The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A #286, Does Formic Pro kill queens? Does it produce resistant mites?

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/yn_LFlsMjZw Includes a bonus session with Dr. Heather Broccard-Bell regarding Formic Acid.

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday the 13th of December and this is back here bekeeping questions and answers episode number 286. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm glad that you're here. We have a lot going on. This is going to be a special episode this Friday and that's because I brought in a special guest to give an expert opinion on something that a lot of people want to know about. I'm not going to tell you what that is just yet. So I know what you want to know about first. The sweet opening sequences that we showed in slow motion of the birds in heavy snow. That's what's going on outside right now. What's the temperature? 14.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That's minus 10 Celsius. The wind pretty slow, pretty decent. About a mile per hour or less. So no big deal

there 95% relative humidity, actively snowing. And we have more snow coming. Of course, it just continues to fall. But guess what? Here in the northeastern part of the United States, the state of Pennsylvania, Agricultural Zone 4, which is where I am, we're going to get a warm up on Monday. Monday ahead for us here. It's going to be different where you are, obviously, but we're going to get 50 degrees, maybe 49.5 because the weather people can be off by a smidge sometimes. And the reason I bring that up is because look at that temperature jump. 14.7, that's a hard freeze. And then we're going to jump right up to way above freezing.

And there's going to be rain in the afternoon, of course, which is a big help with melting off the snow. And this is your chance. Clean entrances check to see if cleansing flights are happening, get some information about your beehives, clean entrances, things like that. We have had a total accumulation in my area, Erie County, Pennsylvania, 54 inches. And where I live, it's much higher than that.

Because in the higher elevations, we have these microclimates that make things very different. So even heading north, we get improved weather conditions, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But that's because we have lake effect snow here. What's the lake? Lake Erie. So Lake Erie is still fairly warm.

It's not freshen over. It's not even winter yet. So anyway, moving on. What are we going to talk about? Look down in the video description. you'll see all the topics in order, and you'll see some links that probably you want to follow up on to get more information.

So that's pretty decent. If you have a question right now, it's on the top of your head. You just can't wait for another Q&A, or take the gamble that I may not even talk about it if you submit a topic. Please go to the Facebook group, The Way to Be, fellowship. There, you can get your questions answered, you can get in conversations day or night.

You just can't sleep. It's bothering you so much. You need to find out. you need another opinion right now, and you want to post a photo of what you're talking about. That's a great spot. Zero politics, zero marketing. So, I hope you'll go there. If you want to know where to submit your own topic or question for future consideration,

please go to my main website, The WaytoB.org, and click on the page, mark the way to be. Fill out the form, and there you go. All right, so let's get right into it. The very first question comes in from Dick. and from Los Altos, California. Says, hi Fred, how far apart should the frames be so that the bees can make capcombe thick enough to be removed by a hot knife?

I find that if the frames are pushed up against each other, as recommended by, and then he named somebody here, which I won't name the other YouTuber, the capcombe surface is right at or below the levels of the top and bottom bars. This makes it impossible for the hot knife to do its thing. All right. So here's the thing about, well, let's see, is that about rude to how French frames be? But anyway, this is in your honey super. You may notice that sometimes there are frame spacers that companies sell that come with your honey supers. So honey supers come Langstroth style in eight or

10 frame sizes. And that means you jam eight or 10 frames in there. And when you do that, the way they're built, there's a space at either end so that when you start pulling frames, you can actually pull them to the side first and then lift them out. So there is a space. There's additional room there. And the person that was named here that gave this information, it's probably really good advice. Because when you start out, push all your frames together, whether they're brewed or whether it's a honey super, push them all together and leave a gap on both sides or one side more than the other. I like to make them equidistant, push them all to the middle. Now with brood frames, it doesn't matter.

They're going to stay the same. Later on today, somebody else asks about brute frame spacing, interestingly enough. So we're going to hit on that too. But for the Honey Super specifically, it's very common for people to recommend nine frames in a 10 frame box, seven frames in an eight frame box, and then that you spread them out. Now, that often happens when people want deeper honeycomb on the frame. There are advantages to that as described here, but here's my thing.

Start off pushing them all together as they draw out the comb, and before they've capped the honey, then space them out. And what this does is helps reduce wonky comb, erratic natural comb. sometimes with plastic foundation if it's not really well waxed foundation the bees will avoid the plastic foundation and if you spread your frames apart they'll make a second tier they'll make their own comb off that plastic top bar and you'll have a space between that and the foundation that they should have built it off of so that's one of the things we're avoiding by pushing the frames tight together to start and then once they've started they're building it all out as I said

then you can spread them out. And it just, you know, people that use uncapping forks and stuff, it doesn't matter. If you use an uncapping roller, which I don't like, and I'm going to show it to you anyway. This is an uncapping roller, and it just perforates everything. So these, it doesn't matter if it sticks out beyond the frame itself or not. And the problem I have is not with the beeswax sticking out beyond, but what happens when you're trying to carve that off? and if you scrape away at the surface of your foundation,

if your frame and your foundation is plastic, then you potentially are scraping plastic off and putting that right into your honey. I don't recommend doing that for that reason. But you want to be careful, and so I use uncapping forks and stuff. I realize there are rollers. There are a lot of uncapping methods, but the hot knives, people want to carve it away.

So if you get your frames to draw out more, then you're going to get more cap wax. You're going to get more wax in your harvest and your cap wax on capping tank. And then, of course, you have more honey. And you can even it up, which is why then also you have to be very careful when you get these deeper drawn frames that when you pull them up, you don't rub them straight against each other because they'll kind of match in these contours as they go down. And if you pull up this frame and it scrapes against this one, any bees that are on it when you pull it out,

get rolled that's the term rolling your queen is what people are mostly worried about but you're smashing peas in general that's again why we have to pull them to the side first then pull them up and when they're deeper frames like that as described here then that becomes even more important so always like remove your first frame whichever one looks the least worked in other words the thinnest frame pull that to the side get that out of the way put it in your frame holder first then start pulling them aside before you lift them out But that's what those are about. Do I do that? I personally do not. But then I'm not a big time honey harvester But I understand that frustration and that's where that comes from. So just a recap really quick

Start with them all push together first. So if you have a 10 frame box there should be 10 frames in it And then as they fill out you can remove a frame and really space them bit by bit as they go if you leave too much space on one side of the other Too early now you'll get brace comb going in there that you'll also have to cut up out. So it's a game that you have to kind of follow along frequently just to make sure that things are good. Question number two comes up and this is Amy from Las Vegas, Nevada. This has absolutely nothing to do with bees. Amy says, says, if I have hive alive, if you don't know, is a fondant. It's premixed for your bees. If I have hive alive and that will keep sugar water from fermenting,

for five months as per their website, she says here, I'll assume that it would do the same for hummingbird syrup. And that is four parts water, one part sugar. Have they done any cross research if there are any benefits, detriment to hummingbirds that consume hive alive? And this is a two-part question that Amy asks here also wants to know, could I also just put honey in

and mix it again with a light, honey syrup instead of sugar. Okay, so we're going to talk about both of those right off the bat. So I went to two of what I consider to be the top ornithological experts in the country. One is Audubon Society, of course, most of you have heard of them, and then Cornell, Department of Ornithology. So at Cornell University, they do all this research, but here's the good news. Both of these institutions provided exactly the same information, and that is, do not mix anything but dry white processed sugar and water that is clean water, really good clean water. Mix that together and the parts are the same. Quarter cup of dry sugar to one cup of water.

Mix it all together, bring it to a boil, and then let it cool down. And the boiling part, they say, is to kill bacteria and defeat any potential yeast that might already be collecting on your sugar. So the question can be asked and often is asked because people are backyard birds. My wife puts out a bunch of hummingbird feeders every year. Hummingbirds eat a lot of insects. A lot of people don't realize that. It's a wonderful pest control bird. So by keeping them around with sugar syrup, it benefits all of your insect controls, including

mosquitoes, by the way, which mosquitoes fly at night. And hummingbirds are diurnal, but they do come in early. morning and fly pretty late into the evenings in the summertime. So the thing is add nothing to it. Now the question about honey, this also comes up a lot. If it's great for the bees, wouldn't it be great just to mix it up with water and then dilute it down so that it's at a suitable consistency for hummingbirds? Big no on that because once sugar in the form, once it's been converted into honey and then we put it into water, what are we making? We're almost making mead now. now. So yeast works on it right away. Bacteria goes to work on it right away. So you get the

opposite effect. It actually can go bad right away. Draws bacteria, draws yeast and can start fermentation. That's why when we're storing honey, we make sure that the water content is way down and out of it. So it has a very short shelf life. The other thing is when you're putting out your hummingbird feeders, keep them in the shade, and just replenish and keep those units clean and that's kind of the best you can do for them. So no. The other thing is when people are talking about extending their sugar syrup, which is what that came from, we have hive alive here, expensive stuff, this should be looked at as a medication or a treatment for your bees, and then we have honeybee healthy, which is an essential oil mix. This stuff is cheaper

than this stuff, and this will extend your sugar syrup for six months or more based on I fill sugar water spritzers with this and I've waited to see how long I have it before I start to see those little black mold building up on the inside on the edges and stuff. You get six months out of that and of course I store it in a sheltered area. I don't sit it out in the sun. It's not like a hummingbird feeder but actually have a hummingbird feeder around here. Might as well talk about this while we're talking about hummingbird feeders. I have a bunch of these.

And I've kept this down here, I don't even know why, just so that we could talk about bird feeding from time to time. This has an ant moat in the middle of it. For those of you who are just listening, because this is a podcast on Podbean. It's called The Way to Be. This has a brass hanger that sits up in the center here, and it does not have a reservoir up here. That's why it's an advantage if you're trying to feed your honeybee, not honeybees. You're trying to feed your hummingbirds without feeding your honeybees. And the reason is, see how this is spaced up here on top where they drink.

The bee's tongue is only so long. So if you keep this reservoir only to about, it's got everything marked here at 12 ounces, for example. You're out of tongue reach for the bee. So this is something that we need to know as beekeepers. Why do you need to know that? Because as a beekeeper, you get blamed for honeybees being on people's hummingbird, feeders. So if you can tell them to get a reservoir type where you know you can control the level and keep it out of tongue range for your bees but within reach of your hummingbirds getting the nectar

or the fake nectar, then you're good to go. So and I will put a link to that one down if you're interested in feeding hummingbirds and things like that. Then answers that question. Moving right along to question number three, which comes from Andrew Ward. It says, why don't you use mouse guards on your colonies during winter. I don't use mouse guards on my colonies during winter because I do a lot of mouse testing and I like to mess around with mice and see what they can get into, what they can't, because mice try to get into your house and other spaces in the wintertime. So I also research mouse trap systems. But keeping them out of your beehive is very important. And we found that three eighths of an inch high, no matter what the width is, mice cannot get in.

And so they are, it doesn't look like there's mouse guards on there because the entrances are sized right to keep mice out. So the other thing is, and I did a recent video, there's another question about entrances keeping mice out too today. So we're going to hit on that, but if you're 3 eighths of an inch, if you have a reversible bottom board, one side is 3 eighths of an inch. If you leave it there year round, you're good for mice. Now the mice can chew into the opening. But we like to have it. I don't know if you watched a video of my grandson this past week Cleaning entrances these are the tools he uses to clean the entrance

They gave these away for free at the North American Honeybee expo last year But the tip on here is very thin and hooked so and see how long it is you can run this all the way back through the entrance and draw out dead bees from the way back So also this fits into a three-eighth inch high opening So flow hives, for example, have very narrow openings. They already are set up to keep bees out, or not bees, mice out as well. So those are my entrances so that these will work,

and because it's 3.8.7 inch, it accommodates this, but will not accommodate a mouse now. One of my viewers, and I really appreciate, by the way, the viewers that I have, because they really pay attention, that would be you. And I get updates about, because I did mention, shrews could not get in here in the state of Pennsylvania. And I go out of my way, by the way, to research these things. So I reach out to small mammal biologists. I don't just do test myself.

I bounce my thinking off of these people, right? So what species are around? What's trying to get into a beehive? And the other thing is when I set out mousetraps and I have something called the box of certain death and it is a surefire mousetrap system, I have videos of it, you make your own, There's a reason why they don't sell them and ship them to you because when you make your own, they're too big, they're too heavy, they're cumbersome, but it's a guaranteed rodent trapping system. And that's once they're inside a building. So I want to make clear that I don't recommend trapping and killing mice or voles or moles and things like that out in the open because the baits that we use will draw them in from who knows how far away. So again, direct observation, and that's with video cameras, and then once they're in deciding what can they go into? So how did I figure out, just for starters, that they couldn't get in through a 3-8 inch opening? Well, first you set up in a shed, a storage shed where mice eventually find their way.

And I think mice smell each other and follow each other around, and they go to the same openings and stuff like that. And so you set up a bottom board on the floor. and if it's a solid bottom board for a Langstroth hive, chances are it's a three-quarter-inch opening. And you put a deep brood box, an empty one right over the top of it, and then you put a lid on that to make sure things can't climb up and go over because a deer mouse can go straight up the front of a beehive like lightning. No problem at all. So I wanted to make sure that they were forced to go through a certain entrance,

and in this case, three-quarters of an inch. And once they got in there easily, they had... a feast. So we had peanuts and we had black oil sunflower seeds for them to go in and eat. So we wanted to make sure that they were accustomed to that. Also we are using cameras that are motion activated so that we can see which ones are getting in, how they're getting in, and how much of an effort they put out to get into this empty beehive, which is really nothing but a bait station. So once their confidence is up and they're charges straight to it, they're going in there and they're eating for long periods of time and they're running back

out and if it were really a tight space and it were outside if you did this experiment outside with a bee box that just doesn't have beehives doesn't have a colony of bees in it it's just a box outside then the the dynamic is a little different now they start to draw in nest material because it's a protected area that they can actually build a nest and live where if it's in the middle of a shed floor in a bigger space they're less apt to want to build a nest but they do want to get into it to get the resources and get out So that makes it more interesting.

So then the next thing you do is you just start reducing the entrance. And once you dropped it to 3 eighths of an inch, and then guess what? Big surprise, the winter side of the board is already at 3 eighth inch of an inch, as we mentioned. And then they can't get through. What else can't get through? The short-tailed shrew cannot get through. And this is where I will take you back to now what my viewers have said. So somebody from the northwestern United States says there's a pygmy shrew up there.

We have pygmy shrews in the northeast. They cannot. They're so tiny, they don't look fully grown. They cannot get through the 3 eighth inch opening. They have to have a lot of incentive to do that, too, by the way. And a lot of the shrews are hunting mice. This is why I don't want to trap and kill shrews ever. So just keeping them out means we don't have to trap them.

So anyway, apparently the tiny shrew in the northwest can actually get in. 3 eighths of an inch. So then I thought about that and I thought, oh man, I've been telling people forever, not that 3.8 of an inch will do it. So then I thought about something else. I have a lot of video of mice eating bees, dead bees on the landing boards outside the hive. So 3 eighths inch, nothing has gotten through it. Even the juvenile deer mice that have gray coats instead of the tan coats, the juvenile mice, we're not getting in. So it's a win, a total win, which means we have a clean out opening and we don't have to put mouse guards like this on there for example which just leaves these little holes that now we have to push it with dowel rods or you have to

take this off clean out your landing board area and then replace it or have an alternate entrance a couple inches up three quarters of an inch but now we've got an opening that mice can get in see what happens so leave the entrance at the bottom just my recommendation personal recommendation and then keep the entrance cleaned out. And so here's my thought about this super tiny shrew that lives in the northwestern United States. I would say if one of those went into my beehive and was eating a few bees and living in there,

I would say that's not so bad. From what I've learned about shrews, if one of those was in there, they're going to repel all the mice because they're hunters of tiny mammals as well. And they can take out a mammal larger than themselves, no great surprise because they're basically the tiniest mammal. And how do they kill larger mammals with venom?

They're poisonous. So that's really interesting too. So even the short-tailed shrew that we have here has venom. And that's why they'll track and kill mice. And it's kind of a grisly story. But because it's Friday the 13th, I will tell you the grisly scary story about how the mighty shrew kills its prey. In fact, I'll bet the prey often wishes it were dead.

Because they're true, the short-tail true that I have videos of, and I've made a video and posted it here on YouTube. You can look at that if you want to see what they look like because a lot of people never see one. They don't know what their physical traits are they think is a vole or something when it's not. It actually tracks down and bites a mouse. Now here's the best part. Their vision is really bad. How do they track down a mouse? Eco-location.

Eco-location, echolocation. They make these clicks and they get this reverb from the clicks and they go through tunnels and pathways and everything if they bounce their little clicks off something even around corners they find out something's moving they charge in on it and they're lightning fast and they bite the mouse and this toxin acts on the mouse which means its muscles relax the mouse is not dead then it drags the mouse away still alive but incapable of resisting and they stuff them in their nest and they're or the adult shrew feeds off of that mouse for an extended period of time and the meat stays fresh. Why? Because it's not dead. If that's not a horror story, I don't know what it is.

So, when I see a shrew going through in this neck of the woods, short-tailed shrew, which is pretty big, not tiny, like this pygmy shrew we're talking about. But if I saw a pygmy shrew zipping into a beehive, I would be happy about it because those things are semi-rere. And like I said, the fact that it eats bees that die and it finds them on the landing board, it's much different than having a mouse inside. A mouse is a dirty little rodent. I mean grungy. The shrew is not a rodent, by the way.

So the mouse is in there. Mice eliminate constantly. Just while they're walking around, they are the Plato Fun Factory of doo-Doo. What they're eating is being digested, processing, and little turds are dropping out of the mouse, just wherever they happen to be. and you do not want that inside your beehive. Am I making my case? I think so.

So if I had the tiny shrew that could squeeze into the 3 eighths of an inch, welcome aboard. I'm glad to see it because I want to see those little tiny things. They have an incredible metabolic rate, one of the highest heart rates, a high metabolism. In fact, if that little thing doesn't have food for an extended period of time, it just dies out. Like it can't go a whole night without eating.

Amazing. Look them up. So anyway, that's it. That's why I don't use mouse guards. I know I gave a long answer. Friday the 13th, I want to tell the story of the venomous mammal that we have here, and what happens to those who end up being its food resource. Okay.

Question number four. This is from Ruznau 5989. That's the YouTube channel name. Notice watching cutouts. Here's another one about honeycomb. How thick honeycomb is at times, but how squeezed together and consistent. The Brute is. Just the size of the cluster changed.

What depth of the cell is natural for a queen to lay in? And these are questions that I'm always asking the people that do piles of cutouts. So we're talking about Randy McCaffrey, which is Dirt Rooster, and Mr. Ed, Jeff Horchoff. These guys have such an opportunity. I did just see the list of talking points that the presenters are going to be giving at the North American Honeybee Expo in Louisville. Kentucky in January, and it looks like Randy McCaffrey. Dirt Rooster is going to be talking about

the science, the observations that he's made based on all the cutouts. Thank you. It's about time. Because when we talk about things like the ability to collect statistical data, right, so if they're doing cutouts and they're seeing a honeycomb that is spaced apart, center to center, how far apart is it? What's the most consistent distance that you find? And then Randy will say it's just all over the place, and it really is. And so when we say things like here, the brood size is pretty predictable. But here's the thing. When the bees are occupying a space, it's not controlled by people,

they start up in the cavity and they start adhering their beeswax to the top, interior surface of the cavity that they're in. And then they start building that down. So they already established the spacing, whether it's, and of course the early frame will primarily be used, were brood because they're just getting started. So I would think those distances are not necessarily just for brood or just for honey because as they build down, the honey of course will be built up near the top and as they expand these paddles or levels, whatever they are, the fins as they spread them out,

then they will be more and more just honey and then the brood becomes a recycled area, brood frames. But we can get some information. So I did do some research because after all, I'm science-based, so I have to find out from all the people to get in there with our micrometers and depth calipers and everything and find out what it is, the average depth, the most common worker-brewd depth, is 10 to 12 millimeters. So if you have the center core at the wax foundation, and here comes the cell, we're at 10 to 12 millimeters coming off of the foundation on one side. So we would double that for both sides. And then we figure they're, have a 3 eighth inch B space, then we have another cell that's also a 10 to 12 millimeters,

and then we've got that other disc there, right? So we've got the other comb. And this is natural comb that they would build without our guidance, without frames and all the spacing that we talked about earlier today. So that distance center to center. So if you're a builder, we talk about studs on center. This would be 34 millimeters on center, foundation to foundation, What's that in inches? 1.3 inches. 1 and 3 tenths of an inch. Okay, on center. So now these are averages.

So you could get into another colony and find that it's off by as much as a half an inch. I've seen honeycomb really deep. So these are the standards when bees left to themselves occupy space, run their comb, how far apart do they go? And they do something, you'll see bees all holding their feet together and you'll see these little chains hanging down.

That's called festooning and they're actually figuring the spatial relationship to their next comb that they're going to build and on they go. So that's an interesting question and I hope you're satisfied with that answer. 1.3 inches on centimeter on center or 34 millimeters. Question number five. This comes from Susan Bronson, Michigan. Do you know of any company that makes an inexpensive composite plastic, entrance reducer similar to the wooden ones with the one inch and three inch openings. I've used the wooden ones but the bees and mice chew them and then mice get in. I have also used the metal reducer mouse guards but they are not handy for using the bottom board clean out tool

to scrape the bees in winter. I want a simple reducer that works year round. So I'm going to take Susan right back to what I just talked about. If you can get it down to a three-eighth seven-inch opening, we don't need it. So to answer the question, there is no one right now that makes a plastic entrance reducer that is just like the standard entrance reducer that comes with a bottom board if you buy one from Man Lake, Dayton, Better B, any company that you go to, they're all pretty standard. Three-quarters on one side, three-eighths on the other. There is a company that I've talked about in the past, Guess what? We're going to be talking about this more in the future.

And this is that Hivegate entrance. This has a, this outside dimensions of this are 3 eighths of an inch. So the thing is, they sell, and the reason I bring it up, I have an interview that we're going to be doing later on with somebody that's done some advanced research on this type of entrance and what it does. But there's this metal faceplate that is to accommodate this entrance so that means this dimension right here is 3 eighth of an inch if we flip it over this is 3.8 of an inch because it leaves space for two and the other thing I did because my long

length roth hive had an opening that was too large I found out that this little centerpiece right here and see there's a lip on it that's 3.8.7 inch so I could put this right on the face of my long lankst wrath hive and insert this and create a smaller entrance that mice can't get in My long Langstroth hive has a flat face and a little tiny ledge on it and it's well off the ground and wouldn't you know it a mouse can jump straight up Was not getting in but was showing up frequently enough that I thought I needed to do something about that so I put this metal plate on the front Now the problem with if we go back to my feeding test in the shed Mice will left to themselves of course. They're going to chew an opening a little bigger. They'll start it went in and they'll just start chewing it top until they can get through and then once they squeeze in they stop chewing.

So you can stop that by having any kind of metal. So you can buy sheet metal, galvanized sheet metal, you can get that at all the home centers. If you go looking around for that where the angle iron is and things like that, you'll see that they sell all different sizes. And if you've got 10 snips, here's the thing. If you've already got the opening set at 3 eighths and you just want to shield it to keep your mice from being able to chew the upper part. They don't chew the bottom board to make it. They don't want to dip under like that.

They chew the edge up above. Don't know why they do. It's just what they do. So you can actually take a piece of sheet metal and just bend a 90 in it. Or the problem is you could look at pieces of aluminum, like the angle of aluminum itself, they're too thick. So I don't know what that reduces it to,

but what you're doing is you're just creating a metal protective edge, over the top. So now that I'm thinking about it, see, just while I'm answering this question, you could take aluminum angle iron and face it out. So the face of it, here's the face of the hive, your angle iron would go up against it here and you'd actually create a shaded area, an extended entrance area. Screw the angle iron aluminum facing out. Instead of trying to it under to protect it as a 90 flip that 90 out and away now we've got a shade and we've also got a 3 eighth inch guard so you can slide that upper down and now we've got another entrance configuration right there but it's not plastic but they sell that aluminum is easy to cut

easy to drill you can put a screw on there i just gave myself an idea so you know what susan thank you for that we have another entrance reduced that I'm gonna have to make a quick tip video about. So that's like a five or six minute video. I'm gonna get some angle aluminum. And how do we space it, right? So in my last video where I used a copper plate that I put on the front just for kicks,

because I was in the hardware store, milling about, which I'm often known to do, I just stand around and look at stuff. Let ideas come to me and when I see the equipment, see I look at tools and I figure out later what that could be for. I don't go to the hardware store with a plane. with a plan. I just go in there because it happened to be driving by, and I think there might be something in there that I need to have. So looking at that, we might have another entrance on our hands.

So what do you think? Angle iron facing out aluminum, so it dissipates hot and cold, and it's aluminum color, so it won't overheat in the sun. I know we have an extended flat area for your be. All right, That's it. We're on to something thanks to Susan from Bronson. Boom. Great idea. Okay, now question number six. This is the big question.

This is the one I did not want to answer on my own. And this is why today's video is going to be very long, but it's going to be worth it. Stick around or watch it in segments. For those of you who are commuting, the truckers, the long haul people that let me know that they appreciate this as a podcast. You're going to like the length of today's video. So anyway, David L from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Says, Hi Fred, I have a question about mite treatment. Thinking of using formic pro.

And it says they say not to use it above 30 degrees Celsius, but the inside of the hive is always higher than 30 Celsius. All year round here in Brisbane. Can you answer this for me? David. So then I'm thinking, I'm sitting here, By the way, I have a bunch of Formic Pro. And I keep this handy. Look, it comes this big pack.

This is a whole case of it. Why do I have it? Because I haven't used it. Because I get my varro decharacter mites under control. These are outdated. So I have a lot of questions for Nod, the company that makes these. This expired in July of 2022.

Safe to say, can't be used. What a waste of money. All right. And I'm not saying that it's not a good treatment. I'm saying that this is my backup. And I just ordered because I guess I'm not too smart. I just ordered two more cases from BetterVee. And to ask my backup for next year,

because if the oxalic acid vaporization does not get my varroa destructor mites under control, I need a second tier treatment. that for road destructor mites are not likely to develop a resistance to. So when I got this question from David, I thought, what a great opportunity to reach out to nod. And all I did was write them. I fell out a questionnaire on their site page and said, I would like to interview someone, short fuse,

because I did that this week. And I want to ask about the formic probe pads. Would you please give me somebody? So got a response within a day from, Dr. Heather Brockard Bell. And that was perfect because in the past I interviewed Dr. Bell because we talked about Interior Hive Communications because she used to be in California.

She's not there anymore. So what you're going to be watching for the rest of today's question and answer episode will be my interview with Dr. Heather Brockard Bell. And before we get into that, I want to give you guys some alert here. The Mideaway Quickstrips, my instructor at Cornell at the Dice Lab,

She used to use mightaway quick strips as her number one choice for controlling Feroa destructor mites. Guess what? It's going away. So I'm telling you right now that they produce their last batch of it. So what they're selling right now is going to be the end of it. So you're going to have, and some people just call them MAQ, you'll see that sometimes, I gave my bees, MAQ, which if you're a new beekeeper is super frustrating, what is that?

might away quick strips from the same company. So I hope you'll watch this interview. I hope you benefit from it. If you like this method of responding to questions by bringing in guest experts, which we've done in the past, let me know down in the comments section. So I will say goodbye to you early because you're going to be listening to this.

And then we're just going to close out at the end. So thanks for being here today. And now here's my interview with Dr. Bell. Okay, so thank you so much for joining me, Heather, and please explain who you are, where you located now, and what you do for a living. I am Heather Brokhard Bell. I am the Honeybee Health researcher at Nod APRA Products. We're located in Trenton, Ontario, which is sort of halfway between Toronto and Ottawa in southern Ontario. My job is research and development. So I work on testing the products that we currently have, but I also work on developing new products for the

company. And in addition to that, I helped to run the Education Center, which part of that involves going around and speaking at conferences and writing articles and doing interviews such this. Oh, that's great. And speaking of conferences, are you, by the way, going to the North American Honeybee Expo? I'm not going to that one. I am going to ABF, though. I'll be at ABF and ABRC and where you know. Okay. And that happens in close proximity with that. If not even like the same weekend, or is it just a week? Yeah, it's it's one and right after the other. And two of my colleagues are actually heading to the North American Honeybee Expo. Oh, who will those be? That would be Dana Brown and Tom Nolan. Yeah, we know Tom. I just ran into him down in Texas at this Texas State Beekeepers

conference in Austin. He's full of information. Tom is a great resource. He is. He is. And it's a lot of fun to talk to. And I hope those that are listening today, if you are going to the North American Honeybee Expo, don't forget to visit the Nod booth. Okay. So the reason I'm asked you to join me, a thank you, on such short notice, because this is a question that I received from Queensland, Australia, from David, who lives in Bisbane. And I think this question may come up from, time to time, and it's concerning the operational temperature parameters for Formic Pro specifically. And his question, and I'll just read it to you, they say not to use it above 30 degrees Celsius. But inside the hive is always higher than 30 degrees Celsius all year round here in Brisbane.

Can you answer this for me? And rather than just shoot from the hip and answer that myself, I went to the top tier expert. that's why you're here today. So what can you tell us about these parameters and why it makes a difference what's going on inside the hive as compared to the environment that the hive is in? Well, it's kind of two different things.

So first, at different ambient temperatures, so the temperature outside of the hive. Yes, he is correct. The bees are maintaining a temperature inside the hive to some extent. and what they're doing is heating it up or cooling it down if the outside temperature is different from what they like, which is about 33 degrees Celsius. So the first part of the answer is that as the temperature changes on the outside of the hive,

the behavior of the bees changes on the inside of the hive. So if they're having to heat up or cool down the inside of the hive, they'll be fanning or they'll be clustering or they'll be moving around or doing other things. And that can relate, that can change how formic acid is actually distributed within the hive during application. The other part of that is that anyone that has done any studies with a near infrared camera or with a heat gun and like pointed a heat gun at a colony, you'll notice that actually the whole inside of the colony is not maintained at a constant temperature. The bees focus on maintaining the temperature specifically where the brood is. So you can imagine at different times of the year, different colony strengths, the distribution of that brood within the colony changes.

And so the amount that the bees are actually controlling the internal temperature will change. So if you're outside of that temperature range and the bees are only tightly controlling that one particular area and formic acid is actually just exposed to ambient temperatures because it's outside of that specific root area, that can affect the release rate of formic acid. So can you speak a little bit about where the formic, let's, I want a visual here, by the way, just so people know, they come in these packets, which I still have in my aluminum foil. This is a brand new one. It expired in 2022. And for those that are, you know, you get a case of them like I did, they come like this, they're Ziploc bagged, and they're controlled. Because the reason I'm mentioning this is because when you open this packet and you put it inside the hive, there's another packet in there that you should not open, correct? Correct, yes. If it doesn't have a picture on it with scissors saying, cut me open, don't do it. Now, once it's inside the hive and we're treating our bees, and of course, we should probably mention the treatment is for varro destructor mites. And we generally put it directly on the brood cluster, right?

So it would be your brood box on the tops of those frames. Yes, if you're running. Oh, go ahead. If you're running single deeps, yes. So if you're running a Langstroth colony, and our testing has mostly been on and our label has to do with Langstroth colonies or datant colonies and a few other ones that are very similar in dimension in Europe. If you're running a single deep, then you're going to put the strips right on top of that. And you're going to place them so that they're sort of optimizing all the space on top there.

So you're sort of going to put them like one third in on one side and then one third in on the other side. covering as much as you can, targeting the brood zone. But if you're running a double deep, you're actually going to put the strips between the two boxes. So right in the heart of the brood nest, yeah. And I noticed that you mentioned put one slightly forward, one slightly back. That's if you're doing the two back treatment at once. There is an alternate. Can you explain the difference as if we do one after the other instead of just two at once? So, yes, in North America, it is the case. that there are these two different treatment options. And we always recommend if your colony is strong,

it's, you know, your population is high, you're not stressing them in other ways. Always do the two strips. The two strips is going to make sure that you're getting below the cap, having enough formic acid in there to actually kill all the rural that you want to be killing. So that's treatment option one. In North America, that is a,

the first treatment option. And then also we have this one plus one treatment option here, but I don't believe that that will be registered in Australia. I think that it's only going to be the two treatment option in Australia. In North America, however, we do have the option of putting one strip in place, and then 10 days later you're going to swap it out with the second strip. And your personal take on that is, which is effective? My personal take is, again, I would always recommend.

people use the two-strip option. Yes, and I personally only ever use the two-strip option. Okay, so let's talk about why we have this temperature limitation to begin with. I think the greatest concern is when it's too hot, what happens inside the hive, and what is the impact on brood or adult bees or so forth? The ultimate answer is that outside of the optimal temperature range, the 10 degrees to 30 degrees range approximately, the results can be unpredictable. So it will depend on a number of different variables as to if you get above the temperature range, like if you're in the mid 30 degree Celsius

range, if your colony is small, you're essentially, you're not going to have enough bees in there to move the vapors around sufficiently. And also, if the colony is small, you're not going to be actually occupying the full box. And in that case, it might be, it might be that formic acid is actually evaporating off too fast and that you might overcome the colony. You could, you could expect to see higher mortality if you've got a weaker colony and you're applying it above the temperature range. Counterintuitively, if you have a really big, strong booming colony and you're applying it above the temperature range, you actually might have so much fanning because they're cooling down the, the broodness so much that you might actually flush out too much of the formic acid.

So at the end of the day, it's best to just apply it within the temperature range because then you know what should be happening. I mean, we've tested it within that range. So you mentioned colony size, and often people will say that don't use formic pro unless it's a robust colony with the good population. Can you explain why that is? Yeah, and it's really for the first reason that I talked about even with the temperature. So if you don't have sufficient population in there, like the bees are really sort of using the formic acid as a tool to treat themselves. And they're moving those vapors around. And if you don't have sufficient colony size, then you don't have sufficient bees to be able to flush out the excess vapors.

And you risk having too much formic acid building up inside those colonies, which is toxic for bees when it gets above a certain level. What's the origin of formic acid? Wow, that's an interesting question. Formic acid is actually in a ton of different places out there in the natural environment. You've got actually a bunch of formic acid in your body. It's like a fundamental part of your biochemical processes. It's also found in the atmosphere. But where it was originally discovered and studied and how it got its name was in ant colonies. So ants actually use it and actually a number of other stinging insects as well. Use it for personal defense. they basically spray it on something that's attacking them in the hopes that it will deter or kill whatever it is that they're that they're defending against. And that's when we see the ants double up and their abdomen goes forward, right? Yeah. And they're kind of spraying it out.

Yeah. And I'm sure people are wondering, are ants related to honeybees or are honeybees related to ants? Indeed, they are. So both of those insects, so ants, honeybees, and, and wasps are. are hymenopterans. So that's like a large group that encompasses all of that. It seems like the ancestral, oh no, and I'm going to get it wrong. I think the ancestral was a wasp and that actually ants and the honeyvees developed later on from a wasp ancestor, if I'm not mistaken, but it could be. It is very interesting. And I know I blindsided you with that question. And I do have questions.

I have two cases of Formic Pro that are beyond their used by date. So what actually happens to it? I mean, there may be somebody like me sitting at home. They invested. They've got these cases. Good news. Didn't need them because the mites didn't get to that level. Bad news.

Now we've got this laying around. What do we do with it? Well, what you can do with it, if it's past the expiry date, and what I will say is what really happens is the packaging starts to break down. And if you've got product that is past the expiry date, then you run the risk that the packaging has broken down to the point where it's sort of released the form of acid. So if you were to use it, it might not be as effective as what you're anticipating. If you do have expired product, good news, it's fully compostable, fully biodegradable.

So essentially what you should do, open it up, provided you don't have a whole ton of it, but you can open it up somewhere out of the way, some were protected so that animals can't get at it. Let it gas off. So you're going to make sure. that there is no more formic acid in there, and then you can just throw it in the compost bin. That's great. I mentioned the off-gassing of this. What are the risks to the people that are handling it and installing it in their hives? What kind of personal protective equipment should they have?

Well, you should absolutely have your nitrile gloves on, or at the very least, dish gloves. So some sort of barrier on your hands if you're handling it. That's the primary risk, and I believe that that is the only PPE that is officially recommended. I would say that if you are a commercial beekeeper and you're applying this to a thousand colonies, like go ahead and wear a respirator. You really shouldn't be exposing yourself to formic acid on a really long-term basis. But if you're a hobby beekeeper or a sideline beekeeper and you've got 10 or 20 hives that you're applying it to, make sure that you're opening the package away from your face, do the application,

but there's very little risk if you're just doing that number of hives. That's right. And yeah, it's important that you imagine occupational exposure for those that might be just dealing with it all the time, which is true of your smoke or not of other things. Long-term inhalation could result in problems. That's right. It's all about dose. Like everything is safe at some level and unsafe at some other level. So you just want to mitigate that. Even water can take care. That's right. You can. And it's not even just a simple case of drowning that there is water toxicity where it actually shuts down your brain. And then. Yeah. bad news. I'm glad we touched on that part about water because somebody might be sitting there with three jugs ready to guzzle and we've saved them. Exactly. Okay, I'm going to blindside you with a question because this is an idea I've had. You have a big colony of bees you walk out there and they're being robbed. So there's a whole bunch of activity and would not that be a great opportunity to just pop in a couple of

formic pro pads and would this not do two things. One, stop the robbing because who wants to rob a colony that smells like that. And number two, you would also be dealing with whatever the Varroa problem may be, which could be why they're being robbed in the first place, and they're likely to be queenless. What do you think of that? I don't think that that's necessarily a bad idea. I think that you're going to want to check to see how strong your colony is.

If it's being robbed, I would suspect that it's maybe not strong enough to apply form a pro, but what are your options here? Like if you do nothing and you just allow them to be robbed, out and succumb to whatever disease is ailing them and it's, you know, most likely might related. Yeah, your option is to just let that happen or to try to do something about it. And yeah, I think that if you've got a strong enough colony, then I would go ahead and apply form or pro.

Okay. Because that's what that's on my list of things to do in 2025. So, what else can we talk about with this? Has this formula changed a lot in just the past? as two or three years? Not at all. Our last, so we had our mightaway quick strips, which dominated for most of the 2010s. And we were selling it up until this year. So that was the previous generation of the product. But we had released Formic Pro at least into the North American market in about 2017. So we've had Formic Pro on the shelves for a while. The big reason,

there's not much difference in terms of efficacy. In fact, our scientific data shows that there isn't any difference in terms of efficacy between Forma Pro and Max. The big difference was shelf life. So that was why we actually went to adding some extra stiffners and binders to produce Forma Pro. That extended out the shelf life. So now we've got two years instead of one year, so you don't have to rush so quickly when you buy it. But Max was discontinued this year.

This was our last production year for Max. Max. So now we, yeah, now we're just focused on In On Formic Pro. I'm glad we're talking. So if somebody sees those on sale right now, should they be buying them? They should buy them up if they, if they want to use Max, this is their last opportunity to do so. We ran our last production of it earlier this year. What's the shelf life on this? That's one year. So it would want to be buying it and using it in the spring, most likely. And this is considered an organic treatment, as you mentioned. And it will be. biodegrade. And it is approved, is it approved in all states for having honey superzon during treatment? Yes. Yeah. All of North America, you can use it during honey, yes, with honey superson.

Okay, now I'm going to bring up some of the complaints that I get about it. One is, it will kill your queens. Is it true? And what is it that contributes to the demise of a queen? So I will tell you, I hear this question a lot. And so finally, fairly recently, about six months or so ago, I went out and I actually grabbed all of the studies that have ever been done using FormicPro. And these include things everywhere from our internal studies to ones that were done by academic labs totally independent of us, where we didn't even ask the people to do them. They just happened. I went and I compiled them all and I think that there were 14 of them. I actually have this data set that I'm happy to share with people if people want to see it.

And there is no statistically significant difference in queen loss between treated or untreated groups across any of those studies. Sorry, accepting one. The very first study that I looked at, there was a significant difference there. But the other 13 studies don't show any difference between the treated and the non-treated groups. And I think when people have these losses, having now done research for the company for about four years, I can tell you that at certain times of the year, there's just a lot of supersedure happening. And it's very rarely that I can say with any certainty that a supersedure event was related in any way to a treatment. It's just that during the fall, this is what I see.

During the fall, there's a lot of supersedure happening, whereas there's not so much in the spring. And I think when beekeepers are using products, they're not running a control group. And like for obvious reasons, you don't want to have untreated hives. So if you don't know what the baseline level of supersedure is, then anything that you're putting into your colony, I mean, the logical error is called post hoc, ergo proctor hoc, which means after, therefore, because of. And it's not necessarily true that just because something happened after something else that it was caused by that. So without that control group, it's very difficult to say. That's agree. Yeah.

So, yeah, just to sum that up, basically, I have all this data from. from a bunch of different sources. I put it all together, and there's no difference between untreated or treated colonies in terms of queen loss. So not killing queens. That's a dramatic statement. And because so many people have said it for so long, it just became like the standard. Oh, you're formic.

You're probably going to bonoen that colony right away. What about sublethal impact? Impact on fertility. The queen's still there. But she's just not as awesome as she was before treatment. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, I will say that I don't have any direct data on that. But when I was compiling my data on Queen Loss, I was actually including any Queen

issues, like any notable issues. So whether or not that was actually like everything up to Queen death, but also including, you know, was there a brood break in there? Like did it stop her from laying? Was there any, was there a supersedger event? Anything else? You know, anything that affected the Queen that we could record. But not all of those studies, did people actually look at all those parameters?

So in terms of sublethal effects, I don't have any direct data on that right in front of me. Okay. So another question, backyard beekeepers, they're always following the calendar to the letter. So they put their formic pro on. Now it's been six weeks. Is that bad? Why? Oh, just to leave the strips in place?

Yeah. No, actually, contrary to many other things that are out there for treating Veroa, because most of the formic has evaporated off, like in a relatively short time span within about the first week or so, most of it is really gone. And the remainder of the strip is all of these organic constituents that are fully biodegradable. You're not, so the problem with some other things is if you leave the strips in place, you've got like a slow release of that active ingredient over time, and that's contributing to the development of resistance. Because formic acid is mostly gone after that first week, you're not running that same risk

where you're just constantly exposing them. And then on top of that, formic acid is something that's already present in hive. So if that was going to be a problem, if like low levels of formic acid exposure over time, we're going to contribute to resistance, we would already see that because that's the state of affairs in the colony anyway. Wow. I'm glad I'm asking these questions. Because that's another thing that we hear frequently in lectures is that if you leave it on, and certainly it is true with some other treatments that you could be developing resistance in the boroughamites, but that's not the case you're saying with formic pro.

Yeah, and I think a big part of that has to do with what I said earlier about formic acid is in a ton of different places, including in a ton of biochemical processes in you and me and mites and bees as well. So there's a lot of biochemistry that's happening that involves formic acids. So formic acids is sort of always around anyway. So kind of like acalic acid, that may be why resistance is not noted with that treatment as well. Absolutely. Can you tell me as a representative of nod, what's better than formic pro out there? Well, I don't think there's anything better than formic pro out there.

Trick question did not fall for it. I think those are all my questions. The best storage temperature for it? For Formic Pro, Max was a little bit touchier when it came to storage. So there were really, I think we were saying that it needed to be stored around 25 degrees. I think Formic Pro, the instructions on our pamphlets just say that it needs to be at ambient temperature in a cool place out of direct sunlight. So as long as you're, like, you're not keeping it in a hot garage.

You're not storing it outside. If it's in like a temperature controlled environment, such as like the inside of a building that's, you know, reasonably maintained, I think you're okay as long as you're out of direct sunlight. Will there be any changes in packaging or anything that would allow it to have a longer shelf life than it currently does? Or is it going to stay at two years right now? I would really love to see us. We are working on projects where we're trying to improve the product. We're always trying to improve the product. So I would love to see an extension on the shelf life for sure.

You know, there are other things that I would love to see. And we are, as I said, we are pursuing some of that research right now. Okay. Well, what else? How about discounts? Any of that coming up soon? Discount codes you can throw out there for just a little listening right now. I'm the wrong guy to ask about this.

I'm not the salesperson. I'm sorry, Fred. I always tell people. I always tell people to go and mention my name and that will guarantee you pay the same as everyone else. So that's it. Are there any final thoughts or any common misconceptions that you'd like to explain right now while I have you? Oh, I think we covered quite a lot of ground there. I think that that touched on some of the major ones that I hear.

Okay. I can't think of anything extra. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time again. And also for those that are listening and watching, the North American Honeybee Expo, ask your questions to the people at the nod booth and get some. There are other maybe discounts also. Maybe.

Which Heather doesn't know about because she's working again. But you ask Tom and Dana. Tom and Dana. Because it is heavy. So definitely if there's a discount, take advantage of it. Actually, I should correct that. We don't sell directly.

So who you need to ask is our distributor. Okay, distributors. All right, thanks again. Great information. Yeah. Okay.