The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 297 new swarm capture method, moving your queen down in spring.

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/Ac1geMw8ErE

and welcome happy Friday this is Friday March the 14th of 2025 and this is backyard beekeeping questions and answers episode number 297 I'm Frederick Donne and this is the way to be so anyway there's a lot going on today it's perfect outside I mean really nice no jacket required you can go out there the bees are flying I bet you want to know what the temperatures are and what the weather's doing 65 degrees Fahrenheit, that's 18 Celsius, sunny, you could get a tan today. No kidding. 5 mile an hour winds, which is 8 kilometers per hour. That's going to change. Bad things are headed towards the Midwestern United States. And by the way, I'm in northwest Pennsylvania, northeastern part of the United States.

46% relative humidity, so that's low and that's great. Here's why. Bees are cleaning out their hives and drying things out. And they're bringing in pollen. too. So there's so much going on and it started yesterday really. And so we were out there doing assessments, seeing what's going on. Full moon tonight. I don't know what that means to you, but if you have to get out in the woods and put together some kind of ceremony, it's time to do it. Don't forget. Silver maple is starting to bloom. I see the flower is just getting going, regular maples, nothing. Red maples, diddly. Also skunk cabbage in the woods. the swamps and wetlands that's just starting to open.

So the bees are bringing in pollen a lot of it. It's pale yellow. I don't know where they're getting it yet. Haven't figured it out. It could be scone cabbage because that pollen is pale yellow. So some people are asking frequently, and if you want to know what we're going to talk about today, let's get that out of the way.

All of the topics will be in order and some associated links and extra information will be down in the video. description. This is also a playlist if you don't know that so you can click on the playlist. If you go to anybody's YouTube channel and mine is Frederick Dunn and you click on playlist you'll see all the different playlists that are available and you'll find out that this Q&A has been going on for a long time. So and you can follow a playlist and just listen to the whole thing and hopefully the way your system

is set up pick up where you left off. So most of my listeners and viewers are using their cell phones, which I find interesting. The second most used system is the television. The third is a desktop computer. That's interesting stuff. So anyway, people want to know when am I going to put pollen patties on my hives? And remember, this year is the first year I'm even trying that. But I have to recover from some B losses, so I'm super tight about that. I made jokes. By the way, don't joke about your bees, it can go bad for you. I have observation hives in my observation hive building. I've made jokes that I don't care about them.

That's why they make it, and I don't feed them and everything else. Minimal feed. We had little jars of syrup on them once in a while, but they're dead. Did not make it through the winter. So the good news out of that is we got classic pictures, really good shots of what the colony bees looks like when it gets too cold for them and they can't spread out over their resources like capped honey. And so it becomes a teaching tool.

And the good news too is that I needed to get my bees out of one of those hives anyway. And so we're going to be installing my horizontal hives. Now this goes back three years. It goes back three years to the North American Honeybee Expo. And horizontal bees built a custom. observation hive for me. And so big shout out to them, tempered glass and everything else. So finally, I can get that set up because it required the removal of the existing hive. The frames are not compatible. I'm doing all deep frames. Anyway, I'll explain that when I show the

breaking down of a debt out. So, and that's not part of today's Q&A. Today's Q&A is related to the questions that you submitted, the listener, the viewer. And I say listener because we're also available as a podcast, Podbean. If you just Google the Way to Be podcast, you'll find us. So, and then you can just listen while you travel, things like that, because this is probably going to be a fairly long one today, although I'm at risk, because the supervisor might show up at any time. You can get in here if I don't move quick enough.

So you can submit your own questions and topics for consideration by going to the website, the way to be.org. And you can click on the page also titled The Way to Be, and then fill in the information, which is where most of today's questions have come from. So that's really cool. Also, just to get some business out of the way, I will be at Edinburgh University

with a bunch of other people in the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association tomorrow. So if you already know, we'll see you there. So what else can we talk about? That's about it. The pollen patties that I'm putting on probably this weekend because it's going to hit 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's fantastic.

considering we were in the 30s even this morning. So not fun around here. What's going to come along after that rain? So because they're building up brood, and I'll talk about this later, but I might as well hit it now to make sure that it's top of mind, as they say. I'm putting in the pollen patties because in the past, the bees have built up and in the observation hives, just for example, the queen would lay eggs all over the place. It would look like they had everything they needed. They had pollen and everything, and they had sugar syrup or still capped honey, which is the case for most of the hives right now. They have enough, capped honey. And then it would rain for several days.

And then what would happen? They'd use up all the pollen that they had. They'd use up all the sugar syrup or capped honey or whatever you put on your hives. That can disappear in just a matter of days. And then what do they do? They cannibalize the brood. So I'm trying to offset that this year. And so the pollen patties were putting in.

the hive alive pollen patties if you go to hive alive for anything whether it's the fondant which today you know we're probably not needing any more fondant although keep it on if it's there and uh you can get a discount from them fred 10 if you don't want to use the discount don't and it's only through their actual website so if you're going to other places to buy it still great stuff you just can't get that discount so that's it let's jump right into question number one who comes from Brent from Team Awesome. By the way, oh man, can you demo the rubber band around the queen clip? So here's what happened. We were talking about different things with Mr. Ed, Jeff Horchoff, Randy McCaffrey, who is Dirt Rooster. And we were talking about different queen clips

in this particular style. Now, my grandson and I, aka the supervisor, We were out, we like to find the queen, put her in one of these clips, set her aside while we manipulate all the frames, and then we don't have to worry about losing the queen outside the hive, rolling the queen between frames and things like that. So this becomes your insurance policy. And didn't we set it out last year, and the queen just walked right out through here?

That's what this thing looks like. Okay. So then Mr. Ed points out, yeah, I put a rubber band on mine, but he didn't show that. this video I'm sure he showed it in one video or a video but so this is where the question comes from from Brent you just take your rubber band and snap it right across here so in other words keep your rubber band handy already and all you're doing is making sure that this closes snug that's all because the spring tends to get worn out it'll stay partially open

and that's when your queen scoots right out and you don't have control of her any more so that's it you're just wrapping the rubber band around this keeping it shut. So I guess that's Mr. Ed's favorite. And Rainey McCaffrey said he likes these. So you can get your queen in there and then you have to, of course, plug this hole. You can put a marshmallow in there or something because remember it only lasts while you're working your bees.

So that answers that question. That was an easy one. Moving right on. Next comes from John from Bear, Delaware. So not every day you get a comment from that state. So I run single entrance with no top vents in my three hives. I covered my hives with one inch polyboard shiny side out this year. When would you suggest removing it? Okay, so this comes up a lot and my answer is the same. If you go to the trouble to insulate your hives, I'm not a fan at all of temporary insulation. Like putting insulate on your covers and everything else,

quilt boxes, all the other things that people tend to do, they modify their hives in preparation for wintertime. I don't do that here. I just, whatever I put on for insulation stays on. And the reason being, insulation is beneficial to your bees year round, and that's why when you're looking at insulation material,

whatever you're going to hive wraps and things like that, I look at longevity for that because I would want to leave it on, summer and winter, Insulating your hives definitely helps. If you insulate nothing else, do the inner cover. And of course, then that just keeps condensation off your bees. And that was the big changer, the big improvement for my bees as far as being able to conserve resources going all the way through winter. So I can't speak to that, taking it off, one inch poly, shiny side out.

So also the reason I bring this up or wanted to even answer this question is because if you're going to do something to your beehives To make the side walls more insulated or something like and I realize that oftentimes these are wraps or Huggies or whatever they want to call them and when you do that it covers the joints between your boxes which means the wrap covers maybe two or even three Supers together while you're going in a winter and some even fold over it the top and so they're not practical for leaving them on the entire year so if that's the configuration that you have when you start seeing that you don't have freezing temperatures at night that would be the time to take them off and of course put them in your storage area but it's another thing you have to store so i would look at maybe getting hives that are a little more insulated if that's what

you need where you live or making something a little more permanent that you can paint and weatherproof and then get that on there. I really don't like having to store a bunch of gear as it is. We climb over everything. We've cleaned and organized our storage building. And I just don't need more stuff out there. So look at insulation in a way that it could become a part of your hive all year round because summer, winter, it still works.

Still good. But yeah, if you're looking to take it off when the evenings are above freezing, That's when I would do it. Next question, and this was interesting to me because it comes from Leon, from Avon, Ohio. And the way the question is posted here, it says, Overwintered 17 colonies seems to be 14 still strong, although you never answer my questions. Well, I'm answering this one, Leon.

I'll try one. When are you planning on forcing the queen? That's an interesting way of looking at things, forcing the queen, down from the scene. I did some inspections the other day. I have a few friends with brood and the super planning on using your method. When might that be? Okay. Well there's a lot going on but first I want to explain what my thinking is. So I did that. So I'm not just answering the question. I did a drawing just for this response. So if we hold this drawing up here, you can see that this is by normal configuration by the way, except for that Queen excludeer that you see in the middle we go into winter with a deep brood box so that's

eight or ten frame langstroth deep that's what the bees brood up in and spring and everything else and then we go right into the next box up which is their medium super also eight or ten whatever your hive configuration is and we let the bees finish off that second box with capped honey so then what happens is during winter time we have condensed down so So in other words, above these two boxes, that's what we build up our surplus, and that's what we're pulling off for honey harvesting during the year. And then when winter comes, what do we do? We end up with the medium super being the honey super that gets them through winter.

So that's really handy. Now what happens in spring? In spring, they end up right in this top box. Sometimes they're bridging a little bit between these two boxes. And this is why in spring sometimes you'll hear about people saying, we rotate our boxes, we under super. So they would take that top box, put it on the bottom, and put the bottom box on top.

I don't like that because your bees have already arranged themselves very specifically. And now we're messing that up. Not only that, you'd be splitting up the brood area. So let's get back to the drawing. I'll tell you what I'm doing this year. We get into that top box. I use the supervisor because he's nine years old and he has super keen eyes. He's great at queen spotting.

We'll go through those frames and we'll find the queen. We take the queen out. What do we do with the queen? Put her in our queen clip with a rubber band on it. Then we make sure that we have a queen excluder. Now the one I'm showing here is the heavy-duty wooden queen excluder with the metal bars in the middle. Those have been the best. I'm not a huge fan of queen excluders, but they're super hand.

for things just like this because I'm doing this across the board this year. I have a whole box of wooden framed queen excluders from last year. I got them all from Betterby, no discount. And did all that wooden trim with eco wood. So they should be good to go without paint. And we will find the queen. If she's already in that bottom box, bonus, all we have to do is put the queen excluder on top of the bottom box to keep her there.

Now what will happen is they've already started brooding up in that middle box or the next box above your brood. And that's fine because they'll just finish. The nurse bees will not abandon the brood. But a lot of bees that are in your colony that's building up right now will follow the queen and take care of her too. And then what will she do? She'll start laying in the bottom box because she can't get through the queen excluder. Now the next question that comes up, she's down there, she's brooding up. so she's laying eggs and eventually, you know, all the breed that's up above,

they will emerge from their cells and then they'll move down. And also, if we're doing this early, that's why the timeliness of this comes in. I want to do it before they're developing drones. Because if there's drones above your queen excluder, they can't get out. So you could have a temporary top entrance to let your drones out later. If you mark it on the calendar, like if you see that you've got drone eggs in drone cells, or if they're already capped, for example, then you'll know when they're going to emerge,

and there won't be any more eggs being laid up there. So this is a great study for kids. They can mark their calendars. They can note eggs, larva. They can notice at what stage of development they are, and then develop a calendar for those backyard homeschool kids that then they can plan when the drones will emerge, and then they can just let them out.

In fact, you can let your drones out just by doing an inspection, because if they're trapped in there, you pop that in her cover to look at them to see how things, are going and they'll fly right out. So they're not going to die just being stuck in there for a while. So that's what I'm doing now. Will I remove the queen excluders? I don't know yet because I have things I want to do this year. So I'm going to play around with queen excluders. I won't necessarily do this to every single hive. But when we do it here, because I'm in Pennsylvania, we seem to be behind everybody because I'm even behind the people that are just 15 minutes to the north of me because

they are in lower elevations. We all have our own little microclimates. So when the queen goes down there, she'll be stuck. Also, this is kind of someone else said. That sounds like virtual demure method, you know, but I'm just not pulling frames and moving frames of brood around. I'm just putting the queen down below. So any way you slice it, we've created more space for the bees because they won't be congested up above and maybe that will have some impact on their propensity to swarm. I'm going to give you one last look at the drawings so you can see what we're doing and I did write those up there. So you can try this out yourself. It's just bio theory.

So for Leon, yes, I answered your question. Did a drawing just for you. Question number four comes from John from McLean'sboro and the county? The county's Hamilton. Anyway, just opened my top bar and lands hives last week to take a peek inside. The bees in late February had started bringing in maple tree pollen, etc. Just wanting to check and see if they had plenty of honey. My four hives all had five plus bars of unused honey at this time.

So that's great. You've got five bars of honey. So if it's top bar, that's the equivalent of five frames for the top bar world. Anyway, did not want to go down into the brood section considering still may be cool in the evening. So not wanting to disrupt brood, that's not bad. If we see all this pollen coming in, by the way, you're set. The only reason to inspect brood this time of year, still pretty early, but you'd be looking to see if they're developing queen cells already making preparations for swarming and things like that.

So my question is, will they at all use this honey during the March brood buildup? Or will they bring in enough nectar to take care of the young bees? If so, then is it okay to harvest the extra honey so that they'll have more room in the spring? What would you do? That's the key part. What would I personally do? Okay, I'm not pulling honey off of anything that's got bees in it right now. The reason is, here's what's happened in the past. It annoys me a lot, and why I've also gone to these pollen patties for the first time in all of my beekeeping years, which has been since 2006, by the way.

Because last year is hugely disappointed to see them cannibalize their eggs. What happens is they get going, like right now. There's a lot of pollen coming in. They're getting some nectar too. And so it seems like we would be safe pulling off surplus capped honey, but I say wait and here's why.

This is a big storm system coming through. This has happened in the past. If we get two or three days of rain or high winds or conditions under which your bees cannot forage, what do they do? They've just increased their demand for resources inside the hive because they're brooding up. The most demanding time, of course, your egg hatches on the third day, right? So after three days, you've got a larvae there that has to be fed. Now, nutrition is critical for them.

So the number one thing that your bees need is an energy source. energy source is that stored honey. They can use that up remarkably fast. So you go in and I look at observation hives and I see that I've got a whole, I've got a whole frame of capped honey up there. These guys are good. Two days later, it's all gone. Why this rapid consumption of stored resources because they're brooding up and all this open brood has to be fed and they're feeding it frequently. So if they can't keep up with it, they can't feed it, then they cannibalize it. They get rid of it. They don't feed the things they can't take care of. Oftentimes, you'll see that they'll back off, and what's the first thing they get rid of?

Drones. So you'll see a bunch of cast off developing drone larvae and things like that. So leave it on. That's the bottom line. Leave those resources on until, you know, for sure, until you get one of those days where you walk in your bee yard and you can smell the honey in the air, they are set then. So much better to start to consider maybe supering. when things are warming up rather than remove that stuff yet.

And then we have the meaningful, the smell in the air, and everything is in bloom. And for me, my key for that is dandelion bloom. A lot of other things have bloom before that, but the dandelions seem to be the marker for when you really get a lot of nectar and you really get a lot of pollen coming in. And then you can pull the surplus. And that's the point when your bees tend to ignore old stored honey. So you can put that in your honey.

warmer. I hope you have one. If you don't, take a closet and turn it into one. Put a dehumidifier in there. I use my Vivo sun or whatever it's called tent. Those things are $100 dirt sheet that comes with the metal framing and everything. And I put the dehumidifier in there and one of those rolling racks and I put my honey in that. You can put a whole souper in there and just warm it and dry it out and then harvest it. So for people, harvest that for people. So that for me is when it's okay. when we know the environment's going to provide what they need. And once the brute is capped, remember, they're just down to all carbs. But they can't feed and nourish and care for the bees

if they don't have the energy to do it, and that energy comes from the carbohydrates stored honey. Let's see. Question number five. This is from Jason. It says, thanks for reaching out. I apologize. My somewhat long, rambling question. I hope it all made sense.

Anyway, it's a colder day today in Minnesota, so the bees will not be flying. I will get the hive entrance closed off right away. Now, my advice was there was a debt out. We don't want our bees randomly robbing deadouts for a lot of reasons. But the first one being that we don't know what happened why they died until you really take the colony apart and find out what's going on in there. We don't want them just randomly feeding on the resources in the hive.

They're just dragging everything out on their feet and they're getting into who knows what. So I recommended closing that up. So you can put a robbing screen on there, something that allows for ventilation until you can get to it to do a real cleanup. I've been putting my dead out honeycomb from that observation hive, the capped honey, and there was a lot of it in my hive butler toots. The vented ones, the ones that are designed for collecting swarms because I want airflow in there. Now if you're going to close it up and put capped honey in there and it's an unheated space, the problem is cold at night, warm of the daytime, condensation forms on your capped honey. frames I highly recommend you get something like these are wise dry packs they're desiccant packs that are reusable you put those in your totes with your honey to make sure

condensation does not form in there keep it super dry so anyway I plan to repopulate the hive with a surviving so far double deep nuke that I'm pretty happy to have gotten through the winter part of my original question to you was moving the nuke into the dead out only a short distance away because any issues or will the bees reorient themselves with no problem. So here's the thing from what I understand. We have a dead out hive. So we've got this hive. We're going to pull the resources out of. We're going to clean it up really good. And now we want to repopulate it with a nuke that's too tall. That means five over five. So that's 10 frames. And they did really well. So we've got good stock. My recommendation is to take the nuke

off the stand, wherever it is, take the debt out after you've cleaned everything up, put that on that spot, and then just pull the frames and transfer them into your 10 frame system. And that way they're where the bees that are alive are already oriented to coming and going, and there's no problem with that. Now let's say that what you're trying to do, though, is move to a new location 20 feet away, 30 feet away. This is me, casual beekeeping. I even do walk away splits right in my same B yard. I just divide up all the resources, put it in another colony, and put that colony as close as 10 feet away from the original colony.

The original location has that advantage because the foragers are conditioned to fly out, get where the need, and come back to that spot. So if you leave that spot empty, you'll see foragers coming back looking at that, like they totally forgot that morning where they flew out of and now they're coming back to an old spot because that's their memory. And remember that foragers are out there for approximately two weeks.

So I don't mean a continuous forage for two weeks. I mean two weeks of their life. So it would run its course completely in two weeks. But if you put that new, the cleaned out box where your nuke is now, you'll have no shift at all. They'll go out and come back right there. If you have nothing there and you move it to the new location, it's within your same apiary. 10 or 15 20 feet away or whatever the foragers that go out if they don't find their way back to that particular hive box then they will eventually just walk into another hive their foragers they have resources they get welcomed there's so much drift going on already in your apiary

i don't feel the need to move them away you know miles for a week or whatever and bring them back the memory for those bees for that colony is up to two weeks just because those that they're living working outside the hive during the day, generally will be gone within two weeks. So then you'll be coming back with fresh memories. I don't do that. Because I end up forgetting or I get busy or the weather changes and I just leave the colony in somebody's backyard somewhere for what? So now they can have it and they get all the stuff.

Leave it right in your apiary. I hope that helps. Question number six comes from Steve Orangeville, Ontario, Canada. Nice talk with Jeff and Randy. So if you haven't seen that, by the way, I invited Jeff, and I mentioned this already, but Jeff Horchoff, which is Mr. Ed, and Randy McCaffrey, who is dirt rooster. We did a roundtable. We just shot the breeze about different things that are happening.

So you get a perspective from Gulfport, Mississippi, and you get another perspective from Louisiana. You get some pretty casual beekeeping methods described and ripouts and things that they see. so I highly recommend if you haven't listened to that yet or you haven't watched it, please do. And if you like that format where we just get together and talk about all things beekeeping, if you like it, let us know because we're thinking about doing that again. We don't know how often that will happen. So when I was in, I saw the dorm room trash bucket swarm catcher at this site.

How to Catch and rehome a bee swarm with a trash bucket. and it says here, Silver Lake Honey. Works like a swarm catcher or swarm reacher from the North American Honeybee Expo. So, and that was today's thumbnail. Is today's thumbnail. Let's talk trash. Now, I realize this is a square bucket.

It's a waste paper bin that's just expanded metal. And it's really smooth. And this is designed to be a trash can in your office or whatever. This is the six gallon size. Now, the one that's in the video, because I asked Mr. Ed about it, who'd you learn that from? And he was talking about it how great it is because the bees go in. And when you're trying to get them off a branch, you can put this at the end of a long pole and stick it up there like the swarm reacher. But the swarm reacher, we needed them to go onto a frame and then we bring down the frame full of bees.

Hopefully we get the queen and then we put this in a beehive. and then if the queen's on it, we put a queen excluder on the front of that beehive, and the rest of the bees join up, and they go, and you've got them. So with this, Jeff and others were saying, and so I did give a shout-out to the guy that did the video about it and wanted people to go and look at it because we wanted to credit people to come up with these great ideas.

So I'm looking at this thing. This was delivered half an hour ago by UPS, because as soon as I get done talking with Jeff and Randy, I got online and ordered my own. So why did I pick a square one? Well, I picked the square one because I want to, of course, create. Now, I'm going to do mine a little different. It doesn't mean that it's better or worse,

but I'm using a PVC pipe. I'm going to bracket the PVC pipe to this, and it's going to have an end cap on it. Then I'm going to slide my pole up into the PVC pipe, and then I'll have a set screw that holds it there. and then you can lift this up as high as you need it to go. And these are, my longest one is a light bulb changer pole. Like for, think of cathedrals and churches and things like that with really high ceilings

and somebody has to stand on the floor and extend that up with a section cup on the end and unscrew light bulb and then bring it down. That's what I have. So I will slide that into that pole and I don't care if it moves around a little bit. And the thing is, we want to get the bees in here. sense if you shake the bees into this by jamming it into the tree branch that they're on all from the safety of ground level which i think is really cool now if the queen gets into this basket the other bees join the basket now keep in mind uh they can smell through it so this is just

a screen and the air passes through so i expect other bees to glom onto the outside of it too because they smell the queen and they start to get close to her and then you'll see their little nasanoff glands going and then they'll draw more to to it and then you just bring this down nice and slow and now we get into the reason why i picked a square one because i just want to take this thing and lean it against the landing board and this has a nice lip on it see that i want to put this right on the landing board of the hive i'm trying to put them in and then i want the bees to just walk up and go into the landing board if it's round i don't get all this surface contact area so i like the square one if you want to know about this particular

one which was pretty cheap I bought it in a two pack on Amazon I'll put the link down to the video description I also highly recommend that you follow the link to the YouTube where the guy demonstrates it you might get your own ideas there's lots of creative people out there and it does make sense to me get your bees in a basket like this there's no problem with ventilation no matter where they go this is pretty sweet so I like it and thank Jeff Horchoff for bringing it up but then you know what I went to the to the channel and saw it and realized I must have watched that a while ago too and just never

did anything about it. So screen trash can. They're pretty cheap. So good stuff. And think about the square one and if that's an advantage for you. And they're not that tough. So if you've got a round winter ready and you want to modify it, maybe you could create a square edge on it with a little loop or something. Who knows? Whatever you want to do. So thank you to Steve from Orangeville, Ontario for bringing that up. We'll link that video so you can say hello to that gentleman and thank him for demonstrating that and giving us ideas that we can launch our own practices from. It's really, really good. Question number seven comes from Jerry Dorchester, Illinois. My first hive survived their first winner. I was too nervous to do my treatments last year.

My bees are exploding with growth already. I want to want to split them this year and a bit to get more hives so I also want a honey crop so I plan to attempt the Demeray method once I've pulled two walkaway splits anyway aside from all that my main question is I would like to treat for mites before I split my daytime temps are 55 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit and night times are 35 to 45 I have my Formic Pro on hand and ready but the directions say the lowest temp I should use is 55. I'm worried that my night temps may be too low so please explain the temperature specifications more and thank you sorry for being long okay no problem so anyway

The other thing is this Demeray method. A lot of people are asking about it. I have not practiced this in the past. I'm going to send you to a website, a YouTube channel called The Keepers Hive. The Keepers Hive. You may have heard a lot about it. I have a single queen Keepers Hive system in my AP area right now. I have the two queen Keepers Hive system in my garage, unassembled, unpainted, not ready to go yet.

I'm waiting for the supervisors show up. He's going to take part in putting it. this thing together, it's going to be a joint project. I also have identified the stand that I'm going to put it on, so we're lining things up, and we've picked the colonies that we're going to combine them in. Now, one of the things that they do to help that they recommend at the Keepers Hive for keeping your bees from swarming out since you get maximum honey yield is the Demeray method, and they demonstrate it at length. So I highly recommend, go to the YouTube channel, the Keepers Hive, look at the Demerahe method, and put that into practice. So the

part of it is prior to making splits wanting to treat for varro destructor mites and wanted to use formic pro and the concern is that the formic pro is going off label now because it's going to be too cold too cold by the way is better than too hot and here's why formic pro uses formic acid formic acid has to get into the air and it's this off-gassing that passes through the hive they also according to the label and according to the instructions from the company that makes it, you want to do this only on large, heavily populated colonies of bees. There is going to be some bee die-off. Now, it's volatile. So when you first put it on, in fact, you have a duration of treatment, right? So you'll be putting that on single or double.

There's two choices as far as the length of treatment or the intensity of treatment. If it's too cold, it's volatile. So it needs these warmer temperatures in order for the fumes to get into the air, for the bees to fan it around, and then of course to get the varrode-destructor mites to die. So if it's too cold, the volatiles don't work as well. In other words, if it's too cold, your bees are going to go into torpor again, they're going to make a tight cluster, they're not fanning things around the way they need to. And so you have a lower dispersion of that formic, right that's supposed to be in the air to kill your mites. This is an organic treatment, by the way,

considered a soft treatment. And it is very efficacious, which means it kills a bunch of varro-destruct your mites. And so if it's too hot, though, on the flip side of that, that means it releases too much of that forming too soon and too high intensity. And so that's when you have hundreds of bees boiling out of the entrance of your landing board

because you just created an environment where those volatiles in the air are driving your bees out of the hive. And this is where some people, even in my own club, used it and didn't realize how warm it was going to get during the day. They got a sudden warm up. And then it was too hot, which meant that during the early, especially the first 72 hours, really critical your temperatures are. After that, they kind of taper off. And I did an interview with a representative from Nod. So if you want to see that interview, there is a page on my website, which is the way to be.org, and there's a page marked interviews you can watch and listen to.

And you just look at the one from Nod. We talk about specifically Formic Pro and all of its parameters, how it works, and what happens if you leave it too long, for example, stuff like that. But that's what's behind it. you'll get not as an effective a treatment if the temps drop lower than anticipated. So not the end of the world though. Remember, too hot, kill a bunch of bees. Now the other thing is a lot of beekeepers, a lot of people that are speculating, right? When it comes to a treatment, some people will hear somebody say, well, that killed my queens.

And then they'll tell everybody else, that stuff kills queens. Well, you need to look at the scientific studies. and you need to see what the conditions were that were going on in the environment where the formic was used and what the situation was with the queens because they have to do scientific studies bigger operations use it people with a lot on the line not backyard beekeepers like us uh people with a lot of uh investment use it and if it were killing other queens and they would a make it part of their normal queen replacement regimen which some people do. And if they're just treating and then they're finding out their queens are still good,

then obviously it didn't damage the queen. So the key is operating within the parameters of the label always and making sure the temperatures are going to be what they're supposed to be. And follow the instructions. There's some people that forget you have to remove your entrance reducer. You have to do all these other things. And then some other people will say, well, if you take out the entrance reducers, now they're going to get robbed.

There are going to be no robbers coming to a hive that smells like Form Pro. So during that treatment cycle, I don't think you're at risk of being robbed out. So follow those guidelines in. You can't complain about it not being good if you don't follow the label. And then you turn around and say, yeah, stuff didn't work. So follow the label. It apparently works. I have not personally used it.

I have it on the shelf. I reinvest it. I bought more of it. and it's my backup plan. If I find out that I need a real shock and awe kind of attack on the Brod Destructor Mites, like I just suddenly get some colony that has 300 mites in account or something. This has never happened to me, but if it's not on the shelf ready to go, I can't take care of a colony that's in trouble.

So it's my backup plan. My primary line of fence when it comes to Brodstrikeer mites is going to be oxalic acid vaporization, as always. If you're concerned about the risks, the respiratory risks to the beekeeper, then follow the dribble method. Where do you get the recipe for xylic acid dribble? You go to scientific beekeeping, which is run by Randy Oliver, and he is very good at posting his formulas. Get your own dribble going, which is something you can do in conjunction with doing your inspections in spring. So very benign, very easygoing treatment.

Let's see this comes from Jay from DeMond, Ohio. Says, what's your opinion of using buckwheat? I have heard that the bees get aggressive in the afternoon when the flowers close. Buckwheat. So I should say that this year, now buckwheat, this is where we get into trouble, right? Because buckwheat, apparently, is a non-native plant. And a lot of people visualize wheat. This isn't wheat.

This is very different. and I don't know why they call it buckwheat. Bucks eat it maybe, I don't know. But anyway, it has a high nectar content. It's very good for soil building, so it adds nutrients to soil, so it's a great cover crop. And most of the information, frustratingly enough, when I try to do research on buckwheat, because now I have a lot of it, and I plan to seed with it, it germinates really fast, it'll grow in really crappy soil. And if you've got like a weather forecast ahead where you're going to have rain for the next three or four days, this will germinate in three or four days. Very interesting. So it's good for the bees. It's a non-native plant. And that's where I say, yeah, you get in trouble because I get people that

want me only to plant or deal with natives. And when I find a non-native, they want me to get rid of it. And there's even, yeah, there's all movements behind native plants only. So, but as far as bees getting aggressive, here's what happens, based on my own observations, is bees are very content when nectar is coming in strong, and especially at the end of the year, I've noticed this, because what happens is as the nectar resources start to wane, as they start to disappear, and also at a time of day when the nectar is being withheld by the plants themselves, because it's getting cooler, you know, the sun's setting, whatever's going on, your bees can become more intense, more frantic about their search for those resources because the time is limited and bees are highly productive.

And I don't know about them becoming aggressive, but they definitely become intense about getting their resources in. I don't know if you've ever been around a robbing situation, but it is like Black Friday at Walmart or Kmart or whatever. and the bees are just going intensely after those resources. And there's a lot of fighting that actually can happen when you have a surplus force and not enough of the resources available. So I'm just guessing that that's kind of where that comes from, but they're just intense about getting those resources when they really need them.

And in the opening or the beginning of a nectar season, when there's plenty of pollen and plenty of nectar out there, you almost don't even see guards on landing porers. So then it all matters. Time of year, what the resources, what the demands are inside the hive, and what the environment is providing. But time of day, just closing out because they're closing at the end of the day, just creates more competition for those last hours.

Question number nine, this comes from Brad. I see in this old video, I miss hearing your voice. Get so much out of listening. Okay, so early on, with... these old videos that I made, I only put texts on them because early on I had somebody telling me that my voice was terrible and I never wanted to hear it again and they only want to hear the bees so I complied and went ahead and just typed in text and everything which I really regret now. So anyway it says about the placement of the queen cage.

It says you would do this differently today, right? It says wouldn't you tilt the candy end upward to prevent the hole from being plugged by dead attendance. Curious. Thank you. No, I wouldn't. So here's my thinking. This is a queen cage. By the way, this is the type that comes without attendance. But if it had attendance, this is what we're talking about. You have a candy plug at one end, and you have a cork that keeps them from accessing the candy. You all frequently hear people tell you, and it's okay. I mean, if you follow that rule, you won't fail, right? I like to fail safe, but I also know what's going to happen with the queen.

I have never lost a queen in a cage. So what's really important is the screen side of the cage. That needs to be open and unobstructed. So when you put it between the frames, do-to-do, push frames together, the screen is to be open for ventilation, and so those bees that are residents of that colony, can feed that queen. Now the thinking is there's two lines of thought, right? So in this picture, I put it in horizontal. And I also can put it candy side down. And then when the bees shoot through,

now what happens if this is the concern? What happens if the bees that are resident to the colony get a hold of those workers in there and kill them? Or what if they don't feed those workers, which is more likely than actually killing them? So less often are they actually? killing them through the screen but what they're doing is they're not feeding the workers that are in there so they're not getting water they're not getting what they need to survive what the bees are doing is feeding the queen taking care of the queen so however it happens let's say the workers are dead and they're straight over the hole where the candy plug is they'll say that now it plugged it and now your queen dies in there no she doesn't and

here's why what's happening where is your queen getting her food resources right now while she's in this cage through the screen who's feeding her the bees inside the hive now what if the queen can't get out of that hole will she die being fed through the screen no she's still alive they're still taking care of her what are you going to do as the beekeeper when you've installed the queen in a queen cage inside a hive and hope that she comes out on her own let's say worst case scenario the bees are dead and the worker bees even the undertakers in this hive have forgotten how to pull a dead bee out and drag her away let's say that that's happened. They've forgotten. They don't know how to do it and there's dead bees in there

and the queen's in there. Well, you as the beekeeper, have come back in three days, and you're going to check to see that the queen has exited the cage. And if she hasn't, what are you going to do? You're going to let her out. So you will just pull the cork on the other end opposite the candy, and you'll let your queen go out and she can go her happy way. She doesn't die of starvation in that time frame. This queen is not going to leave the hive. So she doesn't have to go out to go to the bathroom or anything, she's going to be fed and cared for. So I have never had a queen dead inside the cage. Now, I think one of the reasons that this comes around, let's jump to the commercial end of things where we're re-queaning, I don't know, a thousand colonies of bees.

They may not come back and access their cages in five days or even 10 days or whatever. So the bigger part of that is what's wrong with leaving your queen longer in the cage every single day that that queen is not out of this cage laying eggs you are losing a thousand eggs a day that's minimum you are at the other end losing from 1500 to 2,000 new workers emerging 21 days out right so the longer that the queen is in this cage, the worst it is for your colony. That's why oftentimes when I see that they're just really trying to feed her and that they know I don't have laying workers or other things like that that make your bees kind of defensive towards a new queen. When I find that they're receptive to that queen, I do a direct release and I've made videos about it and show you how to do it. So no, I would not

change how I orient that. There is another cautionary statement, though, which I actually think could be important. And for people that have the candy plug in there, because the candy plug is really a mixture of powdered sugar and stuff like that. So if the candy plug were straight up above, and that is the only entrance, and you put that in a hive and that hive gets really hot, and for some reason that candy plug liquefies and drips down on the queen, I think that's the only real risk for the queen is that she's ending up in a hot environment and the candy melts down onto her. I've never had that happen because I live in Pennsylvania. I haven't had those kind of tempts inside a hive, but I've never had a queen die. The only key is make sure it's ventilated

that the screen is accessible to your nurse bees in the hive so they can attend to the queen through these holes. So that's why I do that. So once again, you know, people hear about it and they think dead bees, let me know if you've ever seen dead bees, keep your queen, from exiting that cage but the other thing is these cages are not with attendance in them so let's say you're really worried about that you can get something called a queen muff just thinking on the fly so this is queen muff now this thing will actually hold a whole frame so you can pull a frame of brood with a queen on it this is velcroed you open it you stick that right inside here you put your hands through these openings on the ends and we've got our queen in here

we put that inside like this and you have your tweezers in there and you pull the cork out and you get those workers out of there and with the queen still in the cage you put the cork back in and you take it out now you have no workers with her and you just eliminated that risk so that's a queen muff whatever you want to call it. And I got that also from Better Be many years ago. I have used it just a handful of times, so it can be handy. If you're going to teach someone how to mark a queen, for example, things like that, and you want to hold her with your fingers, then something like that would keep her from flying away. Question number 10. It comes from Derek. What is the timing you're planning to use and to add the hive-alive-alive pollen patties? Just put it on any time, or you're trying

to time it with spring flowering. That's a great question, by the way, because I know this is a transitional period. People are excited that your bees are alive. For those of you lost your colonies, this is a great chance for working with the colonies that are residual in your apiary, and we can really bolster them, right? So we can get their numbers up because you're probably wanting to make splits to recover your losses. So the thing of it is, it's just like the hive-alive fondant that's on. And of course, the pollen patties are superior to hive-alive fondant when it comes to you, they have the protein source. So they can actually aid in producing brood, where the hive-alive fondant itself is an energy source for your bees.

It does help with nozema, according to their research. But it's not going to help them grow brood other than giving them the energy they need to do it. So the pollen patties are going to help with that. And so the discussion has been around like when. to use a pollen paddy and I've said in the past because I listened to everyone I can find that's an authority on bee nutrition. And so feeding in the fall was questionable. In other words, brooding up using pollen patties in the fall, things like that when, you know, nature goes to sleep and the stuff is not being provided. That's been very iffy as to whether or not that

investment would pay off. So, but the one thing that they all agree on is if someone is trying to build in the spring, before all the polandum, pollen is really kicked in and that's key to this question. Putting your pollen paddies on now helps them do what I also described earlier today, which is rear their brood without cannibalizing it in the event that all of a sudden there's rain or inclement weather and it prevents them from getting new resources so it can sustain your bees. So if you wait until flowering until the environment's kicking in, it's not helpful to put it on then because your bees are going to go with what's out in nature.

So if your dandelions are already blooming, too late, don't use some pollen patties. And that's when you can use it to save your bees. If you live in an area that gets a July dearth period or something like that, and you've got colonies that you have plans for that you want to work with and install your pollen paddies there. But anyway, to answer the question, now, put it on now. So where I am, attempts are in the 70s. They're going to be in the 70s tomorrow.

Pollin patties are going on. It's time. Last question of the day comes from Aces H.R. 9499. That's the YouTube channel name. We have huge temp differences from zero to 75 and the bees are out when it's warm so I put out water. But should I put out the dry pollen anytime soon? South Central Nebraska. So the dry pollen or dry pollen substitute, I'm going to guess it's dry pollen substitute. there are three major players in the dry pollen substitute market. So I'm using AP 23, which comes from Dayton,

because it was the top performing in lab tests, the top performing pollen for pollen substitute for helping produce and support the production of fruit. So the thing is, it's out right now for me. So I put it out today because the bees are flying and foraging. keeping in mind pollen is already coming in so they're going to ignore the dry pollen substitute when they find an alternate in other words real pollen and so when they go out to do that depending on where you are if your bees are flying and you see a bunch of scouts checking every crevice on the side of your house windows you know you go out with your cup of coffee they're in your face that's a good time to put out your dry pollen substitute also I highly recommend that you use those cardboard style egg cartons to do it

and that you set it on a tray and that you bring it in at night and put it out after 10 or 11 in the morning when the sun is shining and your bees are once again foraging. If you leave them out at night, even in boxes or sheltered areas, remember condensation forms on your dry pollen substitute and it reduces its effectiveness, its nutritional value. So, highly recommend. The other thing is I did these backyard tests too. placing your dry pollen substitute in sun or shade. Putting it in the sun got more attention from the bees. In fact, when we had several cartons laid out, and as the day progressed and the shade moved across the dry pollen substitute, we did time lapse video sequences.

The bees stopped going to the dry pollen sub that was in the shade, and they followed that line of sun all the way to the very end until it went into the shade and then they left. So honeybees prefer to go after your dry pollen substitute in the sun in the colder areas of the northeastern United States or other parts. I'm guessing that Nebraska will be much like that too. So that was the last question of the day. Let's see. So the fluff that we're talking about, there's extreme weather on the way.

Those of you who are in that path of the storm already know who you are. We're talking 70, 80 mile an hour winds in the risk of tornadoes. We're also talking about the potential for hail the size of golf balls. Well, for me, my bees are like at the bottom of my consideration list if you've got something like that going on. So if that is headed your way, it's time to strap your beehives together. And this leads me to, we're thinking about weather conditions going forward. And so some of the hives that have really proven that they're really tough and they can stand up to rugged weather conditions. So it falls under the same category, fail safe.

If it can handle that, you can handle anything if the weather doesn't hit. So these hives that clamp the boxes together. The very first one that comes to mind, of course, my long Langstroth hives, I think, if I were installing another one, I would actually use those 3-inch screws and screw it to its support system on the ground. Right now it's just sitting out there and it's gone through 60 mile an hour plus winds. It's been through all kinds of extreme weather conditions and hasn't budged an inch. But if I were trying to be safe about that, I would definitely screw mount it. Now the other thing is I have the top bar hive that is not out yet,

but when I do put it out, it's going to be screwed securely. It's not going to sit on the legs that came with it. So I'm going to make a hive stand that goes well into the ground, probably three feet, and then it's going to be bolted to that, screwed and bolted down. Because I'm thinking ahead for extreme weather conditions. I don't want anything to go anywhere, and I'm not a migratory beekeeper, so I don't have to pick it up and move it at all. So clamping your hives together, the most durable weather hive that I have right now

that's a Langstroth-style vertical is the Apamehive system, because it bolts completely together. That thing could fall off its stand and roll across a field and be 100% intact. So that's a tough customer as far as the hives go. Now the other side of that is you can buy those clamps and clamp your boxes together. And I think of things like the nucleus hives that are made out of wood

that I'm stacking three high. That's a tall, narrow, proud-to-the-wind stance. In other words, it's got a lot of surface area. It's really going to be hit by the wood. wind and the wind is going to act on it more than it would a shorter stockier heavier hive so having those clamped together that's on my list that to do's this year is to put those kinds of clamps the same ones i have on my long langstrough hive that keeps the top shut down they're adjustable they're very solid and so i'm going to be doing more of that because some of the things that happened during wintertime

where that you go out there i don't know how these boxes move because they're propolized together everything is really good but you'll see now you've got the super is offset just a little bit like a quarter inch and maybe the little seam opened up so whatever happens through winter that got that to do that I could have solved that problem and not had to go out there I use bar clamps and I slide the bar clamp on and I use that twister to bring the box back into alignment and then we're just cinching it with shipping straps clamping your boxes together very good because that's going to help you out bear comes up I had a bear come and tear off a landing board just solid one piece landing board just tore off the front didn't get into the box didn't get into the hive so that's our goal we don't want bees or bears we don't want bears to get rewarded when they come and they mess with our beehives because they pull the frames out and they drag them

50 60 feet away and then they finish eating in a field somewhere so all the cameras are out and I'm ready because spring is coming and the bears are coming out of their dens. So storms, all this other stuff, just think about what's going to keep your hive together in the event that it comes off of its stand. The other part of that is really good stands that we can secure our hives too so they don't budge, so they don't go anywhere. So that is coming. If you're in that path, I wish you all the best. Feed inside the hive as much as possible. So if you've got colonies that are light right now, light syrup, hive top feeder. I'm wanting to have those on every hive.

My wife and I were out looking at all the hives yesterday, one by one. And even a nucleus hive that was only 5 over 5, it was guaranteed to die. I mean, there's no feeder on top. It got no fondant. It had double bubble, a single layer, and then a migratory cover, and then an insulated cap over the top of that. They're doing great. So no supplemental feed at all.

No fondant, nothing but double bubble, and I wrote them off. I get spoiled because when you have too many peas and you run out of equipment, right? You don't have the gear. I didn't have another feeder to put on there, so I just hope for the best, put double bubble on, and off they went, and here they are, flying, doing well. So it has no feeder. So the reason I bring that up is what I'm going to change in my own apiary this year I'm going to make sure that I have the option to feed any of my hives at any time of year.

So one of the things I looked at when I was at the Pennsylvania conference, I looked at the hive IQ insulated beehive. And when we got to the top, there was no feeder system at all. And they said that there was one in the works. So it had an interesting insulated top. It had a metal clad top, all of it, you know, super insulated thing. but the fact that I didn't have the option to feed without getting into the hive is not great for me. So one of the best feeder systems that we have is the ones that come with Apame.

So I would like to see that adapted to other hive types. So if you've got a wooden hive, for example, that's what led me to buy two more hives because, first of all, it combined a lot of things that we know now, right? So if you've been following the propola hives, which are just roughed up interior surfaces, they come from premier. And so we want that propolis envelope. We want to encourage RBEs to propelize as much as they can because we've understood now that this is medicinal.

And not only that, the positive benefits of having propolis inside a hive are unknown. In other words, the extent of that is unknown. We do know that helps with a lot of things. So I was doing that. I was looking at and assessing the finishes on different hives. I don't know how long a plastic hive is going to last. I just don't know. It's already bleaching out a little bit.

I don't know at what point it becomes rigid. It doesn't work. So those are my concerns about Apamey, but as long as they've been out, they don't have any failures yet. So if I look at the wooden hives from Premier, I'm using those, and I want the best of two worlds.

So I want that cool hive top feeder system that comes with the Apameh hive. So they have a Apamea cover with the feeder and the insulated cover, and they also have the Apamea bottom board, which there again, the bottom boards tend to rot. They also carpenter bees and stuff like to chew into them. I don't know why. So now if I have an Apamea bottom board, I have the option for, number one, sliding front entrances,

so I can control that, bigger, smaller, just with the slide of the feet. face of it. And then we have a pollen trap underneath for those who like to collect pollen. If you're trying to make your own pollen patties, that would be the most cost-effective route if you could learn to do that. So you could trap your own pollen, make your own pollen patties from pollen that's in your area, and put it in the freezer, feed it back to your bees and spring, that kind of thing. So anyway, then there was the Endura Hive Finish that was featured at the North American Honeybee Expo by Nature's Image Farm, which is owned by Greg Burns and his family. So then I ordered two of those. So the wooden hive,

Propyl hive, Endura hive finish, which is their finish, which is supposed to last 100 years and three days. And then the Apame cover that's compatible with that, the feeder system, and then the bottom board that's compatible with that. So I have two of those. We're going to rotate those out into the hive. There's still in their boxes. I haven't opened them. Just got them, by the way. So that's what I'm doing. I'm combining the things that I know work really well and that will hold up and that are beneficial to the bees. Keep your entrances small, by the way, please do. This is a time of year when your colonies can be robbed.

So how do you know if your bees are robbing or cleaning house? Are they robbing or are they residents? And that's something you need to know. When you're looking at your hives, you might think, oh, look, this hives going gangbusters. They're alive. Everything is great. But I want you to pay attention to the entrance and landing board behavior. the bees that are there? Are the bees that are coming out of that entrance parking themselves on the

side and wiggling their abdomens around like this? Are they adjusting everything as if they just gained a bunch of resources and they're on their way out of there? Like they are robbing the place? If you don't see these things, if you don't see the bees at that entrance dragging out dead bodies or dragging out detritus and getting rid of it, if you see that, those are resident bees in the colony is alive. If you see pollen coming in and going into that hive, usually around, the peak pollen is around 2 p.m., 3 p.m. When you see a lot of that going in, they're good to go.

They're resident bees. They're moving in resources. They're not there to rob it. Landing board is a landing board nice and clean. So if you see a bunch of detritus, a bunch of bees wiggling their abdomens, you see bees are frenzied and there's no residents there at night. you've got a debt out and it's time to close it up.

We don't want our bees robbing out a debt out. You want to get in there and assess it to make sure you're not spreading disease to your other colonies. So very important stuff. There's a lot going on. I'll combine your wheat colonies. So that's what I'm doing too.

We have our apiary is too large. I have concerns that we are taxing the environment too much, the immediate environment. So if we have too many colonies here, It is a great opportunity in spring now to look at those that have smaller clusters that are maybe occupying only two or three frames in your deep box because they're weak coming out of winter. That's an easy time and why that's why I was talking about those

Endura hives that I just got with the Apamate top and base because now I can swap out old equipment and transfer all of those frames and combine two colonies together. So we can reduce the apiary size, strengthen the number, in each hive coming into spring and we can get now if this is your target to get a better honey flow out of your hives so surplus honey out of them and this is where and i hope it didn't bite off more than i could chew but this double queen system from the keeper's hive i picked out the colonies and i'm going to install that so we're going to remove two hives and we have to put the

single keeper's hive there on the stand it's a it's a license stand where it's really heavy-duty 11-hundred pound support system stands we're going to put that on there and we're going to pull all the frames out of two colonies and put them on either side and we're going to kick it off so it's going to be good it's going to be perfect but in theory it's operating although there are two queens in it it's operating as one hive in that central column you know we're forecasting but if it works well we're going to have flow supers on there so then we're bringing the positives of many worlds so the keeper's high we not to lift anything we can access the brood they're both running single brood chambers queen

exclude are up above and uh could be able to manage rbs and get lots of honey out of it so i'm just letting you know what my plans are this year so combining weak colonies you can reduce your numbers and they get stronger colonies so why tinker around with too many colonies uh when you can now take the weaker colonies your survivor stock push them all together and then make better colonies. Clean your dead outs as soon as you can. Also, your dead outs, if you clean them really well, clean the drawn comb and everything else.

You've got brood comb in there. Blow everything out. Oh, this is, I have a black one of these that I got last year, but then I was watching a channel called Project Farm. He's a guy that talks really fast, and he's all these super extensive tests on different equipment tools and stuff like that. and so these air blasters that he did tests on this is called a wolf box so you can look it up yourself

it's a rechargeable air blaster the reason i like it is because last year i did a quick tip where demonstrated a focused nozzle for your low-pressure air system which hooks into an air compressor so you have a hundred feet of compressor hose and you go out there and you set up your cleaning station and you could blow the dead bees that had freeze kill and things like that, blow them right out of their cells, clean every cell with air, and it makes a huge difference. Scouts will check out colonies that don't smell like dead bees. But then I got this thing, and it has the same air pressure as the low pressure air system.

So it has three different levels. That's top level, you got low, and then you got the first level. but this level right here this thing this thing would would float marbles so anyway it's really strong so now i have a low-pressure air hose with a nozzle in my pocket so if i want to blow out all the dead bees on a landing board we scrape it out it's really disgusting and it's full of it's damp and got dead bodies this will blow that out so it's called wolf box USB charger it's really disgusting it's feels really solid that's taking the place in my black one that I had from before now that other one worked good too but it also ran out fast this one blast

more air I don't know what the mile per hour rating is but if you want to clean stuff out in a touchless way that's it good stuff now if you're going in your chicken coop where to the wise if there are mouse droppings and things like that in your chicken coop that will blast all that stuff out of there here's the risk. You need to wear a respirator. Here's why. I always, people often thought I was being overly cautious when I talked about hanta virus. So if you go to my website, I talk about deer mice, house mice and things like that, and how touching them with your bare hands, blowing out, cleaning up areas where there's mitreitis. Mice drop waste material everywhere they go as they go.

Hanta virus is something that people say, yo, what are the odds? Somebody's going to get Hanta virus. Well, famous actor's wife died of Hantavirus, and that is what they discovered over this past week. And it's not a joke. So don't breathe in dust from places where there are animal droppings. But the flip side of that is you could take,

this is obviously I'm not going to do it here, you're going to mess up my room, but I could take this thing. blow this cup of coffee empty. You can be full of coffee. I can blow it all out of this in less than 30 seconds. So it really does move air. So if you're looking for a way to clean up your stuff and blow stuff out of there, that's it. Chicken coops everything. Blow off your chickens while you're at it if you want to. They won't like it, but you can do it. So that is a really good thing. Combined with colonies, clean your deadouts, and your deadouts become your swarm traps.

That's what I'm doing this year. Because last year I had such good luck. I don't know why I'm lugging them around to the tree line and putting them up so high and everything else because the bees were scouting, empty bee hives that don't leave pollen in there and please don't leave capped honey in there. We just want the comb. We want it to feel and smell good.

We want it to be lived in. And you can put a little touch of lemongrass oil or you can put Swarm Commander in there when you hit peak swarm season. And you'll start picking up scouts. on these colonies. And I haven't had wax moths and stuff move into these empty hives. So maybe I'm just living in a great spot,

but it works really good. But anyway, if you're going to put out swarm traps, do it now. Here's the thinking. The scouts are checking out areas for occupation weeks ahead of a swarm emitting from a hive. So you want to have those things positioned early and ready to go.

And also thank you to those who supported the Northwestern pencil Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association Fund Drive. It is a nonprofit organization for the pellet sales. These are switch grass pellets that we use for smoker fuel, and they burn all day. And for those of you who went ahead and ordered that, I appreciate that.

It helps us with our outreach with teaching about bees. I get zero profit, I get zero benefit from recommending that. It is just a fundraiser. So you can go to the Northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers website or you can just Google search Northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association pellet sales and you can get those and they ship out to you and if you're tired of your smoker going out halfway through the afternoon this will fix that problem I wouldn't and couldn't make it up nobody is complaining about these smoker pellets dense cool smoke burns all day you only have to fill up

one smoker and you're good to go and the B response is very good in other words they react to the smoker right away and they're calmed so it works in every regard it comes from Ernst seeds so we're thankful to them for also helping us out because you can't just go and get them you can't just buy them from earned seeds you can only get them through our fundraiser so thank you for those of you did that we appreciate it you're helping out plus you're ending that of not having a smoker lit and ready to go when you need it. One of the top complaints about having a smoker is that it goes out when you need it the most. This will not do that.

Thanks a lot for watching. I hope that spring is bringing good news for you and your bees, and I hope that you have a fantastic weekend ahead. Thanks for being here.