The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 285 winter has arrived early!

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/gu6Jeyx1psA

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. This is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 285. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here today. Glad I'm here today. We're in the middle of a snowstorm still. The blizzard's gone. Our blizzard conditions have gone away.

I know you're wondering what's going on. What are we going to talk about today? Well, look down in the video description and you'll see all the topics in order. The other thing is you might be wondering how to submit your own topic for a consideration in a future episode of The Way to Be, which, by the way, happens to be a podcast as well, so you can just Google it, The Way to Be podcast, and listen while you drive, or maybe you're stuck in a snowstorm, and you're in a big line of traffic, and you can't go anywhere, so you might as well just listen to Backyard Beekeeping. So, as I mentioned, the weather, heavy snow, the series of,

that you just saw in the opening of today's video, those for video this morning. So that's what's going on outside right now. I was allowed outside for a little while and I cleared the driveway. So the mail people and the FedEx and UPS, all these people are having to get through these back roads around here. We have had 28 inches of snow accumulation. Think about that. So anyway, it is 23.5 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

And in Celsius, that's minus five. And the wind right now, 7.5 miles per hour, which is 12 kilometers per hour. And where am I talking about? The state of Pennsylvania, northwestern part of the state, the snow belt. So when you're looking at national weather, they're talking about all the problems that people are having. That's where I am. Dead center, right in the middle of it. So 98% relative humidity, no big surprise there.

and 55 mile per hour wind gusts is what we got yesterday. They promised us up to 60. So I guess that still qualifies it's up to 60. We didn't get 60. I'm not complaining.

And you might be wondering, Fred, 55 miles per hour, what's that in kilometers? 88.5 kilometers per hour. So if you want to know how to submit you're on topic, go to the way to be. Dot org. Click on the page,

smart the way to be. There's a form there. You can fill it out. You can say anonymous. You didn't even have to admit who you are as long as you're saying nice things. I appreciate that. You can have a question or you can just bring something to my attention that you think might be interesting to backyard beekeepers. I don't want you to thank also that backyard beekeeping is just for beginners because it isn't. There are some very sophisticated, very experienced backyard beekeepers that watch this. So I want to thank you for being here. And that's because, often my listeners and viewers provide information and responses that I depend on too to keep me sharp. I like to be challenged and questioned. If I say something and you think that's nonsense,

let me know in the most polite possible way. So I think I'm going to jump right into it and get to the very first question of the day which comes from Ernest L-R-E-L-A-N. That's the YouTube name. It says watch all the time, like investigations. And P.S. I was a film editor for the United States Marine Corps. So that's cool and thank you for your service. Lots of veterans out there. But the thing was, this comment is relevant to another YouTube that I put out a while ago.

If you want to know about the North American Honeybee Expo and vendors and items and things that might be, there or just what the environment might be like, just go to my YouTube page, which is Frederick Dun, F-R-E-D-E-R-I-C-K, done, and type in Honeybee Expo. And you'll see the video. It shows a lot of vendors there. One of the vendors, and that's why this question came up, was about a smokeless smoker or a flameless smoker. And we all know Apisalus is one, but that's more of a vape system.

This is an actual smoker. And I was on the list to review it to give my feedback. It had its own pellets. It was self-extinguishing. It was a very well-made smoker. It had a battery pack on it and had a glow plug built into it. So when you turned it on, it heated up. And while it was heating, while the glow plug was on, it would burn.

It would smoke. And then the minute you turn it off, disconnect the battery, it was off. And there was no more flame. So it came from a part of the world where they weren't allowed to have flames. at all, fire risk was so high that they had to have a flameless smoker system. So it seemed great, really well made. They sent me a unit. I was supposed to review it and then I got a notification from them. Hold off, we have some bugs in the system, we have to work it out. So and it came in tubs. I don't know if you recall this, if you want to look at it.

Again, of course they talked about the coating so there were different scents associated. So the smell of the pellets that were burning would be placed. pleasing to the beekeeper and then the response from the bees of course was also supposed to be good never hit the market they had three attempts so right now the only smokeless smoker for your bees which sounds ironic is apisalus which is more of a vaping system api is what it goes by it's a battery powered unit two only there's actually works right now it doesn't mean that that other unit is not going to make its way into the hands of beekeepers but they have some bugs to work out so that's to answer this question and glad to have it sorry it never hit it

next question question number two comes from Nigel Moore by the way before I go on with this question some of you read CC on the videos and so I catch a comment every now and again that if only it were in this language or that language, if you are trying to read it, like English is not your first language, and maybe you want to read it in your own language where you are, make a note. Write down in the comment section of the video, please put this in Hindi or please put this in French, and I'll do it for you. I'll create a CC in your language. So just let me know and I'll take care of that right away. So here's Nigel Moore's question. Can you please tell me if wild bees,

carry the varro de-destructor mite, and if so, why does it not wipe them out? I ask this because they're not being treated to combat the mite. Thank you. So for Nigel, thank you for the question. This comes up all the time. This is something that is near and dear to me as beekeeper, because the last thing I want to be doing is treating my bees. So I'm in the state of Pennsylvania, as I already mentioned. There's a lot of research going on in this state, and we collaborate with other states, with entomology departments from other universities all over. So Penn State is what I'm talking about for research like this. And even my bee club, the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association gets involved in genetics.

I'm not really powerful in genetics because, of course, I don't have a lot of colonies. That doesn't mean we can't engage with best practices when it comes to beekeeping. So, and this comes up, you know, if we only only, left them alone they would be fine well for those of you don't know by the way honeybees did exist here in the state of Pennsylvania native honey bees by the way but we only know about them through fossil remains so it's clear they didn't make it but I don't know maybe that was unfair to make that comparison because they weren't obviously taken out from the Vero-Distructor mite honeybees have

faced challenges the Veroa destructor mite is what we're talking about the most today and what I personally talk about the least when I give a beekeeping presentation because that ground is so well covered so um they looked at bee trees unattended bees the most famous reference to honeybees that are not maintained that are left to themselves just to see what shakes out dr thomas seeley the arnut forest in the state of new york right here in the united states when the verotistrictorite came out, it was devastating to beehives. Devastating to be colonies and the losses were skyrocketing. You know they've had challenges before. There was the tracheal mite at one time. American foul

brood was terrible, still is, but not very prevalent. European foul brood, pretty darn challenging and attacks the brood. And then we have a whole slew of viruses. So now we've got this vector of viruses known as a road destructor mite, which is brought to us from other countries. It wasn't here. Just like I'm until recently, it wasn't even in Australia. And I think that in Australia, for example, there were a lot of challenges to the very idea of treating. Their treatment method initially in Australia when it showed up was to kill any bees that have it. That did not work. So, and I've said this often, and I stick with it now, that the future in honeybees is really genetics. That gets tossed on its head frequently and the reason is we need our bees to do things

that yield huge income which puts honeybees right on the map because they impact our Department of Agriculture on a national scale. Honeybees as pollinators produce of course help us produce vegetables and fruits and all kinds of things that really need pollinators and honeybees are the top pollinators because they're most easily managed. You'll hear frequently people say that you know native bees out pollinate honey bees. One to one, you bet they do. However, we put out 20, 30,000 honey bees in an area, you know. So we are outperforming by numbers alone.

So the honey bee is perfectly adapted as a pollinator. The reason I'm saying this is the only reason the US Department of Agriculture really cares about the honeybee is because of its impact on our gross products when it comes to agriculture, right? Because if this was just a little insect zipping around, it wouldn't get this kind of attention. There wouldn't be a bunch of treatments for it. And genetics are all kind of muddied up, right? So for 40 years, Thomas Seeley observed that feral colonies and they are not forest took a major hit, of course, but then balance themselves out without being attended to by people. However, that seems overly simple, and it is. We have kind of genetic wars going on in the United States

because depending on what you want from your bees, you're going to focus on those genetics. Well, honeybees that handle the varroa destructor mite well often are very small-sized colonies, which is true they are or not forest. If you looked at the space, which Dr. Thomas Uly evaluated in great detail, it averaged about 11 gallons. Now, some of you might be looking at gallons and thinking, what is that in liters? 42 liters while we're talking.

So small colonies did really well. Now, one of the things that happens when you keep your bees in small colonies, they're in small spaces, and so we know that they cycle out, they replace their queens, they swarm a lot. If they swarm a lot, there's a lot of reproduction, and of course, then they are reducing the mite load because they've reduced the amount of brood. So the other part of that is what if we wanted large colonies of bees to get more pollination going because that's how business works. If a little bit works really well and is profitable, then a lot must be really good.

So then in the commercial industry, they have making the grade, grading your colonies. So you need a minimum number of frames of brood and a bee population that's going to get you top dollar. When they go to the most famous pollination thing that's going to come up here in February, the almond groves in California. More than 80% of the world's almonds are produced right here in the United States. That makes it a huge cash crop, which means what? There's a lot of interest from the Department of Agriculture, and therefore those who want to make money from bees

are going to provide for pollination services. Now the backyard beekeeper, and I preface today's thing, backyard beekeepers aren't always beginners. We just like to keep our bees small scale, keep them static, we don't migrate them around, not a sidelineer. So it doesn't mean you can't make a little money from your bees, but it means that we're not loading them in trucks and things like that, which is an advantage. Why?

Because you'll hear reference to regionally adapted. Bees adapted to your climate. climate so and I may I raise mutts you'll hear that a lot so that means we've allowed them to hybridize and we selectively split and multiply from colonies that are performing the best in our environment now that doesn't mean that it's one of those beehives it's going to have seven supers on it by the end of summer my colonies where I am are very small they're very successful I try to go treatment-free completely So I thought that was working great, but then I got a little bit concerned because

every once in a while I'd get a big spike. And of course, like a lot of people that are science-based, and I am, you read a study that shows that one colony in your backyard apiary that gets overrun with varro, destructor mites can have a domino effect on the rest of your bees. And that did happen once in a while. get one colony a little bit out of control because even though I was treatment-free for 10 years, it doesn't mean I was ignoring the bees. I was an active treatment-free person. So the other thing was I pulled in genetics that were known to survive treatment-free.

You'll hear initials like VSH. VSH-Veroa-sensitive hygienic bee stock. That is one of the traits that when a bee finds out that there are varroa in the capped pupa of a developing bee. They'll uncap it and they can dry it out and they'll either pull out the developing pupa or they just dry out the mite and in some cases they cap it back and in some cases they don't even finish capping it back and that bee finishes development. The mites cannot be exposed to air like that. So I reached out to people that had survivor line stock. I've said it before I'll say it again, if you're a back-air beekeeper and we can't do this genetic development on our own on any scale, really, that makes a big impact, we can certainly support the breeders that have the

stock that is showing that, right? So when we use the Arnot Forest as a model of bees in feral colonies that are surviving, surviving means that the honeybees are still out there, it does not necessarily mean that those colonies would be useful or scalable when it comes to pollinating crops. The other thing is you need everybody on board with their practices in order to allow the genetics to ultimately prevail. In the meantime, what would that mean economically? A profound slam to the business of beekeeping, right? So the commercial scale beekeeper, if you're one of those people, the last thing you want to do is just turn them all loose and say, let's see what we get at the end.

When you look at the almond board, in other words, these are people that number crunch, talk about what goes on, are they meeting the pollination requirements for the almonds? And what's the condition of the colonies coming in? And what's the condition of the colonies leaving? Last year, last February, so that's this year. This past February,

30% of colonies that were actively participating in almond pollination expired. They died. So coming out of almonds is not great for bees. Ammonds themselves as a pollination service is fantastic for the beekeeper, but they don't get enough nectar and pollen to keep those bees going, so they have to be fed and cared for and looked after. And even then, 30% loss is a pretty big deal. And that's the pollen board, or that's the almond board.

That's not beekeepers saying, hey, my bees have trouble. But you can bet when beekeepers lose their bees, they get compensated for that. So each colony, for example, state of Pennsylvania, let's say your commercial beekeeper or a sidelineer, and you lose 70, 80% of your colonies. You get compensated for each colony loss through the Department of Agriculture. So once again, business kicks in and shores it up. If we're just going to go with survivors, and they had this great study that was going to go on through Penn State, and we're going to look at just bees that are in trees, bees that are in cavities and trees,

and we're just going to not meddle with them, collect samplings from the foragers, observe them through several years, several seasons, and see how it goes. So who was doing the study? Well, there was a tie-in with the survivability of untreated colonies for Louisiana State University, Professor Kristen Neely here. And what they found out was the genetics, right? They have these bees called Poline, P-O-L-TEC, L-I-N-E. And those are V-S-H-Bs.

So what they did is they did observations of these bees compared with commercial stock bees, right? and they just started not treating them. So treatment-free, and this is a study that you can look up, 62% survival. That's not very good for a top-of-line pole-line bee stock, right? But that is 60% survival. When they took the commercial lines of bees down there,

and they did not treat them through the winter, or at the end of the summer and through the winter, they had 3% survival. Bible. Not good. And you might argue that, yeah, but what if we kept that 3%? Three hives out of every hundred and then we kept going with them. Well, Penn State did similar studies too, where they just allowed these bees to die or live and the treatment free stock by the end of the third year was gone. So if you don't have any bees that are making it, then in the end you potentially could lose them all.

So the other thing was if they treated them, you got 56% survival for the commercial line of bees, which is, again, that doesn't sound very good to me. And the genetics, the poll line tied with being treated. And they didn't say what the treatment was, by the way, in that particular study. I'm sure there's some extended version of it that explains every detail of it. 72% survival for the already resistant polandum. stock. So that's kind of explains what I did too because I had been treatment-free for a while,

but I was still losing bees, but not in big percentages. I was losing maybe 30%, 40% sometimes. And when acalic acid, which is an organic treatment, came out, and I decided, huh, what if I tried that? Kind of like what was going on with the pole line here, where it jumped in survival from 62% to 72% 10% survival, then I thought, wow, if I treat it with exhalic acid, maybe I'll get a higher survival rate, and I did. And I still practice kind of a hybrid

of treatment and treatment-free. And that's because the colonies are doing extremely well that have very low mite counts, I don't treat those. Those that have higher mite counts, I do treat those with exhalic acid vaporization. and then I just don't reproduce or expand my apiary from the colonies that don't do well. So I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm trying to explain the trees that we identified to follow

to see how they were doing on their own. Every tree in my area died out on its own. So then I didn't have anything to work with. And that's just me. So there was a wider study that was done. Feral Colonies, Pennsylvania. So this is Penn State University and it was headed up by Dr. Margarita Lopez Uribe, right? And in 1987, most feral colonies died off completely. They're studying colonies now. In 2017, they sampled over 20 colonies, which, by the way, that's not a very big number.

but in 2017 they sampered over 20 colonies to see what their their virus loads were and things like that to see if there's a correlation lower virus load greater survivability smaller colonies and as of march of 2003 so march 24th they're currently being analyzed still so he couldn't find a study that even showed what the final findings were and just myself in my county, whenever I come across people, because I'm meeting people all the time, because I also happen to be a portrait photographer, and people like to have their pictures taken on their property in the woods. And so we find feral colonies while we're doing pictures. And I go, oh my gosh, would it be okay if I came back and followed up with this colony of bees in this bee tree? So we ended up with a bunch of bee trees that I just could come and check up on. Not one of those trees remained occupied for two years. Not one of them.

So there again, where I am. Now, what if that was my total study? What if I somehow had a grant, which I don't. But let's say I did. And I could just go and find all these colonies. I could put the word out through social media. If there's a bee tree in your yard and your property, somebody you know, let me know I'll come out there.

and we won't meddle with them, we'll just observe and see if they swarm. If they're ever empty and then get reoccupied, because that's what I feel probably happens a lot when people say, that tree right there has been occupied with bees since I was 10, and I'm 52 now. You'll find out that they frequently cycle out completely. In other words, they could have died through the winter. And then when spring rolls around, wax moths fly in there, and then the wax worms chew up all.

that residue and then create a bunch of detritus on the bottom and then what happens a swarm comes in and finds a cavity that still smells great even though now all the wax worms are gone because they did their job they recycled old brewed comb and old honeycomb and their new colony moves in and builds it back up and then you show up the first week of july and go see they're still there look at that so unless you have meaningful monitoring and i was using an endoscope so that i could go right in and see what's going on in there. You can also, if you're an experienced beekeeper, is the comb new? Is it old? Is it, you know, old brute comb? What's the at at tritis at the bottom look like? Well, there again, I just want to say, long story short, none of those colonies are alive right now. Last year, we had

an extended dearth period, you know, had a fantastic spring, get to midsummer, and then to the end of the year, we had such low rainfall that there were challenges for the bees. But so, we had, there's very little evidence that 100% treatment free and hands-off beekeeping is going to be a work workable thing for you to be doing. You risk losing everything and you risk having varroa mites out of control. Now on the flip side of that, if you add small colonies, let's say you just set up a bank of nucleus hives. That's too small. Let's run. Let's run, ramp it up. Let's make it a double stack. So we have what would be a single brood box, 10 deep frames, but it's in 5 over 5. And he just left it there. Made a study out. Treat that

like your treatment-free tree. So then you could populate all of those. But see, now we've messed with them already, okay? Because when we're beekeepers, we're messing with our bees by what we keep them in. And now it's a managed colony. It's not truly a feral colony of bees. So we've got them in a man-made box. And now we have to follow the rules of the forests. So the other part of that is, because remember, the standard that gets constantly brought up to us, if you're trying to create a platform to build your treatment-free policies on,

you look at the Arn-Up forests, but you have to think, how far apart are all of those colonies of bees? Well, they're like a quarter mile apart. So most of us don't have the land to spread out your beehives a quarter mile from one another. So these are other things that play in how well the stock survives. So in a backyard environment, if you've got 10 colonies of bees and you only live on an acre, you've already violated what's going to help you observe bees that live and let live kind of management practice.

So there are management things that tell us, going back to Dr. Sealy, keep your colonies as far apart as you can, still under your control. and you would be keeping your colonies small if you're going to go treatment free. And I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying that it's active management. So there again, and he recommends Dr. Seeley, recommends culling colonies that demonstrate disease or overwhelming parasitic loads. So the parasite in this case is the varro-destructor mite.

If you're not willing to do all of that and you just want bees on your property and you just want to stare at a per bit of distance and just feel like they'll probably work it out. Or let's say you're more scientific, you want to do a test. And let's say I did this. Let's say this spring, I go out into my apiary and I say, live or die, do what you're going to do. And then I just start taking notes, see how they make it. How embarrassing by the end of the year, the following year, or the most likely scenarios, by the end of the third year of treatment-free,

I'd be lucky to have a single colony out there. And the reason is, my bees are not just being replenished by my own bees. I would love it, if that were the case, if they flew out and engaged with other bees that come from survivor stock. And so my queens fly out, they mate with drones from survivor stock only. That is not feasible anymore where I live. and that's because there are a lot of beekeepers or a lot of new beekeepers.

So the first thing to do is they buy a package of bees from somewhere or they buy a nucleus of bees that's come up from the south. And I'm not saying that there's something wrong with southern bees, but I'm saying that we're looking at this study here that I quoted, Poline Bs versus standard commercial stock. Most of the bees that people buy packages of are commercial line bees.

You'll get a lot of Italian genetics and things like that. They require treatment. You can't just bring them up here and turn them loose. You'll get great honey for the first year and a half, two years. You get a lot of productivity. You'll have huge clusters of bees, brood-wise, going in a wintertime that you'll have to feed, feed, feed, because they're a warm weather, warm climate bee, right? Most of the commercial stock is this way.

And if you're just going to turn them loose on their own, I think you're going to find it's kind of heartbreaking. And you're going to get a lot of criticism, by the way, which some people don't mind. there are beekeepers, their treatment-free beekeepers that, let's be honest, just don't tell the truth about their survivorship, right? The stock that makes it.

Pride gets in the way of science sometimes. And people will frequently say that, you know, they had all this survivability and everything, but then you go talk to somebody else. Yeah, it wasn't terrible that so-and-so lost six out of eight of their colonies of bees. And then you're thinking back, wait a second, that person at a meeting said,

I have 100% survival. So what happens is people get stuck and the pride gets in the way and they don't want to say, and I'm not saying every treatment-free beekeepers like that. I'm just saying it's hard to find people to stay honest about what they're actually having going on because we equate success in beekeeping to not so much what you're learning, which has a huge amount of value. But the success of beekeeping is how much honey you've got off of that hive. Well, if you're keeping small colonies, you're not getting a large amount of honey.

And how many of your bees survived? You know, winter. So there again, good beekeeper, bad beekeeper. And so this is a very complicated thing. And there is an entire nation that does not treat their bees. Where do you think that is? It's Cuba. I want to know more about Cuban bees, but there again, let's check out that environment.

The environment of Cuba is much different. than here in the northeastern United States for example so climate plays heavy the other thing is the stock needs to be allowed to just die off and live and it's a very tiny percentage that will live and then you need to be able to work with those without being impeded by other beekeepers that are bringing in stock that cannot manage itself in your area even big beekeepers that have done studies they had might-free I think even Let's talk Bob Binney had a huge colony. Bob lends his bees to science frequently. Bob Binney.

And University of Georgia does studies on his hives and things like that. And I think that we're trying to do varroa mite tests and counts and things like that. And he had an out yard that was a sizable out yard, and they were varroa-free. In other words, there was a problem because they didn't have the varroa-mites to conduct their study on. So if you don't have a varroa might, you couldn't do the study. Well, then some time passed, I don't know exactly how much. But next thing you know, it turned into having huge varroa loads. And they were scratching their heads wondering what the heck is going on there.

So it sounded like they had some genetics really dialed in. Because heaven forbid, you fail because you don't have enough varroa so that you can do a test, right? So you can do a study. That's the kind of good news that you want, bad news for scientific research, for your goal is to take out varomites. But then what they found out then, of course,

is a bunch of bees that are unmanaged because somebody was older and was ill and wasn't able to take care of their apiary anymore. So there were bees left on their own in that vicinity that then impacted what otherwise was a parasite-free out yard of bees. So the model really demonstrates that bees should be managed you should know what's going on in those hives. Just, you know, we used to have a big sign up in an engineering department on a ship that I was in.

And it said, you get what you inspect, not what you expect. And, you know, I didn't think that was a great slogan, but it's true when it comes to bees and livestock under your care. If you don't know what's going on, you can't kind of make claims that they're doing extremely well. I guess the long-term goal is to have bees that can tolerate mites and some of the, pathogens that they carry. We have a lot of, we have a multi-pronged approach. It's called integrated pest management. So if you're going treatment-free, for those you who have made that decision, do everything else you can to help passively control those mites while your bees build themselves up somehow. So screen bottom boards, maybe pulling out drum brood and things

like that at the right time. There are a whole bunch of things that you would need to to do split your colonies make brood breaks all these other things i would say that that's advanced beekeeping it's not beginner bekeeping moving on to question number three this comes from ruse now r u s n o w that is the youtube channel name any advice on having an observation hive inside your home i read lack of moisture can be an issue any blueprints or ideas for the ideal I have lots of ideas, sketches and plans and drawings for the ideal observation hive. Ideal for who? Ideal for me, that's who. And the best observation hive that I have right now was actually made by Ricky Rourke of

Horizontal Bees.com and he's going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo. Check him out. He makes a lot of horizontal hives, but he also built my observation hive 2 spec, including safety glass instead of plexia and things like that. So what's ideal for me and what I want out of it is the ability to observe the bees, photograph them and everything else. I also want to make acoustic recording. So I want to record sounds inside the hive.

So I have a configured hive just for that. But the thing here is the question is, I heard they have a lack of moisture, that that can be an issue. I don't think lack of moisture is much of an issue really. So I would need to know more about why someone had problems with moisture on that high. So if you had an observation hive, let's say, this observation hive is kept indoors in a warm heated space.

That's why you have observation hives in libraries and science centers and things like that. I used to go to a pancake house in Illinois that actually had a big observation hive right in the store that was part of the restaurant. So while you were waiting for your table, you could go stare at bees, which I did when I was in third and fourth grade. So anyway, you can create condensation inside your observation hive even when it's in a warm, heated space. Here's how. I've been paying attention because I'm wanting to do other things with other observation hives. So one of the things that came up was how long could we make the entrance to the observation hive? A lot of observation hives, a lot of mine, are just mounted directly to the wall,

and there's maybe six to ten inches of space, so the entrance into the hive. the channel going out because I have different diameter channels because I want to see it as one work better than the other, that kind of thing. And does that have any impact on how close they produce brood to the entrance and things like that? And it got to talking with other people that were experts on these entrances for the bees. And there are observation hive entrances that are really long. Why do I bring that up? Well, because if your hive is right up against the bulkhead, right up against the wall, and you have standard 2x4, then sheathing and dry rock, dry wall, sheet rock.

So if you have that and then here's your hive, then the entrance is right there. And then there may be some kind of landing board on the outside of the structure, and I'm sure you've put that on a south-facing wall, that kind of thing, south or east. Anyway, one of the ways to get your bees moisture, because that's the question. I paid attention to a science center that I recently visited, and I was looking at the observation hive and they had a bunch of vent holes in the entrance. And at a really long extended entrance, which I thought was really cool because students could sit down to see the bees coming and going, you get to see it from inside. Are they carrying pollen? Are they carrying propolis? What are they doing?

And sometimes they were stopping even in that channel and doing trophlaxis. For those of you don't know what that is, they're transferring the nectar that they're collecting, or water in some cases, right to an interior bee that meets the same. there before they even get into the hive. That's because they have this really long entrance tube. And so these exchanges would happen where people can stare at them. So I was thinking about that too. And then when the tube goes outside, it's usually flush with the building that it's on. And I would suggest that if you're concerned about moisture and the bees access to it, I would extend that tube and I would make it a pretty small diameter to you by the way.

one inch diameter would be fine most of these are like shop dust collection diameters two inch diameter two and a half inch diameter nice big tubes right um if you reduce that diameter you reduce air flow through it and the bees can still manage well but what happens is eventually if the tube extended past the face of the building front it would be cold and exposed to the air this time of year right now with temperatures in the 20s outside so what would happen the entire tube on its way into the hive would hit a point where it's warm and dry it would also hit a point on its way out where it would obtain the dew point and the dew point is the surface temperature on the interior that causes moisture in the air to condense and you've got moisture on the interior surface so the reason i say for this question is i would extend my

entrance tube six inches out from the face of the building and now I've got a channel that bees travel through until the encounter moisture without having to encounter the great outdoors. It also gives your bees that are being kept in your nice warm 69 degree Fahrenheit space, whatever your internal temperatures are for your observation hive. Mine are all in an unheated building anyway so this doesn't happen like that. But if you had that tube out there, now the bees would go down and just get moisture from the interior of the tube and not be exposed to that wind gusts it would blow them right off the landing board because what's coming up this coming week here where I live in the state of

Pennsylvania it'd be different for you but we're going to have a lot of moisture we're going to see bees coming out and getting drinks because snow's about to melt but so by having that extended tube you've got condensation I also like even though they're really expensive the translucent or even transparent tubes right really structurally solid like Schedule 40, and then that way you'll be able to observe where the bees are stopping and what they're doing, and you'll see that they can get their moisture there. Because it comes up from time to time, people will say, hey, I want to put water inside my beehive, and I always say, please don't do that. The reason is your bees may need to dry out the hive. Look what's going on right now. I think we have 98 or 99% relative humidity. If you put a water reservoir inside the hive, then now you've got a challenge.

So let's give you a second option to that extended entrance going from your observation hive to the outdoors. You could run another tube through the bottom of your observation hive. And have that tube go out to nothing but a water feeder. So that could have a sponge that constantly sucks up water because bees will put their tongue on the sponge and get that. And that reduces like the airflow, the humidity. you don't want a big open water surface that your bees then might be trying to dehumidify. So you could do that and then the bees could go and drink and bring that right in. And you want that to be really nice super filtered water if you could because it's for your bees inside of the hive.

There's room for experimentation, but that tube to the outside on cold days will work. Try it. And on that science building that I was looking at that had the vent holes in it, you could close the vent holes. and of course condensation forms. That's why the vent holes are in those transparent pipes because they need students to be able to see it. So I also took notes on that.

Have the vents, close them off if you don't need them, and then condensation could form, and then you can see beads drinking. You could also see the transition and teach students about DuPoint. So super interesting stuff. That was question number three. Moving on to question number four.

comes from mccorn m c-o-r-n-e that's the youtube channel name and three questions it says here will bees take fondant that has dried number two what keeps fondant above the inner cover from freezing three if fondant freezes on the hive does it matter and of course fondant that you make yourself i don't know what the parameters are Hive Alive Fondent, I have access to Dara Scott, who's the founder, the head guy at Hive Alive. He says don't freeze the fondant. And I'm thinking, you know, much like this question is, yeah, but here where we live, because remember that's developed in Ireland. Where we live, it's 23 degrees, 25 degrees, 21 degrees. The fondant's on top of the inner cover.

We have double bubble over the top of it. I have an insulated outer cover. And the chances of it freezing are, it's pretty possible to get to freezing there. But of course, if later in the year, as the clusters more towards the top, less chance of freezing there. But let's say it did. What's the detriment? He just said, try not to freeze it.

So I don't know what the detriment is. I would think freezing would preserve stuff instead of damage it. So I know that when it gets really hot, it gets damaged. So in other words, it should never go over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So I will answer some of these questions. It wasn't a very strong question about what happens when it freezes. I want to know more about that. But when it's dried.

And so this happens. I forgot a couple of these on some beehives this year. I kept meaning to take them off, but they were placeholders. And so they were the same fauna that had been on. on through last winter was still there in the month of July. Now when I picked it up, see how workable this is. This is really flexible. It's basically in a liquid, but I have found this fondant turns almost a pale white and

just off white and it's really firm then. So would the bees take it? I mean they might. Clearly they were on a colony that didn't use it fast enough and really didn't need it. So I took it off and then I took it apart to see if I could just dissolve that in 120 degree water. Why did I do that and not heat it up and boil water and really mix it up? Because aside from whatever happens if you freeze it, I don't know what that is, but if you overheat it, we definitely damage some of the benefits that are in here.

So if it's in a semi-solid state, if it starts to feel like dried out plato, then you can mix that with warm water and it goes into solution. really easily and now you just made a liquid feed that you can give back to your bees. That's what I do with it. So if I find one that's really rigid, remember it's on a colony that's not using it up then either. So they don't need it. I can just put the plug back in and get it off of there. Depending on the time of year, by the way, that was my mistake again on that colony, but I hadn't supered it or I would have seen the fondant pack. So what it was is one of those underdog colonies that I didn't think was going to make it. So I wasn't even really looking at the

inside and so I had a fondant pack in there that was all dried out but could be turned into solution again. So they would eat it. It's just really slow going and they need a lot of moisture to do it. So the previous question about water. They need access to water in winter even to metabolize their stored honey. So everything that they want to consume that's available in wintertime is going to require a lot of water use. That's why another vote. for not venting off all of the humidity and moisture inside a hive through a top vent going through winter because they need the moisture also that dew point that i talked about on the tube if you're venting through the top the dew point is achieved up above and so now we get frosty areas on the fringe of whatever like people use pillows and uh quilt boxes and things like that the top area of that should be super frosty and then there should be a transition to some moisture and then a transmission to just being dry and warm

not a fan personally of quilt boxes it doesn't mean if you've got a bunch of them and you like them and they're working your bees are living that's great moisture defeats insulation so uh moving on from that so you can mix it up it's still good you can use it and i would just if the bees needed it and for some reason you know use an older pack of fondant or something by the way that has an expiration date on it they're good for two years if it's past the expiration date you might think about swapping that out So that's also why I don't recommend buying a whole bunch of them and stockpiling them if you don't need them. I already have backups for the colonies that I think are going to need fondant. And they're ready to go.

I'm not going to buy a bunch more and have them on the shelf and just let them get older and maybe firmer. But you can dissolve them. Bees, if you have a lot of water, they can still take it. But I would replace it with a fresh one personally. Just that's what I would do. Question number five, John Gardner, that's a YouTube channel name, my request for a future topic, how to accurately weigh beehives. I get this question a lot. Weighing beehives, for me personally, because we have members of our bee club, you know,

and when you talk to people that they want to show you their cell phone, and it has all this data from all the broodminder. data that they have. The most common and the most frequently encountered scale for beehives comes from broodminder. So if you can just Google broodminder and look at the broodminder scale and things like that, you get an idea of what's out there. The thing of it is, you know, the broodminder scale, it's in a triangle shape thing. Anyway, it's like there's a cantilever to it. I had a lot of questions about the broodminder that still kind of are unanswered. But my question for you is, some people just like tech, and that's okay. You can do it.

They'll come complete with instructions on exactly how to set up your brewed minder. Remember, it has to report its findings. It has to report its information. Now, there are old school mechanical scales that you can tow it around and lift a whole hive and see where it's at, and then you go through and you could lift it again. And, you know, you can use a motor lift if you wanted to, something like that, to lift an entire hive and just put one of those heavy-duty weight scales on it, because I've got those. dial type scales I've got spring scales but I wasn't using them to weigh entire hives I was weighing frames of honey to get a feel for you know how much is this

a layans frame full of capped honey way compared to a langstroth deep frame full of capped honey and of course the depth of the cells and all that plays but that's the only thing I wanted to weigh and find out what's going on you could do that just like holding up a trout or a steelhead or whatever that you're trying to find out what it weighs, those are easy to do. Weighing the entire hive, my question for you is, what do you want to know? In other words, do we want to know if they had a sudden weight gain? Do we want to know if they swarmed? Do we want to know if they've consumed all their honey all of a sudden? And then you'll get this readout on your phone on the 27th of January that, you know,

your hive is light. Now, what would you, you would go out and put on emergency feed, I suppose. But these are things that can be figured out just by you. And by the way, I know somebody's sitting there wanting to go shopping. So when I looked up the broodminder digital hive scales, I found it, no, it doesn't say here. I think it's foxhound, is it foxhound or foxhound bee supply? With the digital hive scale, so you get a broodminder sensor that will tell you temperature. There's another sensor that will do temp and humidity, so it's whichever one you want.

you want bundled with the digital hive scale is $239.99. You can also get them at BetterB, they sell them. So I looked around to see what they're selling for. But you know what I really wanted to see was feedback. I wanted to see customer feedback. So ratings and things like that. And there wasn't one. So darn it.

Anyway, my point for you is, unless money is really burning a hole in your pocket. why do you want to lift a hive to know what it weighs right now because the variances when I ask people that show me their apps on their phones and things like that I was like wow that is a lot of data which I personally wouldn't even have the time to number crunch I'm sure it it transfers to your computer or something now you can do a spreadsheet now you can know all the you can have the ups and downs of the weights and stuff day and night like when there's a nectar flow on they bring in all this moist nectar they dehydrate it so it goes down then the weight goes up again when they're bringing in more

or the following day and then all of a sudden they're bringing in water and all of a sudden there's a bunch of new bees and things like that there's a swarm so you lost five pounds or something if it's a big swarm what would you do with all of this information um is it going to be helpful to you so if you're doing a scientific study i suppose that would be important for your charts and graphs to give your findings so if you're a student you're in college you're studying entomology and you need exact data for things like that i can see it um but if you're a student you're in college you're studying entomology and you need exact data for things like that i can see it you just want to know let's tip the hive let's see how solid that one feels because it's really obvious once you start tipping hives and you start feeling for how heavy they are you'll really know when one's in trouble it's distinctive you get all these they feel like they're full of clay you know they're so dense and so heavy and you get one oh it just tips really easy well they're in trouble so then the question is why are they in trouble and what would a hive scale could i put one of these on every hive no it's designed to sit under a hive and stay there So at what time a year do you need to use it?

Like is there a foot of snow on the ground, two feet, three feet of snow on the ground, and you're going to go out there and do what with your hives when they're light or heavy? I don't know. So I'm saying is work it out. What do you want to get out of it? I'm interested. If you're listening right now or you're watching, please put a comment down in the comments section,

what you found valuable about being able to have a touch. digital absolute running weight of your hives in other words what time of year was that important and at what time did having that digital advantage that tech advantage save a colony or what did you what was your call to action all of a sudden because this thing works so well i got an alert on my phone this hive is light or there was a spike there swarming right so what are you going to do stop it no well now you have data so now you know exactly when they swarmed I don't know because I have so many questions my questions don't run deep enough for me to spend that kind of money to put a scale on my hive

now if you want to go around and weigh things I don't know if you're going to ship stuff you need to know what your hives are going to weigh you have to plan for shipping I don't know tell me why it's important to know and if you know something besides the broodminder the broodminder scale has been around for years a lot of university studies use it Penn State, bought a whole pile of them. But again, they're data crunchers. They need that exact data to back up, you know, what they think is going to happen. So, and then to put that in their study.

So I want to know, how are you benefiting from it? If you do these, if you use them, if there's another company that makes another scale, there's another mechanical scale or something like that that you have found valuable right about it, I'd like to look into that. So please put that down in the comments section. And I don't mean to be negative about it because I'm not against tech. I use tech on a lot of things. I think it can be really good.

I just, you know, I want to save you money in this case, which is rare for me. I know you're probably sitting there shocked right now that I'm trying to talk you out of spending a bunch of money. Here's a fluff section because we're done. We're wrapping up now on this frozen Friday of December, right? So I want you to pay attention to your bees. I don't know where you're located right now. but if you're in the northeast storms are everywhere winter storms are zipping in the weather is dynamic so i haven't had to do anything with my bees you would think it'd be a big deal but not one hive blew over in those high winds i didn't have to go out there and do a rescue by the way if you need to pull on an emergency bee suit did you know that there is an emergency b suit it's being sold by better bee and it's called the emergency it's the pullover b suit or something the whole thing would fit in your glove compartment and you could unwork

unravel it and then I'm gonna put a link to that down in the video description but like if you were driving out to look at a bee yard and you don't have your whole B-suit with you because it's wintertime and you're drinking your hot chocolate and all that stuff and you're not ready to do any work you're just checking up on things to make sure a bear hasn't been out there or something like that nobody stole your stuff the electric fence is good which it isn't right now with all the deep snow electric fences are garbage right now anyway what if you had to pull on an emergency pullover suit it's like $25 and you can pull it on and it covers your whole head and a veil it's long sleeve put your thumbs in it and everything else you could go out and do an emergency

manipulation and not have to tow an entire B-suit around I'm going to put a link if you're looking for a gift for a beekeeper a stocking stuffer if you do that in your household then the better be emergency pullover it wads back up it's fun to take out because it's funny to me like it's a good jokes like, oh, look at the bees over there and you open up this little pocket and you unzip it and the whole suit comes out and it's just the top, of course. And, but it is good. If you're having to deal with something that you didn't expect, it's an on-the-go kind of bee suit. But can your bees fly out? We've got warm weather coming up here in the state of Pennsylvania. Obviously, again, different where you are. But Monday, coming right up. We're going to have the warmest day.

And you know these forecasters, they're spot on. They're never wrong. It's going to be 46 degrees Fahrenheit. And the low is going to be 42, which means melting day and night. And in some cases, people have over two feet of snow on their roof. I think if you owned a gutter company, you're going to be in business come spring. But here's the thing. Your bees need to be able to fly out.

So what you're going to be able to see is come Monday when you get this sudden warm up, you're going to see bees doing cleansing flights. So this is a great chance to make sure that your landing boards are clear. Now at other times, I wouldn't think it was that big a deal, but you know it's going to follow this warm trend. We're also going to have consistent 12-mile-per-hour winds, which is really good. Warm air and wind. We're going to get the snow off the roof.

We're going to get the stuff down. And now I hope you're ready for some flooding that's about to happen in my neck of the woods. But I want you to clean off your entrances and make sure they're absolutely clear. And here's why. We're going to get here in the Northeast, we're going to get more rain. We're going to get the wind is going to be strong. It's going to transition to snow and then we're going to get freezing temperatures. So let me tell you something that will potentially lock up your hive in a way that your bees cannot manage.

And that's when it transitions to ice. It'll go straight from rain to snow to ice. And so if you haven't cleared it and you've got this big pack of snow on your landing board, it melts down onto the landing board turns to ice with the rain building while it's transitioning you have an encapsulated beehive and potentially suffocating bees inside all because you couldn't be bothered to put down your hot chocolate and get out there and poke a hole in the entrance for your bees so please do that let's see and this will be your chance to you to pop the top and look at your you

know your fond if you've got that on if you've got dry sugar check it see if it's because this is your chance you don't have to get down the hive I don't want you to get down inside the hive because guess what if they're dead they're dead there's nothing you're going to do about it please don't pop the inner cover and stuff like that you're just assessing feed and you're making sure that they have what they need so and by Wednesday so start from Monday to Wednesday we're not going to have freezing but Wednesday night it's going to drop to freezing temps in the state of Pennsylvania northwest part of state your roof snow is also going to super wet, super heavy, so maybe get some of that off if you can do it.

Leave snow around the hive. So again, it's around the sides of the hive because we like that. It's a good insulator and everything else. Monday, you're going to get a chance to observe cleansing flights. I already said that. You also want to look to see when they're landing in the snow are they turning it tan or brown and stuff like that. So these are things that you will want to make notes in your bee log.

So you're going to write down bees that we're actively doing cleansing flights it's a great chance to listen to your highest put your head right up against it and hear the humming because they can be so quiet in the state of torpor that you don't hear anything they can seem dead if you think they're dead please don't pull it apart to find out and get confirmation because having that knowledge right now in December does not help you we're not in a position to cycle it out clean it up do an autopsy but you are in a great position to be that final nail on their coffin if you open it up just because you had to know and you open up a full cluster of bees right there and expose them to rain and cold and everything else just because you're a person and you

want to know what's going on don't open any hives just do everything you can to facilitate their survival this winter check the alignment of your boxes leveling stuff like that and so in closing i want to say is of course check your straps stuff like that make sure everything is secure If you didn't get any, if you're in my neck of the woods and nothing blew over, I think I'm pretty solid for the whole winter here because my bees took it. The hives handle it. I don't know what the bees are doing in there. They're probably not happy.

Subit your topics, questions that you might have right down in the comment section of this video. So that's pretty much it. Thanks a lot for being here. I hope that you learned one new thing. And if not, I don't know what to tell you. have a fantastic weekend with your bees. I hope things are going well for you wherever you are. We have more snow coming all weekend. Thanks for watching.