off straight into the jar, but you don't want the honey.

So I don't know what else to tell you, other than to bring someone in who wants the honey, if you have a bee club or something like that, I'm sure it wouldn't be very hard to get someone that wants to come in and take honey off of your hives and help get your honey surplus removed. You want to make sure, though, that what's left behind is enough to get your bees through winter. But aside from that, this doesn't sound like a big problem. This sounds like bees can turn into work. I have that situation myself years ago.

I only wanted 10 hives. We're at 43. And it can turn into a big job. And this is where mentoring someone comes in. But this is your third year of beekeeping. So I would bring someone in that wants the honey and track those bees. And I do like putting it back on the hive it came off of just for 24 hours. So they can clean up the residue of the honey that's on those frames that have been extracted.

And you're putting those back on the hive that they came from. And when we have an abundance of resources, this is not always the end. of the world although when you get to the end of the year the last thing we want to see is a late september swarm this happens occasionally because what are they doing they're building up right now when you walk outside and you smell honey in the air which is what we're having here that is a rapid build-up and they can what some people may not realize is what we're describing here is a potential for being honey-bound that means that your foragers are bringing in nectar the storekeeper bees inside the hive

are looking for places to park it because they're out of room. And so now they can actually start to backfill the brood area, which then impacts your queen's ability to lay her eggs and then produce, of course, winter stock. So we want to prevent that. So we have to actively remove capped honey so that we can free up the space. And I also like to get that uncapped and extracted

and back on the hive as soon as possible to give them space to store their stuff. we don't want a honeybound situation at this time of year. Now, later on, at the end of September, when the nights are cold and the days are warm, I don't mind that they become semi-honeybound at that time of year. Because what happens then is we've already got our fat-bodied winter bees produced or they're emerging already, so they're in pupa state.

And when they come out and if they end up covering cells that are full of honey that's capped, that's okay because they're just collected over that and they're going to consume that fairly quickly and open up brood area at the end of the year. It reminds me of some of the stories I used to hear about early submariners in the Navy. When they went on long deployments, these are diesel boat days, you know, World War II and stuff. They would deploy and walk on their food. So in other words, there would be planks down on the deck of the submarine and they would have all their food in cans underneath. And as the deployment continued, they would remove those planks, and then they would pull up the cans. And of course, the crew consumes them. And then eventually they end up with just storeroom space again.

So that's kind of what I think about. At the end of the year, when we've got a honeybound situation, it's not actually the end of the world, because they'll consume the honey first that the cluster is over, and then we're open up again for production. And hopefully they've got enough pollen to get through. So for me, at the end of the year, I don't worry too much about it. for now I would make sure they have extra space. We don't want to have a late season swarm, which is the other risk of having a hive that's really chocka block with honey and nectar. Question number nine comes from David, Brian, Texas. A lot of people in Texas watching.

That's pretty cool. I'm going to meet a lot of people in Texas, by the way, because I get to go down there and give a presentation. I'm looking forward to it. So anyway, David's in Brian, Texas. It says, I got started thinking this morning about resource hives and VSH queens. For those of you who don't know, VSH is Veroa sensitive, hygienic. So it means they realize when varroa is underneath the cappings of pupating bees and things like that and they'll actually uncap a varroa infected pupa. And then hygienic, they do a lot of grooming. They might be biting the legs like the Purdue mite molars, ankle biters.

And so that's what that is. My thought was influenced by the way you and Michael Palmer spread out from your resource hive brood to the rest of your apiary. So again, the resource hives, if I've got a colony that's weak, or as described earlier, maybe you lost a queen and you need to have something to bridge that gap with brood. You can take a frame of brood and put it in with the colony that's in decline. You can also bring a frame of brood from a resource hive, put it in a colony that's about to receive a new queen, and introduce the new queen in concert with a new frame of brood from another hive and they get this pheromone blast that makes them more accepting of your new queen so anyway uh if your resource hives were high vs hs would spreading out their brood to other colonies suppress mites would it take too

many combs of brood for this to be a viable option just thinking of various options as it takes the time to influence the environment with good genetics. So when we're pulling out frames of brood to fortify colony that has another queen, the benefits of their genetics are not very, you know, lasting. So even though you might get some bees that have those traits, if they're coming out of a VSH colony, right, they will be actively VSH bees. So they will, as nurse bees are going to do a great job, they're going to groom, and they're going to go after varumites where they find them, and they're going to groom them off and get them out of the hive and things like that. But that won't last because they're going to progress on through their jobs

and will eventually stop doing that. So it's not a long-term fix and it does not long-term affect the genetics of the hive that you put them in because that comes from the queen that's installed in the hive. So that's it. So it helps boost numbers. And if they're healthy, of course, it makes them more productive, freeze up more bees for for foraging and things like that. but it does not alter genetics on its own.

It's a flash in the pan kind of result. Question number 10 comes from Den B-7181. That's a YouTube channel name. Have you ever tried to overwinter a weaker colony on top of a strong colony with a double-screen board? Okay, I do have the double-screen boards only because they need to teach about them from time to time. I don't do it myself.

I don't use them myself. and the principle is that we put a strong colony that's already on a foundation deep brood box we put the double screen board on there why double screens because two screens keeps them out of physical contact often you will see this referred to as a snail grove board and then of course you have to have an alternate entrance so they have these little turns that will open up an entrance to the side or the back this is double screen sits on top and uh your stronger colony on the bottom weaker colonies on the top why do that because the weaker colony now benefits from secondary heat that will pass through these screens and keep them warm

which means they use fewer resources to keep themselves warm while they recover I prefer instead to leave my colonies independent and then just have really good insulation and if a colony is weaker or smaller more insulation double bubble whatever and then I make sure that they're well fed so that they can if they don't have to forage for nectar for example because you've provided some heavy sugar syrup that frees up more foragers for pollen okay and there are foragers that do pollen and nectar at the same time but as we saw in the opener today ragweed for example is a source of a lot of pollen for these bees and they are not getting nectar from it so if they can have that sucrose available inside the hive then that frees them up

for other things which means they can continue with a smaller complement of bees until they build up. So especially with the wonky weather that's going to happen near the end of the year, you can get days of rain, days of cold when they can't forage very well, and you will have to feed them. But I don't personally stack the hives that way. I do understand why that works, but for me it's too much manipulation later on and I don't have a place to put feed on top of the hive down below. if I needed to feed them because now I have an insert in between which is that double screen board To deal with them. So try it if you want to. I would rather just have insulation if you need to give them extra heavy syrup at the end of the year

Question number 11. This comes from curious coy 492. That's the YouTube name if the top frames has propolized double bubble with this leave less space for bees to chase small high beetles. I know you don't deal with small high beetles in your apiary, but unfortunately those little guys are a problem. My observation is the small high beetles tend to be more numerous near the inner cover. That's true, just based on what other people tell me. And don't the bees chase the small high beetles to corners and upper parts of the hive. Continuing in that line of reasoning, would that adaptation be one layer of double bubble on top of the inner cover, less insulation, but balanced with small-hietal control. So I think it actually would work.

I like what we're talking about. This is double bubble. You talk about it a lot. But I do notice this, for example, on the nucleus hives that I have where I use this as a layer underneath that three-quarter-inch plank on top, this comes in direct, in fact, I should have had one that's been used because it comes in direct contact with the back of your frames. And when it does that, the bees propolize it. They propolize the tops of their frames in the hive right to this when this is under your inner cover. And when they do that, they have in fact eliminated a hiding space for the small hive beetles. So I would like to hear feedback from those who have small hay beetles and who have tried that. But I think we have, they like to corral them up on top of the inner cover too if they

have access through that. And they use propolis to seal them into corn. and things like that, but with double bubble or any reflectics type of insulation film like this, it sticks right to it and we just eliminated a hiding space. Now, someone else did tell me that on these edges where the aluminum coating does not cover the edges that some things can get in there. Well, they sell tape, a luminized tape that is for double bubble or reflectics. right you can actually fold that and just kind of make a quilt out of this close all the edges and put that down and I think that would even guarantee a little more that they can't

hide in the little edges of the double bubble but I like the idea I think it would work I think it would help what do you think would that work those of you who have small high beetle problems oh I'm gonna mention something while we're talking about that you see these little plastic standoff sometimes people feed pollen patties and winter patties and things like that at the end of the year this is a trivet it is a culinary term keeps things off of direct contact but what it does in your case is provides a space underneath pollen patties or winter patties and those are areas where small high beetles are known to encroach on and feed and reproduce in your winter patties so by ellis

elevating it with a trivet putting your paddy on top and having your bees have access top edges bottom of your pollen paddy or your protein patties whatever you're putting in there if you're in small high beetle territory this takes away their ability to hide from your bees it's a trivet from be smart designs and it is sold at better bee and i've seen it a lot of places but i thought i would mention that too since we're on the small high beetle thing and That's it. Question number 12. Sorry we're running so long today. But I was glad that Randy could chime in and share his experience with us. This comes from Maui, from Metro Manila, the Philippines. Hi Fred. I introduced a naturally mated queen using a push-in cage. I released on the fourth day, and it's my third time to do this.

But the first time this happened, the queen has laid multiple eggs in cells. I thought the queen was just newly mated and getting the hang of things, but three weeks later, she's still laying multiple eggs in cells. They are worker brood, though. What does this mean? She has many open cells to lay in. The hive is pretty strong. Any thoughts? Will this affect the number of fertilized eggs she will be laying in her lifetime? Well, first of all, the queens produce eggs on demand. what they need based on nutrition and everything else coming in. It's the sperm that is limited, right? So they can produce eggs, but the mating is, they gather sperm, it's stored in the spermatica,

that is separate from egg production. So the eggs that are coming out. Here's the thing. Your nurse bees are going to clear them out. We never see twins and triplets in worker cells. There's going to be one worker bee developing in there. And that means even if this queen just like a Plato fund factory, is going around and there's just eggs, you know, coming out of her abdomen as she goes around the hive,

which I have a video of, one that they just kept coming out. Whether her abdomen was down in cell or not, eggs were being produced and the workers were following her and they were just consuming them as she went. So what happens when a queen, and it's good news that we know that it's a queen that's doing it, also good news that we know that worker brood is coming from that. So she's made it. So what happens is your workers are policing up the eggs, and that's actually the term. They consume eggs that either are genetically inferior in some way, maybe too closely related to the workers, because sometimes she might have made it with a drone, among other drones, but one might be too closely genetically related to her, and they will police up those eggs and consume them.

So they consume all the eggs out of the cell, except the one that, they leave for development and then when it hatches on its third day they start feeding that larva and off they go. So it's not that she's going to run out of eggs. Sperm is what's finite but queens can go to the outside. There's a reason why we have five colors because it's extremely rare to have a queen over five years old. Usually they just don't last that long. I think you've just got a queen that still just overproductive and cranking out a lot of eggs and doesn't know how to stop. it. So eventually it should settle. I hope it does, but I would like to hear more later because it's

been three weeks. That is a long time for a queen to try to get the hang of that. I don't know if any of you raised chickens, but chickens get into their fifth month, going into the sixth month, and that's normal when the hen starts to go into lay. And sometimes chickens that have never laid an egg before they're just walking along and an egg falls out and they have no idea where that came from and they look around and there's an egg in the yard now then they get used to it and they figure out oh the eggs belong in a hiding place and that's where the nest box comes in so then they start to recognize the feeling of producing an egg but three weeks as a slow learner however if she's overproductive much better in my book than a laying queen that is underproductive

and has a shotgun pattern so they're just consuming those eggs not the end of the world, but she should settle out. That's not a great trait. Question number 13. Last question of the day comes from Erica in Helsinki, Finland. Hi, what's your opinion on polystyrene hives? I'm planning on getting bees here in Finland, and the majority of people are using polystyrene hives. And this is what people in other parts of the world just call polyhives, and they swear by them, by the way, for extremely hot environments as well as extremely cold environments. Anyway, since they're lighter and more insulated, most people use them.

Wooden hives seem like a more ecological choice to me, but I'm not sure if it's a stupid thing to base my choice on. We are 60 degrees north, so we have a quite short season. But due to the Gulf Stream, we rarely go under minus 20 Celsius in winter. Any opinions? Thank you in advance. Well, here's the thing always. When you're going into beekeeping and you're new,

finding out what people in your immediate area do and have done and demonstrated success with definitely become a good model that you should follow. So, and my same concerns are as before, if plastic had no end-of-life issue, if we didn't have problems with microplastics and, you know, a 500-year decaying. cycle for plastic to break down. There are magical things happening in biochemistry. There are new things always on the verge of being released that have problems but can

consume plastics and then turn them into compost. The problems they're having with those things and with that research is that those things, those enzymes that can do that are actually dangerous. could you imagine something that consumes plastic and turns it into compost getting on plastic that you don't want to dispose of? Aha, that's the problem. So what's really interesting, too, is they call these enzyme areas reactors, where they put all the plastic in there, the enzymes feed on them, the enzymes decay and die out, and then they're harmless in the environment. That sounds like a perfect world, but there's a lot yet to be worked out.

So in the meantime, I'm a huge fan of limiting, if we can, the amount of plastics that we use. use. The upside of plastic is it lasts a really long time, you know, which is up and the downside, right? But if you're getting hive equipment, then you don't have to cut down forests, you don't have to cut trees, you don't have to have lumber. Lumber is limited. I realize some people suggest looking at lumber as slow growing grass, but our demand for lumber can exceed the supply. So do we need forests or do we need lumber? And because areas are being clear-cut, old growth areas that we will never see replenished in our lifetime by the same full-sized trees. And some people are fine with that because a tree can be harvested when it's 12 inches in diameter and so on.

So there's a lot of decision-making going on about that. So plastics are a petroleum product. Poly-hives are popular. Their use, their shipping weight is low. Your ability to lift and move them around is much easier than, woodenware and they definitely insulate better than any other material that the hives are being made out of. Dr. Leo Shirashkin insulates with lambs wool, but that does not compete with polystyrene. So it's a pickle. It's just going to have to be a decision that we each make

based on the quality of what's being made, the life expectancy of it. If polyhives only lasted five years, I would never buy one. Anything that's made out of plastic, if it has a very short functional life, I just wouldn't buy it. If it's made well and the material is strong enough and the weather conditions where you live and the environmental variation through the year is not going to degrade that. I had problems with early polystyrene because my chickens would eat it. One would start packing it and they would all stand around because chickens aren't smart.

they just eat things because another chicken ate it and so polystyrene has to be tough and durable and depending on the company that makes it to find out from those who are already using it how tough they are what the drawbacks are what they like and don't like and things like that but when people are already in your area using something and it's proven to work well i don't personally see a big problem with it so that's kind of it that i'll say it again, apamah hives are kind of bulletproof. Those things are already clasped together. They're super tough. One guy had a tree fall on his, and the hive actually protected other hives because the tree fell on his apomah hive and it held up. So it's tough stuff. I don't know

how long they're going to last. In fact, these are questions I have when we get to the North American Honeybee Expo in January. I want to know more about longevity for plastics and hive materials and equipment that are made from them and the different grades of plastic. One of the biggest experts in plastic I've ever met is the guy that owns B-smart designs. So plastic quality is a broad spectrum. So how long they're going to last, whether they hold up to ultraviolet light. Plastic and sunshine generally don't mix very well at all. So you have to paint it.

That's one of the reasons. Paint, preserve it. So these are just, you ask for my opinion. so for Erica these are my opinions if I'm in a really cold area I would be looking heavy at insulation When I was talking to Dr. Thomas Seeley he likes the polystyrene insulation but he would prefer that were sandwiched Between plywood so if you had quarter inch plywood exterior grade and then you had you know rigid foam board polystyrene sandwich in between we just it away with the degradation of the plastic due to exposure to to the sun, right? So there are a lot of things that we could fool around with, but I would go with

what? Find somebody in your area that is doing extremely well that you find to be a well-reasoned beekeeper and they can share the good and the bad about things and just give you the real scoop on what works well where you are. And I think that would be great. So that was the last question for today. That was question number 13 from Erica. And we're in the fluff section. So I just want to reiterate. For those who might find yourselves with a lot of honey at the end of the year back-yard beekeepers can pull frame by frame and get them uncapped extracted cycled out and right back in the hive again now I like to coordinate the removal of the final year's honey harvest with packing down the hive because we already got them out of the honey super with an escapeboard or something like that and this is if you're pulling the whole super then we've already got them down in the lower boxes and you've pulled that off for your last honey harvest you did two things at one time now to clean up those frames this is where if you're the only

apiary around you could put them out on a robbing station let them clean them up and then go into storage from that so the last thing too is final mite treatment cycle opportunities if you want to have healthy winter bees you're in the crunch zone right now you're almost too late even now because the nurse bees that are going to be produced that ultimately will produce your fat-bodied winter nurse bees are already in production now. So if you haven't got your mites under control and you intend to get them under control, then this is your window of opportunity to do it. You really want to get them down now. Also, the next thing, what's going to happen after this big nectar flow that we have going in the northeast right now? Robbing. Because your colonies are in rapid

buildup. I don't know if you're looking at your landing boards, but our landing boards are a steady stream of pollen coming in which is an alarm bell because that means their populations are building really fast they're feeding their larvae and you're gonna have high populations at the end of that well what also happens at the end of that so 21 days out we've got that's your new nurse bees inside the hive go another 14 days after that and now we've got bees moving out and then what's depleted from the environment resources so what are they going to do they're going to rob each other so we talked a lot about

and other things that raid beehives for honey. But let me tell you what the most fever-pitched attack you're ever going to see is going to come actually from other honeybees, strong colonies that don't need the resources. But they have this massive surplus of foragers that have nothing to do. So what do they do? They rob other bee colonies.

The reason I tell you this is I want you to reduce your entrances as soon as that nectar flow starts to drop off. Okay, for me personally, my entrances are reduced all the time. Oh, next Friday, normally the last Friday of the month, and next Friday is the last Friday of the month, we do a live stream. I'm not going to be able to do that. So next Friday, there will be a Q&A, but it's going to be pre-recorded and it's going to post on Friday. But I will not be available to do an actual live stream, so I want to thank those of you who care about those and like to join in. But next Friday will just be a regular Q&A.

So if you've got questions that you were holding for the live stream, please submit them during the next week. by going to the way to be.org, clicking on the way to be page, and filling out the form. Or in some cases, just commenting underneath some of the videos I try to look at and answer everything. So the next thing is after all the nectar and pollen starts to draw down, it's a great time to start planning for next year's plants. If you've got a lot of ground under your control, a lot of green spaces, this is your opportunity. I usually do spring planting because I grow things from seed,

but I think this year I'm going to, if it all works out, because it's weather contingent, if I can get my areas prepped in fall and seed everything in fall, I think I might get a better crop in spring. Because it seems like in spring when we seed everything, the birds are watching everything that I'm doing. They're following me around, getting the seeds that I spread, before I can get them rolled in and things like that. So maybe fall planting could work out.

What's your opinion about planting in fall? or planting in spring in Agone 4 or 5. And so we're going to do the same things. Sunflowers, Maximilian sunflowers, we're expanding those. They're doing fantastic this year. And of course, we're going to plant Cosmos and going to continue with borage. So all of these things, if you can get some deals and get your plots prepped in fall and get your seeds in the ground and let them winter over,

then you don't have to do any stratification and stuff inside. I am still going to do Hissup again this year, and I'm going to hope that I can get the voles away for my Hissop. 55 Hissop plants 100% removed by vols after I put them out. I need a fix for that. And, oh, the other thing, Cautionary Tale, for those of you who are thinking about getting the switchgrass pellets from the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association, and the page is marked switchgrass pellets.

It's a fundraiser. It is an all-volunteer group that ships those out. We might be shutting down pellet sales unless somebody else steps up in our organization that takes it on as a volunteer and starts also shipping out pellets. But it's turned into a real chore to ship them. And I want to really thank those of you and the feedback that you've given about switchgrass pellets for your smokers, how well they've worked, how great they are. I agree.

100% best smoker fuel I've ever personally used well you should know ahead of time that you may be going to order in November or something like that and find that they just aren't available anymore and that's because it's taking up too much time for the volunteers and we have to respect their lives as well everybody's doing this for nothing so it's just for our non-profit beekeeper organization and then they of course helps us teach and educate others about honeybeats and beekeeping So I want to thank those that have been working on that and thank those of you who purchase those pellets and support of this organization. And that's it for today. So I hope that you enjoy today's presentation and that you have a great weekend ahead.

And if you're in the northeastern United States, look forward to that warming weather and get out there and get as much done as you possibly can with your bees. Thanks for watching and thanks for listening to the Way to Be podcast.