The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A #277 Recorded During a LIVE Chat from 4-5 PM Friday, Sep 27th, 2024

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

This is the audio track from #277 Q&A on YouTube:  https://youtube.com/live/M7bcZSYLb3Y?feature=share    

So, looks like it's me and Keith. So anyway, let's get started. Hello and welcome. Happy Friday. This is Backyard, Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 277. Today's Friday, September the 27th, and of course, last Friday of the month. So this is live, live chat. So I guess as people come in, just please remind them, Keith, to type their questions in all the caps if they're for me.

and we'll get into those and see how things go. So I'll bet people are going to want to know later on how the weather is doing outside. So we have 72 degrees Fahrenheit here in the state of Pennsylvania, northeastern United States. That's 22 degrees Celsius, 1.8 mile per hour wind,

so the wind is insignificant, 78% relative humidity. So the bees are still bringing in nectar resources here in this part of the United States and probably other parts of the country as well. but we are wrapping it up. So we have golden rods pretty much gone. Astors are the strong input right now for nectar and pollen.

And we have, of course, the Maximilian Sunflowers all over the place. They're still doing extremely well. And we'll talk more about that stuff. But maybe you want to know what we're going to talk about today after the fact. Please go down in the video description below and see item by item all of the comments that all of the questions that were submitted and they'll be in order and they'll be associated links with those. So people are starting to show up. One minute late, Bill Robinson, good to see you. Ross is here. So we have two keepers of the gate here today, Ross and now John McNeil. So thanks.

Great to see you all. And it's this great video with Hillary. So for those of you who don't know, we just did an interview. Well, I did an interview with Hillary Kearney about her new book, which is now available. Just happen to have it here. And it is Heart of the Hive inside the mind of the honeybee. So it's a great book. It's really good. It seems kind of small, but it has fantastic pictures and everything else. Gigi's here. So people that we know are showing up, people that knew it was going to happen. So if you want to know how to submit your own topic later for consideration for another Friday episode, please go to the wayto-be.org and fill out the page, there's a form on the page, the way to be.

And you can submit your topic. And it can be a topic. It doesn't always have to be a question. And it says here from GG 90 degrees Fahrenheit, Bone Dry, California, we have summer dearth because we don't get any water for months at a time. And Wildwood's Honeybee Farms is here too, and that's Grayson. So glad to see you here too. I don't know how you people have the time, but I'm glad that you're here.

I know for some of you, especially in California, this is early in the day. So we're in a dearth here in the northeastern United States too. My pond is the lowest that it's been that I can remember. So we need rain. A lot of people need rain. And then other people, on the other hand, getting too much rain, especially down in the southeastern United States, Gulf Coast area, they really got hit. So I'm wondering.

In fact, we were all wondering this morning how the beehives are making it down there. High winds, high water, flooding. and everything else. So from Missouri, Terry's here. John's here from Annapolis, Maryland, where the United States Naval Academy is, and that includes the Marines, by the way, regardless of what they say.

All right. So what else are we going to talk about here? Lunch here in San Francisco Bay Area of California, watching while I work from home. So that's Mark. So I'm glad that you're here. So if you guys have questions, chime in. I'm going to go ahead and start off with the questions

that were submitted during the week, and don't forget that your question should be typed in all caps. Otherwise, I'll guess that you're just talking to one another. So the very first question comes from Claude from Louisville, Kentucky. Funny that we have that town, because that is where the North American Honeybee Expo will be in January, and I will be one of the presenters there, as always. Every year, Kamen Reynolds is nice enough to invite me to be there and to talk.

So here you go. That's what we're doing. So in Kentucky here, several years ago, so I began painting my hive bodies, different colors in the belief that it would help bees find their home. Then I heard a talk by professor and I deleted the professor's name just because I'm not sure.

And who I think I found that bees do not see or rely on color. So the question is, does painting hives different colors help the bees find their home? So this is actually an area where a lot of beekeepers make funny statements like bees cannot see red. Bees do see red. They don't see it as red. So things are different.

Bees see in an ultraviolet spectrum that you and I do not see at all. And it was interesting to me. So I'm going to talk about a few things regarding how bees find their hive at home and things like that easier. But at the Dice Lab, at the Cornell University Dice Lab for Honeybee Studies, all the hives there had these little squares on them. It looked like four inches by four inches. And they had little barely visible to us hash lines on them. And I thought, what are those things?

And they were painting with ultraviolet paint. So that was interesting to me because the BEC in this color spectrum and you and I would see it as non-contrasting. And the Bs see it as an illuminated beacon. and it was part of a test that they were doing to see how bees locate their homes. But from a practical standpoint, those of you are just building hives or setting them up. Think about physical features in your landscape. Bees navigate by the sun, we know, but they also navigate heavily by different landscape features

that they see on the horizon and close by, and it helps them orient to their hive. And then as they get closer and closer, they rely more on, of course, pheromones in the hive to make sure they're in the right place, even though a lot of drift happens. But they also do colors, strong contrasting colors to us may not be very contrasting to the bees. So for humans, colors stand out to us that the bees barely notice. Look at flowers. We see flowers out, yellow flowers and things like that. Different times of the year, the blooms are different colors.

And the bees, when they look at a yellow flower, they don't see a yellow flower. They see a very distinctive pollen area on the flower. And sometimes the petals have leading lines if we could see the ultraviolet spectrum that lead you to the center. But what's far more important for the beekeeper, the position of your hive, direction of the landing board, any memorable things for the bee that are next to it, maybe there's a big rock there, maybe you built it next to a bush or something like that. Those things help your bees notice. but they do get very specific when you get close. So I have an observation hive building, for example. Every single entrance to the observation hive

has a physically different configuration. So one's diamond shape, one's a regular square, another one has a big extension roof coming off of it. Those are far more valuable to your bees when they're memorizing where they live than the different colors that you might paint on there. So colors are kind of for you. Anyway, I filled around with the bees,

a little bit on how well they're orienting to what they see. And so I had a queen excluder that you set on the front. Usually when you want to keep a swarm from leaving, because we don't have the queen to leave. So I had a queen excluder on for two or three days. And just for fun, I decided rather than just remove it, take the queen excluder up and attach it maybe four inches above the entrance. And what do you think the bees did?

Were they homing in in the physical location of their entrance? or are they homing in and then recognizing the entrance? Well, let me tell you, most of them were recognizing the entrance because what they did is now they flew into the queen excluder, inches above the actual entrance, and then they were walking down the front of the hive and then going into the actual entrance. So that was a really funny and educational way

to understand more about bees orienting to what they physically see over the colors that they're painted and things like that. So high contrast doesn't, it's not a way. waste of time. You still need to paint your hive or have some kind of preservative on your hive, but the physical shape of those entrances will help your bees orient more. So you might take little triangles and squares or even hexagons, cut them out of wood, and then attach that to the front of the hive off to the side of the entrance. Those would be more valuable to your bees, physical dimensional traits of the hive when they're orienting to a specific hive. So Ania here says,

take a super of honey from one hive to give it to another that is overflowing with bees, or is it too late for such modification? So for Anya, I want to know what part of the country you're in because whether or not it's too late really is related to where you're keeping your bees. So I will answer that question if I were right here. Taking a super of honey and giving it to another hive that is overflowing with bees. If it's overflowing with bees, I would much consider feeding those bees back rather than trying to shift boxes around. The hive that you're going to take honey off of is that a hive that has a super that you were going to remove anyway. And if you are, I would much rather harvest and keep that honey and then back feed at this time of year two to one

sugar syrup to the colony that's light. And that's just my practice. There are other people that do other things. But I don't like shifting honey from one hive to another. The honey's value. I would extract it myself. Even open cells of honey this time of year, in my neck of the woods, it's pretty dry already. We were getting under 18% moisture content in honey on frames that was open. So I would harvest that,

and then I would bring back heavy sugar syrup if that colony were light, and there are not enough resources in the environment for a well-populated hive to come in and fortify it. A lot of the things that we're doing now, In preparation for winter, we are breaking seals on hives. So taking the supers off is not a problem because all we're going to do is bringing the cover back down. And then they still have time to propolize that.

That's much less of an impact to your bees as far as sealing up for winter than if we're separating boxes lower down and adding boxes now. So I'm not a fan of feeding one colony from another colony by just pulling a honey super and transferring it over. because we also added space to the hive and more area for the bees to manage. But there are other details that we would need to know. So it says central Virginia. You might still have time down there. See what other beekeepers are doing? But I would much rather back feed a colony that's light right now.

That's my practice where I am. And we're pulling honey and condensing now here, getting ready for winter. So do-to-do-do-do. Moving on. This is from Ross. It says Fred, John McNeil. asked, is there an ultraviolet filter lens for cameras that you can see how you see? Okay, the filters for cameras. We used to use ultraviolet film back in the day because I'm a long time photographer.

My father was a photographer. We had to carry ultraviolet film in a cooler because it can only be out so long. Filters for cameras, if it could really see the ultraviolet spectrum, there again, it needs to be not just the ultraviolet spectrum, but the spectrum that a honeybee sees, which can even be different. But there are people that do ultraviolet photography and ultraviolet surveillance, for example. And sometimes that involves casting a light on the surface rather than filtering it down. So I don't know of a camera filter that just goes on your regular camera. you get into much more expensive, expensive actual ultraviolet cameras because there's a lot more to it than just putting a filter on.

Although if somebody has researched it and they have a filter like that, we have polarizing filters and things. But as far as ultraviolet spectrum filtering, that's much more difficult. So I don't know if one off the top of my head. It's an interesting question. It'd be great because let me tell you what, if one were around and it were reasonably, priced if it were under $1,000, I think I would have one just for kicks because the way it's a real eye-opener to see a field of flowers the way honeybees see them. We see all the colors because, you know, we're human. We see a full spectrum of color. When bees look at it, they see

very distinctive flowers that look to us like they kind of blend. And they stand out and they're prominent and allows a bee to really zip right in there, get close enough, and smell and now sense the flower to see if other bees have been on it, if there's nectar left and things like that. And bees themselves are leaving little tracks on the surface of the flowers and the petals and things like that that also communicate to one another through pheromone. And for all we know, maybe something visible is also going on there. But what we see and what bees see is incredibly different.

And I would think that just a filter wouldn't do it. It would have to be an actual ultraviolet camera. The film that we used to use was very expensive. And it was at the St. Louis Zoo, by the way, because I don't know why we were doing that. We were looking at reptiles through ultraviolet. I don't know why. But the film itself only reacted to certain light spectrum segments. So maybe you could go back to film, see if that stuff is still available.

That's the best I have for you right now. So what else here? When do you know your hive is ready for winter when it's the last time you get into your hives for the year? So for me here, the last time, we are cutting down on opening hives right now. But the last part of the year, the cut line for me is when we have freezing temperatures at night. And that's not just a one-off, you know. So if you're Celsius, that's zero degrees Celsius. For us, it's 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

night. So at night, if it's dropping below freezing, that's it, I'm done. I'm not getting in the hives anymore. So by then, we should have identified colonies in our apiary, since most of you, I'm just guessing, our backyard beekeepers, you're not dealing with 100 hives. You go through and you find out which ones are going to need care, which ones have a hive that's too large for the number of bees that are occupying it. Now, sometimes we open a hive right now, and if my grandson is with me and he sees honey everywhere. He wants to take that honey right now. But that's the second box, just hypothetically here, second box in my bee yard would not get taken off because a highly populated hive full of honey right now, going into next week, temperatures are going to go down. They get to keep

all the honey in those bottom two boxes. And packing down is for me when I have three or more boxes on a hive. And the population of the bees is not big enough to contend with that. going through winter. So then we would pack them down, remove the top box. And sometimes, rarely this time of year, but sometimes we will take full frames and replace partially filled frames into the box down below just to make sure that they have a full complement of resources and then everything else beyond that, we're just taking off. So when we do it, is triggered by weather, not the calendar. So we know right now, resources in the state of Pennsylvania, where I am are leaning out. So the bees now will start putting a bunch of pressure on one another.

So this is another reason or another kind of trigger when we're going to get into beehives and when we're not, when the robbing potential is really high. And you see a lot of bees putting pressure on other colonies in your apiary and they're checking the sides in the back and underneath. And they're just kind of desperate because the workforce is exceeding the work available. So now they're just looking to pill for one another. So very careful about opening hives and the conditions on those days. So also I create diversions for the bees when we're going to open a hive if we have to. So for packing down, if I'm going to, we go out there with sugar syrup and I'll spray the front of every single hive in the apiary. I don't care that that's going to draw on a couple of

wasps or something like that because wasps are kittens compared to what can happen. if one colony of bees starts to get into a colony that you've opened and you've pulled apart frames and honey starts to be exposed and is dripping down in there, if you get a robbing frenzy started there, that colony, even though they be a strong colony, can be easily overwhelmed by another colony that discovered that now there's honey exposed in a hive and they start going. Once they start, it's hard to stop. So that's when you're into robbing screens and things like that. So for me, the trigger is if it's cold at night, below freezing, that's it.

No more pulling apart your hives. This is also another advantage if you're one of those people that got behind and did not treat for varroa destructor mites, there's still hope if you have the oxalic acid vaporization system that allows you to put that through a quarter inch hole in the side or back of your hive, which is what I do. We use the instant vape now. and that means that we don't have to open the hive anymore, so we don't risk exposing our bees to other bees. So there's a lot to consider.

It's not so straightforward as you might think, but definitely start to pack them down. If you start a robbery sequence in one of your hives, you could have a real pickle there and those bees that would be otherwise well established and ready for winter, thanks to the intervention of the beekeeper and opening it up, let's hit on too when's the best time a day to be opening them out when they do hopefully have something to do but

anywhere from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., those are prime times when most of the bees would be outgoing and not returning. And that's also when foragers are the most involved, like in the environment somewhere. And if you're going to do one of the things where you come home from work and you want to open a hive at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on a day when it's 71 degrees, for example, but late in the season, with few resources in the environment, you could trigger a robbing event. Be very careful. Here's Patty who says, My Two Hives were robbed,

had a homemade robber screen, but didn't fit well. I think they seem abundant feeding one-to-one and pollen patties. Okay, and that's in Southeast Ohio. I would like to mention for Patty and others that are listening, pollen patties are a fantastic resource and have been proven to build brood in spring. pollen patties are expensive.

So even the hive alive, you know, super awesome pollen patties that are out there, I would not be putting on this time of year because what I want my bees to do, and we don't necessarily want to trigger a bunch of brood. So you could be wasting the pollen patty. The studies show that the differences with pollen patties on going into fall and no pollen patties instead of just giving, you know, a carbohydrate like sugar syrup, that the differences are insignificant. So in other words, it's not that the pollen patties will be terrible for the bees, is that they're

expensive and you might be wasting them and your bees will not necessarily build up from those. So what we're trying to do is satiate your bees so that they have the nectar resources coming in because that's a trigger. Cold weather comes, even people sit down and they start eating high sugar things and high, you know, high calorie items just in response to the weather, even though we don't need it anymore because we're modern and we live in houses and we're warmed up and everything else. Bees are responding to this. They're trying to keep weight on in the form of carbohydrates now. So remember, too, that some of the triggers for them building brood, which they should be declining right now. If they're building brood, it's because they were

responses, not the responses, they're responding to what's going on out in the environment. So we need those triggers also. That's why spring buildup, it's kind of good in the fall. You're kind of wasting your money, putting pollen patties on. So the sugar syrup, definitely. That's proven to definitely boost them because we have a 30, 20% chance of rain every day coming up for the next several days. That may mean no rain. But likewise, if they are able to forage and you put sugar syrup on, you didn't waste anything. If you put sugar syrup on and it rains for three days, then they will not be emptying out all of their resources prematurely going into winter.

So I hope that that makes sense. But don't, you know, pollen patties are expensive. So you can still put them on. I'm just saying the benefits may not be there. What else? Do-to-do-do-do-do-do-do. And somebody else, Richard says, and the Beatles lay eggs in the paddy.

Well, one of the things, yeah, I'll mention this while we're talking about pollen patties, winter patties and things like that because those have small, high beetle issues. These are called trivets. These are dirt cheap. They come from Be Smart Designs. You can pretty much tell by the color.

These go on top of the frames, and your pollen paddy would sit on top of that. That way the bees patrol all sides of your pollen patty, and your small high beetles. Don't get a chance to get started in there. Small high beetles like to start chewing into things and get away from your bees where your bees can't do anything about them.

So we're going to move on to question number two, unless somebody else here has a question. And I'm really glad, by the way, that you all showed up today. That's good. So anyway, D.C.'s bees. Fred, how long are pollen patties still good being stored in the fridge.

They are the global with apis in them. So global patties, by the way, fantastic company, very good patties. And I'm glad you mentioned the fridge because they say do not freeze them. So don't put them in the freezer, keep them in the fridge. Most of them have a shelf life that's pretty darn short. Some is short as six months, some a year. I think the pollen patties, I don't want to get up to go check it. They should have the expiration or use by date right on them, but keeping them in the fridge is your best move, don't freeze them.

And it should be on it. So if somebody wants to even just Google Global Paddy's, Pollin Paddy's shelf life, it might be just six months to a year. You want it. Here's the key. This is also why I'm glad this actually came up because sometimes at the end of the year, you can get real deals on pollen patties, winter patties. things like that. Always consider the shelf life, and it might be a great deal, but if you're going to stockpile them somewhere and not use them right away, fresher is better. So wait until you're actually going to use them and buy a couple months out from actual use and putting them inside your

hives. Pollin, you know, has a shelf life. Pollan, when even it's in the hive, the bees don't use really old pollen. And sometimes they'll even seal it up and abandon and leave it there and never use it, which is really annoying to us because we want them to use all of their resources. It's another reason kind of not to bring in new pollen at the end of the year when they have pollen in the hive that we want them to consume use up. Remember that your fat-bodied winter bees, which we should really kind of call dearth bees, they're consuming the pollen. These are nurse bees that don't fly out at all.

They're the ones that are going to live up to six months all the way through winter. they store the pollen and proteins in their bodies. And that's so that they become nurse bees, which sustain the colony in periods of extreme dearth, or in this case, wintertime, and they're feeding from their bodies. So they actually can. Some people get alarmed because they don't see any pollen in their hives at all.

And you would expect the size of the brood inside the hive to respond to that. And they do. So a good queen reacts to the lack of pollen protein coming in, and then she would back off. on her egg production. So brood would slow down. And in some cases, even the nurse bees kick in there. And if the queen is laying too many eggs

and there isn't enough coming into the hive to sustain those larvae that are about to hatch, right? They start to consume the eggs. This is another time when new beekeepers get alarmed because if you have, as I do, observation hives, you see, oh, look at all the eggs in here. And your grandsons come in, expecting to see larvae in those cells three days later.

They come in and see all the cells are empty. Well, they got police stopped by the nurse bees because there weren't enough resources coming in. And then I don't want to artificially stimulate pollen for them, you know, at this time of year going into winter, because they're scaling down. I don't think unless you're, I can't think of a reason why you really want them to boost huge numbers going into winter unless you have a completely undersized hive. That's pretty much it. So anybody have an answer for DC's bees? to see how long. So here comes, again, do you trap pollen

and feed it back to them in early fall? I do not. I don't feed any pollen in the fall. If I wanted to see what's going on and I wanted to use something that is inexpensive and proven to boost them, it would be AP 23, dry pollen substitute. So I wouldn't collect pollen, store it,

try to make my own pollen patties and things like that. Instead, I just take egg cartons and I put AP 23 on the egg cartons. I only put them out in the periods of time when the bees are actively foraging. So they don't stay out overnight. They don't stay out day after day. I carry them out there, put them in the sunshine, and then I put them away at night. And that AP 23 has proven to boost or at least bridge the period when they're lacking pollen. So it's got a shelf life too.

So you don't want to load a bunch of that up. And why would it say AP 23 instead of mega bee and instead of, you know, ultra bee, which comes from man like megabee, which comes from better be. AP 23 outperform them in studies consistently. So putting that out, dry pollen sub, much better than putting in pollen patties. Because guess what? The bees in who's getting it, the foragers? So here's why I like it.

They're tying up the foragers. They're giving them something to do. and then they're bringing it in. So there they go. So I don't trap, I have trapped pollen, but my son eats it. And it really wears me out because half a day of pollen, he just like eats it, spoonfuls and stuff. I don't even know why.

Anyway, moving on. Says as a breeder of azaleas, which are said to be toxic to honeybees, is there anything I can do to select a cultivar that is good for honey, wild bumble bees? If you're talking about a cultivar specifically for azaleas, I don't know of any. Here's the thing about azaleas. Unless you have so many of them that that is the primary source of nectar for your bees.

I don't think that's a huge risk. But I just put out a video yesterday or the day before on Pinky Winky. So that is my number one choice for, you know, a cultivar. going to be fantastic for your bees for nectar and pollen and the pollen is really interesting because it's pink colored and it's good for the bees so unlike azaleas it is not a problem for your bees and it's perennial it's going to come back every year those things are eight feet tall eight feet in diameter so huge flowers all over them but i don't worry about azaleas unless i were keeping bees on an azalea farm where they're you know where they're actually being cultural

for sale and there's thousands of plants and that would be a different thing. But if you've just got a few of them in your yard and you're having all of these other resources too, dilution is the solution to pollution. And I don't think you really have a toxic response from that. Not a medical professional. So I have to say that. But these things come up quite a bit where somebody hears about a toxic plant and they're very concerned that the bees are going to get resources from that plant. and then that makes toxic honey or toxic pollen in the hive and things like that, it would have to be a very concentrated amount. It would have to be the primary thing that your bees are bringing in.

And then there again, for it to be toxic, the person that consumes it has to consume a lot of it so that it now is at toxic level. So all of these things have to come together. So if it's just spread out, I don't see it as a huge risk. So let's see. This is from ML Farm. It says, hi friend, my local bee club, had a booth at the county fair, had several people ask about colony collapse disorder, and if it was still an issue, I'd be very interested in your response

about CCD. Well, David Hakenberg, by the way, is a Pennsylvania beekeeper, huge commercial beekeeper. He does migratory pollination services and stuff, and he's the one that said it was, his colonies were collapsing, that they were dying. He had wintering bee yards, right? Colony Collapses disorder became kind of a description for a colony of bees that you go out to inspect your bees expecting to see how they're doing. And not only are they, you can't assess how they're doing because the colony was empty. They didn't just collapse and die.

They departed. And this is why David Hackenberg was alarmed because a huge percentage of his colonies absconded. So we didn't have bees to test. So that was the big problem. But CCD is one of the reasons that I'm here in front of you right now because I was interested in helping investigate that and taking pictures of the conditions of the honeybees. Colony collapse disorder is something, it's a term that we really don't like because it's kind of a catchphrase. And there are many moving parts, right? So what's wrong with the honeybee is, you know, what came of that?

And so then what's wrong with our agricultural practices? because the finger pointing started. You know, we've all these different issues going on. So migratory beekeepers even came under fire because they were moving hundreds of hives around the country and spreading potential disease or stressing their bees. And 30% of the colonies coming out of the almond grows died. This is from the almond growers association

that put those statistics out. And you can Google that too. So the stress on the bees that are being used for pollination services can be extremely high and the losses can be high. So when we talk about colony collapse disorder, we were talking about colonies of bees that are loaded on 18 wheelers and shipped around and back fed sugar syrup and things like that frequently. So these are stress colonies of bees. So the results of that and the decline of those bees is very different from state. stationary apiaries where the bees become, this is why you hear these terms a lot today, locally adapted bees. So that means that generation after generation, year after year,

these bees are doing well in the climate that they live in. This becomes a huge challenge when we need bees that can handle all climates. So then we have to have bees that can be loaded up, that can be stressed, it can be moved around and stick, you know, stick them over here for a couple of weeks for this bloom, take them over here for a couple of weeks for the next bloom. And often these blooms that require pollination, the plants that require that do not provide for the bees very well. So supplements are key. And it's a rabbit hole you can really go into, but colony collapse disorder was reported by commercial beekeepers and was not the same experience that a lot of backyard, which is my focus group, backyard beekeepers were experiencing.

And so some of the people start to look at that now. Here's a good thing. 80% of the world's almonds are coming out of California here in the United States. That makes it get a lot of attention because economically it's a big impact. So we could thank migratory beekeepers for having an alarm like that because what it did is boosted interest nationally in the health and well-being of honeybees. What I'm kind of frustrated by is it did not boosts. on the part of farmers, the practice of agriculture in the United States. Depending on where you live, you may drive for miles and miles and see one crop.

You also may realize that hedgerows are diminishing. So if you're a number cruncher and you're an agriculture and you're just looking at every plot of land is having maximum financial gain for you, then we do away with anything that's not productive that is not earning an income for that farmer. This is not default farmers. This is the pressure of shaving down the profits to a point where using every inch of soil available to you becomes valuable and therefore we can't let any of it go to wild flowers and things like that and support pollinators aside from honeybees. So I think they came up with models that were like 10% of the land should be left to be wild, to be for the bees and for pollinators.

And so all of these kind of proposals have been made. But you know that departments of agriculture are state by state. And each one has their own way of dealing with it. And each state has to have their economy. And agriculture can be a big part of that, depending on what state you're in. So colony collapse disorder is too vague, I guess. Did I give too lengthy of an answer for that? But we really need to look harder at the way we farm, the way we practice agriculture,

and because it's not just the honeybee, the honeybee is the canary and the coal mine. So if you understand what that's about the canary, it's a bad environment, the air does not support its life, and it dies before the coal miners do. That's the goal. But instead of fixing conditions in the coal mine, which would be our department of agriculture, they resuscitate the canary and they give the canary everything it needs to live in this terrible environment. That's not what it's supposed to be about. We're supposed to fix the environment, make it safer for the canary, so now it lives. That's kind of what we're doing with

the bees. We're boosting our bees and fortifying our bees through vitamins and supplements and everything else so they can survive in an environment that no longer supports and sustains honey bees. So I hope that gives you some food for thought. Ross says just letting you know moss and the water station was a huge success this year. I usually struggle to keep the bees going to my water station, not this year. And Gigi says, what kind of moss do you use? Okay, let's talk about moss. Before we get into the rest of these questions, I would rather follow the thread. Anyway, So I used to make fun of my wife because she had these pills because she was a super health nut down in Florida. Thank you, Brian.

I really appreciate that. And she had these blue-green algae tablets. She had a friend that was also a health nut and they would do anything to be fit and healthy. And algae was a big part of that, microalgae. So there is something, in fact, this is going on right now 50 feet from where I am. I'm back on spirolina. So now I'm not saying that this is the only spirulina that you should be looking at, but I did reference this at another Q&A,

and I put up the links of current studies. And this morning, I didn't bring it with me, of course, didn't know that this would come up. But moss, so water that has algae in it, the bees show a preference for it. bees are on to something because even at the edges of my pond, we have a lot of moss in the pond and everything else. So this troubles a lot of beekeepers that want their bees to go to pristine, clean, super clear water sources. Bees tend to be drawn towards water that's mineralized and different times a year they go for different things.

This is why bees also go in the spring onto gravel roads. I happen to live on a dirt road and the bees will be out there. What are they doing? Well, if there was ever salt used through the wintertime, these salts and minerals were still now in puddles in the road. And so the bees are there. The spirulina, this is very interesting. It's almost, I will put the link to the spirulina study down in the video description after this is all processed and everything. For those of you want to read studies, it's almost too good to be true.

These microalgaes are incredibly beneficial to the bees and the results. And this is not a one-off. This is not one study. In other words, the current study is less of a study and more of a master's degree student actively compiling all the research that's been done on spirulina and this type of algae. And then what the benefit is to the bees. So right now I'm feeding that because we finish taking honey off of our hives. And now I'm back feeding with sugar syrup with spirulina in it. And we're doing different levels of spirulina.

Now, you may recall that I don't know if it was last year or the year before, we had a whole case of spirulina patties because, again, the science was so strong and the benefits to the bees were so convincing that, wow, we should be having spirulina patties. And again, I used to make fun of my wife because I thought, well, this is just somebody that has access to a mountain lake that has a blue-green algae bloom problem, found a way to harvest all this allergy, desicate it, put it into pills, and then sell it to people as a vitamin supplement, which, as we know, is not regulated. And then now they solve their problem and profit from it. So I was very suspicious about that. But here you go. Spirulina, good for the

B gut, and they're quantifying the benefits of that. And they delivered it in a lot of different ways. So they delivered spirulina through paste. And the percentages, of course, were altered, some as high as 10%. So imagine 10% of that powder and dry sugar and then mixing that into a sugar syrup or into a paddy. The paddies dried out too quick. They cracked. The bees couldn't consume them. It was just too difficult.

So getting the bees to get it in an area. So one way, like Ross was saying, they get it through their drinking water. And those are micro doses, right? So in other words, the bees are getting the water that they need and they're showing a preference for the water that has moss. So I just built a concrete water area in my water wall that I'm hoping to, of course, cover with moss as much as I possibly can.

That's for next year. But in the meantime, Spirulina specifically is named as something that can be added in sugar syrup was the best delivery system for getting your bees then to consume it. So, of course, I'm showing different levels. I'm seeing if the bees have a preference for it. And I'm using just the gallon size Ziploc baggies with tiny holes in them.

That video is going to come out this coming week, I hope, if I have the time. But another advantage that the bees are having to get the sugar syrup with spirulina in it is that their tongues can get through these holes. And this was an unexpected benefit of feeding it in these gallon freezer bags, Ziploc bags, that the wasse and bald-faced hornets are showing up trying to get at the spirulina liquid syrup, right? They can't do it because their mouths, their tongues are very short, they're feathery, they're really wide.

The bees can get into these Ziploc baggies and they can put their barbascus in and their tongues go in. So they are getting it all and the wass are frustrated and just flying away. So no more am I providing them. an open feed situation where wasson hornets, which didn't bother me that much because now we get to see what's in the environment, but the honeybees then were in competition at those feeders, but with the Ziploc baggy feeders, they were actually unable to feed, and only the honeybees could feed that.

So the reason I'm doing this in open air right now is because I'm looking to see at the capacity that these bags can take and what sugar syrup consistency needs to be, so it doesn't leak. because if I'm going to put one of those zip-like baggies inside a beehive on top of the inner cover, or heaven forbid, right on top of the upper frames, and I want the bees to come up there, we can't have a bag that leaks, and we can't have holes, little pinholes in the top, that leak and trickle down into the hive. We don't want to do that. We want it to be feed on demand, and I don't want any secondary leaking going on.

And because these freezer bags have no air in them, there's very little expansion and contraction. So I will tell you this much, a full gallon bag of sugar syrup with spirulina or anything that you happen to want to feed to your bees. And this includes hive alive syrup, which has proven effective on nozima. So anyway, a gallon bag with a gallon of sugar syrup in it leaks a lot. Don't do it. Absolutely don't do it. So a gallon bag that has half a gallon of sugar syrup in it, perfect. No leaking.

on-demand feeding for the bees, and I'm confident now just for the past two days of testing that I've done, that we will put Ziploc baggies as an option for giving heavy syrup. And now with the advent of spirulina, I'll put a link to this one. The only reason I chose this one, this is for people. But I got this one from Amazon, and it had the highest rating. This stuff also has a shelf life. Don't stockpilot. So it's good for a.

couple of years, just like a lot of things, fresher is better when you're going to feed it to your bees. So I'm glad Ross mentioned that because I want moss on everything that my bees drink out of if I can't. And the moss itself, of course, is not guaranteed. Spirulina is just one of many micro, it's almost a, it's almost a diatom, like almost single cell. Like these are tiny and they're free flowing and that's why the bees can drink them in and metabolize them. So, and you can do that. I will put that link to that study if you really want to swell your head a little bit with too much information i will put that down in the description later so what else we have oh so here we go somebody else is talking about bees the water in my gutters so same thing if you could i don't know if you ever did

a study if you took earth science or biology in school but you know you go out to a pond and you take a syringe and you like a bunch of the pond water and they put it under a microscope it is amazing how much is going on in there and we have we're going to talk a little bit about what is in your water already later on because I have another question that somebody asked that led me down that path. So question number two, it took us as long to get to that, it says, hello, done. Bsh bees are so defensive, which I can get honey, but I cannot enjoy watching them. Can you try Caucasian bees? Caucasian bees. They're so nice. You can even pet them, it says. So this leads me to several things.

First of all, the bees that I get Caucasian bees, I've heard very good things about them. But we're using locally adapted stock. So we're right back to kind of where we started with talking about colony collapse disorder. Locally adapted stock does continuously very well. And what you feed it is not so significant as what's available in the environment. But what I want to talk about is recently I posted a video, not very popular. video, but it showed that when you open a hive, because we were trying to keep it from being honeybound, last thing I want is a swarm of bees going into October. So I open them on a

cloud a day. Now, on a cloudy day, overcast days, bad weather's coming, your bees are naturally crankier. But this was a wake-up call for beekeepers in general. If you're a beekeeper often you'll learn from someone who's very comfortable wearing no personal protective clothing at all. And unfortunately, that becomes kind of a litmus test for, hey, is this beekeeper really know what he or she is doing? If they show up in a full bee suit, they must really not know anything about bees. Okay, so I am concerned when I hear people say that or demonstrate that. And the reason is bees can be potentially dangerous. You can have a colony of bees that shifts their attitude.

You could be out there every day with your cup of coffee in the morning or whatever, visiting your bees, everything is great. And then one day you're inspecting the hive. And because you've been told that you need to look like you know what you're doing and have no personal protective clothing whatsoever on, and you drop that frame of brood or you pull a frame of brood, and you get a cook-off. So cookoff is a military term that things are hot and the round just goes on its own without being fired.

So you get a cook off from your bees. Now all of a sudden you've got 20, 30 bees in your face. You may not be able to stay in your ground and close up the hive the way you should. So you need to be able to stay calm. You need to be able to put your frames back. You need to be able to put the inner cover back on. And without antagonizing them further, bees are going to be after you. Well, the bees were after me, but I expected it.

So, you know, I've been keeping bees for a while. I understood that opening my hive on an overcast day could solicit a response from the bees that I don't want. So when you open it up, the bees, of course, they attack my camera. And that was the interesting part. It was the only time I've, as you might guess, I've had a lot of different camera equipment, a lot of different audio equipment.

We stopped using dead cats. Those are the filters that buffer the wind and everything that go, over your big expensive microphones and they have long black hair, almost all of them are black. Those get responses from your bees. The camera got a negative response from the bees and they embedded six stingers into the rubberized coating of the camera that is a first for me.

So it's safe to say those bees were mad. Now, they're defensive because we're getting in their space, we're getting in their stuff. They don't want us there. No matter how much you think your bees like you, We're invaders in the hive when we're opening them up. So I wore, in that case, just a jacket, gloves, full veil. Thinking back, now that the weather is getting cooler,

if you're going to get into your hives, you should always have available full protection, a full-length suit, gloves, veil. Maybe you don't ever need it. Maybe you're just out there all the time, and you're one of those people that luck's out, and you never take off your bees. But you are the first line of action when it comes to taking care of your bees.

So if they get really hostile, and in my case, those bees are not far from my driveway. Our driveway was unsafe for two days. So reacting calmly, deliberately, having a plan, having protection, and not getting stung like crazy. You can see my eyes are not swollen, shud, or anything. I'm not, I don't celebrate that my hand would look like a baseball glove, you know. My goal, personally, is not to get stung all the time. So we need to be able to react with our bees. Now, we understood why those bees reacted that way.

I was in them, weather was bad, and the bees were, it's a time of year when resources are thinning down, and they can become more defensive than the same colony would have been four weeks ago. Now, sometimes people's bees will start to attack everybody. So you can get a hive that never calms down. Whose job is it to deal with that colony of bees? It's the beekeeper. It's you, the owner.

If you're not prepared to deal with a colony of bees that goes on the warpath, so to speak, and start singing everyone, I was concerned about UPS drivers, FedEx drivers, anybody coming up the driveway, almost roped off my driveway. and my driveway is 300 feet long. So I just warned everybody, if you come up my driveway, you have to wear a veil, you have to be protected. It's your job to protect the public from your bees because the spinoff of that,

if something really bad happened, if your delivery person was stung by a bee and they have an anaphylactic shock situation, then that's all on you because the bees are there because you're there. And beekeepers have been sued. So personal protection, you have to have it. And if I had bees that were as hot, as these described here in this question number two,

I would re-queen those bees. I would go from calm genetics. You can breed for temperament. So, you know, we're not big queen breeders. We're not going to come out with our own line of bees because we're just backyard beekeepers. So hive by hive, colony by colony, we favor some and we dislike others. and the ones that are consistently difficult to work, great candidate to requeen them.

Because I think that we owe it to ourselves so that we can have peace and quiet while we sit out there and everyone we know doesn't get attacked. So I think it's good. Question number three, let me see if there's any questions for me. No questions for me. If you have a question for me,

it should be typed in all caps, so I'll see it. You're not shouting. We know. You're just getting my attention. So all caps, if it's for me. Question number three comes from James Barron, 1202, and that's the YouTube channel name. There was a husband and wife. So now we're talking about hot bees again. There was a husband and a wife hospitalized today from a bee attack in North Richland Hills. The bees were in a hollow tree, and the man was doing yard work. He was found on the ground, unconscious, with blood all over his face. His wife tried to help him and was attacked. I just saw in the news that, and I was hooking up a hose to a faucet near one of my hives two days ago, and they started after me

hitting my face, and I ran in the house. I was mowing on my tractor yesterday and another hive got after me, and they learned the hard way years ago to put on my B-suit when I'm mowing near them. Now, that thing about mowing near your bees gets a lot of people. So it's, I've had beekeeping friends that went in their house and couldn't go out because the bees were attacking full force. And so they called me to see what I would do. And of course, I said I would come over there because I want to see this behavior. I want to see how hot a hot hive is. And, you know, how about your fellow beekeepers? But he was sung through his bee suit many times.

So they were intense. And so that's a candidate for euthanasia. So you get rid of those bees. If they're that dangerous and that persistent, and if you can go 100 yards from your bee yard, and I don't just mean in the immediate event, I mean hours afterwards, if they are attacking people 100 yards away,

you have to go deal with those bees. I think the New Jersey Beekeepers Association or something like that, their most popular video ever made was because he had to use dish soap, like Don dish soap and water. And he had to euthanize a colony that was attacking him. So he walked around and showed you what that looks like. And actually, they were not as bad as some of the ones I've seen before. And he had to euthanize them. So people are very interested in just how that goes. so you kind of need to have a response kit ready to go.

Dish soap, water, full protective gear, even if that's not what you, you know, it's worth repeating, even if it's not what you wear it. Now, the other thing about mowing, we mow in the bee yard, we is an electric mower. So food for thought. Mowers thump the ground, so they create a vibration. Bees don't like it. So the other thing is, there's exhaust. if it's an internal combustion engine, there's exhaust coming off of that that the bees also may have a response to. So if you could just get battery-powered mowers or battery-powered weed whackers even for around your bee yard,

then you're going to cut down on the response that you get from your bees. Now, my wife uses an electric mower to mow the bee yard, and she wears a full bee suit when she does it. So they're vented suits and everything else. She's not been attacked while she's doing it, but that's just a precaution that she takes. my grandson wears a B-suit, he gets to use an electric mower because it's a bagger and it's a pretty darn safe piece of gear. And the weed whackers, if you're weed whacking, the battery-powered weed-wackers are good. I personally, I just go ahead and use a gas-powered weed wacker because it's more powerful, you know, lasts longer. And I just don't let the weed whacker hit the stand of the hive because if you ever want to grab a hive and do that to it, it's weed-wacking the stand and sending,

a vibration through them, which will get you a response. So electric makes things a lot safer. I think also they sell electric riding movers now for those that use those and just use them around your bee yard and you'll cut down on some of the responses that you get. But and the people, there was nothing anybody who's going to do about the bees that are in the tree. That was not under the management of a beekeeper. But loss of life. That's a serious thing. So I did look that up, by the way. How many people? die from bee stings in the United States every year. And the statistics, it's not as dangerous as you might think, but on average, approximately 60 people in the United States die each year due to allergic

reactions to bee stings. So these are people that are allergic to bee stings, be venom. They suffer anaphylactic shock. So they go into anaphylaxis. And 60 people a year might not seem like a big number unless you're one of those people that died. But here's what I want you to understand is that if those were your bees, you don't ever want to be the person that kept bees that were genetically so hot that they would attack, unprovoked, and cause someone their life. That is irreversible. There's no way to recover from that. So I would ask you please to think about the defensive levels of the bees that you keep and where you keep them and what the potential risks are to others who may come around who are not beekeepers who are not ready to cope with that.

That's a high number. And I looked up too and made a comparison between bees and wasson hornets, for example. Now you might think that wass and hornets kill more people, but it's not. It's honeybees. So it's not a joke. We can get warm and fuzzy about bees. And we just really need to keep in mind that they are venomous insects. they have the potential to sting.

So anyway, Philip Morris, is there going to be a fall harvest for the supervisor to sell? Okay, he already got his, he had orders already, and he got his honey to sell. Unfortunately, he did not, and for those of you don't know what we're talking about, the supervisor is my nine-year-old grandson, he just had a birthday. He tells me, he's been a beekeeper since he was two years old, so that's why he know so much about bees. I don't know. He's been with me ever since he was too, but he does not have a surplus of honey to sell and his flow hive failed him. So the bees are working the flow super. They never filled it. So he has a good attitude about it though. He says, okay, so next year,

because that was the first year with that colony in the flow hive. And so he's hoping to have honey of his own to sell because trust me, he has already done the math and he knows it. exactly how much money he is going to make off of honey. Now, if you want something interesting to look up, just as a side note, look up the most expensive honey in the world. And I think it's called fairy honey or something like that. And it's really interesting what people can get for their honey. Quinn, my grandson, sells his honey for $22 a quart.

But he has this whole NASH sheet on how many bees, lives, 2,000 and some bees to make that quart of honey. So he markets it pretty heavy. Some people get a lot of money for their honey. Dr. Leo Shirashkin, who has his bees down in the Ozarks of Missouri, his honey is half off right now. I just got that email, and he's selling it for $50 a pound. That's discounted. So actually, Dr. Leo has the most expensive honey in the United States that I know of.

And I think he ties it in with the information. that he's producing his honey from, but we would never get that here. But the supervisor did not make big sales, so, but his clients are satisfied. Let's see, electronic mower, eco-electric mower works great. There you go. That's a good brand, by the way. Keith Spillman says, all my hives went crazy after Helene passed all of them. I think it was the sudden rise of our metric.

pressure on the backside of the fast-moving storm. Storms, I mean, the bees don't, does that mean, this is Keith Spillman, by the way, half-tracks and honey? So are we saying that they just became defensive after the storm passed with no interaction with people? Because the other thing is when the, what's the storm do to a beehive? let's go there. If you're going to get 60, 70, 80 mile an hour winds, which my hives have all been exposed to, it's like somebody vibrating the hive, really shaking it up. So I think that you would get,

you know, a highly defensive situation. That's not the time to run out and check all the bees. I've done this in the middle of winter, run out when it was really cold, but we had 60 mile in our winds, we had a winter storm come through. I had cameras on the hive. I watched the hive blow over. So what did I do? I ran right out there to put that hive to and stand it up with the blowing wind, the cold, and everything else, because the front had passed through. So now the winds were reduced. We had 35, 40 mile in our winds. So I had to put them together as quick as I could, and then I had to run away.

And I almost posted the video, but I decided not to because I couldn't let anyone see that I ran away from my own bees, but they were on me. So in the freezing cold. It was amazing. So, yeah, just be familiar with your bees and everything else. Here is from Valerie. It says, hello, Fred. The link for the switchgrass pellets is not working. Do you know if the pellets are still available?

So what we're talking about there is the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association offered switchgrass pellets. And it was a fundraiser for the nonprofit, which is the Bee Club. And they were selling switchgrass pellets, which turned out to be a super success because they worked so well. And as I've said before, they're my favorite pellets. Here's the problem. I try to warn people that they would be done this month and they are.

So what that boil down to is the volunteers that we have in our organization that were putting in hours packaging and shipping pellets. It just, it was a huge job for them to do. And by the way, shout up to those people in my beekeeping club that took that on. All I did was tell people about it. So my job was easy and they are discontinued. So if you go, if you follow the pellet links now, there's nothing. Now, I don't know if that's forever.

We have to have a meeting to see if somebody else is going to volunteer because you know how that works. People volunteer for something. The thing is going to be easy peasy, but somebody had to drive to earn seeds, pick up the pellets, box the pellets, ship the pellets. Somebody else had to receive the payment for the pellets and so on. So I really want to thank all of you who purchased those pellets and support of the fundraiser. It was very successful. And it just became so much work for those who

were bagging and shipping and responding to buyers that for now, they've shut that down. So there are no more switchgrass pellets for sale. And you might wonder if earned seeds, because they are members of our club, by the way, that's our connection with earned seeds. So there may be start up again in the spring. But through The holidays are upcoming, you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all that stuff. There won't be any switchgrass pellet seed sales for the switchgrass pellet smoker fuel. So, but thank you so much for those of you did that. And what else is going on here?

Keith says they all covered up the front of the hives like bearding and filled the air, but not defensive just everywhere. Okay, that makes sense. That's much better. I'm glad they weren't defensive. And again, thank you so much for those of you who supported the fundraiser for the pellets. It was very good. And the feedback has been fantastic.

So the other thing to consider, too, that I want you to think about, when you have hot bees. Some people intentionally keep hot bees. Okay. Let's say you're one of those people. Keep your cell phone on you at all times and get that app, which is an emergency number. because some people are keeping really hot bees. There's another thing I want you to think about because I thought about this even with birds.

A lot of you may not know, I'm a poultry technician also, which means you draw blood from different birds. I don't know if you've ever dealt with ratites. The ostrich is a ratite. It is the largest land bird. I think it's probably the largest bird, period. The ostrich, not too far for me, kicked its owner in the femur and broke his femur.

Now, this guy was on the ground, and EMS showed up to take care of him. He was up against a fence, and the ostrich guarded him, and they could not get to him right away. So the reason I tell that story is those are his ostrich, his animals. So I raised emu. They were like much easier going. They're only six feet tall.

They're only 120 pounds. They only run 35 miles an hour. So EMEU, way better than ostrich. Now let's go to honeybees. If you are a honeybee keeper and you are keeping hot genetics, that you know are hot because you think that is the best way to wipe out Varroa, to get honey in an area where other bees are not doing as well and things like that, consider that if you became a medical emergency,

who is going to respond to that medical emergency? When EMS shows up, you get paramedics and EMTs, and they see that this guy's attacked by bees, somebody either has to be a beekeeper or has to be ready to go in there. they're not going to put themselves in harm's way to save your life. So you may be dealing with something that could ultimately backfire. Huge. Just consider the animals you keep and the potential risks.

That's all I'm going to say. I can't tell you what to do. This is America. But that's just it. So moving on here, Fred. Are you going to Nabi this year? So that's from Flower Street Farm Bees. Nabi, for those of you don't know,

is the North American Honeybee Expo is run by Cayman Reynolds and all the volunteers, Reynolds family, everybody else. Yes, I go every year. I am a presenter. I just got an email from Cayman Reynolds, ask him what topic I wanted to cover.

And so, yeah, I'm going to be there, and I get to be a presenter. So, look forward to seeing you if you guys are going. It's the biggest. Let me just give them a plug. There is no other attraction for beekeepers in the United States that matches the North American Honeybee Expo. Now, I probably shouldn't say that because I'm going to a lot of conferences.

I go to a lot of expos. And I get invited. And thank you. If you happen to be one of the people that's invited me to come and present and be part of that, I'm going to be at the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association. I'm a presenter there. I'm going to be in Texas. I'm a presenter there down in Austin.

So I'm going to all these places, but just let me try to put it in scope. Go and look at my video called North American Honeybee Expo, and this was January of this year, and you'll kind of get a feel for it. There are so many vendors. This is where people that produce equipment for beekeepers, even if you don't go to see the speakers, it does not hurt my feelings. If you don't go in and listen to me, give my presentation, which is nothing like what I talk about on YouTube. So it's not a repeat.

It's not a Q&A. It's not a video that you've already seen. It is new stuff that I only give at in-person presentations, right? So, but if you go out into the vendor area, this is where a lot of these companies are waiting to present and reveal brand new technology equipment, practices, medications, feeds, tests, everything. They release it at the North American Honey Bee Expo. So if you wanted to go, if you, let's say you have a big ticket item on your mind.

You want to buy an extractor. You want to buy, you know, one of those giant uncapping tanks. I don't have one. Let's say you're wanting to grow as a beekeeper and you've got some big ticket items in mind. They will give you concessions, the companies will, at the North American Honeybee Expo that will more than offset your trip there. Get a ticket and go to it. it. It is it. Like if you, it's too much. There's, there's too much to see. It's overwhelming almost. You can look at a new item and a new thing every half an hour and never see it all. In fact,

be frustrated at the end when you get back. I'll be there. I'm going to talk to the vendors that I want to talk to and I'm going to share with you. If you don't go, I'm going to share with you what they're working on, what's new and what I think about it. So, It's terrific. The environment is great. The people that you meet there are super nice. The entire, if there's an energy that surrounds a gathering of people, it is positive. It is a fantastic thing.

That's enough. Let me move on now. Just able to order. But anyway, it'll offset your stuff. So take advantage of those early sales. And you can't just go there and get stuff from vendors and not go to the Expo. In other words, they won't let you in. So you have to have a ticket.

You have to be there. Steve Amos says, Fred, the 60-volt-Dowalt weed eaters are awesome. Had batteries for other uses, and even their chainsaw is pretty good. I have that DeWalt chainsaw, by the way. I like it. I also have the telescoping chainsaw that cuts their branches. Anyway, so there you go. DeWalt, I'm sure a lot of people have their favorite stuff.

Just read reviews. Pick what you want. And there's batteries for everything these days. So if you're already invested in DeWalt line, which I am, then because my instant vape, my axelic acid vaporizer is also DeWalt. So it was a no brainer there. Good stuff works great.

Kevin Lancaster says I have two two-frame mating nukes, both with mated queens. I raise them, have backup queens. I would like to hear what you would do with the queens and colonies if I don't end up using them for my other colonies. That is a pickle for Kevin. This is why I don't breed queens because a lot of people ask,

you know, do you use an ecosystem? Yes, I would. If I were a queen breeder, I would use an ecosystem. I've seen lots of great methods for breeding queens. But you end up with a bunch of queens that you don't need. Now what? You sell queens. You have to have them in a finishing yard,

then you have to mate your queens, and you have these mating nukes. And now we have these little colonies of Queens, which has explode. And by that I mean, the population goes nuts. You have a bunch of bees that now don't fit in their little nukes anymore. And I would look for somebody that needs them. If you belong to a bee club or something, I would put the word out. I would, you know, give them away or something, help new beekeepers that might.

Because here's what happens sometimes to beekeepers at this time of year. We're in this, you know, month of September. We are summer's over. and some people are discovering right now that they're queenless. Now what? Well, so I tell people, because do I just let them die? Do I just neglect them? Well, first of all, that's not neglect.

If they're queenless, they don't just die. They're not suffering. The bees that are in a colony without a queen, they live out their lives. The nurse bees make a transition. They activate their ovaries. They start laying eggs. They start producing drones to the point of their death. So what they're doing is they're just living out their lives and there's just no replacements coming in.

So if we look at the organism as a living thing, that living thing dies. If we look at the individual bees in the hive, they're just living out their life. By the time they're foraging, they're good for two weeks and then they're done. So if you've caught it early on and if you've got more than 5,000 bees in the colony, if it's really tiny, if they're the size of your fist, they're done. Putting a queen in there won't help. Because remember, even if it's a lane queen, you put her in there, you're 21 days out from emerging workers. So, but if I had extra queens, I would be looking for people that suddenly found a colony queenless and they self a good population.

The colony still has potential. And I would do that. But otherwise, you have extra queens. Exactly why I don't raise queens because you just end up with a lot of queens. And now we have to pick and choose which ones get to, you know, produce young for a colony. So they don't have great answers to that. Yeah, G.G. Henderson said Ernsts was making the pellets, but they don't sell them commercially only as correct. Earns seeds will not sell direct to people.

They won't accept another fundraiser. Remember, they're connected with our B club and they only did it for that. That's what it was. So, this is from QuadrupleX. Were your B-Club teams making the switchgrass pellets from scratch, or was there a commercial manufacturer? Oh, that's what that answer was. Earned Seeds was making them. Earned Seeds has the capability.

Making pellets is not an easy thing to do. So we were in fellowship with them, and that's how it went. So they're commercial. Our guys didn't make switchgrass pellets. So Ross Millard says, but it would be worth it to sell switchgrass pellets at North American Honeybee Expo a lot less work with no shipping.

Could be, but you have to pay for a booth at the North American. I don't know if booths are even available now or if all those spots are picked up. It's going to be bigger than last year. I personally wouldn't even have a booth at the North American Honeybee Expo. And here's why.

I want to get around and see people. I'm going to meet people. I want to see their stuff. I don't want to be responsible for going back to my booth. And because I've been asked if I would have a booth. No, never. Because I'm there to see all the other people. I don't want people to come and see me.

So that's just not my thing. It's enough that I have to go in and give a presentation, which I like, because I like to talk to people. And I want to show you the things I've learned through the year. And I want to give you a couple of wow moments. That's what I'm there for. but yeah there would be a lot of things you know people could sell a lot of things and in fact you know what the number one this is ross millard saying that but the number one thing that was coming out of some of the

vendors that were there last year for the first time is they wish they'd brought more stuff because they sold out so fast that they had to keep their things there until the last day so they wouldn't let people pick up their stuff and leave right away i mean they probably would let you but they had to ask people to please leave it there so they even had a display to the end of the end of the end of end of the expo because all their stuff was sold. People come to the expo wanting to buy stuff. That's what they do. I bought stuff. That's why I was there. I want to learn new things. And if something whows me, I'm going to buy it. That's what I want to do. So what else do we have here? It says, Dimitri, hi Fred, with how many frames do the bees in

your layens hive go into winter? The layens hives, sad story. super depressing, they're full. I don't pull any of their frames out. So one of the land's hives has 16 out of 20 frames involved and that's what they're going to stay at. The other one has all 20 frames occupied to some level with resources or bees and brood. So I've let my layens hives go on autopilot, so to speak. They're just hives that I feature. I don't, you know, we look into them. I like to share about them.

We show people the bees. We pull the big frames and show these massive brood. And we've also, I already know when I go into my bee yard and I see a swarm that's massive that it came out of one of the layans hives because they swarmed this year. each of them did. And then this was the interesting part. I had my grandsons out there. There's two of them.

They were beekeepers. And one of the lay-ins hides was queenless. Because they had swarm. It didn't look like they were replacing their queen. So then I thought, aha, finally, one of them is going to get down to a manageable size, and I'm going to swap it out. That didn't happen because what happened then was a swarm showed up.

And this is really interesting. It's a cool swarm dynamic. A swarm showed up that was huge. And their scouts apparently had been going in and out of that layans hive. They covered the entire front of the hive. The queen went in. They all went in. So I had a swarm move into an occupied land's hive that did not have a queen,

but there were a bunch of workers in there. So that was one of the easiest hands-off things. But anyway, that wasn't the question. The question was, how many frames do I leave them going into winter? They're both 20 frame Dr. Leo hives. So I left them whatever they used. I didn't take anything out. Just because I want to see what they do.

So they do extremely well. And one is full, all 20 frames. And the other one has three more frames that they could use that they're not currently using. So any of the frames that are not, you know, we're talking about. this coming week. It's it for Lay and's Hives, too. If there are frames that are comb, but they're empty, then I will just shift. This is, this is the beauty of horizontal lives. I will just shift the follower board and not include partially full frames. So we'll just take those out and we'll move the follower board over. But as it stands right now, they're going to stay the way they are. I'm not

taking anything out of there. Keith Spillman wants to know if I will have an above average presentation. Yes, I guarantee it. If you don't like my presentation at the North American Honeybee Expo, I will buy you a free muffin and a free coffee at the free muffin and coffee stand out where the vendors are. You can tell them, I sent you. Okay, so I'm Fred with how many frames. Okay, so that's it. Anything else?

Having a booth that North American Honeybee would be like being put in a beekeeper's timeout. All the cool things going on around you, but you're stuck. Yes. Thank you. That's from Flower Street Farms. When I walk by Randy McCaffrey, Dirt Rooster, and I see his giant, really cool, you know, they have one of the best displays, the shirts, the merch,

all the stuff that's going on. Elizabeth, his wife is there, and they have other people there because they're just too busy. That's the last thing I want to do. As cool as that is, and having people come to you and say, hi, and shake your hand, I'm sure Randy just gets tired of talking and shaking hands with everybody. That's not what I want.

I want to be out and about. I want to be mobile. I don't want anybody to know. where I'm going to be for an extended period of time because then they can catch me and, I don't know, prank me or something. So, Fred, I think the folks would love another tribunal with you, dirt register, Mr. Ed. Okay, so I was told, for those of you don't know, Camden Reynolds, and all this brilliance put me, Mr. Ed, and Randy McCaffrey on stage together with no prior prep.

They just said, we saw it on the schedule. All of us did. Fred, dirt rooster, Mr. Ed, cutouts and cutups. And so we just went up there. And I actually tell you what, you know, I really liked it because all we did is go up there and talk. Catch up with each other. Just happen to be a room full of people while we did it. So it was a lot of fun.

And I heard that we're doing something similar. But for those of you know how comedy routines work, I'm the straight man. So somebody has to keep. those two in order okay so that's what that's about so if you come to that once again if you don't like it free cup of coffee over in the vendor room um Timothy says by the way if you have questions for me they should be in all caps so it says Timothy Mitchell did you raise emu for food meat and eggs and what does it taste like I'll tell Timothy right now that emu tastes like steak. It's not like a bird at all. It's very expensive. But the reason I was keeping them was to

document the stages, significant stages of growth and development of the Australian emu, starting with a 51-day incubation cycle with those eggs. So I wasn't raising them for profit. So we didn't need to. I wanted to record the drumming that they do and all the behaviors and you have an emu that comes out of an egg and it's almost a foot tall right away. They're just fantastic. expensive. I think their feed bill was over 300 months. So interesting. But no, and then we just sold them off. So that was it. All right. Do I have any more question? Oh, question number four. Back on track here. I know we're supposed to stop at five. Feel free to walk out. I'm not offended. I know you probably have places to be. This comes from Kevin.

And it says, good morning, Fred, Monfelt, let's see, I'm here from Nebraska. So I resuppose of yours, some borage on there. And we plant pumpkins in June, like between the 5th and the 13th of June, typically. So I'm looking for some crops that I can put in those spaces to provide a bloom for the bees in the spring until we plant pumpkins in June. And I've done some research on my own, but just don't feel like I maybe have seen. everything there is to see. Okay, so you may know what I'm going to say. I like to go to the local garden center different times of the year. We haven't had a garden center out here called Stans,

and they have acres of perennials and stuff. So they grow them. They do seedlings. They do everything. And so you can go to these garden centers, and I hope there's one near you. You can go at different times a year and see because they also have natives and they have cultivars and all these things there. So depending on what your focus is going to be, you can see what the pollinators are on there before you buy anything. So it's twofold. One, you get to see the varieties of plants that your bees are on at different times of the year. You can see if it's just bumble bees, you can see if honey bees are on there. And I'm fortunate enough that that Stans Garden Center that I go to, there must be a beekeeper nearby because there are honeybees on everything that's honeybee worthy. So now you'll know

what plants in you can transplant that are already good for your agzone. You can ask about the conditions they grow in. This year in the garden, so my wife has taken over the vegetable garden and we planted marigolds too. Now she was not a big fan of marigolds. But this is the first year I've ever seen honeybees on marigolds. I don't know what the value is. I don't know if the pollen is particularly good. I don't know if marigolds have a decent nectar flow. It certainly hasn't shown up in any of my Xerxes society references for the top 100 pollinator plants. Early spring, we're mostly focused where I am on trees. So, but if you're looking to plant something in your garden, marigolds is what I'm looking at this year. And by the way, we did two different things. One,

we took seed for marigolds, and we also bought started plants. the seed outperform the started plants. So my advice to my friends, the backyard beekeepers, if you're going to plant marigolds, because we use them to drive deer and stuff away from some of the plants that we're hoping to protect, so we're using them for natural protection. Just plant the seed.

It way outperforms marigolds that you buy already started in planting there. So they were fantastic. And that's the only thing that comes to mind because early spring around here, you know, dandelions, you're not going to plant those in your garden, but the dandelions in the fields are, you know, a big kickoff for us. Clover, I suppose you could plant clover, but then that doesn't start blooming until a little later. So, and clover's perennials, that's a good thing.

I like stuff that I don't have to plant every year. That's why I like that pinky winky that we just put in there. um that's just about that's all i can think of go to your garden center talk to garden experts i'm not a garden expert i'm a very casual gardener people that look at my yard and realize that i don't manicure anything and anything that's grown too tall that can't be mowed anymore i just put a sign out there that says pollinator habitat study because they don't want to mow it but it is a pollinator habitat study because it becomes habitat and polliners go to it so but early spring trees, talk to your master gardeners about it.

So Timothy says, I don't know if you've answered this question before. How long do Queens pipe in their life? There is an entomologist that is the entire thing on Queen communications, piping, quacking, tooting, all the things they do. I don't know how long they do it. I have heard people say that they've received a made-a-queen queen in the mail that was still quacking or tooting or piping. I can't tell you the subtle differences of those things.

But I hear queens piping inside hives when they're just emerging from their cells. So that's going to span, you know, for the time the first one starts to come out of her cell, this emergence cycle that happens. They've carried on talking back and forth for three days. The reason I know that is because I'm out there recording them. And I think it's ridiculous that one queen emerges and she does that and then you hear another one inside. So she's basically saying, I'm over here.

Come find me through my vibrations and then please tear a hole in the side of my cell and sting me to death. Because that's what happens. Unless the bees that are inside decide that they have a preference for one of those queens, because they all start hyping back and forth. They're letting each other know where they are. So the first one that's emerged is the one that's mobile. She can go around and kill these others.

They're stuck in their cell. She's going to sting them usually right where the wing is on the thorax. But I've also seen the workers go after a queen they didn't like that happened to emerge. You'll also see workers keep resealing the box. of this queen cell while the queen is trying to get out there keeping her in there by working the wax back it's interesting what happens but three days has been the norm because after three days we'll go out there and we don't hear them anymore so i love to record it and but there are entomologists who have documented all the frequencies the sounds they make in the duration of these sounds and the differences

which i do not know i don't know that it runs between piping and quacking and whatever other classifications of their sounds they have. But if I can find this study, I will put a link. It might be worth knowing about. But it is fun to be showing somebody a beehive and hear a queen piping. That lets you know the swarm has happened is about to happen. At any rate, you need to pay attention to that colony. This is from Demetri.

It says the last couple years, farmers close to my house started growing common sunflowers. I'm talking at least 50 acres with the bees go forage on these sunflowers. Okay, so interesting thing about sunflowers. There's been a lot of study on the different varieties of sunflowers and the quality of their pollen. And in some cases where the pollen from the sunflowers even demonstrated that it had a positive effect on your bees' ability to fight foul-brewed of all things. Because remember, pollen gets used by the nurse bees to manufacture the resources that are then fed to the developing prude in your hive. Now the fields of sunflowers, you have to find out the specific variety

of the sunflower. Some of them don't even produce pollen, which is a huge letdown. We know the bees work them for nectar and pollen, and they work them in circles, right? So I plant, you know, sunflowers by the thousands every year. And I know that they are case by case type by type. I don't know how we classify the sunflowers. But anyway, you need to know specifically what they are because some of them are designed

so that you can't seed them. You can't grow other sunflowers from them. So they like do a one-off. They produce all that seed one time, but then they'll say, this is interesting too, by the way, while we're talking about sunflowers, how many times have you been told that the black oil sunflower seed that you get for your bird feeder has been irradiated or something,

and you can't plant it? Yet you explain to me how come sunflowers grow up underneath the bird feeders every year. I would say that a lot of them will grow, and what's cheaper than a 40-pound bag of black oil sunflower seed, compare that to the cost of $300, which I spend to plant sunflower, of different varieties throughout my property. So if the black old sunflower seeds work, but you're going to have to observe them

and see what your bees are doing. If they're working them with their proboscis, then they're getting nectar from it. Case by case, I don't know how much nectar they would get. And then, of course, they're getting pollen from it because you're going to see pollen on their corbicular while they're working the sunflower. Now, here's one of the things,

for those of you're looking at sunflower varieties that you're thinking of planting on your property, some of them are designed to be pollen free and that's because the sunflowers are grown to be cut and put inside your house and then people complain because pollen is all over their table and stuff. So the last thing I want is a pollen-free sunflower variety. I want loads of pollen and I want my bees to get it.

So there's a lot of different stuff. But don't have a better answer than that. What else? Is it normal for the colony to wait and have all brood emerge before leaving? No. It is not normal for a colony of bees to wait and have all brood emerge before leaving. When they swarm out, if it's a normal swarm, I mean, an abscond can happen for a lot of different reasons, and then they'll abandon their brood.

So they don't generally wait. You've got a colony that has to go all the way back to the beginning of today's discussions. They have collapsed. when there's no brood and no adults in the hive. That's a colony collapse. So that means there was no reproduction long enough, and then eventually even the residual bees, rather than try to develop drones,

they just departed the colony altogether. So something can happen inside a beehive that makes it untenable for the bees. Even varroa pressure can be so high that your bees will leave. There can be a disease in the hive that causes them to leave. So there are pressures that you may not quickly pick up on that can cause bees to completely abscond. And if there's no brood at all left, it means that this has been a declining condition for a long time, and that falls on the lap of the beekeeper who did not keep up with landing board observations and things like that to see what's going on.

If you're looking at landing boards and you see that all of your colonies have pollen coming in and the activities at a really good pace and everything else, you come across another hive, that's B is coming and going, lower rate, no pollen coming in, that is worth an inspection because you'll want to see what's going on in there. So Philip Morris asks, how does the queen generate the piping sound? I heard buzzing sound that sounded a little like piping. So queen's piping, they're vibrating their wing muscles. And you can actually see them. people have shown you can google google go to youtube you should be watching youtube go to youtube

and look for videos on queen's piping because they will show videos of a queen actually piping and you will see her thorax vibrate and you'll see that she's rubbing nothing else together to make that sound so it's a vibration that they make with their thorax and i think we're going to wrap things up here looked it up and the sunflower species is the heliens anis then now that we know that name then you look at pollen quality for that specific plant but remember that they are growing those plants when you have sunflower fields 100 acres thousand acres of sunflowers they are growing them for the seed not for pollen not for their nectar producing capabilities. These are, you know, I don't want to get out of my lane here on, you know,

what botany should be. But you'll have to look that up to find out specifically what its traits are, what it's being grown for, and what the benefits are. So that's it. I'm going to Bill Robinson is shoving off. I think we need to conclude. So if nobody has a pressing, comment.

There was one more thing. Oh, I probably should answer these. People submitted their questions. I need to have them answered, even though we've gone long today. Sorry about that. Cover crops, companion crops. We did that, I think. Yes.

Here's another question here. It says, I have a horse trough near my beehives all year. I float sections of pool noodles on the surface and the bees readily land there. and crawl into the holes for a safe drink. I also have individual waters beside each hive, and in triple-digit days this summer, I was refreshing them twice a day due to evaporation.

The bees overwhelmingly used the black 70-gallon horse trough, however, even though my neighbor erected an above-ground pool 60 yards away, he's had no problem with my bees. However, the horse trough breeds mosquitoes badly, and there are no places around here to acquire feeder, goldfish, or mosquito fish. So I'm out of loss what to do. By the way, there are companies online that will ship mosquito fish directly to your door. Now, I don't know if you're out of the realm for that, but you can buy fish online. So that's just food for thought.

I'm thinking about draining and painting the inside white with enamel paint as mosquitoes lay their eggs in black standing water. It might lessen the problem, but not eliminate it completely. What are your thoughts on this? Okay, so painting it, I do know this. Standing water is good for mosquitoes to have their lay their eggs and for their larvae to develop. Standing water in the sun is even more promising for them. For what reason? We'll go all the way back to the beginning.

where we talked about spirulina and we talked about moss and we talk about moss that grows in the water. And there are things that grow in the water in the sun that we can't even see that mosquito larvae feed on. So I was thinking about this and I'm so glad I'm glad I'm answering this question because I did some research today on it. How to deal with the mosquitoes that are in that trough. So here's what I was thinking about. they have fairly inexpensive solar powered fountains. I'm not saying turn the trough into a fountain. I'm saying take that fountain, that's solar powered,

and the ones that have the separate panel, and then they've got the little motor that moves the water that makes the fountain. Take that motor that moves the water that makes the fountain and put it in the bottom of your trough. This is what I would do, just me, because if we can get the water moving, mosquitoes don't want to lay their eggs in it.

Mosquitoes don't lay their eggs in it. The larvae don't develop and the larvae don't launch from your horse trough. And it didn't say whether or not livestock are feeding from this. I would guess they're not. I don't know because I would think that would disturb the water too anyway. Because I've had rain barrels do the same thing. So you could put that solar panel and then put the motor underwater and just let it blow the water around inside. It doesn't have to come through the surface and create a

fountain, which then would accelerate the evaporation of the water from that 70-gallon trough. So if it just sits on the bottom and keeps water moving, that would make it less appealing to the mosquitoes you would have. Also, they're pretty darn delicate, which is interesting. The mosquito larvae need to access the surface of the water. That's why stagnant water is what they prefer because they get their little snorkels up there. I know there's an actual entomological term for it. I just don't know what it is. But they actually put a little tube up at the surface,

and they need to breathe surface water. And then they go squiggling around. And they have a little filter system that gets these little tiny microbes that they're feeding on in the water. Because that was the other thing. I thought, well, we could interrupt their feed. And I thought if we put like a couple of pool tablets in there,

that would do that. But apparently, standing water, they'll even develop and grow in some chlorinated water unless the chlorination level is really high, and we don't want that because bees will go after chlorinated water. We don't want high chlorine. So moving the water, that's what came to mind for me, a solar powered fan, not fan, but fountain system that should just take the fountain parts off and just let the motor circulate water inside there and keep it moving. And whatever you decide to do, if it works, let us know. I don't think it being black,

I know that mosquitoes are attracted to black because it looks dark and everything, but I've had these blue welches, plastic barrels, and mosquito larvae have developed in those. That's what prompted me to put feeder fish in there. So that works. Try it out. Let us know what you do because I'm interested. I want to know.

I want to know about the life cycle of the mosquitoes. So now we're moving on. Changing the subject to the supervisor found any size. Sasquatch around your hives. I want to see another one of his streams. Okay. By the way, he is part of the Sasquatch Slant Yeti, Slant Bigfoot search team. He and his cousin.

They have vests. They have badges. They have patches. They take it serious. 340 Sasquatch sightings in the state of Pennsylvania. We won't tell them that none of those sightings were in Erie County. We also won't tell them that those 340 sightings occurred ever since SOSWatch has existed. Existed.

Okay. Now, EL says use BT. I know there are mosquito tablets you can put in and they claim they are safe for your bees. But I'm assuming that the person asking this does not want to treat the water with anything to kill them. but that's true. They say that it works and that it's not that they had to prove that it would not impact bees. Me personally, I would pick another method other than treating the water before I would put that in for my primary bee feeder since the bees are visiting this trough. And Gigi says, I would wonder if the BT would adversely affect the bees.

There's no evidence that does. They had to prove it didn't, but guess who does these studies? And I'm not saying don't trust the studies, but when companies produce these things, it is the same company that does these impact studies and has to prove that they won't happen. So if you're going to follow my mantra, which is to fail safe, don't use them. Okay. Let's see what else. That's it. That's it for today.

Do your own research question, everything. Look stuff up. Don't let your bees drink something. extra that you don't completely know about. And in closing, I want to recommend this book. If you haven't seen it before, Heart of the Hive. This is by Hillary Kearney inside the mind of the honeybee. It's a really good book. If you didn't see it and you want to listen to something while you're doing your chores and gardening and stuff, it is also inaudible and it is narrated by Hillary Kearney herself. That was part of the interview we did. What's it like to narrate your own book? How is it,

how to go and so on so please listen to that so i love the answer i use goldfish or pinhead minnows to eat mosquito larvae that's it for today you guys i want to thank you for being here and uh for commenting in the section and uh hope to see in the coming week watch for some of those videos coming up pay attention to spirulina for those of you like to feed supplements to your bees the results are very impressive So I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Thanks for being here today.