The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 318 August 8th 2025

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/3Y8JF1Bbq1c

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, August the 8th of 2025. This is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 318. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So welcome, I'm glad you're here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please go down in the video description, and you'll see all the topics listed in order. And later on, we'll have time links associated with those. You can go straight to the topics that interest you.

You may be wondering how to submit your own. go to my website, which is the way to be.org, click on the page marked contact. You fill out that information and off will go. So if you've got a question on top of your mind right now and you just have to get a hold of somebody, you need real-time interaction. Please go to the Facebook group, The Way to Be Fellowship. And there you'll find people just like you at all levels that are very easygoing and they will look at pictures, help you decode what's going on in your B-yard stuff.

like that so there you go I know you want to know what's going on outside and this past week I did publish a video that had pollinator plants and pollinators that are on them not just the honeybees but things as obscure as ants even maybe a wasp mimic all that's there please check that out if you want to know where my other videos can be found please go to the YouTube channel Frederick Dunn and in the top right corner you can type into the search exactly what you're looking for. There are more than 1,200 videos there so things can be difficult to find. All right, so I know you want to know

what's going on outside right now. Well, let's take a look. Eighty-one.7 degrees Fahrenheit. And I wrote that down in Celsius, too, for some of you. And that would be 27.6 Celsius. The good news is, recently the bees were all bearding in the outside of the hives.

That's because we had a lot of rain, a big nectar flow going on, and a lot of bees in production, so they bearded high humidity. 99% relative humidity, but that's way down right now. What is it? 65% relative humidity. Of course, conditions could be different where you are. This is in the northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania.

So, and the winds. Thank goodness we have some wins, at least, unless you're trying to do micro-macrophotography, which makes that a challenge. 2.5 miles per hour, that's 4 kilometers per hour. Let me tell you something. For those of you who are in my neck of the woods, this is basically it for the good days.

And by that, I mean, it's going to get really hot, really hot. So your bees don't like it. What happens when you get into your beehives when it's really hot? It seems easy because the propolis breaks easier. It's easier to scrape things off and work the beeswax, but it's the very fact that the beeswax is soft that makes it a challenge, especially if you have foundationless comb or if you're working top bar hives or something like that.

I've also had people right and let me know that their lay-ins hives, even though they have wire support in their frames, on these hot days, their comb has sagged down to the bottom. That's kind of a challenge. I do wonder why they didn't run the wires horizontally. So anyway, let's talk about what's outside. Clover. So the bees are on Clover. We had that in the opening sequences and they're quick on the clover, but what I really wanted to focus on was the hissup. So the hiss up is doing fantastic. Two days ago they were ignoring it. Now suddenly it's popular. So the bees are all over that. The marigolds have finally bloomed. So I planted, for those of you who have been watching me, I planted thousands of marigolds. I thought they were letting me down. Nothing was happening. And now I said, and now I said, see them. They're there. They're happening. Cosmos going strong. You're going to continue to bloom and go strong

all the way into the first frost. Cosmos are fantastic. In years past, sometimes the bees don't spend a lot of attention. Don't spend a lot of time or pay a lot of attention to them. But this year, they are all over them. So there must be a really good nectar flow on the cosmos. So what else is in there? Borage. I planted so much borage and the honeybees are ignoring it. They're other pollinators that like it, but I wanted my honeybees on it because it's a really nice nectar, and I was hoping to get that into our honey supers. So anyway, Goldenrod continues to open. Keep in mind, there's a lot of different species of golden rod, and some of it's all clustered up, and I'm going to take the supervisor who's going to be here tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to a picnic, the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association picnic, and he's coming. So when we get back,

from that we're going to be looking at ants and see how they herd and corral and feed well they protect and get feed from aphids so i know nothing to do with honeybees but it is fun it's outside things are going good anyway ironweed bees are all over that's really good joe pie weed is finally starting to blossom there's not a lot of it though you know sometimes you'll think that wow this plant was supposed to be a fantastic pollinator plant i put it out the honey bees aren't even touching it and here I have 20 plants. Well, your honeybees are going to nectar and pollen resources that they can get in abundance. So if they've got another resource that offers them 20,000 blossoms, and it provides nectar and pollen, whatever they need, or both, then they're going to opt for that. That's just the way it goes.

So the more you can plant of something the better off it should be, which I thought was going to happen with borage, and it didn't. Now, maybe it'll, it's, it's, Got time, you know, maybe stuff will still happen. Maximillians, still going strong. Birdocks are about half done. Burdogs are a type of thistle, and the honeybees really like those. It's one of those plants where you can hear the bees on it before you see it. And I think I have too many bees.

Again, I don't have mentioned this before, but if you're a brand new beekeeper and you're thinking of how many colonies of bees to keep, try to keep the numbers down if you can because what will happen is you'll get more honey per colony if you have an area that only has three or four hives of bees. And you'll hit an area where you have so many colonies that they're all getting resources in. And when you go out and look at pollinator plants, if you see bees all over every plant you come across, chances are you have too many bees for your area. So I think we could drawback, have fewer colonies, more hunting. more resources for those bees less competition for the exact same nectar and pollen that they need

the other thing is what's going on up in the corner is it here it's the corner over here we are showing the hive number 44 so we have questions about it that's right now being recorded while i'm talking to you this minute same time simultaneous so anyway uh you can see what's going on with those because they did have a question about that today And I think that's about it. Let's jump right in. Question number one comes from Diane from Warren, New Jersey. Do you think I could get away with using five-foot T-posts to create hive stands using your design?

I've got lots of them on hand. Yes, you can. That's the quick answer. And some of you may be sitting there wondering, don't I have to buy a hive stand? Don't I have to set one up that can be moved around? Not really. Iron T-posts are pretty fantastic. I use six and eight-foot T-posts in the past.

but there's nothing wrong with a five-foot teeth post. Now, I drive them into the ground far enough that they get enough friction grip. So you get soil compression to support a load or soil friction on the sides of your post to support a load. And remember that those T-posts have little bump outs on them. So a five-foot post, you could drive right down. And I did, it was over at a friend's house the other day,

Bill and Wendy. And they had, I was all excited because I saw that they had those. safety caps on their T-posts in their garden I thought yeah I need to do that because we think about this or should at least bend over to grab something for your beehive or whatever the T-post top is right there and you could hit your face on it you're distracted you're looking at bees so you do have to think about safety and one of the things an advantage to having the taller post is that they're way out of jam yourself in the face range. So I was excited he had red caps on his T-post. I was excited about the safety factor,

but it turns out he was just identifying the plants that he planted in that zone. Either way, it works. Please think about it. Now, I did see people just cut a slit in old tennis balls and stick those on T-post. Seems like that would work too. So whatever, just please think about that. And if you don't know what we're talking about with a T-post-style hive stand, please go to my Frederick Dunn the YouTube channel right side on the little search area just type in hive stand tipos it's all there all the parts everything metal conduit easy to do so that should take care of that but yeah you can use them it just puts that strike down in the other thing is one of the reasons I used to like that they were up higher is because I could run

rope and things like that across to hold things down not that important they actually kind of got in the way more than they benefited me so yeah absolutely let's move on to question number two question number two comes from Cheryl fuller 4231 which is YouTube channel name what happened next did they survive did they collect pollen was the queen mated or a virgin I have so many questions and need to know the next episode please please please okay we're talking about hive number 44 we put out a video as it what was it was it the 13th or the 14th so 13 and 14 July I collected a swarm and in the swarm we had multiple queens

so I separate out the queens because I like to see do the bees favor one over the other and sometimes you'll even find a little cluster of bees on the ground next to a swarm and it's just weird why would they be there and why aren't they joining the rest sometimes that's because they're attracted to a virgin queen who does not have the social draw because her pheromones are different than the mated queen that would get the bulk of the swarm. So what I did was I hung that clip with that queen on a fence. She eventually gathered a tiny collection of bees. We put them in a small nucleus five-frame hive and that's what you're watching

right now up in the corner. That's them today. So do they survive? Yes, they did. Did they do a really cool propolis entrance that shrouds their normal entrance in the hive? Yes, they did. They're the only colony in my V-R that's done that. Are they bringing in pollen? Yes, they are. Why are they bringing in pollen? Because there's brood. Why is there brood? Because the queen got mated. And that didn't happen straight away. So when I'm going to open that hive and do an inspection to see what's really going on? Well around the 20th of this. month so we have to be patient about these things when you have a newly installed colony of bees don't jump the gun and harass them too much but what I do look at is the landing board activity which is what you're seeing right now and I

like to see that they have guards on deck because sometimes when they've lost their queen they lose their incentive to invest in the colony anymore so they're guarding they're not overly defensive by the way because I can sit right there right next to it two or three feet from the landing board and just sit in a chair and watch them no problem so they're doing good and I'm excited to see it so along with Cheryl anybody else that's concerned about that first of all watch the video I hope you do the thumbnail of the video has a queen in a queen clip up in the corner it says rejected because that's exactly what they did in fact when I first got the queen in the clip I couldn't get any bees interrupt

in her she's just by herself they treated her like any other bee now in the absence of the other queen because I installed her in another hive and the bulk of the bees went in and part of them stayed out then more of those bees collected around the queen that I made the assumption was unmated that's the only reason I could think that she would be ignored not ignored now things going good the big the big fun is going to be the big interest point if they can get themselves together and I think they can in time for winter in a small colony, a small box. By the way, keeping them in a small box like a five frame nuke is very important until they start to build. So you have to do your B math and make sure that once she

starts to lay when they're rooted up, when those breeds start to emerge, that's the point when they have a population increase. That's when we'll start to expand it. And I'll expand it by adding another five-frame nucleus hive on top of that and we'll continue to track them. But you know what? Those are some different bees. They are interesting. They're propolizing everything. Some people think that, wow, there must be, they weren't saying carniolans. Maybe they were Caucasian bees because they are known to propylize, do a lot of propolizing. Commercial beekeepers have phased that out. So they bred against propylizing because it just made a gummy mess you know because keep in mind they do automated honey harvesting and everything else and you don't want propolis all over everything but if

you're a backer beekeeper like we are then we want the propolis even though it's going to be a pain but we want the propolis because it's proven to be extremely healthy so my guess is we have an extremely healthy little colony there i have no idea what the genetics are because we are all hybridize here I do buy in if I'm getting a queen from somewhere I go to Daniel weaver so that's B. Weaver and I also got a couple of carniolins last year from Betterby which I think or actually if they're from Betterby I think they're probably coming from the Oliveira's bee breeders there in California so anyway question number three comes from John McLeanborough Illinois says Fred I have a

question about smoker fuels Love the switchgrass pellets. Use them with the last two years using a propane torch and a cork when I'm finished. Makes them last a long time. By the way, that switchgrass has been out for two years already? My question is, I was reading an article about using used coffee grounds as smoker fuel. But they did say you would need something to help. Keep them burning.

What are your thoughts on coffee grounds with switchgrass and a smoker? Okay, so my first thought was coffee grounds. I understand why people want coffee grounds and their smoker because they think it would smell like fresh-roasted coffee every time you like your smoker and you get out there. So actually, I was going to dismiss it out of hand. Here's why. Because we have the switchgrass smoker pellets.

If they're working great on their own, why not just stick with that? And by the way, if you're listening and you are, and if you're watching, then I highly. suggest you get Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association switch grass smoker pellets they come from urn seeds it is a fundraiser and it funds our educational programs for beekeepers and I get absolutely zero for doing it for promoting it because it works and feedback like this from John it works great so anyway it does work now your coffee grounds what are you doing with them

for those of you drink coffee because I am shocked to find out that there are people that don't drink coffee. So I asked my wife to stop throwing coffee grounds out. She puts them in the garden, of course, and I guess worms eat them. Who knows what happens. But so I decided we'll just hang on to them and we have to dry them out.

But you can understand why you can't just pour a bunch of coffee grounds into your smoker, light it, and expect it to function. First of all, coffee grounds are too small, even if you do a rough grind, right? And so if you just jam a bunch of coffee grounds in there, the air doesn't pass through it very well, so you don't get a continuous burn. It's just going to go out. The other thing I was wondering is, doesn't it just smell like burnt coffee? But let's say, all right, the first thing you're going to have to do is dry it out. So mine is being collected every single day and it's drying out right now. While I'm talking to you, it's outside drying out. So I'll dry the coffee grounds and we will mix them in with the switchgrass, smoker pellets from urn seeds, which are,

available to you only through the northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association so if you Google it that's what it is so then I'm going to add it because I did look it up and there actually it was pretty funny because there's some cautionary statements in there about like too much caffeine like you could breathe caffeine through the smoke I don't know what's going on I'm a science guy I'd like to read a published study because there's no so let's just start there there's no known additional benefit to the bees. They do say it generates a cool white smoke, a dense smoke, generates quite a bit of creosote, so it will creosote up your smoker. And smells good. So if you want your smoker to generate smoke that smells good and you want a way to recycle your

coffee grounds, if you're one of those people that throws them away, then sure, save them, dry them, dry them out and use them. And you could probably start them with things like, wood pulp egg cartons and stuff like that. Don't throw those away. There's a good for composting. They're good for everything. So anyway, I'm going to try it out just for kicks, but the switchgrass smoker pellets on their own are working fantastic, but why not extend it a little bit? And if it adds a little more smoke, but keep in mind, when we mix in those coffee grounds, we're cutting down on the amount of air that's going to pass through those big smoker pellets. So the smoker pellets are actually pretty big in diameter, about a quarter inch.

And they're still my favorite. And by the way, we haven't had to dump and refill our smokers. We just as described here, light them. It burns. We do a 20-minute job in the B-yard. Put the cork on it. As described, it shuts it down right away. And I still have plenty of pellets in there.

Next time we go to do something. Again, I light it with a propane torch. and then do what I need to do, put the gorg in, repeat. They last for days. And of course, I'm not a commercial guy. I'm not out there puffing away for eight hours straight, nine hours straight. When I used to use pine shavings, I lined up three smokers. And lit one, got it going, did my thing.

And by the time it started blowing sparks or really hot smoke, I put that one away, and I ignited the second smoker, and then I went from there. So I don't have to do that anymore because one smoker, even the medium-sized smokers like the one over here on the shelf, will last you all day with switchgrass. Switchgrass pellets from the Northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association. Some people are sick of me promoting things. So the website is the Northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association. Whatever. I get nothing for that.

I'm just telling you it works. Everyone says it works. One person out of everyone that bought them ended up with some crushed pellets from the mail like they came apart or something. They fixed that. So it's good. Question number four comes from Uncle Junior 52.

Caught a swarm. August 4th of 2025. In a swarm trap box, I did not see a queen. So I put in two comb frames and honey frame in the box. I also fed.

sugar water and pollen outside the box and on top of the box the swarm stayed outside the box for four hours eating and then they all went in the box I'll go to shut the door in the a.m. or maybe reduce the hole I'll re-look for a queen I looked in the box all five frames are covered with bees so there are a few things here number one with the swarm in a swarm box or a swarm trap please don't provide feed there because you have a new colony that's trying to get started and you could encourage Robbie until they're in their final location once in the final location if you have a hive top in hive hive hive top feeder that's highly that's what I highly recommend you use to help get them going

but if you have a swarm and it moved into a hive 99.9% of the time basically 100%. They have a queen. It's the only reason they're there. The colony on the you know, on the fly, when they're vivouacking and they're looking for a new location, they've got a queen with them. If, for example, because I've done this many times, one of my very first cinematic assignments was swarm behavior. And what would happen if you collected a queen out of a swarm and then you set up all these video cameras all around them, the sounds they made and everything else. This is many years ago. But I still do it today. I like to play with swarms. It's just fun to do. But if you remove a queen, they get all excited.

They're looking everywhere. They can't find the queen. And they'll disband and off they'll go. So there needs to be a queen pheromone to bind them. Some of the confusion has probably come in because in some social media, people will say, I found a swarm here. I think they needed a queen. I gave them a queen now.

Look, they liked the queen. They accepted the queen. I think there was already a queen or they wouldn't have. have landed there to begin with in the absence of the queen they go right back to the hive that they left so let's say there was a queen present and you brought another queen and didn't they go on to the queen that you brought the only reason that they go from a queen that's in the center of that cluster onto another queen that you brought with you is the queen that you brought with you is likely a made queen and particularly this time of year sometimes you get after swarms or

what's referred to as tertiary swarms, and they'll have an unmated queen with them. Now, by herself, she's enough to get them to cluster around her and stay with her. However, if there's competition, and this is where sometimes you'll see cluster beads in a bivouac location, which means they've left their primary residence, they're intermediate, so they're in a temporary holding position. Sometimes you'll see that multiple swarms happen

at once in close proximity to one another. And then you'll look at a tree and there'll be a tiny cluster over here and a medium-sized cluster, maybe even in some cases on the same branch. And as the time passes, they kind of merge together, particularly if they're out overnight. So then what's happening is most often they are multiple queens there, but they're collecting together under whichever queen has the strongest pheromone that's the best hope for the future because a mated queen is ready to lay

eggs as soon as they set up shop in a new cavity an unmated queen may have to wait several days even more than a week before she's mated and actually laying eggs and at this time a year that's a critical timeline so I think there is a queen in this box and the other thing is the feeding part please don't put feet on top of that hive. I think he's talking about the pollen anyway, but let's not draw interest to a swarm and let's get them in their primary residence as soon as possible. Whatever their final cavity is they're going to be in whatever hive you're going to put them in. And then clean out that swarm trap if you want to

get another one even late in the year, make sure it's still there and just put drawn comb in it. Draw and comb in your swarm trap. Question number five comes from Dennis from Burlington, Iowa. Dennis says, I'm confused. I'm a subscriber and a big fan. I just watched a nine-year-old video where the state inspector did a sugar-coding test on your bees for varomites. At the end, you say that your bees are treatment-free. In watching your most recent videos, you talk about treating your bees. What has changed your mind because the old video was a testament to not treating your bees?

as they only found one might. Okay, this comes up so often. Now, when I started out beekeeping, I didn't plan to be a beekeeper. I was just studying bees. I wanted to look into bees. There was a documentary, Silence of the Bees, there's another documentary, more than honey.

They were talking about colony collapse disorder, and Hakenberg was the first one to give it, and I was so excited at the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association. I got to meet David Hackenberg, the guy that was in that documentary all those years ago. Anyway, he called it, his bees were just disappearing. They called it Colony Collapse. Long story short, I got very interested in trying to understand what was going on in our environment. And I just finished videoing and studying Australian emus and Tennessee Fainting Ghosts.

And I was ready for a new project. So I wanted to video these bees. Now, once I started hanging out with a state inspector for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, I was doing video and photography of the different conditions that we were finding in apiaries, backyard apiaries, sidelineers, and stuff like that. And he suggested that I keep my own bees. That's how we get started. So rather than running around trying to see everyone else's bees in their own apiaries to see where the conditions were

and what they're facing as far as potential disease. And one of the very first ones I went to at American Fowlbrew, by the way. Moving on, I got my own bees, 2006. But I didn't want just any bees. See? I'm kind of a holistic guy. Kind of a tree hugger. So I try to find out about who's doing treatment-free bees.

They keep in mind, I'm brand-new to beekeeping. Just studying the bee and people who keep them. what I found out was there's a Weaver family, Daniel Weaver, who keeps bees in Texas, who was willing to go with survivor stock. In other words, let bees that required treatment that were overwhelmed by varroa mites, removing them, so they started segregation, right? So colonies that had low varomite counts over here, colonies that had met the threshold of too many varroaamites in them over here. And this meant reducing their operation by a huge percentage. So if you haven't seen it, I hope you'll go to their YouTube channel,

which is Bee Weaver, I believe, and see Daniel Weaver talk about his beginnings because he's a very interesting guy. He's an entomologist. He's an attorney. He's an academic. He has all these backgrounds, and he's a generational Weaver family guy,

a beekeeper guy, right? So genetics. And kind of went against the grain, even with his own family, about treatment or treatment-free. but he went the treatment-free route. And so that got my attention. So those are the bees I want.

That's what I want to do. I don't want to have to treat anything because it just doesn't feel right. So the question about what changed, I'm getting there as quick as I can. I'm in a rush. And so what happened was I got those, but I couldn't get packages of bees from them.

So this meant I had to kind of do advanced things early on as a beginning beekeeper. And so I got packages. packages of bees, but then I had to wait till they get established. Then I had to fly in the queens and I had to re-queen my colonies. So then I would have treatment-free bee colonies. Okay. So we're talking 2006 and 7 early on. So then what happened was, of course, we have to count mites. So we're doing alcohol washes and stuff like that. And there are a lot of people that do not like and do not want a state inspector coming to their property. So my point is, more information the better. And by the way, that state inspector is the reason I'm keeping bees. In the first place, he's the one that told me to keep bees. He's the reason I'm here right now.

So thank you, Kent Castor. I'll name him. Why? Because he retired just this last year. So anyway, when a bee inspector comes to your property, you have a wealth of information? right there. If you're like me, I'm a prober. I like to know what's going on with everyone. Whatever your job is, I'm going to ask you a million questions. So I want to know about be inspectors. What are you seeing at other apiaries? What's working? What's not working?

What are the trends this year? What's happening? And as he would unload his truck, about the third time he inspected me. So every year or two, he came around. And he would always ask, do you want me to do my count? Says, yes, I do. I want you to count every single hive. But of course, back then, we're talking 14 colonies, you know, not 43. So anyway, I would make him do the inspections. Why? By the way, when you get a bee inspector that comes out to your property, I can't wait. We have a brand new bee inspector. I have never met her.

I've seen her. I heard a little bit about her. I think she got her degree from University of Illinois. And she's here now in Pennsylvania. She's covered in our zone. I cannot wait for her to come up and inspect my apiary. Why? Because, you see, we got the guys crossed arms.

We don't need the man in our apiary. Yes, we do. By the way, this is a woman. So, when she comes over and she asks me, do you want me to look into every hive? Yes, I do. Because, see, there, she's going to have to open up all the hives. So what am I going to do?

I'm going to stand there with my phone. I'm going to take pictures. I'm going to ask questions. She's going to get into hives that I don't even want to get into hives that I don't even want to get into. I cannot wait for her to open my ivory beehive. I can't wait. It's going to be the best.

So I digress. Anyway, yeah, my mite numbers were really low. So my counts were low. I had nothing but that stock. And by the way, they were super sensitive. In other words, I didn't get the hot bees that a lot of people talked about. And so there are a lot of things to understand when you're trying to go. treatment-free because it sounds good it feels good and then you talk to these big

people in the V industry that say backyard people are doing nothing that's a waste of your time but you know it's kind of like every little bit helps and it does feel good and if I'm not treating right I'm I'm having my loads but they are surviving the mites so this is key too so in my inspections, very low mite counts, and in that one he had a hard time finding any mites in any of my hives. Good news. So, let's move on. What got me started treating? Well, things changed around me here. I live in rural America, in rural Pennsylvania. I live on a dirt road in the middle of farm country, and there were no beekeepers right around me. There was one through the woods, northeast of me. and so I wasn't having anyone meddling with my genetics so I naively thought I will set swarms out constantly

I will send out drones and my genetics because this stock is good stock and I'm going to flood the area and every spring I'm going to let my bees swarm and I'm going to again interact with the genetics in my area until I arrive at this kind of homeostasis of survivor stock that I have. That every time you generate a swarm, you just lost your genetics. My B-Weaver queens went to who knows where. So then I have residual genetics, but I'm also doing this in spring, which means I have winter survivor stock, which means I have good stuff going on. So that's my logic.

I'm just explaining it all. And the other thing was synthetic treatments or miticides. No way. I was at the point back then where if I had to put kuma fos and things like that into my beehives that's going to be in the wax and everything else can't use it when you have honey supers and things like that. I'd rather not keep bees. That's the way I thought about it now.

I'd be stubborn or whatever. So the thing is, they came out with softer organic treatments for mites. When you start to see your mite numbers go up, now, I was losing quite a few of my bees every winter, but not so much different from what those who treated were losing. In fact, some of the people that treated their colonies lost more than I did treatment-free. So it looked pretty darn bleak.

Why treat? If you're going to have treatment-free and treating bees kind of the same. The magic number was a cycle of about every three years with a colony that would build up. The colony would fail. So if this is a staggered thing, you're not losing 100% of your bees.

So it kind of built up the third year in a colony. All these issues were concentrated. And then eventually, let's say that colony was a win. enter debt out and they would think, well, that's not bad because I have these other colonies, plus I can get swarms and things like that. So the colonies that were one-year-old, two-year-old, would generate strong swarms in spring that would cycle those back. So I wasn't getting these three-year colonies through their third year very well. We were just kind of leapfrogging with the newer colonies being responsible for replacing my losses, if that makes sense. So this is why

record keeping is really important too so anyway there were so many people in research so many people that I respect that I understand the logic that almost looked at you like you didn't have a lot of wits about you if you weren't managing a vera destructor mite that is in fact in attacking your bees so the more I learned about that then what really changed it was when oxalic acid was approved so when Acylic acid became approved and it was sublimation. So I had the little pans, little thin ones.

You put so much exhalic acid in there and you can put that in. Now, remember when exhalic acid first came out, it was knocking the mites out. It was, you did a couple treatments. You look at your bottom board, and that's why I like screen bottom boards and removable inserts. You see dead mites. So you see a mite drop within 48, 72 hours after that treatment. and it's significant. So why weren't those mites showing up in my counts?

That was annoying to me, because what the oxalic acid was taking out, mite-wise, was not showing up in mite washes of nurse bees. So see how we learn through the years. So if you think you have no mites, I would and you want to go treatment-free. So there are lots of ways to manage that, to get them under control,

to get the mites down without treatment, but it's through integrated pest management. And then you can still end up with mites that hit treatment levels. The other eye-opener for me and why I currently treat when I have a colony that has a problem. and in some cases, if there's enough drift going on with all my colonies in my backyard apiary, I have slowly started to treat the entire apiary as one giant extended colony

because the drones are going everywhere. The foragers are blending with foragers from other colonies. Bees go, and by the way, when your bees are bearding on the outside of a hive and you get out they're really early in the morning and it's really cold and by really cold i mean like this morning it was 63 degrees um you can go out there with a marker and color pick a color for each colony the really big ones and uh the bees that are sitting really still their little feet are there they're all in a row uh make one colony the pink colony and send your grandson out there or granddaughter or anybody that has to do what you tell them and have them put a little dab of paint on

every thorax on that colony. And don't use that color on any other colony. And then you're going to see, now we put green on this one over here and fluorescent blue or something else on the other ones. So as you mark these, you will start to see through the day and through the week. These foragers show up at colonies.

They should not be at. This is a low-key, low-grade backyard experiment. This is what informs my treatment of my colonies. So the exhalic acid vaporization, I have other things in my pocket. I have varaxan this year. Two big packs of it standing by. I have phormic pro still in the packs 10 feet from where I'm sitting right now. In the event that I have a colony that has a problem that rises to that level that goes beyond the exhalic acid treatment method,

then I'm ready to hit them with number two, right? To make sure that the colonies are healthier going into winter. Now, this is where I got to do a real problem. If your only goal is to keep roughly the same number of colonies year after year after year, it's like an accordion. In spring, you have a die-off, and then they'll come back to you. If you end up, then you collect swarms and everything else, but you notice your numbers of colonies remains the same. But remember, you've also brought in a bunch of swarms, but your number of colonies has remained the same, which indicates a pretty good loss rate.

So the fact that they do reproduce so quickly that they can have multiple generations through the year means that it can appear outwardly that this apiary is holding its own, that it has the same number of colonies year after year they're doing great. But it's that die-off and then that refresher and don't forget the third year on every colony

that's treatment-free often hits a critical state where eventually they just die through winter. So, and I don't even know what the buildup is. I don't have the ability to test beeswax. I used to get all involved in. I want to send off the beeswax, you know, the old brood comb and things like that. And you would find out that kumaphos, for example, still shows up in honeycomb for beekeepers who have never used it. Think about that.

This stuff persists for a very long time. And so one of the things that sold me on exhalic acid was the fact that, that even before it was approved for honey supers. The testing of xylic acid, which is present already, before treatment in honey and beeswax. After treatment, honey and beeswax, almost no difference. This is why they considered it something they wouldn't even pay attention to, and they relaxed that restriction of no honey supers on while you treat with exhalic acid vapor. You can also do a dribble, And so that's pretty much it. So that's what I started doing.

And when I realized that that, when you see how many mites are dying, you're missing mites. So then you might think, well then go into Survivor Line bees, go into Darwinian beekeeping. Because it seems okay, Darwinian beekeeping.

That's almost what you're going to have to do. But why couldn't I sustain that? And the reason is, this is what I think. See, I don't know for sure. But if I look at my queens, they change colors. They really got light and golden. I had really dark, almost black, and black and amber-toned queens,

which are fantastic wintering queens. And then during swarming, and then when your bees mate and your queen comes back and what they've done genetically mixing things up, I end up with these lighter queens. Because now have beekeepers near me that don't even talk to me, that are commercial that have an entire different line of bees. So my ability to have any genetic control over what's happening in my area is gone. So, and even with, like I'll just use Daniel Weaver as an example,

they had to go to breeding grounds well away from where they are. And if another beekeeper came to where the drone yards are and their queen finishing yards are, these things like that which count on genetic isolation unless you're doing um you're going to create breeder queens from instrumental insemination but then you're going to that doesn't generate enough queens so now you have to have queens from those and now you have to have the genetics that's what we have drone yards that's why we have queen finishing yards and that's why they have to mate and you're saturating an area but another commercial beekeeper shows up and now you have not controlled your

genetics anymore or sometimes an old timer just stops keeping bees in other words they have a bee art a huge bee art it becomes unmanaged and now those bees are just going everywhere too so your genetics can fluctuate so much um so i always i'm ready you know to be treatment free i would love that to happen the best i can do is support those who are doing treatment-free research i was very happy because when I was taking courses at Cornell and they had a list of viable proven treatment-free lines of bees you know the Purdue ankle fighters are in there all these other strains of bees were in there the bee weaver line was not there was not mentioned and then most recently Randy Oliver did a talk about that and he did mention Daniel weaver and I believe you published

that in the American Bee Journal so they're getting recognition now for all these years and all those losses and being ready to stand and only deal with treatment-free survivor stock bees. So that's why I support them by buying their queens. And so I reach out to other people to buy queens if they've done really good genetic isolation and stuff. Look at the size of these operations and the number of colonies it takes to get down to what is going to make those breeder queens, which are very, what I want to say is genetically expensive and expensive to get and have and use.

And so in some cases, it might be 30 colonies out of 1,000 that qualify for that. So then I start to understand, yes, I understand why these people say a backyard beekeeper doesn't really have a big impact. So all we do is manage what we have in front of us for as much as we can, for as long as we can. And I know that I would not have passed my program work. at Cornell to be a master beekeeper if I did not have a treatment plan. You have to have one. Maybe it's different now, but it wasn't then. Because the point was if you don't treat your impact, this is the part that sets on me too. The impact of being a treatment-free beekeeper is that you

really still have to manage everything and you have to be ready to call a colony that's loaded with mites. because we are impacting beekeepers all around us. So if we can get everybody to be responsible and do IPM and do genetics the way survivor stock, the way people are supposed to do, if you're trying to go treatment-free, if we get everybody to do that, that can work.

We're not in the Arnot forest here. We are in a place where people buy bees just willy-nilly from all kinds of places, whatever's going to get them the most honey. because my colonies do not produce huge amounts of honey. They just don't. So there are all these tradeoffs at play, and I realize I'm mudding the water, and if you're a new beekeeper,

the bottom line is I try to give guidance on both sides of the fence. From 10 years' experience, being treatment-free, the accordion, losing, you know, hiving swarms, filling my stock back up, losing bees through winter, spring comes, swarms, expand them back up. I never lost all of my bees. I never lost more than 50% of my bees. But that's how I arrived at where I am. And let me tell you, when I started treating for bees,

it was the first year I had 100% survival. I saw a significant difference in overall colony vigor. And that is just by getting the varroa destructor mites down and removing those pathogens that they carry with them. the virus loads that they carry with them. I want you, if you're considering that, to look deeply into what's really happening to your colonies under the stress

of the Vroa destructor mite. And we don't, of course, we can't get rid of the mite 100%. So the long game, genetics. Backyard beekeeper, you have to manage what you have. So that's just, that's my opinion. I'm trying to tell you how to go. So for Dennis, I understand the confusion because I have viewers that are treatment-free people.

They stick to that. And if you can do that without having a single swarm, and if you can do that without doing anything else with your genetics, by bringing in swarms and new queens and engaging the environment and getting away from other beekeepers, I think you're living in the sweet spot. Life is good for you. I no longer have that here. I'd be happy to get a bag.

Question number six comes from Nancy, Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Watched a video this week of a very experienced beekeeper, putting his extracted frames in the open outdoors for the bees to clean up. I have always put extracted frames right in the freezer for a few days, saving them for the spring. Isn't putting extracted frames out in the open in fighting robbers? Or is that what I should be doing? I don't worry too much about the frames being cleaned up.

They're going back to the bees in spring anyway. So we're talking about spring and winter and all that stuff. This is a recent question. So anyway, robbing stations. Let's talk about that. So the other thing is, why would you put your frames of honey in, or drawn or extracted frames in the freezing? because once the frames, I don't like them to go straight to storage, like right out of the

instructor into the hive butler totes. When I put them out of the frames into the hive butler totes, then there's still a lot of honey on the surface of it because we extracted them. So there are a couple of options. Well, there are many options, but one is to take those frames and put them back on the colony you took them off of. Let them clean them up 24 hours, get them back off before they start to back fill those cells. So that's one way of having the colony that you took it from. They can clean things up and then

they're kind of good for storage because the reason that frames that get put into the freezer, mostly that's a concern for cut comb. So if you're cutting comb and it's capped honey in little squares, usually it's four inches by four inches or two inches by four inches and there are a lot of ways to do it. I've done, you know, Ross rounds. I've done basically all that, even the foundation of those frames and then just cut it out that way. So if you're doing cut comb, you definitely need to cycle that into your freezer. And the reason is sometimes there are tiny eggs that are laid in there or there may be larvae in there that we don't want developing. So cycling them through the freezer is really important.

When it comes to extracted frames, not so important. because the extracted frames, as long as you've got ventilation, so if you've got fan or light, or it's when you close things up and put them in hives and put them in storage, you run the risk of wax moths and things like that. So the robbing station, as far away on your properties, you can get it downwind from your bees. Put that, you know, what I do is, I'm sorry to keep mentioning Hive Butler, totes but I'm going to by the way if you order one you can use Fred five to get a 5% discount on your purchase what would I get from that nothing so it's just they just

offered that so anyway I rack up there's 10 frames we'll go in there deeps mediums shallows whatever you want and I close them up right next to the extractor then I wait I don't put them out first thing in the morning especially this time of year. Why is that? We don't want to feed the yellow jacket wasse and the bald-faced hornets and the European hornets and stuff. We want to feed our honeybees. So in fact, I talked with my wife about this a little more. I actually want to build a rack that's raccoon proof.

Because if you forget and leave them out there overnight, the raccoons come and they pull them off and they dump everything out and they lick everything and it ruins the cells. you have a bunch of smash-up cells because they licked it all clean so anyway if you can make some kind of rack that's away from raccoons and possums and stuff so wants to raid that stuff at night put them on the ground raccoons and skunks are going to get them too so anyway i wait until it's 10 or 11 in the morning and the honeybees are actively foraging and then i put them out in a consistent location because what those bees were

will do in the space of two or three hours out there saves me time because it's still in the hive butler tote they're still in there i don't even take them out i put the tote up on its side frames vertical pull the lid off put the lid underneath let the bees clean it up sunset comes along i go out there i put the lid on it throw it in the wagon take it back and put it inside the building So the bees got distracted. And one of the reasons that, like it says here, it kicks off robbing. We're in a transitional point right now. The golden rod is starting to kick in.

So that's very valuable to the bees. It's going to be a huge nectar flow. So will asters and things like that. Those will kick in. All the other stuff, all at once. We're at the beginning of a major nectar flow for us here in Pennsylvania. And since you're also in Pennsylvania, you're going to deal with this too. So this is a robbing zone right now.

Watch bees checking out other hives. When you see scout honeybees flying under a hive, checking the back, really pinging on the edge where the top of your hive comes together and they're avoiding the front entrance or when they're in front of the entrance, they're moving really fast and they're kind of ziggin around looking for that opening.

We're in a high robbing potential time. So what this does, your robbing station, that's when you put your stuff out and get those bees occupied. So twofold, they glean honey from it. Because even though they're just cleaning the surface of the honey from the cells and from the comb and everything that you've put out there, it doesn't seem like a lot, but think of how many flowers it would have had to visit to get that.

So we're occupying them. The other thing is you want to see where they're headed. So when you've got your hive butler toad or however you want to rack them up, when you put them out there, watch the bee. I tried to get my supervisor out there nine years old to stare at it for a while tell me where he thinks they're going he says they're going up so I knew he was on to them what they do is they're going up in this big kind of corkscrew because they're orientering they're registering where that robbing station is and then they go so if they're

going and when they do that they go back towards the apiary those are mine I'm good if I have a disproportionate number of bees doing that but then they go northeast of me they're going to my neighbor so it's not that I don't want his bees to have any honey it's that he should know that his bees are getting honey for me and the same thing you don't do open feeding either you'd be open feeding a neighbor's bees for example while they still have honey supers on so it's part of being considered of your neighbor. We don't want to spread stuff. I also don't want him doing it and my bees going over there. I don't know if his comb and if his honey is free of diseases. I don't know. But I do know, remember, based on what I talked about earlier, that my apiary is a community. Whatever one of them has, they basically all have. So that's why I'm okay with open feeding right here with my own bees. it's also why I wait until midday when my own bees are scouting that spot.

I don't want bees to think it's worth their time to fly 2,000 yards to come here to get a few remnants from unexracted frame. So I like that. I do do it. And then once they're cleaned up and the little bits of wax and stuff that ends up on the bottom,

you put that right in your wax melter, collect a bunch of that together it's going to make really good candles later so a lot of reasons to do it but so yeah that's those are my thoughts people can still do anything they want question number seven comes from butch traverse city i travers city michigan where is the video you had with a honey extractor base you designed i want to make one like it okay i don't know if see i thought i did a video about it So if you'll watch the end of today's video, so go through the credits and look at the end, I'm going to look it up and I'm going to attach it at the end, but it really isn't like an instructional video. It just shows it in use. So all it is is a wooden triangle. So what I will do is I'm going to draw up.

Here I am making a promise. I'm going to make a drawing of that platform, and I'm going to put it on my website. what's the name of the website the way to be dot org what page should you go to when you get there prints and drawings because that's where we have the hive prints and drawings and this one's going to be these are going to be hand sketches by me no AI no fancy stuff so i'm going to sketch it out and show you exactly how i've made it it's just in it's like an a think of the capital letter a with a cross piece through it and the two legs that extend far that accommodates your bucket then it's bolted from underneath so these things are

glued together bolted together and heavy-duty casters underneath and I will put a little demo video on there too that just shows what it looks like when it works and the whole principle is that because your honey extractor is sitting on that it is not restrained to the ground so it takes the stress away from that central axle that everything spins on and so instead the whole thing just kind of moves in a nice easy ellipse right and it takes the load off of it and it also means that for the backyard beekeeper it's on a platform that has wheels under it and you can wheel it into the corner put it away when you're not doing extracting i don't have an extraction room i just have an area with all my other bee stuff that i use to extract honey

So then sometimes I need to hose it out. It's on wheels. We'll it right out the garage door and out onto the concrete and hose it off. Let the bees clean it up. Whatever I decide to do. So I will do that. It will be on the drawings page and I will try to take pictures and post those two. I'll do something. You'll have the information and at the very end of today's video, if I remember, you'll see that little just a video of it. action I guess all right so highly recommend you do that by the way it is fantastic moving on to question number eight comes from Peter from the Ville of Morris in Vermont follow up previous questions as you're in the northeastern part of the United States the northwestern part of Pennsylvania but just north and next to a very large cornfield how do you test honey or or any corn spray or seed contaminants.

Thank you. So I don't know what that farmer thinks because every time a piece of equipment's out there in the corn, whether it's a sprayer or the farm machinery is so high tech these days, I run out there to make a video. I don't know if he thinks I'm from Greenpeace or something and I'm trying to, you know, narc him out or show what he does. But what I'm doing is I'm getting stock video of farm equipment in action.

And he goes through and spray the corn. I don't know what he's sprayed. These farmers today are so big you don't get to talk to him anymore that there used to be a time when the guy that owned that field had a dairy farm. There were eight dairy farms on this road, eight family farms. There's one left. Because somebody came through and offered him a ridiculous amount of money for his farm. Well, actually, that's not the way it went. A guy pulled up in a pickup try, the farmer that owns these hundreds of acres, at the time. And he said, hey, want to sell your farm? And he goes, yeah. And he like just made up some fictitious number that was so astronomical. Nobody would buy his farm. And then the guy just

drove away. So he thought that settled that. So anyway, what happened was the same guy comes back like a week later and it says, I'll make that price. I'll buy your farm. They sold the farm. that guy bought the farm they left to this day the farm house is empty well it's not owned by the person that owns the farm because the same person that bought that farm bought several farms all up and down the highway here and so we don't get to talk to these people so as far as what they're spraying the other thing is they used to have to put a sign at the end of in next to the road when they were putting down seed they would name the seed or something it would be montan or whatever and they would also list any herbicides

or pesticides that were being used. Something must have changed legally because you don't see those signs anymore. And I don't get someone to talk to. I do see that guy sitting in that field for long periods of time while he waits for his tractor to recalibrate and waits for it to get a satellite connection and waits for the software to update before he can do anything.

And apparently we're not too far from having tractors do this. Not here. It's only a 300-acre area. but these large expanses they have tractors that are going to be like teslas they program them they tell them what to do and the tractor has no farmer in it it just goes and does its thing that is modern farming so i'm glad i shared that part with you because i stare at things and study things that pay attention and stuff costs way much way too much money so as far as the pollutants the toxins what are my bees getting into a lot of people might be interested to know that your bees do get corn

pollen and I did participate in testing and my tests came back really clean so not too worried right here for my bees but keep in mind how far your bees my bees are flying for miles in every direction so the good news is well it's good and bad these farms are not farming so it's crop farms corn and soy corn and soy corn and soy that's it which I would like to see change I missed the days when they had the other farmer he was interested in forage for his cattle so sometimes he had alfalfa out there and if they had alfalfa my bees are going to be all over that so anyway I participated in pollen studies that's what we did we collected pollen every

single week I collected plant samples so the entire plant heads so these are here's the farmer field here's Fred's property right next to it I took samples of the entire plants that were adjacent like within just a couple feet and so definitely getting sprayed definitely part of the soil treatment and everything else. There was a time where it was the wind was blowing and that farmer, whoever was working for him drove a herbicide system down the line and I went way into my property and took out three trees I just planted and everything. That was substantial stuff. I have no idea what they sprayed on there. it was pretty devastating and nobody to talk to because you know a couple of trees what do they care

so anyway all my stuff came back clean i submitted the pollen uh got my printouts uh was very interested in the study university of vermont was part of it um i believe they sent the pollen to cornell for testing and uh so all my stuff they were interested in neonicininoids neonicinenoids which people call Neo-Nix systemic pesticide. New York State banned them. So I was told Pennsylvania is headed the same way where they will ban them also. I don't know what Vermont's doing.

And since Peter's in Vermont, maybe he can find out what's going on up there, but I know that those beekeepers up there were not happy with what they found in their pollen. So that was interesting stuff, but it also was a feel-good thing. And if you want to know, for example, where you are, where you live in the United States, what the pesticide loading is.

You go to a website, by the way, B-Scape, B-E-E-E-S-A-P-E-A-P-E-E-A-P-E-E-E-A-P-E-E-E-Scape. Put in your location, see what the pesticide loading is. My numbers are way low here. So I don't know what they're using, but the pesticide loading is very low, so that makes it good. So the contaminants are not bad. That was a good news. Question number nine. Tom Flippott, T-O-M-P-H-I-L-P-O-T-R-T-2-49 YouTube channel name.

Any suggestions for books about honeybees, it would be appropriate for preschoolers. Are there some better for boys or girls? Thanks. So that's today's thumbnail. Those pictures, that fine artwork is from, we should actually, we should bring in the supervisor.

and have him do his book picks for the week or the month or the year or whatever. This is the book. If you're an elementary school kid or you're trying to get people interested in bees at an early age, because child psychology plays. Look at the size of it. It's kind of proven that kids, when you say, go get a book and I'll read it to you. When they're four and five years old,

the size of the book makes a difference. these little tiny books. Nope. So this is a top-rated book. So for those of you who are listening, it's by Candace Fleming and Eric and Roman, Honeybee, The Busy Life of Apis Malifera. And what's really good about this, aside from the fact that look at the awards they've won, this thing is full of fantastic illustrations. So these are paintings. Looks like maybe they used acrylic on these pretty good stuff but the write-ups are just enough to keep you turning the pages but this has a high wow factor for little kids kids love to see pictures and then want you to explain it to them so you have to use the bee voices and stuff so this was an easy one to make this recommendation

uh for those of you in the past who i've remarked to that My grandson checks out books from his library about bees and he fact checks them. And when they're wrong, he's not very happy about it. And I have to say that if you're being fact-checked by a 9-year-old and your book doesn't hold up, that is a book to avoid. So anyway, this is a great book. I'll say it again. You can get it on Amazon anywhere you want.

For those of you don't want to just Google it and find it. Candice Fleming, Eric Roman, Honeybee, The Busy Life of Apis Malifra. I'll put a link down to the video description. This is a standout. Head and shoulders, wings and thorax, above all the others. So, very good.

As far as one, for girls or boys being different, I don't know of any distinction between the two as far as what they like. So now we're in the fluff section for today. Thanks for sticking with me all this time. The very first thing I want to talk about is water. The bees are going to known sources of water. Now we have a big pond.

Well, big. It's 120 feet across. Never dried out. Great year. The water level stayed high. You can hear the bees at the pond constantly. That's good news. We also put out water in pants.

I did a quick study because I wanted everybody to do my survey, which is on my YouTube channel. And if you go to the survey, they're still live. but of course it's tapered off. The predominant response was it made no difference what the water that people were putting out for their bees, no difference what it's in. Now that's very different than what I'm seeing right here. It's the funniest thing ever to me to be in the rain.

And yes, I go out in the rain. I like being out in the rain. Rainy days are awesome. So we have rain coming next week. So anyway, in the rain, I go out by the pond and honeybees fly to the pond in the rain to drink water and then fly back through the rain to their hive. Your guess is as good as mine.

But my experiment is ongoing as far as a vinyl, it's the bottom from a planter with a rock in the middle of it, and then glass pie plates. So pirex, pie plates, with a rock in the middle of that. same rock, same water, different vessel. They empty the glass pie plates every single day. That's a lot of water.

And there's always some water left in the vinyl ones. Now, all vinyl is plastic, all plastic is not vinyl. So what I wanted to find out, is this the same thing where you are? Do they go for this glass over vinyl? Would they know the difference? so I don't know if it's the color of it because it is beige colored. I don't know if that makes a difference. There are bees on both, but they empty the glass plates.

So I'm going to put out more pie plates because also it's a bird bath. It's good for any number of things. But for me, glass has worked. And the reason I bring it up, water. Once you start putting it out, keep it out there. Okay, so the flow is on to. You're going to have to pay attention. Again, this is for the Northeast.

in the United States. Goldenrod kicks in our last nectar flow. It also goes hand in hand with late season swarms if you don't keep up with them. Now the frustration is you can do everything that every beekeeper tells you to do. You can expand the hive ahead of time. You can put extra frames on. You can open your entrance reducers for those that do that. I don't do that. But this is a nectar flow coming up. So you have some choices. If you can't lift boxes and you don't have horizontal hives, which by the way are easy to manage. If you have the vertical hives and let's say you did double deeps, which I don't recommend, but let's see you did it.

You can go in there and pull from your double deem, so the upper box, pull the frames of fully capped honey. And go ahead and harvest those or put them in totes or storage until you get enough together to make it worth your time to go through uncapping and spinning out. And have other frames to go in. Now where do you put those frames? That's important. So often when we're looking at these boxes that are honey supers you'll see the number one frame maybe the interior surface of it has all the comb drawn out

but on the outside of that it's not complete and then you'll see the number 10 frame if it's a 10 frame box the inside is fully drawn with comb but the outer side of that not fully drawn out not complete. So when we pull out these fully capped frames right you have to be a really ready to put in drawn outcome that's been cleaned up. So we'll take these out number one and number 10 frames or number one and number eight if you have eight frame boxes, put those dead center and put your almost full frames all the way to the outside. Because it's not like brood. If this is a brood area, we want to keep them in exactly the same order. We're trying to keep the brood together, make it easy on the bees. They've arranged everything in their own special way for brood, kind of

keep them cluster together right when it comes to your honey super push your empty frames withdrawing comb in the middle because they're going to backfill those again first so this way you can harvest frame by frame it does require that you get into your hives about every 11 days during a nectar flow and but it keeps the bees working the other thing is let's say you open your hive and it's wall to wall which we have the situation right now unfortunately wall to wall honey right to where they've attached to the inner cover and even that little burr comb there is full of honey too you pull it off honey drips everywhere by the way when that happens you do a little twisting you see the honey's dripping everywhere close it right back up twist each box a little bit and realign it because that breaks all that intermediate comb between those boxes

and then go and continue your inspections on another hive and come back to this one because while it's closed up your bees will clean all that up inside then you can come back to it you can even do it the next day so then you go to the next hive and then you can do those inspections and remove any honey that you want but now it's wall-to-wall honey and you're not ready to extract so you're willing to super you're going to add another box lift off the top box that's full of honey put your box that you want them to fill just under that so that would be the number two if this is a if it's a two box hive right now and you're adding a box, the one that's full of honey goes on top, the next one, your honey souper goes underneath of it. If they're moving some brood up into that second box that you just put up on top,

then you can't rely on them not putting brood in the box of frames that you're putting up now that you want them to process and fill with honey. You may have to use a queen excluder verifying that your queen is down in that bottom box just so you don't have brewed in your your honey super. So in a perfect world, it's a deep box, it's a medium super that has a little bit of brood in it, but then there's a honey bridge and then the box you put on top of that does not get brood in it. Unless you're one of those people that puts an upper vent, upper entrance, something like that. I don't do that. I have a single entrance, no top venting. So those are some options and it does help them then backfill it.

Because sometimes when you have a box that's full of honey, wall-to-wall, and you just want to super on top of that, and you find, ah, they're not even touching it. And then they swarmed. Well, sometimes the bees inside sense that that is full, that that's a honey cap, and that now they think their hive ends right there, even though you and all your generosity provided them with more room

for honey to be stored, and they ignored it and didn't draw it home. and things like that that you needed to be done. This is why it's particularly hard for new beekeepers that don't have racks of drawn comb ready to go and swap out wherever you need it. So that's food for thought. The flow is on.

Let's see, pull frame, center, okay. Wait till noon for cleanup. We already talked about that. Two Queen Video for the, Keepers Hive. People have been asking about that. Don't blame you. You've been waiting. It's been late. Had visitors here and we set up the two queen hive system. So this video that's coming up is going to cover from unboxing the two queen system from the Keepers Hive because I paid for it through their fundraising campaign and setting it up, putting it out in the B yard, setting on a licensed stand,

painting and finishing it, how we put the frames in it, and then my visitors went and collected super splits. I did my super splits from one side, she did her super splits from the other side. And so now we have all these bees representing six colonies, composing two colonies, each with a queen on each side, and it is in service. It's going to going. It's kicking. So that's coming up. We are going to finally put that video out there. And another thing that I often fail to mention is I want to thank the people that are my patrons. So the Patreon members. Keep in mind that this channel, you never have to pay for a membership. I do not make you watch advertisements or get interrupted by advertisements mid-reel.

All the ads run at the beginning or the end or if you stop and start. Those patrons I really appreciate because that money 100% of donations to this channel gets cycled back to equipment that I use to produce content for you. So I want to thank you for being here. I hope that you learned something today that was useful and I hope that you can handle the heat that's facing all of us ahead and that your bees are doing well. Also, thanks for being here.

Have a great weekend. Thanks for watching.