The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 314 how do the bees use light sugar syrup?

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/irRTcUWAzi0

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today's Friday, July the 11th, and this is back here, beekeeping questions and answers episode number 314. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here with me today, and what day is it, by the way, while we're talking, this is National French Friday. But you know what they say? Every day is Friday at McDonald's. So, moving right on. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please, down in the video description and you'll see all the topics list is in order including any related links and additional information that might be helpful to you so i want to thank you for being here and a super hot outside you're probably wondering how hot

is it well let's check it up 87.6 degrees Fahrenheit that is 31 Celsius how about the wind hardly any 1.3 miles per hour 61 percent relative humidity humidity so it's not that bad potential storms coming where to the northeastern part of the united states what part the northwestern part of the state of pennsylvania so we had two inches of rain yesterday in just a couple of hours i know that's nothing compared to what's happened to a lot of parts of the country and uh real gully washers so i hope your bees are well i hope that you're doing well and that you haven't been washed out it's going to be even hotter tomorrow so pick your best bee day i don't even know what it is just get out there when it's not

raining I guess and do what you need to do and the air quality outside is pretty darn good so no haze from Canada right now with all the rain of course it knocks those particulates right out of the air so how about the opening let's talk about that and it was an extended opening so we've got pollen and nectar coming in all the hives are busy all the colonies are loaded and including the two recent ones that I just installed did the videos about those yesterday posted two at once It's pretty weird. Unusual for me. But I had problems with the queen,

so I thought I would share how you get them to get into your hive and a little bit of control there. But they're all doing great. The second round, no one absconded. So that's the good news. We'll have follow-ups on that. Pollin and nectar, like I said, is coming in heavy. And what are the sources?

Milkweed. They're all over the milkweed right now. They don't get pollen from that. They just get nectar. But the nectar is fantastic to the point where the honeybees are risking their feet when they collect the nectar because they get trapped in the little florets on the milkweed and sometimes the bees get stuck and they don't get away. So it's pretty interesting, but it's worth it. Lots of nectar there. Spreading dog bean, they're on that white clover. They're

bringing in nectar and pollen from that. And the linden tree blossoms. The bees are all over the linden trees. So the little leaf linden is pretty much wrapped up, although there were still a few bees on it. And now the larger bass wood, the linden trees, the ones with the leaves bigger than my hand. They're huge. Fantastic. So as they get older, they're just bringing more and more flowers. So it's fantastic for the bees. And people have asked if I've been seeing monarch butterflies around.

I saw two while it was out. And they were moving too fast for me to catch up with. So if you want to know how to submit a question or topic for a future episode of beekeeping questions and answers, please go to my website, which is the way to be.org, and click on the page that's in all caps now, contact Fred. So it should be easier, and you'll see if we can get something going that's interesting to you personally.

Also, if you've got a question that's right on the top of your head right now and you just have to talk to somebody and you don't know who to do to or who to reach out to, go to the way to be fellowship. Just Google search that the way to be fellowship and you'll find it on Facebook if you're a nice person and you're not going to be all grumpy You'll be more than welcome to join that group all levels really good moderators there and I really appreciate the work that everyone does to keep things civil there So that's where you can go and I'm pretty sure that's just about it. So let's get started Question number one comes from B Kathy

That's interesting Fred is there a link where you see? speak on the apiary type split taking frames from multiple hives to create a new hive. Thank you. So what we're talking about is the super split. I've been bringing that up and people want to see how that works. We can describe it all day long. It seems pretty straightforward, but here's the good news because it's going to tie in with something that other people have been asking about. What's that? The Keepers Hive. So I already have the Keepers Hive, the one that has the nucleus hives that go up from that. It's working great. the bees are in it, everything is good.

But the one that's really of interest to a lot of people, and at least one member of my bee club, also has one, and she's a beginner beekeeper. It's the two queen system. So the two queen keepers hive. It's all painted, it's all put together, it's all ready to go, and the stand, the equipment for the stand,

just arrived yesterday. So I'm going to be setting that up this week. Now here we are in July, kind of late to be starting a big high, system like that that we're going to depend on two colonies in the same combined hive and it's going to produce so I'm told more honey than if the hives or colonies were kept separate in their own hives so this should be interesting and if we just you know put in a package of bees or something like that too late for that they don't have a lot of time to build up so we need to go in strong so what we're going to do is use what bee Kathy is talking about here With a super split. We're going to go throughout the apiary. I'm going to collect from the hives that are the strongest that have The most full brood boxes and we're going to pull frames of brood from each of those. We're going to go around with hive butler totes and we're going to separate them and I'm going to make a video about the entire process good or bad If it bombs if it fails, you're going to see it, but I think it's going to succeed and you're going to maybe get some ideas about how to start a late season

colony of your own that really doesn't fall under the beginning nucleus hive category because you'll have more than 10,000 bees just to start off with in brood. So it's going to work. You'll see. It's going to be great. I'm going to forecast that. It's just going to be fantastic. So that was question number one and moving right along already. We have a pretty good fluff section today too, so I hope you'll stick around. Question number two comes from Chris-O it says Anyway do you have any videos where you talk about overwintering nukes? I've been searching through your archives but there's a lot to sift through maybe you don't do anything special but I'm in a similar climate

Rochester New York and I'm planning to overwinter my recently captured swarm in five-frame nuke boxes probably too deep unless they really explode in size. I I figured they need to go with good top insulation and at least some side insulation as well. So that's really interesting. I don't have a video series just about that, although we visit those hives all through winter because they're kind of miracle colonies. And I should describe, so let's just do that. Let's describe what we have, what the configuration is.

Now, I did have the Lysen nucleus hive, which is, those are, deep boxes and I actually got rid of that today not today but this past week and because I didn't need that additional insulation where I live so if you're in an area where you get severe cold severe conditions in wintertime you're going to need these big insulated and I mean the sidewalls are insulated the top's insulated polystyrene is probably a good bet if you're in a really challenging environment. And so it wasn't necessary here. So that was more insulation than I needed because we have the standard three-quarter inch pine boxes. And that's the sidewall thickness, pretty standard in the beekeeping industry for Langstroth hive designs around here. And the colonies just went through winter

just fine. So what did I do different as far as the top? I've always said if you're going to insulate anything insulate the top insulate your inner cover have the ability to feed your bees as necessary if you wind up in an emergency situation with an extended cold period extended rain extended dirt or any time your bees are going to be locked up inside and you want the option to add something which i've shifted now to fondant going through winter so they are insulated so we have the five frame wooden nucleus hive boxes and they hold deep frames so these are deep boxes langstroth and we do two or three going through winter two is the minimum and when you get a late season swarm you're probably going to have to feed them to boost them to make sure that they have as

much as they possibly can in their own storing in their own honeycomb which is the best to get them through winter and then have some ability on top of your hive to feed them if you need to so a little two inch feeder shim piece and then on top of that double bubble which is something i use all the time now and then of course the three-quarter inch wooden migratory cover on top of that it's my most common setup and then guess what's on top of that an insulated cap made out of rigid polystyrene it's two inches thick everywhere and it just fits over the top of the whole hive And I've also started, once you have that outer cover on, although I have left it, just like that by itself, three-quarter inch pine, and then just the front and back piece, just like the standard migratory covers that commercial beekeepers use with double bubble underneath,

which takes away all the gaps in areas where things were venting off. But adding the feeder shim and then adding the polystyrene box did make a difference. So they come through with a lot more resources left over in spring. we had an extended winter this past winter so it was a great proving ground for these things and one of them even fell over So imagine this heavy winter storm strong winds cold temperatures And the hive was strapped together shipping straps I highly recommend that when you're putting your hive boxes together And of the wind blew it over so it was tipped over just like a skyscraper because they have a small footprint because they're tall and they're just nucleus hives and then it blew it over and there it was just on the diagonal leaning against something else so I just went out

and stood it right side up again so the boxes did not shift the joints between them because this is another key thing and I know it's here it is July we're talking about winter preps but I might as well tell you ahead of time what happens is the bees propolized everything together so while it's nice and warm outside they're doing a lot of propolizing and sealing up of cracks and crevices and if you don't know what that is it's resin that they get from resin producing trees and so they propolize the interior so it's medicinal and it's also structural seals things up so it has physical benefits to it as well as medicinal so then what happens is if you don't get in your hives again so once we get past these warm days at the end of the year some bee peakers beekeepers some beekeepers still take a part of the

their hives when it's cold even when they have no real reason to get in there they're just curious but what i want you to think about ahead of time is that pulling apart your hives at the end of the year you're doing this at a time when the bees don't have time and opportunity and the environmental conditions to reseal and re-glu things up after you've been in there so always have a reason to do it so the question you know guessing here that you also needed to insulate the side walls they didn't what's really important about the side walls here is that your boxes meet up well that there are no air gaps in between your boxes so they need to seal up nicely and i haven't wrapped i've never used hive wraps i've never used tar paper i've never used titheve i've never used you know insulation boards and so we do have the comparisons because just for example

we also have the appamahives they're insulated side walls and the tops are insulated. And the bees glue those up really well too, so they even seal the vent holes that are in the feeder shims that are on the top of those. Those work through winter, fantastic. They have removable bottom board inserts too, which are very important, in my opinion.

And that's one of the drawbacks of my nucleus hives. They go into winter. They don't have trays underneath. They don't have screen bottom boards that are enclosed with removable trays. I have a few of them that do. And what a fantastic advantage that is. So if you're building one, if you're handy,

if you've got a friend who's a cabinet maker, and they're willing to make hive equipment for you, try to have an enclosed bottom board even on your nucleus hives. Because remember, initially, nucleus hives are temporary, and it's just something that used to get started, and then you shift into other hives. But because I've migrated with those into using them as extended resource hives, and then ultimately they just became hives on their own so with triple so 15 deep frames those are pretty sustainable colonies of bees that when springtime comes along if we have another terrible winter like we did last winter and a lot of people lost their bees

some of my viewers lost 100% of their bees they had nothing to work with if they had had some resource hives handy that also happened to make it through winter then you had something to work with in spring, something that survived. A late season swarm, maybe that you put together and fed them and kept them going. But as far as the physical setup of those, my ideal wooden five-frame nucleus hive setup is, let's go from the bottom up, the bottom board, screen bottom board with an enclosed removable tray. So that's enclosed. It's not open to the outside. A standard entrance reducer, most of mine have the control wheel on the front with a three-quarter inch diameter hole, and the control wheel covers almost half the hole.

And I leave it like that. I haven't changed it. Now, one of the indicators that the bees want a larger entrance is when we start to see them chewing the hole. But what they tend to do is go the other way. They're actually propolizing it up, sealing that wheel on there, and also propolizing the other half of the hole a little bit as well. So they actually tend to want to make the hole even smaller, which doesn't seem practical to us.

But anyway, moving on up. Then we have the double bubble, which acts as an insulation for the top migratory cover, because there's the thing. The migratory covers that are flat, and so if you're not going with a feeder shim, and you're just going straight into the migratory cover, I highly recommend that double bubble go on first.

That'll rest right on top of your top frames, and then that takes care of all the air gaps and problems, and the bees will propelize the tops of their Langstroth frames in the top box right to the interior surface of your double bubble. And then you can peel it off when you need to inspect, and of course your outer cover goes right on top of that, and you seal it up. And then I put that, again, the polystyrene cap on top of that which i did not do for 100% of the hives and i leave it that way

summer or winter makes no difference the insulation benefits your bees no matter what time of year it is so i think that's it the other thing is i have the apamea nucleus hive sizes and those are great highly recommend if you've got the money and you can afford them those are fantastic easy to work with some people wonder about exhalic acid vaporization with a plastic hive if you put a cork or a dowel or something like that on the end of your delivery tube for exhalic acid vaporization you can still do that easily with the apamate hives and i'm sure there's lots of videos out there on how to do that moving on to question number three this comes from timothy and it says whenever i go to your page it always takes me a minute to find the links

to send a comment. If it is not trouble for you, would you please highlight it or more boldly label it so that a 63-year-old can find your comment section more easily? Or is that your intention? Thanks, Fred.

So initially, it kind of is my intention to make people put a little effort into reaching out to send a comment to me, although it's also why I don't just flat out publish the email address. I want you to go and fill out the form because I want you to be thoughtful about it and not just flood me with something that you just had a thought about. So anyway, I did make changes just because Timothy asked for them. So today I went to my website, which again is the way to be.org.

And I changed the name of the page. It says, in all caps, it's the third one down the list. if you look at the margin. I change it in all caps, and now it just says, contact Fred. And then in lowercase, it says questions.

So that is where you fill out the form and you tell me what your question is. Or you send me an idea that you have. And then I respond. Or there's a very good chance that you end up right here right now changing the way my website is configured just because you found that a little bit daunting.

So for 63-year-olds, there you go I'm older than you and so I sympathize that's what I'm going to help you out as of today we made that change question number four comes from Sally from Denver Colorado says I'm checking four hives every 10 days the temps at this altitude 5,750 feet above sea level averages 80 to 98 degrees during the summer that's worse than us that is 98 degrees i would not like that in a way in the spring the colonies were consistent in laying full perfect brood patterns uh like really exciting for a third year beekeeper but now as the summer heat is on the pattern is becoming spotty on all four colonies frames the queens are laying there is all levels of eggs brood and larvae it's just spotty on the entire frames. Is this normal? So I'd like to wish they were laying full brood patterns the entire time. Maybe the Queenie's don't have enough drawn out empty frames to lay eggs in.

If I were to add such frames, what to do with the frames I'm replacing? Can I have more colonies as space is limited? And I can't have more colonies. So anyway, the nectar and pollen flow is in full swing. The entrances are so busy, can't count the bees coming and going. I think I'm doing something wrong, but missing something I should be doing. Or is this typical? Plenty of water available. Mites control is handled. And if it continues to be spotty, can't imagine there being enough bees for a strong colony going into winter.

We came out of winter grade this year. Okay. This is hard to diagnose through a question like this. So we're talking about spotty brood patterns. You may be sitting there right now. front of your TV or your phone. And you may have questions about all kinds of stuff. You want to see what the conditions would be, what they look like, and help diagnose your hive. So there just happens to be a booklet out. And I'm going to hold this up to you. This is honeybees and their maladies. This is

available through Penn State Extension. It is extension. It is extension. p.su. dot ed u go there if you don't have this book you need to get one i get absolutely nothing for telling you that is from penn state this book is helpful regardless of your level of experience it helps me when i'm trying to explain something to someone and don't have a beehive right in front of me i can go to the page and show the conditions and say is this what you're seeing this kind of thing is very very helpful Get one. If you belong to a bee club, your bee club should buy these for every member and hand them out. That's all I'm saying. Because here's a thing. There's so many issues or conditions under which a spotty brood pattern might occur. You might have VSHBs. What is that? Verroa sensitive, hygienic.

Which means when they find something wrong, something off, even just a little bit, they often uncapped cells. they might uncapped cells and remove things. They might remove new larvae. They might remove eggs. They might do a lot of things for a lot of reasons. And that's just one. You could have a failing queen. So here's the thing.

This is the third year of beekeeping. So what was not answered by Sally here is how old are the queens? So is this the second year with those queens? Did they, were they produced at the end of the year last year? where they not made it well, where they purchased and flown in. This is another condition. Often a mated queen gets put in the mail and shipped off to you. Especially this year with all the heat and the weird weather and stuff that we've had going on.

Sometimes you want to hold off and not ship a queen until you know the conditions through the shipping corridor that they're going to travel are good. I've had UPS drivers who knew that it was live put it right in the day. dash of their truck in direct sunlight trying to keep the queen warm now that instinctively might seem like a good thing for some people to do but it's not it's terrible it's bad here's what can happen you can affect fertility of the queen when would you know that not necessarily right away the queen can kick off gangbusters you put her in a new hive everything is set everything's going well great brood patterns as described and then all of a sudden they kind of started tapering off now that's

That's not likely the situation here with Sally. And the reason I say that is because it's happening across all colonies. So now I think when all colonies are doing the exact same thing, I think it's probably nutrition related. Because the other part of that too is one of the first things we jump on is, how about varroa mite pressure? How about deformed wing virus, which is frequently vectored by, deformed wing virus, which is vectored by the varro destructor might,

which feeds on your nurse bees and feeds on developing larvae and things like that and can be impacted by bees that are sensitive to that would be removing those so there are a lot of things going on an injured queen but then that would be one colony not all of them you would have possibly no queen and just laying workers because then you would have this body brood but you'd also see multiple eggs when you find the eggs and you would find the eggs stuck on the interior side wall of those cells and not reaching all the way to the bottom so again because it's happening across several colonies that's probably not it either so the next thing is american foul brood or European foul brood because in the brood has holes in the caps some of your bees try to police that up they clean the

cells out and things like that and they spread the disease to other brood So, but I'm not guessing that that's what it is. I'm saying it because someone else may be sitting there thinking, huh, I wonder what's wrong with mine. And that's why I recommended this book. Honeybees and their maladies would help you really narrow things down. So the other end of it, and this is what I think is going on. High temperatures, by the way, when you get close to 98, 99 degrees,

although it says there's lots of activity here, bees overheat when they're flying. So they definitely need access to lots of fresh water. We definitely want to make sure that any of the mites are under control is described here. So that sounds good. I'm going to say then that maybe there's some kind of protein dearth going on because it's happening across all colonies. There is some spotty brood, which means sometimes if they're not well-nourished, they can't take care of all of them. So your nurse bees might be cannibalizing eggs.

And the queen should be even backing off on her laying, but the pattern itself should be consistent, normal, full, and healthy, just smaller. So I'm out of guesses. Other than that, call in another beekeeper with more experience to take a look and see what's going on, or become social and talk to other beekeepers in your area and find out, hey, you're seeing light brood patterns now, body brood patterns and things like that. And don't forget to take lots of pictures

of what the conditions are. Healthy brood needs to be well identified too. The breed that you do have should look pearly white and healthy. And one of the ways that we identify that there's a nutritional issue potentially in that colony, look at the larvae that you do have. Are they swimming in their food? Or are they just a little shiny and a little damp looking?

and probably being cared for. So if you don't see a lot of creamy white liquid in with those developing larvae, you may have a nutritional deficiency going on. So you can boost nutrition if you want to for those, but that's another reason that they would then be backing off on that. With the heat that's described here, we can't say that it's chilled, brood, because that's another thing that often happens in spring.

People jump into their hives, open them up, take a look at the brood, capped brood and things like that. Close it back up, thinking that it was all neat and fine. They had to look at it really quick because they just had to know what's going on in there. And then they chilled some brood, which later has to be uncapped and removed. And that's when we also often see spotty brood patterns. So I realize this is a shotgun approach because I don't really know what's going on. So if you've got an idea for Sally, please write it down in the comment section below.

and see if it isn't right on the mark. But get honeybees and their maladies. Great gift for people that you like and get them the gift of information. And by the way, that's the updated version. Dr. Robin Underwood is the one that introduced me to the newest one. And they're constantly working on things there at Penn State.

Moving on to question number five comes from Karen. Now this is question, do Queen Bees have Nazanof Glan. So if you're sitting there listening, what the heck is that Nasinov gland anyway? Well, there was a Russian anatomist. What do you think his name was? Nasanoff. He discovered the gland that these worker bees used to put off the nasanoff pheromone and get other bees to join them.

So they send it out. It smells like lemon grass oil. And when you mess up a bunch of bees that are in a swarm and their Nasanoff glands, all get activated at the same time you can smell the lemon grass is what it smells like it's far more complex than that but that's what it smells like and so they have this and it's a way for them to lure each other to consolidate a swarm to get one another to know where they need to be particularly when they're moving into a new hive and things like that this is why you see it when you collect a swarm you hive them up you see the nassanoff glands go and they fan as fast as they can

and they spread it out so that the other bees can come, and then they had their nas and off glands too. But the only ones that have them that can use them like that are worker honeybees. The drones don't have it. Queens don't have it. Queens have something called turgill glands, right? So that's instead of nasanof glands. And so the queen puts out her own pheromone, which is unique to the queen.

And it's the queen endubular pheromone. So her glands are different. she does not have these nasanoff glands. So that communication comes from the queen, and it's a physical passing of that queen mandibular pheromone throughout the hive. Physical contact spreads that through the hive. The Nazanof pheromone is spread through the air.

So it is also different in the way that they communicate that. So that's it. Moving on to question number six. This comes from Josh Curtis, 6445. is a inner cover essential in order to have proper bee space at the top of a hive? So the way this question is worded, is it essential? So that's one thing by itself. Clearly, intercovers are not essential.

And the reason I say that, if you look at the largest number of beehives in the United States, they come from commercial beekeepers, commercial beekeepers don't like to spend, a dime on any extra piece of kit that they don't absolutely benefit from and if they can get by without it they do that's why we have these migratory covers on the hives i mentioned it a little bit when we talked about the nukes so the migratory hive cover does not overlap or go beyond the side walls of your hive so the outside sides of your hive is the width of the migratory cover and that's it the front and back are reinforced with an overlay piece that keeps it aligned, but that's so that they can strap all their hives together, and it's for the convenience of shipping and moving your colonies around.

So clearly it's not essential. Now, the other part of this is in order to maintain B space. So with the migratory covers, there's no B space above your top box, right? The top box, top bars of those frames. So there's no B-space up there. They glue right to the migratory cover. Sometimes people put, as I highly recommend and mentioned before, double bubble underneath that migratory cover. They would absolutely do that. University of Guelph, they use cotton-dut canvas underneath their migratory cover,

which then acts as a type of inner cover, but it does not offer any B-space. but because it's a heavy canvas, and I'm familiar with it because we use it for painting. So if you're an artist and you're an oil painter, then you know about different linens and different cotton canvas heavy, and it's called cotton-tuck canvas unprimed. The reason I bring that up is you can buy rolls of it. So pretend you're an artist, go to an art supply store, buy your heavy cotton canvas, just as if you're going to size it and, you know, spruce it up so that jesso it so that you can do artwork on it.

And you'll find out it's much cheaper that way. Cut it to size. And the reason that's another bonus, in my opinion, is it keeps the bees from gluing down this migratory cover and also provides the surface that's rough. And what do the bees do with rough surfaces? They put propolis on it. So propolis would seal it up. They'd impregnate all that cotton fabric, and they would propalyze that and make it a medicinal

waterproof fabric. And then also, when you're opening your hive, you can peel back this cotton duck. It also works with the double bubble, but not as well. Double bubble eventually is going to fail. The cotton canvas lasts probably as long as you're going to last as a beekeeper. and you can just peel it off just enough to look inside, see what's going on and close it right back up. But no bee space. So essential, this gets into what's essential to the beekeeper and what's essential to the bees?

So why do we need or why do we want bee space above the top bars of our frames inside our hives? Well, sometimes we need to put pollen patties in there. Sometimes you want to put some kind of feet. in there. Sometimes we want to facilitate your honeybees moving over the top bar and down into the hive. So we know they can move around the ends or underneath and they leave little passages for everything. So when you do have an inner cover that maintains bee space and someone may sit there and think how much space is bee space? Well it's three-eighths of an inch.

So if you have a three-eighths-of-an-inch gap, what does that mean? It means it's large enough the two bees can cross over each other one under one over go in different directions it also has been identified as a space at three eighths of an inch that is not so small that the bees want to seal it up with propolis and it's also not so large that they want to build burcombe in there so the bees do ultimately seal up the space but they leave lots of little passageways when you use a rigid inner cover on your hive that facilitate B space. The bees don't seal it up 100%. They leave their little gaps in spaces and their ability to move air through there. So circulation is a big thing. And then the other thing that comes

to mind is you might sit there and think, huh, if the bees were being as natural as we could, then look at the spaces that bees occupy. There's no bee space above the honeycomb. They attach their honeycomb directly to the interior surface, the top of that space. and there's no bee space up there then and that's because it's a structural component we've given them frames and a top bar that's the structure that supports the honeycomb for the bees that way the inner cover does not become part of the structural integrity of the honeycomb that has to support bees and all of their resources the heaviest of that being honey so but if they do it on their own then we look at that comb they leave little passageways and openings and stuff for themselves through the honeycomb,

which would be absent if we use Langstroth frames and then we just put some kind of fabric or covered directly on those frames. So one way to find out if this is useful to your bees as well as the beekeeper is have some with and some without inside your apiary and I have both. so can i say that one outperforms the other in other words if we were in being counters number crunchers if we were economists and we're trying to work for and advise a commercial beekeeper can i justify that we have to have inner covers everywhere probably not because we can also put um pollen patties and winter patties and things like that, we can lift the top box, put it between the frames, the bottom of the frame of

the top box and the top of the frame in the next box down. So you would put that right in there. Because another thing that commercial beekeepers almost all use, and that's a queen excluder, and their food can sit right on top of that, resources and rations and things like that. So if they're trying to get some kind of boost down to the bees. I personally like a feeder shim, a space on the top of the hive, an inner cover, because now the inner cover is separate from the outer cover, which I can take off to check food and resources and things like that without exposing the bees. So I have an outer cover, a feeder shim, a space to provide syrup if I need to,

fondant if I need to, and if I needed to put a treatment on there, I would have a space for that. Some people like to use Formic Pro for Roe destructor mites. You need space between the frames, between the levels to accomplish that, to put that in there. And I understand that they're working on something new at Nod, which is an acronym for Nature's Own Design. They're working on a Formic Pro Patty that would suspend between frames and not have to occupy a space

directly on top. And to think about the communities that keep bees in hive configurations like the Layans hive. Because the Layans hive does not have B space above the frames at all. Because the bees don't go up there. The frames

themselves form the top inner cover of your hive. So that also means that the cover on the outside doesn't get prophylized down because they're confined below the frames so there are a lot of configurations going on there's a lot to think about uh i like the utility of an intercover a feeder shim outer cover insulation and the ability to check on winter feed without ever exposing my bees or getting into the bees which also means what do i need to be wearing when i check a hive for food and resources if i have a feeder shim and an inner cover i don't have to worry about

bee protection because I can see the amount of resources in the wintertime that are still there without ever exposing myself to the bees and without stressing the bees and getting them to come out after me. So that's it. That's all I can think about on that one. Question number seven. This is from Brad. It says, I do have one question. Would you consider one gallon of water, 8.2 pounds with 5.5 pounds of sugar, a weak sugar ratio. Yes, I would. And would bees store or consume for energy this type of weak ratio. I ask, because it's the dearth and I'm feeding my hives, yet super's are still on. I need to absolutely make sure they don't store it. Could I go as a weak ratio to eight pounds of water to four pounds of sugar? So here's the thing. And I say this as frequently as I

possibly can. Colonies that get fed are colonies that you are not going to draw resources off of. if you want to hold true and stay faithful to making sure that the honey that you are providing to people or consuming yourself so it becomes if it's just for you this is not so important if you're selling the honey to other people so i have people to answer to around here my supervisor is one of those the nine-year-old grandson who just got a bunch of honey yesterday by the way so his clients are satisfied and um because here's the thing if once you super you stop feeding and so talking about you know thinner syrups and things like that really doesn't hold much bearing if you're going to mix up sugar syrup and put it on a hive

then that's a hive that we're not drawing surplus honey off of and i understand the dichotomy of this what people worry about is well now they're going to start consuming the honey that i'm going to need later and they're going to be eating up the product. So wouldn't it be great if we could feed them a very light sugar syrup that then just the bees will consume while leaving their honey stores alone, which we're going to want to have for later in the year? So just for a comparison, I want people to think about this

because this is a question that actually comes up a lot. I do know beekeepers that leave a light syrup on all the time. The thinking is, that the bees will use ready exposed light syrup for their immediate uses, their immediate consumption. So if they need energy, they need to carbohydrate, they always consume the uncapped honey cells first. They always do that. So the thinking then is, and it's kind of rational, that if you had a light syrup in there available through an entry feeder, which I do not like, or if you had a rapid round on top, excellent feeder, by the way.

that then the bees would eat this light syrup as needed, but they would store the heavy stuff that they get from outside the hive. This is something I want you to think about a lot. Nectar that they're getting, the sucrose that they're getting from flowers, is often a very light mix. So it is on par with the sugar syrup, even these light sugar syrups, like it's being described here by Brad. there is absolutely no guarantee that they are not going to put that in their honey super.

There's no guarantee that once it's inside the hive that it's not going to go right into the mouths of your storekeeper bees because keep in mind they're getting sucrose depending on the plant that they're getting it from. It often has a very light sugar content. Now the bees are going to go after and harvest from plants that provide the highest sucrose content there is and while they're transporting it they have an enzyme in their body it's called invertase this enzyme converts the sucrose that they're bringing in into fructose and glucose now that means that they're transitioning it and they're starting to turn it into honey

even while it goes mouth to mouth through trophlaxis it's called so if you don't know which bee is receiving that resource it's the one that's got its tongue out and the other one opens up its mandibles, and from its honey's stomach, it releases that nectar. The behavior inside the hive, when there's sugar syrup available, is the same. In other words, bees are going to gather that, and then watch where they go. If you have observation hives, as I do, then you'll find out that they'll get that sugar syrup from the top of your hive, if you have jars or however it's fed to them, and watch the bee that collected it go

and pass that on to multiple other bees inside the hive. Then see what those bees do. Now the surplus, because this is the instinct of the bee, to take resources, store resources for later use. So when you're providing something for them that is a resource, plant protein, so plant protein would be, of course, pollen, then they're going to store it up if it's useful to them

and sucrose, which is glucose and fructose after its invert sugar, then they're going to store that for later. They're not going to waste it. So it ultimately can and probably will blend with the honey that you've got, which is from actual flour sources. And the reason I bring this up in answering this question of Brad, who by the way is a longtime viewer, long time commenter, I want people to consider what you want your honey to be like.

And honey that is heavily fortified with sugar syrup is a leaned out honey. It doesn't have the strong, I want to say flavonoids, but I'm no expert of the way honey should smell or taste. I'm not a honey expert, and I'm not it's a sweetener to me so to me it wouldn't change the world right but it's a matter of representing honey as from a floral source or from sugar syrup and again we're in a dearth period so they're going to consume most of it I understand the way the wheels get turning and the way the logic

starts to work but if you want to have a hundred percent floral wildflower honey and you're going to put your label on it you're going to call that raw honey there cannot be any supplemental feeding going on while your honey supers are on. So there is that. And let's just do some comparisons, by the way, let's talk about the initial 8 pounds of water to 5.5 pounds of dry sugar. That's a 40%, 40.1% mix, right? Let's compare that to what the bees are getting from the environment. So just these are rough estimates, but milkweed, because that's what my bees are on right now. They average 30% sugars. So already we've got a sucrose resource that the bees are all over outside the hive that is actually lighter than what we're calling a light sugar syrup here. Now, if they go out to

white clover, depending on the time of day and what the rain conditions are and things like that, how much moisture there is around clover, white clover is only 20, to 39% sucrose. So that is actually a lower sucrose level, higher water content, than what we're proposing as a light sugar syrup. So the point I'm trying to make is if we're thinking because it's light, they're not going to store it as honey later, then we're actually fooling ourselves a little bit.

Because the linen tree that we talked about earlier today, again, depending on the time of day, the weather, how warm it is, how much rain we've had 29.5% sucrose up to this is pretty rich 77%. So that would be a dense high sucrose resource for the bees. No wonder the tree hums with bees because at different times of the day that is very valuable to your bees and even dandelions in spring which a lot of people bad mouth and don't care about dandelions but I'll take tell you what, a feel of the dandelions is producing nectar and pollen for your bees. I understand the pollen profile is lacking a lot of amino acids.

That doesn't bother me at all because there's nothing else coming in. But you know what? The dandelions are producing 20 to 50% sucrose in their nectaries. So when the nectar is coming in from these flowers, they are already often lower than even what we consider to be a very light syrup. So, food for thought, sunflower is 23 to 55%. Depending on time of day, a variety of sunflower, and rainfall and things like that. This is all very interesting, but the bottom line of all of it is,

once you've supered a hive and you plan to harvest honey from that hive and sell it to other people, there should be no supplemental feeding on that hive. during that period. Now, sure, at the end of the year, when you've done your final harvest, or if it's a hive that, you know, they're going to collapse. They're completely out of resources.

Then you could harvest the honey and backfeed them like crazy, you know, or something like that. I don't know what else to say other than if you want the integrity of your honey to be 100% honey from flowers, then no, not even light syrup. It doesn't work. Question number eight comes from Lynn, Russell, PA. And this is not related to honeybees.

This is related to the thumbnail from today. Right? So it's, it is Japanese beetle season. I've watched your videos about trapping them to feed back to chickens. Says, I am unable to find traps like those in your older videos. Now they all seem to be made from bags. Do you have a DIY idea? for making a reusable trap also how old should chickens be before introducing them to these beetles okay so we're in the fluff

section by the way with question number eight here so from land this does tie in with bees because i also use the japanese beetles in my opening sequences because what are they doing they're all over the same flowers japanese beetles fly to the nectar sources and the same things that your honeybees are after they're also can be incredibly damaging to the plants. Once they get on your plants, that's it. One of the things I was really excited to learn about the Japanese beetles is I can keep them off of my linden trees, these big leaves and stuff

that the Japanese beetles used to leave, skeletized leaves. They would much the leaves and the flowers. They're just borderline terrible. But I can spray liquid fence on them. So not only does liquid fence work to keep the deep. ear off. I'll give you a link to it if you want to go down to the video description or just look for liquid fence stinkiest stuff ever sticks around even after a rain

but it's keeping rabbits and deer off of plants now I can't obviously spray all the plants so the other thing is these Japanese beetles do a lot of damage now here's the thing you can go beyond that and the mention here is what is the feel-good part of collecting and trapping Japanese Beatles. Chicken feed is not chicken feed anymore. It's expensive. I have free-ranging chickens. In fact, free-rangechikins.org is also my website.

I've been doing chickens for 25 years. So the thing of it is, and this is what's in the thumbnail today, and I want to bring your attention to it because those, things are expensive and we have a conflict in my mind I never liked the tanglefoot bags and all the different companies are making and selling you bags six bags are like six or eight dollars and you're supposed to trap Japanese beetles in the bags and then you've got a plastic bag that you're throwing in the garbage okay to me that's garbage don't do it here's the cool part

Tanglefoot is an interesting company. This is the label of their Tanglefoot lures. The reason I'm showing you that is if you're making your own traps to attract Japanese beetles, the Tanglefoot lure is key to what you're going to be doing. That's the thing you have to buy. That's going to last you all season. I've tested these extensively. In other words, I've kept these lures because once you get them out of the box,

this is what they look like so they come in this little foil pack and i bought them in bulk and here's the back with instructions on it you have to tear this off which i've not done because then it's going to smell and then the japanese beetles come after you so these things work really well there are two lures in them this is the mating the sex lure in the bottom that little it looks like an old pencil eraser And the top part up here is the floral lure. That's what gets the Japanese beetles to think that there's something that they want to eat. And they can, while they're eating, do something else that results in more Japanese beetles. Which is terrible.

Anyway. So, you're right. The expansion, the accordion, little expansion things, you know, they recognize pretty darn quick that, making a permanent trap or a trap that did not require you to buy a new plastic bag every you know 10 days or 12 days or whatever if you've got a lot of Japanese beetles um they were talking themselves out of a lot of money it would be like building a car that never needs to be serviced could you imagine that it'd make no money so they want you to buy parts for the Japanese beetle trap so here's the thing this is what I often do is I

do research on stuff I find out who else is doing research and what kind of traps are they using and then you find out in academia that's why this is a really heavy duty scientific quality lab quality trap because entomologists study insects and study what lures them and all this other stuff use traps like this you know what's cool about it it'll accept a mason jar on the bottom so Forget these bags that you throw away. I don't like mason jars for these, and I'll explain why. This is a plastic peanut butter jar, or you might get Welch's grape jelly. You might have a jelly fiend at your house.

It just has plastic jars laying around. It should go to the recyclary, but rather than do that, check it out. It has the same lid and threads as a mason jar, and you can screw that on right under here. Now we've got a trap that never wears out. Also in the bottom and one of the reasons I don't like mason jars is because if you see the bottom of this there's little slits I just took a little Saw and I cut little slits in it Why would I do that? Because look at the shape of the trap if we get a big rainstorm like we had yesterday

The rain goes in here if this is a glass jar. It's gonna fill up and your Japanese beetles are gonna drown and once they drown they're dead Once they're dead they stink once they stink they don't lure any more Japanese beetles to your trap So the other thing is here is the tangle foot lure. That's the part you buy, that's the part you swap out, and it lasts all year. And once that's in, this particular one does not have the foil peeled off the back, because you would peel the foil off the back. Mount it like this.

And I'm going to put the link if I can find it, because here's what I found out. When these universities do studies, they do their field trials and things like that, these aren't made for consumers. so they won't even sell them to you. Sometimes you find a place that produces stuff like this for the scientific community, and you have to buy 100 of them or a thousand of them. I don't know. But it's not designed so that you or I could get there and just order three or two.

But they last many, many years. So this is what I'm using now, and why I'm telling you about it is because the very same plants that your honeybees are after, including the milkweed, the Japanese beetles are on it. so if you have chickens if you have anything that eats bugs if you need protein because that's the most expensive part of chicken feed my chickens see me go up here's the other part and i'm all over the chart with this do you have coy do you raise bass do you have a pond where you actually are raising your own food then the same thing there i had a japanese beetle trap system with a big two

like this I had a drain tube and I call it the high catch and load delivery system because what then I did is I suspended it over the water why would I do that because the Japanese beetle slap hit the fin fall into this fall through the tube hit the water what's waiting for them at the water fish and then the fish are eating the Japanese beetle so if you can get your Japanese beetles to land in the water, they're feeding your fish also. Protein, which later gets cycled back if you're raising fish for stock that you're going to later use to cook and eat fish. I don't know what you're doing. I feed the coy and the blue gill and all of that eat Japanese beetles. So it's not just for chickens,

right? Now, so we have this trap and we set it up. We don't want to use toxins ever. So what I was doing early as I was killing Japanese beetles. This is another way to get them without a trap. You hand out little jars to all the grand monkeys. You send them out and they just flick the Japanese beetles off of plants into jars. Now, this is a great way to occupy a bunch of kids for a long period of time. But I was giving them hot soapy water. Same way that you're going to kill yellow jackets and other insects that you want to get rid of,

flick them into a jar of soapy water. The cuticle gets defeated. high wetting ability goes in through the spiracles, suffocates the insect, and they're dead. You don't need to do that. Later, I got these big pretzel jars, and I filled them with just hot water. So we're talking 125 degree water.

And you carry that around in the back of your cart, and you can dump the Japanese beetles that are collected in here that are still alive right into the hot water, and they die right away hot water takes them out now what chemicals do we use just the water that's it now we can throw those dead beetles on the pond to feed your fish or you can feed them to your chickens and so we throw them in chicken drinkers chickens all run up and they just eat them like crazy don't dump them out of the ground japanese beetles will revive themselves and fly away and it makes you crazy because now you have to go and catch them again.

But the chickens learn when you've got Japanese beetles and they run up and we put them in their water stations anyway and they gobble them right up. The other part of the question was how old the chickens have to be to be able to eat Japanese beetles. Young chickens, just two months old, can be eating Japanese beetles. We don't want to stuff up or block up their crop with them because that's what bulges when they're eating a bunch of food.

it's not their only source of food but you can crush up the Japanese beetles if you want to keep them from flying away and you've got a bunch of them in a jar you can take them and put them in the freezer and then later you can crush them up for your chicks but after they're a couple of months old chicks fight over beetles and that's how they end up pulling them apart they pack it on and because it's a beetle it bounces away and stuff the older chickens gobble them right down so we would feed because we get a lot of Japanese beetles we feed a bunch of them to the chickens and then we feed a bunch of them to the fish and it's a great way to cycle them back now

the other thing is there's a lot of controversy about trapping Japanese beetles and getting away from the plants and stopping them from competing with your honeybees for those valuable resources so people think well if you put up a trap of that pheromone lure you're going to lure those Japanese beetles from who knows how far away and they're going to come zipping over to your yard and you'll have Japanese beetles that you otherwise would not have had. That's true. That's right. But what is, you know, downwind, right? What's downwind at me is the woods. So how many Japanese beetles are coming through the woods to find my stuff? Because they're going to be on the raspberries and everything else too. Who wants Japanese beetles on your raspberries? I don't. So let's get them.

Let's trap them. Let's use the stuff that we're talking about here. Oh, it actually says right on it while I'm looking at this it says T R E C E C E Incorporated so if you want to Google that T R E C E C E Incorporated that's where that came from of course there's no website or anything like that because once again it's not for us we have to track it down so anyway let's say you're lowering them from a distance away and you're still trapping them and killing them but the point is they may stop along the way to your trap and actually get on a plant that they otherwise wouldn't have flown to.

That's why you have your beetle traps downwind of the plants you're hoping to protect. But the other part of this is we notice a huge drop-off in Japanese beetle numbers when you do this year after year consistently. So here we are right now. And we're in July and the Japanese beetles are out there doing their thing. That's why they're in my opening video sequences. they're here and so it's time to get the traps up.

So use them. Because the numbers fall off even if you're luring them from a distance, we are impacting their reproduction. And they're so dumb, they're not getting any smarter about these. They're not avoiding the traps. You put one of these out there

while you're hanging the trap. They're flying and hitting the fence and landing in this thing while you're holding it while you're hanging it out. So that's the other thing, maybe how high should you have it? Because my other genius idea was for people that have chicken runs. And my chickens are free range, but there are people that can't free range or birds for whatever reason. Predators, neighbors, dogs, stuff like that.

So you can set up Japanese beetle traps on those drain pipes and trap the Japanese beetles outside. And they hit this and fall through the tube and deliver themselves right in. into your chicken run and the chickens hear the sound of the beetle falling through the tube and they run over and they get it so that's fun too feature chickens it's fun what i would like to do is teach birds there are people uh that are trying to get the spotted lantern flies to be eaten by birds uh the way birds learn and condition themselves to go after specific foods is they're learning from the parent birds so let's say for example blue birds which we have a lot of bluebirds here very successful nest boxes with bluebirds here

the young bluebirds learn what to go after what to eat and they eat a lot of bugs uh from the parents so if we can get the parents to eat spotted lantern flies while they're developing then they would condition the generations of bluebirds to also go after the spotted lantern flies chickens will eat japanese beetles as soon as they can find them but the problem is they're out of a chicken reach. So we don't have enough wild birds. I don't know why woodpeckers and stuff like that don't go after Japanese beetles because they're sitting ducks. They're exposed. They're right out there. You would think birds would just go and nab them up, but they don't. We have to get them for them. I realize I'm using a lot of time here and some people are thinking, I'm here for the bees.

I don't want to hear about Japanese beetles. But I'm trying to help your bees benefit from the plants that the Japanese beetles are trying to destroy. So join me in this. Get yourself from Japanese beetle traps. Anyway, varroa mite control and reduction. We have to talk about it because this is the time of year that you have to get them under control. I realize there are people out there who are not going to treat for varomites and that's okay. If you're not a treatment varroa manager, then at least do everything you can as far as culling them with drone brood and everything else. Do all you can to get them under control this time of year. We're well ahead of the fall nectar flow. We're well ahead of creating sick bees going in a winter, and varroa mites are a huge

part of that. Insulation, this discussion about insulation comes around, and there's no reason to remove insulation from your hives in the summertime. Keep it year-round. Keep the insulation on year-round. Hive covers, if nothing else, insulated hive covers are doing extremely well. Okay, keep fresh water everywhere. consistent predictable sources of fresh water now sometimes people ask me hey fred maybe you should kick off a backyard experiment with your viewers and then we could all report back and say how it went and this kind of crowdsourcing when it comes to doing backyard science is beneficial so for those you have been waiting for a project that you wanted to get going and give feedback i'm going to put this on my youtube channel too which is Frederick Dunn, the YouTube channel, and there's a social post area where I can do surveys.

So we're going to put this experiment for back yarders in that survey area, and then you can report your findings. So here's what we're going to do, because I noticed recently, I put a bunch of drinkers out for the bees, consistent locations with fresh filtered water. And one of these containers was being drained empty, every single day the other one was being used but not as much so we have to have some consistency in our test so here's what the test is i use pyrex um pie plates as shallow drinkers out forth the bees i take a piece of sandstone and it sits in the middle and that's what the bees land on and then they drink from the pie plate the pie plate is made out of glass of course then i have another

it's the base of a planter so it's plastic and the base of the planter also has the same type of stone sitting in the middle of it and the bees land on that and they drink the water now this could be just me or just my bees but the bees are showing a preference for the water that's being presented in a glass pipe plate over the water that's being presented in this planter base which is plastic or maybe it's vinyl or something else but the glass is preferred by the bees the plastic or vinyl is last so if we could put out several of identical water so it would be filtered water if you've got a, you know, P-U-R filter, if you've got a BRITA filter, something like that,

that would be, you know, consistent. We have to have the same water. Same type of rocks in the middle of each of your shallow presented plates, right? And then glass or plastic, glass or vinyl, and see in the same location, same period of time, same proximity to your B-yard, see if they're showing a preference for one over the other. This is a very simple test that we can do. We will put it out there. I will put the parameters of the test.

And I'm really hoping that you participate, that your kids participate, and that we find out if there is a difference, if your bees are showing a preference for drinking out of something that is not made out of vinyl or plastic. So what do you think? It's going to be good. I hope you'll participate.

And we'll, of course, do the commentary later and talk about how the test went. And I'll do my own right here, and we'll do a video about it. So the other thing is veils that people are wearing, it gets hot in your veils. Vented bee suits are really beneficial. The other thing is we've got these half glazed or they've got these plastic polymer viewing windows in them. Guardian Bee Apparel came out with two last year at the North American Honeybee Expo.

So I've got two of those. I talked about those in previous videos. And one of the complaints that people have is when the humidity gets really high, your breath goes on to the interior of that plate and you can't see out of it. What good is that? You can't wipe it off from the outside because the condensation is on the inside of your veil. Now, somebody else recommended something to me. And I've seen Kamen Reynolds and others where these neck fans,

I was not too excited about that, but then again, I don't live in the south where it's really stifling. But I did get on to Amazon, and I looked at the top rated ones. And because they had Amazon days or whatever, they were on sale. So anyway, I got a neck fan. I don't like it. It's wireless. You charge it up. You turn it on by pushing a button on the side.

And off it goes, it's got different power lower. Here that thing? Who wants to hear that? However, on the lowest level, you can put this around your neck and it blows through these fans against your neck and keeps, of course, you dry and cool, but it's noisy, but it also keeps your interior of your face plate clear. So it'll be cooler, bothered by some noise, and your face plate will remain clear. So that's the benefit of that. This particular one, if you want to look it up, is J-I-S-U-L-I-F-E. J-I-S-U-L-I-F-E. This is the top-rated one, and it's not even the most expensive one. But if you've tried them and you like them, let me know.

If there's a quiet version, let me know. But that's it. It tells you not to put your fingers in the fan. That's important guideline. but that will keep your face plate clear the other thing I was thinking about with these face plates is they make mask clear for divers and you can rub this stuff and rinse off your mask some people that want to go the cheap route just use a gel toothpaste or something like that you can rub that on the interior mask rinse it off and then that keeps it from fogging for a long period of time I don't know how well it's going to work on you know be veils but it's something worth checking out So coming up this week, as I mentioned earlier today, when we were talking about creating a super split, I do have my keepers hive together. So for those of you are waiting to see how that's going, we're putting that together.

It's going to be a video about it this coming week. And we're going to set it up, and we're going to do a super split. And we're going to put colonies in both sides of that, and we're going to see how well that goes. For those of you are wondering how the top our hive is going, did the bees stay or did they go? Did they abscond? there were two cycles of absconding out of that, but now I have two resident colonies at opposite ends of my be mindful top bar hive.

So that's going along. I don't know if I'm going to get into that yet and look at them or if I'm just going to let them hum along. I just want to make sure they have enough top bars that they're not becoming stuck with building too much comb. They're not being fed. They're just getting what they need from the environment. And they're going right along.

So that's doing well. So I want to thank you for being with me here today. And I hope that there's something in today's Q&A that you benefited from. If there's something on your mind and you just haven't had the right answer, I always do research before I respond to these questions. And I reach out to entomologists and people that are doing the latest research in some cases that's not even yet published. So ask away.

Send your questions in and see if there isn't something that I can help you out with. Thanks for being here. I hope you have a fantastic weekend ahead. and I hope that all is well with you and your honeybees. Thanks for watching.