The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 320 summer is nearing an end. Are you ready?

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

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

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, August the 22nd of 2025. This is back here, beekeeping questions and answers episode number 320. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please go down in the video description, and you'll see all the topics listed in order,

and some really good links and stuff that you may find valuable, useful, expanding your mind, more information and resources. Okay, so you also might want to know, what if you have a question, what if you have a topic that you want me to look into? Well, please go to the way to be.org and click on the page mark contact, fill out the form, send it, and there it will be. And maybe it'll be here on one of the Fridays. So let's see what else. This is also a podcast, so don't forget that. Podbean, The Way to Be podcast.

You can also just Google it, The Way to Be podcast. And guess what? you'll find out it's carried by like seven different podcast companies. So chances are you can get it right in your phone and not wreck your car. And I highly recommend you take your earbuds out so that everyone around you can also hear the podcast and benefit from the wonderful beekeeping information that you're going to receive right here. So what else is going on? Well, during the past week, we've had lots of rain and everything.

Rain where? The northeastern part of the United States. the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. And I'll bet you're wondering if you had rain the rest of the week, what's going on right now? Oh, well, that's good question. Let's find out. So the temperature outside, 76.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 24.6.6 Celsius.

2 mph winds. That's 3.2 kilometers per hour for the rest of the world. 66% relative humidity, which is fantastic. There's so much activity, all the bees, of course, they're buzzing. Because what happened? We had a lot of rain. We had overcast skies. We had inclement weather. And that means that when we get a weather break, like right now, today, Friday, the bees are out doing what they need to do and they're bringing in pollen. This is a chance for you, the backyard beekeeper, to go out and look at your landing boards. Because the question came up recently while we're talking.

How often should you get in your hives? When should you get into your hives? If you're looking at your landing boards and you have got 20 or more, 10 or more, let's drop that in a half. Pollin loads per minute. Sit there and count them this time of day. And then you'll find out, and what time of day is this time of day between 10 and 2? Mid afternoon is peak usually. Anyway, if you've got 10 or more coming in per minute, chances are you've got a laying queen, no reason to inspect the hive.

You can tip the hive, you can lift the hive, you can do things to the hive to find out if it's heavy with honey. and if it is, maybe consider supering it. We're going to talk about that today a little bit. But unless you see low activity, no activity, no pollen coming in, or why that distinction? Why 10 per minute? Because if you get 5, 4, 3, or 1 or 2, remember that if you've got a laying worker, they're still raising brood.

And what's the brood? Drones. So if they're raising drones, they're going to need some pollen, which means there'll be some pollen going through, but that's a colony worth inspecting. So what else? Ultraviolet UV index is 8. Sunburn Day.

So wear protection. You go out there. Good weekend ahead, though. Good weekend head right here for me. It may be different where you are, but this is a beekeeping weekend for sure. There's a lot that can be done. So the swarm risk.

I'm actually going to comment on that every Friday from now on. The swarm risk is moderate. If it's warm after a storm, expect a swarm. and I've got colonies right now that have so many bees in them. I don't even know how they fit in. I was looking at an observation hive last night in the way to be Academy building, and there are so many bees you can't see the comb on either side.

Why are they staying there? Why aren't they swarming? I mean, that's the purpose of observation hives apparently that they're going to generate swarms, multiple swarms a year, which means you get new queens every year, multiple times a year. and new genetics every time, but I don't like that particular colony, the one that's wall-to-wall bees, two layers thick, can't see the comb. She is a golden abdomen, probably Italian, I don't know, but based on the amount of brood and the fact that every little cell that opens up, she's laying an egg in there.

She is not like the carniolans. And so we get issues. I have issues. They're just going to swarm, and I want to catch them when they do it. not marked either, by the way, that queen. So the reason 66% relative humidity is good is because they don't have to beard all over the front of your hives or under the hives or up under your hive visors

and roofing and things like that because they can dehydrate their honey pretty darn quick right now. They also dug into their honey. So for those of you who like to know what the weight of different hives are, maybe you use hive monitoring systems, right? And they lost weight. all of a sudden well that's because of the weather it rained and it was at a time when you have a lot of brood

therefore they turn on their honey stores and they start consuming them and then off it goes now they're getting lighter which they're making up for right now air quality how about those fires in canada air quality here is good and uh let's see what else is going on last friday i showed a piece of equipment fascinating piece of gear this is um a hive tool that is on a retractable tether so that whoever has it doesn't lose it and look at clips on your belt loop so your utility belt for your beekeeping and this particular one belongs to the supervisor and this is my second week now going into testing up because I asked him because I know he wouldn't lie to me he's nine years old I mean those kids they don't make stuff up are you watching the Friday Q&As yes grandfather Okay, good, just checking in on you. Because last Friday I said I have his hive tool. And I showed it on the Friday Q&A last Friday.

So if he watches it, as he says he does, then he knows where it is, and yet here it remains. And wasn't he even out in the utility building this past week doing what? Sterilizing hive tools, because he likes his principle of leaving a couple of flat hive tools in every single hive by itself, so we don't spread disease, hive to hive. I thought that was great.

Very self-starter, very industrious. He had them all laid out. So how's it going? Everything's good. Got all the hive tools you can think of? Yep, they're all here. All right, then. Second week, testing. Let's see if he actually is watching, and if he is, here it sits.

So insider information there. The other thing is, during the past week, we had a sudden swarm. sudden, well, you know, it was the end of the day. We look outside. I did look up into a tree. There's a swarm, a big one. Can't let it go. And all the grandchildren are here. So what do we do? We made a video about it and included them. So if you haven't seen it, please go to my YouTube channel, Frederick Dunn.

And you'll see in the order of current videos that the grandchildren help with a swarm. And it's a lot of fun. And we had a good time doing it. So if you haven't seen it, please watch that. The other thing is, during the past week, I did an interview a Zoom presentation, with Hive Alive. And I had questions for them, myself. If you don't know, Hive Alive is a supplement. They have a syrup, they have funnet, they have easy feed,

they have a lot of products. Anyway, they're out of Ireland. And what they wanted for me was a brief presentation about winter prebs for your bees. Please go to their YouTube channel, which is Hive Alive, Big Surprise, and watch that interview, because the thing is I learned some stuff about it regarding can you overdose you know what are the feed differences what about storage what about temperature parameters how long is the shelf life of that pollen paddy stuff like that and I actually got new information and I've been using them for a while so please check that out what else do we have

do do do do do do let's talk about what's going on outside how about that opening the opening was extensive I'm sorry about the length of it it. That's because there's a lot going on out there and I am an observer. So I take my beverage with me and I bring a umbrella chair and I sit and I stare at things. Not troubling at all. Anyway, the number one thing I would like you to consider in your own backyard and this is ahead of the fluff section, which will be at the end of today's Q&A. Water, please provide water everywhere you can think of it. Be consistent about it. The quality of water, the location of the water, a consistently filled drinker for your bees, which by the way here also gets visited by my free-ranging chickens, which are pretty funny. But there's been a change today. So what I want to point out is,

aside from having water available for your bees in a very predictable location in a consistent looking container, we have several containers in a row in the shade on these flip-top picnic bench, slant benches, you know, the back of it, flips, becomes a table. And so there's a change now. What's the change? Well, they're going after high salinity water. So that is not the same throughout the year. But for some reason, right now, they want salts and minerals in their water over fresh water. Now, that does not mean that we don't have bees, leaving the highs that are getting fresh water and bringing that back. We have another group of bees, another group of foragers, water specialists who are after high mineral content water. So you might want to know how much salt

should be in it. Now we did these salt tests years ago. And I did that to determine, first of all, do they even want salt in their fresh water? Apparently they do. And once we determined that they did, then what kind of salt would they have a preference for? So we did a bunch of different sea salts, and we included pink Himalayan salt, which is not technically a sea salt, it's just salt from before pollution happened in the air. So therefore it's somehow better. So the expensive salts, the cheap salts, let me just cut to the chase. Number one was Morton Sea salts, which probably comes from the Salt Lake area,

you know, the flats in Utah, something like that. Anyway, the bees are on that one teaspoon per quart. within the past year someone wrote me there had been another study about salt toxicity salinity toxicity to bees how it's detrimental to them and they wrote me a message full of exclamation points about how i was recommending sea salts now not to work out the details of that other than to say that when i started with light salinity a teaspoon two teaspoons three and so on and the bees landed on the one teaspoon per quart as the preferred salinity right the mix that is actually, by the way, the non-determinal level.

One teaspoon of sea salts per quart of water was non-d detrimental. If you increase that, don't put out salt lakes, things like that. That is not as good and not as easy for the bees to collect. So, long story short, one teaspoon per quart, sea salts. Put that out there. Morton Sea salt specifically. If you go to the Morton website and you always order sea salts, like instead of getting it from Amazon or Walmart or wherever you go.

Tell them I sent you because when you do that, you're going to pay exactly the same as everyone else, and they have no idea who I am. So moving on, saltwater and demand, Morton Sea salts, nectar and pollen. What are the sources? What are the things they're really after out there? Goldenrod, number one, by far, right now. And I do get people saying, where's this goldenrod blooming? Well, it's blooming on my property. I don't know what's going on where you are, but you can hear the golden rod before you see it almost. That's an exaggeration. You can see golden rod from the road across fields and meadows and everything else. But high productivity on goldenrod. Huge fan of it. Don't mow it down. Jewel weed, by the way, which is also known as Touch Me Nots. They're starting to visit that. Most of you won't even see that because it happens to grow in the wetlands around here. And you have to really take some extra time.

away from your hard work, away from your committed duties, and you have to go out there in the wetlands and spend a lot of time. It's important that you go out there and spend time and stare at things until you see where the bees are going, see the jewel weed they're going into. And around this time of year, people get alarmed, and they see that their bees are coming back with a stripe down the middle of the thorax, a really off-white stripe that's kind of hourglass shaped, and they're wondering what's causing that, what's happening to their bees.

Well, let me tell you what's happening. happening jewelweed or some other similar plant is happening to your bees. And that's because when they go into it to get the nectar, the jewel weed has its pollen on top. And so the bee brushes its thorax on that. And guess what happens? Your honeybee cannot clean its thorax completely on its own. Watch their range of motion. It's limited. That's why the hourglass pattern. It's like a windshield wiper that can't clean every edge of the windshield. They leave this little trace behind. So now you can be like a genius on social media and say, oh, it's probably jewelweed, because I just know things.

Anyway, jewelweed, clover, consistently, they're on the clover. Still good, not as heavy as Goldenrod. However, because golden rod, bigger nectar flow, we can just consider milkweed done. I need more varieties of milkweed that will extend my milkweed into the fall. All of my milkweed plantings have failed when it comes to the other varieties. So as soon as I figure that out, if I can get a really big patch going of showy milkweed or something like that, I really want to do it. Cosmos, fantastic. They're all over the cosmos. Not only that, it's really good for native bees.

In the opening sequences, I also showed morning glories. I didn't see any honeybees in the morning glories, but I could hear the buzzing in the morning glories. And what was that from? Bombus. It was from bumblebees that were doing what? Buzz pollination. So if you just can be quiet, if you can just be quiet, if you can just, just be around morning glories. And at what time of day would that be the morning? Because it's morning glories. So anyway, you stand out there and you just listen and you might hear a really faint buzzing and follow that sound and you will nine times out of ten find a bumblebee pollinating morning glories.

It's pretty cool. And I just got one bumblebee leaving. I didn't get, I wanted that full audio. So that's a goal this coming week to test out my. audio rig and try to get the really good sounds of bumblebees vibration pollinating because that's what they do on other things too all right so cosmos strong sunflowers really good virgin's bower by the way virgin's bower looks like it should be poison ivy but it's not it's an ivy but right now the white flowers are blossoming all over the place i didn't see a lot of honeybees on it but i did see um there were a bunch of

butterflies on it. So at least three different species of butterflies were on that virgin spower. Joe Pieweed finally is blooming. It looks like ironweed. Ironweed has a dark purple appearance. Joe Pieweed, more of a washed out kind of pinkish color to the blossoms, at least here in Pennsylvania. And so pollinators are on all that stuff. So with all that said, let's jump into question number one, which comes from, how about this for a YouTube name? Wild and Wacky Wade. So anyway, that's the YouTube name. It says the worker bees look like they're bowing to her.

We're talking about in front of the hive. And in front of the new hive, and I know they may be using their wings to fan the pheromones around, but not sure. What are they actually doing? As if I wanted to get into beekeeping, would this be a good idea to try getting into my first hive, getting them started okay this goes back to the video the thumbnail of that video is a queen on a clip

and she's hanging on a fence and it says rejected under her and that's because we collected a medium-sized swarm there were two queens in it one queen was ignored by the bees in the swarm they gathered around the other one and we put them all together then when we put the queen by herself into another high-five number 44 by the way which i was supposed to inspect on the 20th but we got rained out so that's why that did not happen they're still alive they're still kicking there's pollen going in so it's not over with yet that's yet to come um so the thing of it is they look like they're bounding and that's true because the bees when they line up to ventilate a hive they lock their feet onto the landing board they put their heads down and they also put their

abdomens down and i'll explain that distinction abdomen down head down reducing drag and then of course And what they're doing is they're lining up with other bees in front of them, and they're fending ahead of them, and they fan over the next bee, and they fan over the next bee, and they fan out the entrance. Bees are very good at understanding airflow. So I'm just going to derail this conversation for a microsecond. If you are putting a fan in a window, right, it seems natural. I mean, I grew up in a house that did not have air conditioning when I was little.

I was little I was in my dad's photography studio also which had air conditioning in the studio but the apartment did not so we put a big box fan in the window seems right you put the fan in the window takes up the whole window it seems normal right you got the wall fans in it and you turn it on and you move a bunch of air up okay do you know that does not move as much air as if you had taken the fan and put it on a don't know, a TV dinner tray and moved it inside the house a little bit and left an air gap between the fan and the window interior, right? Then you open up your window, you turn on the fan, now you get more air moving out of the room and out of, out into the outside, right? Why is that?

Well, because now, not only is the air passing through the fan, but the air passing through the fan is gathering air around the fan and also blowing that out in constant. concentrating it through the window. More air movement. And if you want to get all sciencey about that, and if you're a homeschooler and you want some science for your kids, right, you've got this window that's open that the air is going out of, put the fan in the window, go to another window or door in the house and stand there with your anemometer, which is an instrument that registers air speed, and stand there and record the airspeed. Or you can do it at another open window somewhere else. in the house. Record the airspeed with the fan in the window, then move the fan slightly inside

and go and record that airspeed again. You'll find out that more air is being drawn in as more air is being pushed out. Walla. This is what the honeybees are also doing. If you look at them inside the entrance, which is hard to do because we're outside. But if they all lined up in the entrance itself, first of all, they're impeding traffic, right? But the second part of that is not as efficient. So the bees that are lined up just inside, just away from that interior entrance, right, at the bottom board of your hive, those that are moved in just a little bit are moving more air because they're also channeling the air that is around the bees. And then those that are out on the landing board are just helping carry it out. But they don't do that right in that entrance because that, of course, doesn't move as much air.

And the bees figured that out on their own without an anemometer. It's really cool. But that's why they look. I can understand by somebody who would look at that and go, wow, they're bowing and worshipping the queen, or they're living fans, which is what they're doing. Now, inside the hive, they move around in different patterns, and they circulate air through the hive.

That's why they don't need us to circulate the air inside the hive. They don't need us to provide a second entrance at the top to help them move air throughout the hive. because these honeybees are experts at cycling air through a hive exactly where they need it to go. In fact, when they're building their honeycomb without the aid of beekeepers who, like me, put a bunch of frames in there, and then they put comb between the frames and around the edges of frames, and they monitor bee space, of course, and maintain that. But they're creating air channels as well as physical transit channels.

So then they have a very efficient setup. That's why every time we pull a hive apart, every time we do an inspection, we're actually messing up their arrangement which circulates air. Because we move frames around. By we, I mean, people that aren't paying attention who don't care that the bees had all of this planning in place. Because when we move frames of brood to different parts

and we checkerboard frames of brood, which is something I never recommend, then what you've done is you've changed. change the efficiency of their ability to move air in a way that benefits the brood because that's a critical area even though they of course have to dehydrate honey they can move the air on their own they don't need or help to do it okay screen bottom boards yeah that's one of the things i did not like about screen bottom boards is how can the bees now channel and direct air exactly efficiently where they want it to be so if you use a screen bottom board which i do recommend

so long as it's enclosed because now airflow is not part of the screen bottom board configuration. It is just a screen that varro mites and other tiny pests might fall through and get away from the bees. And then, of course, we have isolation for those varro destructor mites. Airflow. So, anyway, is this a good time to start a new hive? No, unless you're in the southern hemisphere. Here in the United States, specifically in the northeastern United States. Now, if you're down south somewhere where you don't have really brood breaks and you don't have a distinctive coming out of winter kind of cycle where they brewed up.

If it's kind of constant year run, maybe you could. I don't know where wild and wacky weight is from. Okay. So, but here, if I were talking with someone and advising them, I would say wait till spring. In other words, learn all you can right now. Help another beekeeper right now. And then get all your configuration and equipment together. get all your knowledge in a line, make friends, get some fellowship of beekeeping going on,

join a club that is open-minded and accepting of scientific research and evidence and accepts people from all walks of beekeeping just for the sake of diversification of discussion. I think it's a great help. Join them. And then in spring, because I don't want you to buy your bees, by the way. I know I have friends that sell bees. I have friends that make all their money selling bees. But I'm here to tell you, as a beginning beekeeper, you don't need to buy bees. You can set up and collect swarms the best time of year to get swarms that are the best swarms you can get are in spring. That's because we already know. They made it through winter. Wherever they were, there's a prime swarm in spring. You get that queen that made it through winter. And you're going to get a big bunch of bees.

and you have the whole productive pollinator year ahead of you to build that colony. So I hope that helps. Study, study, learn, learn, make friends. Okay, question number two comes from Uncle Junior, 52. Uncle Junior snuck in a couple of questions. Did you ever review Bettercombe pre-drawn frames, says Uncle Junior. Yes. Okay, so one of the things I would like you to know as a listener and as a viewer,

you can always go to my YouTube channel, Frederick Dunn, go in the right-hand corner and look at the search bar and type in Bettercombe, B-E-T-T-E-R-C-O-M-B. And then you'll find out I've done several videos on that. When it first came out, I still use it now, I hold it in reserve. So the stuff's expensive, let's not lie. So Better Combe is a, in every biochemical way, it is like beeswax. What's the difference? It wasn't made by bees, made by people. Made by a company called hexa-cell, and then they're sold through BetterB, and it's called Better Com. Better Com, Hex-Sel, same thing. So, the reason to hold it in reserve, I think that stuff, if you buy it assembled,

right now, it's like $10 to $12 per frame, right? So what's the value of that to you? So you can look at the thing, because early on, like so many things, when something is new, so many bee kippers with all of their many decades of experience said it was garbage, wouldn't work, bees won't use it, bees won't do this, bees won't brood in it, bees won't, anyway, I just take that discussion away and remove opinion with practical testing. So I took it, you know, when it first came out, they told us to put it together with toothpicks. Huge mistake. Don't do that. Today, they're wire reinforced. So, and you can do it

yourself, you can put them together yourself with wooden frames, and you'll realize, wow, look what these little holes down the sidebars of the wooden frames are for, to run wires through, to hold things like foundation and better comb. And the cells are fully drawn, which means, this time of year, look what just happened. You have a colony of bees, as I did with my grandchildren, and then the weather turned, and the bees could not forage. They could forage, but everything's wet, everything's rainy, and so that's not good for pollen collection, gets diluted, so that's not very good. And so when you have a colony that's just getting started, what are they doing? They're building comb. And they're trying to do it fast because we don't have a lot of

time if you look at your weather timeline between now and when winter's going to arrive. We have to think about getting the colony to a status to where they can survive on their own, or we have to look at combining colonies. So something like better comb, especially for new beekeepers because they don't have a bunch of drawn comb on the rack that they can just go and get five frames of it and put together a nuke so we get something like better comb we put that in there the bees start working on it right away they'll put nectar and resources in it right away and once they build up their resources and get the nectar stored and get started they will eventually start to put eggs in it and then it will start brooding up so it is good for both honey supers and brood boxes i reserve it personally for

brood boxes because that's where the emergency is necessary. We want them to brood up fast. We don't want them to waste all the resources having to draw out the wax. Now if you're a purist, if you're trying to be a Darwinian beekeeper and you want everything to be as natural as possible, you won't be using better cone. Period. You just won't because it is not made by bees. Now on the other side, if you just want to get a bunch of bees and you want to make sure that they have what they need to survive and you're going to boost them at the end of the year because I've gotten colonies through winter that I collected in September and then boosted the brood frames with better comb so yes I reviewed it yes it was good and guess what it did all the things that I was told

by people that it would not do they did everything in it and with it that they do with normal beeswax comb so there's that and there were even not to get on the soapbox for very long but there were people that said that, and it's not like what happens when it gets in with regular beeswax? What if you're making candles, beeswax candles out of it, which can heal every malady known to man by burning beeswax candles in your house? Well, first of all, not scientifically supported at all. And the other thing was, so we took better comb, rendered it,

just like any other beeswax, made little candles out of it, and I also posted that video. It generated, less smoke than beeswax and burned longer than beeswax. So even that was not a good argument. It's not beeswax. So if you're a purist, you don't want it. If you just want to be able to get something going right away,

that's the stuff. There was something else called permacombe, where the cells were already drawn, they were already deep, they're made out of plastic. And I believe the inventor of that passed away, and it just stopped being provided. So I did test that early on. to and better comb was in fact better comb question number three comes from michael more

wonder if that's a documentary guy michael more anyway do you have one with hive alive so this very simple question comes from the fact that i was testing as i did with salt essential oils now for the viz because so we're going to go back and the reason i'm getting asked this question is hive alive was not around when I did this test. So I did it with, first of all, we established what water source did the bees like the most. So we had at that time, PUR, that's a filter system. So that became the benchmark water that we used. Once they decided that preference, then we went to what sugar syrup were we going to use. So we mixed the sugar syrup one to one. We used cane sugar, granulated sugar. And so by weight, four pounds of sugar, four pounds, which is

half a gallon of water, and then we filled quartz all the same. Now, because they did not have scientific evidence that the hive alive or honeybee healthy, pro-choice, beekeeper's choice, pro-sweet, all these other things that people were feeding their bees, there was no scientific evidence that they were improving the bees microbiome and all the claims because let's be critical thinkers and you know we can mention these names because the practical testing it's the bees that said what was working what was not not me not fred right so we put up all these quart containers all mix the same same water so we establish a control and then we put the recommended usually a teaspoon per quart, honey be healthy, bee-kipper's choice, pro-health, and so on.

Because Hyvalive did not exist at the time, it was not included in the study, but I think the results are going to be no different. Here's why. If you didn't have scientific evidence that what you were adding in essential oil was going to improve the gut health of your bees, you fall back on it improves colony strength. It improves colony strength. It improves longevity. It improves a lot of things that are positives for your colony, but they did not make the distinction between you always had to partner with sugar syrup. So they were not making comparisons with just sugar syrup without their additive. So what happened was they fell back on it's a feeding stimulant. In other words, it would get your bees to consume that resource, those carbohydrates

where in the absence of that, in theory, they would not, or not take a as much. So it was very clear, exponentially clear, that the bees preferred sugar syrup with nothing in it at all other than sugar syrup. So it wouldn't have made a difference. Now, their second preference was beekeepers choice, which I believe is sold by the Blythwood Bee Company. Honeybee Healthy is a standalone. And, uh, pro-health is from, I believe, Man Lake. You can check all that stuff out. But I know confidently, if we had mixed hive alive at their recommended dose,

which is much lower, by the way, into sugar syrup and put it in the lineup, the bees would have still gone for the sugar syrup with nothing in it. Hive Live is not going to attract them. Because one of the positive sides of Hive Alive is that it does not stimulate robbing. So you will hear a lot of beekeepers say, whoa, don't mix up honeybee healthy, for example. So this is anecdotal. But it makes sense. You put honeybee healthy and sugar syrup and you smell that way off.

If the bees have had any experience with lemon grass oils and things like that and they smell that, they're going to go after it. So it doesn't matter that hive alive was not added into that. We can do the test again, and it probably will, just to make sure. fill any gaps in testing there, but there's been nothing that's come out that is going to improve over that. However, I talked early on when we started today about sea salts and how right now there's a big demand for the salts and minerals in their water, which is regular water. And there was one thing that I mixed with sugar syrup that the bees showed a pretty equal preference for. In other words, when we had sugar syrup by itself and something with sugar syrup with something added into it,

the only thing that they had kind of a preference or were on equal demand for was the addition of spirulina. So spirulina comes in dry powder form. You can get it from all kinds of health food stores. It's for people. You can go to Amazon. You can just Google search organic spirulina. And it's like talcum powder. So you mix that stuff into your.

sugar before you mix the water into the sugar otherwise you just get clumps of spirulina around so the bees it's kind of like when they go to the edge of my pond to get water because they like all of the algae and stuff that's in the water they clearly prefer that so by adding spirulina we've added algae basically blue-green algae to the sugar syrup and the benefits to your bees are validated through a number of scientific studies, peer-reviewed studies, they hold up. It's good stuff. I often forget to mention it. It's very easy to get. It's not something that a lot of businesses are going to jump on as far as beef feed by adding that because it's so easy for you to do it yourself. Why not? Why not you

just do it? And put them out together. Put out sugar syrup by itself. Sugar syrup mixed with spirulina. Three tablespoons per gallon. And it's going to look almost black. It looks deep olive green, deep veridian green almost when you mix it up. See how it goes. See what your bees like. But I do not have a video test of that. I don't know if it's worth doing because I think that a video is not going to show anything different, but I might as well repeat a test. And when would we do that testing? Not now because honey supers are on. So we would wait until the end of the year when honey supers are off so this is late september and that's when we would do feed testing like that because we don't want to be putting sugar syrup in any of our own hives

that have honey supers on that we plan to extract from and we also don't want to feed anybody else's bees open-air sugar syrup or have that green spirulina honey in your cells by the way because it shows up it's distinctive when you're harvesting from winter dead outs and things like that it's clear where the spirulina ended up. Question number four comes from Uncle Junior 52. Can you overfeed syrup to a hive?

And that's an interesting question. What is the status of the hive? What are we trying to accomplish? So I'm going to make an analogy. Overfeed sugar syrup to a hive. So if a colony has what they need, if they're bringing in

everything, there's no need to continue to feed sugar syrup to a hive. I do not feed all of my hives and my apiary sugar syrup. The only ones that get it, it's maybe 5% are those that are lagging behind, those that are just starting up, those that have just been split, things like that. So they're under stress in some other way. They get sugar syrup. And this year, by the way, and I wish I had done it before, you know every couple of years I buy pollen patties and then I'll read a study from you know Florida State the bee lab that'll say that well little to know evidence that it benefits your bees and then you'll see another study from somewhere else benefited the bees these are

results longevity bigger brood because it filled the gap for periods of dearth so then we have to think regionally because all beekeeping is local you'll hear that a lot And it's true. It's because your colonies may not be nutritionally deficient where you are. So if you've got a colony, you're trying to boost. This particularly happens with, it's a division of labor. Let's think of it this way. There was a guy at Cornell that said that you needed a minimum of 5,000 bees to have a division of labor and have them to function as a youth social organization, right? So use social insects, which means they set aside their own demand, desire needs for the greater good, for the colony, right? So because, for example, worker bees

all have ovaries, they could activate those ovaries, they could produce eggs on their own, but they don't. They suppress them. And they just work their lives out serving the colony and making sure the queen is sustained. That's basically the whole thing, reproduction. So when we're trying to boost these colonies up, we often make a split. or something like that. And you've taken a bunch of brood frames and you've taken a bunch of nurse bees with them. You put a hive together.

And then you don't see any activity in the landing board. Why aren't they foraging? Why aren't they doing what they need to do? Well, there are a bunch of young bees. They are nurse bees. They are not at the stage of foraging yet. So what they're doing is they're also using up their resources without any replenishment of resources.

So what you're doing when you drop in a pollen patty or when you drop in sugar syrup, Those are two different purposes. The pollen paddies can help them retain the nutrition that they need to continue to rear brood. So it's going to feed nurse bees that feed the brood. The second part of that is the energy necessary. It dropped to 60 degrees here. That doesn't seem very cold to us,

but if you're trying to maintain brood and you're a small number of bees, then like hive number 44 that's out there, a little nucleus hive, underdogs from the start, these cold days, they need 94 to 97 degrees to keep their brood alive. So to do that, they're going to burn a lot of calories. Now, if they're heating the brood and they're trying to preserve them so they don't get below 94 degrees Fahrenheit, who's outside getting groceries now? So you've got 10 kids at home. You have to babysit them. You can't leave them alone. They'll go wacky-doodle or something, and you can't go shopping. So you need others to help you to bring you the

resources to bring the groceries home and that's where this number of bees and a hive count. We need water foragers, number one. We need protein foragers to keep brood going. Number two. We need the carbohydrates. Those are your nectar foragers. And sometimes your pollen foragers are the nectar foragers because they get pollen and nectar from the same plant. But you'll see bees on things like ragweed, which is only producing pollen for them. You'll see bees on milkweed which is only producing nectar for them so all of these parts have to come together to keep a colony whole and you as the beekeeper can decide I want this tiny colony to live and I'm gonna provide them with the things that the

foragers would otherwise be bringing in and I'm gonna free up that labor to preserve the warmth and the integrity of the environment inside the hive for the bees pollen paddy boop sugar on top and off they go. So it was very interesting that stuff works. But as far as overfeeding sugar syrup, should you continue to feed sugar syrup? You'll hear some people say that they won't take it if they don't need it. You can help create a honeybound situation even with a light sugar syrup because then you'll have discussions about well if it's not two to one, they're just going to consume it. Well, they actually can take one to one and put it right in cells if they want to you. lot of real estate inside your hive becomes dedicated to that light sugar syrup because it will take up

twice the space when it's fully wet as it will when it's ultimately dried down to that below 20% moisture content so it's it's why some new beekeepers look at things and they panic a little bit because entire frames were full of nectar and then they look at it in a couple of days and it occupies a third of the space at once did and they think they ate it all. No, they're moving it around and they're concentrating it. They're drying it down. So there's a lot going on there and you can help them. Yes, you can overfeed. So depending on the colony and what's going on, you end up having them fill every space. Now you run out of space for your queen to lay eggs and we need that workforce because what's coming up is winter and they're building to that end. Now, that will change near the end of the

year. Let's change the time of the year and let's stay with the northeastern United States. Could I overfeed sugar syrup once I hit the first week of October? In my opinion, no. If you had a colony that's light at that point, they're desperate. They're in jeopardy. It's up to you to make sure they get what they need. So when you feed that, then some people will say, wow, they're back filling the brood area too. I compare that to World War II. submarines. What do I mean by that? Well, they deployed with food under their feet. So they had all these canned goods that they max out their stores, they maxed out their ability to keep resources so they could extend their time at sea. And they would actually be walking on wood that's laying on,

or tarps on cans of food or something like that. And then as they continued their patrol, they would consume all that and get rid of the trash and then eventually they're just opening up more space but it extended food resources for the crew isn't that interesting that's how i visualize my bees in the fall if they backfill an area and i've got a bunch of bees at getting into november that are now on full cells of nothing but food resources where that cluster is they're going to ultimately eat the food resources that are in those cells and then they're going to convert that to brood production right then and there. So backfilling is what I equate to what they were doing on those boats, putting a whole bunch of food and resources underneath of their feet that later would be

open space again so that then they could do their normal routine. So does that make sense? Time of year plays. And not every colony needs to be fed, as I'll say before. I've got that observation hive right now that has problems. They're too productive. I don't know what they're doing. They are filling every cell with everything.

I would never feed that hive. Question number five. This comes from Trish in Craig, Colorado. How do you inspect your hives this time of year when robbing is prevalent and frames are bulging with honey in brood boxes? There are a lot of practices for this. When you're inspecting your hives, there's high robbing. what happens when you first crack the lid on your hive? So you pull the outer cover.

I'm a firm believer, outer cover, inner cover. Outer cover comes right off. It gives a chance to look at things inside, assess the situation before we pull off the next one. And if you're a top bar hive person, which, you know, I haven't done my first top bar hive inspection, this coming week. It's my plan.

I meant to do it last week. We got rained out going forward. They don't have an outer cover intercover. They got an outer cover that tips, but the top bars are basically the top of the hive. So anyway, the key is to keep them covered, but here's the thing. So if you're going to get into what box, for starters, what do you after? What do you want to see? What do you want to know? Do you want to know if they're full of honey? Okay. So the physical weight of that top box, crack that box a little bit with your hive tools, get it broken away that proboscil and heft it.

How much you need to know? Does it weigh about 40 pounds, 45 pounds? That is on medium super. It's full. What are you trying to figure out? Should I harvest? Should I super? Whatever you're trying to do, you don't necessarily need to pull every frame, is my point, to know.

The second part of that is every time you crack the frame, remember what I talked about earlier. they have bridged comb throughout the hive. Bottom of the frame from the top box, and then, of course, the top of the frame below it has bur comb through it. Often they fill that with honey, those cells. Sometimes it'll be drone-brewed. And so when you pull that apart, you get a bunch of honey leaking down. So that is the dinner bell.

Remember, at the end of the harvest, other bees are out hunting for those resources. You can start a robbing frenzy super fast. here's what you do. So you break the seals. You get everything going a little bit. Now let's say we're going from a medium box to a deep box below. Break the seals, give it a little twist. Just about 20 degrees.

Twist it the other way about 20 degrees and don't open it. Do you know what you just did? You just broke the cells that are joining these frames, top and bottom, and they're leaking honey out. But they're leaking honey out inside the hive. what's happening to it. The bees are cleaning it up. Where are they putting it in a bunch of other cells? Or they're holding it in their bodies. So at any rate, just a couple hours later, it will not drip anymore when you open that box. So that little twist and walk away. If you're going to inspect four or five hives on that day, go and do that break twist routine on every hive you plan to do that with that you're going to inspect.

The other part of this is where are you going? Do you need to go to the brood box? Have you got a queen of excluder down there? You want to go below the queen excluder and look at the brood? There is a fantastic tool that came out this year that almost most of the people that I talk to have never heard of it, which amazes me. It's the hive super lifter. That doesn't mean like it's a super lifter, like it's a great lifter. It means it lifts your super.

It can lift two supers at once. off your brood box, tips it on end, and then you can look down into your brood box without physically having to wrestle those boxes off. Plus, you did not have to break the seal between those top two boxes, and you did not have to take off your inner cover, and you flip the whole thing. Now, the only exposure is between your brood box and that first honey super. I made a video about it demonstrating how it works.

you get one hive super lifter and the rest you just put screws on the backs of your hives that then your hive lifter goes on to and it breaks a seal no stick in a hive tool in between the box it is the easiest way to look at a brood box so look at that there's a video step by step how to put it together there's almost nothing to put together and once these screws load-bearing screws are on your hives you're good to go So worth it, in my opinion. Now, the other part is, let's say we are on the box that we want to look at, and we're going to look frame by frame.

I'm going to tell you about a material that I want you to have in your inspection kit. Now, I have a background of fine art, so I'm a painter. I have rolls of canvas, and this seemed obvious to me. I was listening to Paul Kelly from University of Wealth. Okay. And he uses a heavy canvas, cotton canvas. They lay across the hive. They peel it back.

That is their inner cover, which is kind of interesting because it is a cotton duck woven canvas. The bees propylized it. So it goes right to the top of the frames of your top box. That is, again, the inner cover. You pull off the outer cover and then you just peel it over. What do you need to see? You want to see if these frames are full.

Well, if you're looking to see if they're full of honey, then you start at the number one or the number 10 or the number 1 and number 8 8 or 10 frame boxes and you're looking to see is that end frame full of capped wall-to-wall honey if it is that's a full box now you're going to pull it so these cotton duck canvas is something that I've used as an artist because we stretch our own canvas and you buy it I get it in 72 inch rolls but just for kicks and giggles for today I looked it up you can buy that stuff in 62 inch rolls by the yard. So 62 inches on the roll and one yard long and that's going to give you a whole bunch because you're going to cut them yourself. Cotton duck canvas. The heavier the better.

They have number 10 or number 12. So if you get number 10, I looked it up just before I did today's Q&A, a 62 inch roll one yard long is $13.90. And if you are a prime member, that's free delivery. So then you cut it in strips that match the top of your Langstroth box. Now when you're doing your inspection, you lay that on there if you're not using it as an intercover, you're using it now as an inspection tool. So you lay it over the top of it, that heavier canvas is 10 or 12 is not going to be blown off by a light breeze. You lay that on there and you just curl it back as you're looking at your frames. If you have two of them, you're covering the frames that you've already looked at.

So the only exposure, this keeps the bees calm, is calm er in the hive that you're inspecting and prevents the robbers from scooting in because you've been you know probing around with your hive tool and you slipped a couple of times trying to break the propolis you carved into some honey and now we've got bees zipping in there trying to rob it so because of you so now you can come in there with your cotton duck unprimed canvas and lay it on there and have a cover that works So that should do that. Question number six. Did I mention that that was question number five? Okay, so now we're on number six, which is Darlene from Montana.

It says they had a queenless colony, so I shook the bees in front of my other hives and let the bees decide which hive they wanted to join. I noticed a small handful of bees were killed as it tried to join another colony that was Queen Wright. Do you know why this is? Yes, I know why this is. So, okay, you had a queenless colony and just decided to get the bees into another colony and let them go to whatever colony they wanted to go with. I'd like to change that paradigm a little bit. And let's decide which colony we want to put them in. So rather than dumping them out, which is something that people commonly do if they have laying workers and things like that, I don't personally do it. but if you wanted those bees to go to a I would pick the colony that had the smallest workforce

and I would introduce them at the same time I feed the colony so in other words I would spritz them with light one-to-one sugar syrup with a little bit of honeybee healthy in it something like that or just the sugar syrup by itself with no honeybee healthy in it so what we've done is when we crack them open we gave them a treat sprayed them all down. Then you take the entire box and you add it to the hive with an escapeboard underneath. And we move all those bees into the hive at the time that we give them this treat, at the time we put the box on, and we've boosted that colony of bees. Now, where you took the box from, you're going to have bees, foragers, they're going to go back to that spot and they're going to

be looking for a place to live. Those are the ones we don't care about. Here's why they're foragers. They came back with resources. They're looking for their home. They'll find another home. And when they go to the landing board, what would they have with them? Groceries. They'll be welcomed.

So they are a much more appealing group of bees going in than, hey, I just got kicked out of my apartment because we're doomed and now I want to live with you. But if they bring resources with them or you provide resources and a treat at the same time that you introduce them

to the hive, their acceptance is going to skyrocket. Another chance that you have is you can actually spritz the bees themselves with sugar syrup on the landing board or you can dump them onto the hive, divvy them up and spray them all with sugar syrup as they get introduced. And that improves acceptance too. A little messier. But you can just, I personally would put them on another hive and combine the colonies rather than dump them out, be free and go where you need to go. so I hope those methods work combine them and then that's why I use the escapeboard because once they're down and in you remove that original box that they were in

and that goes to get cleaned up and if you've got honey and stuff in there you can replace like if you're combining with another colony and that colony has some frames that are not fully drawn with honey you pull their empty frames and replace them with full combs of honey from the colony that you're putting in

so you can max out their resources. Question number seven comes from Fane from Viroke, Wisconsin. Second year beekeeper and I did an inspection of my four hives this past Sunday. One of my hives was a swarm that I had caught on June 29th. And swapping out the bottom board and inspecting, I was shocked to feel how light the entire colony was. Two deeps plus two mediums. I could easily lift both boxes and the bottom board off the stand.

It was in much better shape three weeks ago. The queen is laying a great pattern, that's key by the way. And the hive is full of bees, but obviously off to a bad start in terms of preparing for winter. I took a 10-frame medium of capped honey and that I was going to harvest and I put it on the hive along with two quarts. quarts now i see personally i would not have done that we already have two deeps two mediums two mediums two mediums and now we have a 10 frame medium of capped honey that we're going to put on that i would not have done that um along with two quarts so in addition to two quarts of one to one

sugar water using the new apamay top feeder system i also added a pollen paddy in the middle feeding tray i was wondering if i should switch to two to one sugar until the hive is back to a solid wait. Okay, so this is just my take. This is just where you get an opinion, right? Just like if we sat down at breakfast and asked a bunch of beekeeper, what would you do in this case? I would not take a super full of honey off another hive to do it. All your colonies are preparing for winter, so I don't take their resources like that. The second part is you're on the right track. You have that APA feeder, which I do not have down here, which I did have originally. Anyway, the APA feeder for the 10 frame box has space for liquid and pollen patties all at once. And you've already

done that. So you put a pollen patty on and you put one to one sugar syrup, which is enough, by the way. Here's why I'm not worried about them. They have a huge workforce. Now, I don't know what's going on in Verroque, Wisconsin. You can go to B-Scape, B-E-E-E-E-E-S-A-A-P-A-P-A-P-E-E-S-A-A-P-E-E-S-A-A-P-E-E-Scape. Punch in your area, I see what kind of dirt you have. But of course, we have rain issues or we have, you know, growing issues of forage in your area. That website tells you what the forage quality is where you live. If you're looking at your landing boards and you're seeing a lot of resources coming in. There's a lot of bees in there.

You've got that cover on there. I also recommend putting a layer of double bubble over the top of that Apamai hive top feeder. Put a layer of double bubble over the top of that and put your outer Apamai cover on top of that. It increases the R value, knocks down the airflow. If your bees are conserving energy inside the hive, they're not burning carbohydrates as much.

Therefore, they're saving more of the resources that they're bringing in. And you're boosting that with one to one. That's what I would do. I would not put two to one in there right now. Personally, it's just my personal choice. And by giving them those carbohydrates, they will use the sugar syrup

that you're putting in the hive top feeder first. They'll go right after it. It was a great idea to put in the pollen patties. Those pollen patties this year have demonstrated that I have been a little bit incorrect in not using them in the past because even with pollen coming in the entrance at a high rate, inside the hive, they are consuming pollen patties.

When you are trying to boost a small colony and turn it into a big colony, that is a rapid route to doing it. And this is also why in the opening today I wanted to talk to you about that interview with the hive live people, you know, my mind was opened a little bit about, I thought, for example, if I was putting in Hive Alive as sugar syrup, right? Because I don't want Nozema. I want to put a smackdown on Nozema. Because Nozema robs your bees,

it makes them a little bit lethargic. You don't know this just by looking at them. But if you get into counting Nozema spores and you want to get a hemocitometer and set up a microscope and see what's in your bee gut, that's what kind of wakes you up. well, I need to do something about that. That's not good.

So if you find out that there's something like hive alive that knocks that down, you increased vigor. You've got a better workforce of bees in there. They're living longer. Every day that the bee lives longer, that's thousands of pollen visits or nectar visits that you're getting out of that bee that you otherwise weren't. And overall healthier colony of bees.

So I thought if I was doing that in syrup, then I wouldn't put a pollen paddy in there that comes from hive alive because it's 15% pollen, but it's also a dose of hive alive. So I didn't think you could do that, but apparently you can because it's the dose is the level within each food resource, not the amount of the resource. So I hadn't thought of it that way. And so now you can do that. So the pollen patties, the syrup together.

and if you've got hive live in the syrup, I know we're going to hear from Fane, I hope I'm pronouncing the name right, but I know we're going to hear from Fain and know that without putting that medium super on there, if that's already done, okay, but that's too big a colony right now. As far as the configuration goes, for me, going into winter, that's too many boxes. I would not do that. You would have been fine with that APMA feeder, which is a great feeder by the way. So, I think that's it. Number seven. I think we're going to hear good things.

I think that colony is going to gain weight. It's going to be fine because that big workforce is still going to go out there. Question over 8 comes from Robin in Westgrove, PA. I have frames of honey in my mini freezer. I want to extract. What is the best way to thaw it out? Will the frozen honey cause the water content to increase? And if so, what's the best way to decrease?

Thanks. Okay. Now I have a honey drying tent. They're very easy to set up. Vivo Sun is the company that makes them under $200. You build a tent. That's dust free and everything else. You put a dehumidifier in there. I'm only mentioned this is not my remedy for today, but I'm mentioning this because other people are listening that may have space to set up in their basement of Vivo Sun or something. Right next to your freezer, for example. So these enclosed little tents, that come with metal frameworks, you can hang fans and whatever you want in there. It's for people to grow stuff. But I use it to dehydrate things. I also put buckets of desiccant in there. So I get a 20% relative humidity in that space. So that alone with the fans running will dry your honey down. So let's talk about what happens when your honey is in storage.

Now, this is overkill. This is being overly cautious because of someone asked me for, advice I want to make sure the advice I give does the trick and sometimes the things I suggest are a little overboard and that's okay it's better so there are freezer bags that are available to people I've never had them I've never used them they're designed to put each frame of honey in when you put it in the freezer and that's so that you know frost and everything else of course doesn't form on the surface of your stored honey and the thing thing is that we think that once it's capped with beeswax that no more moisture can get into those

cells but actually it can to some level so you can actually end up causing fermentation in your honey because water's going to condense on it it's like you couldn't spray you know a frame of capped honey and expect it not to collect moisture so you can't dampen it or spritz it we want to keep the water off of it so today's thumbnail Because this is a small scale, backyard beekeeping. You can just put your stuff in a tote. What kind of tote? I don't know.

You use the hive butler tote, but those are not airtight. I'd like to point out, if you put it in a hive butler tote to thaw it out, then you're gonna have to put that tote in a big like trash bag, 50 gallon trash bag size. Seal it up, we don't want airflow. We want to control the humidity level inside that. So we wanna dry it as it warms up. So we wanna warm it up slow, right?

So put it in a tote keep it in your basement wherever these are heavy-duty big wise dry packs I use these for photography I use them for beekeeping I put them in my hive butler toads if I'm even storing frames I want a low humidity level inside the tote here's why even insects like your wax moths they need humiliation If it's really low humidity and you can drop it to 20% or something like that, they're not going to make it. They're going to dry out too. They don't like it. They need moisture and humidity. So desiccum packs. These are 500 grams. So these are the ones that you can recharge them. You recharge them in your microwave or your regular oven. Microwave is the best. And so the way you know is they weigh so much when they're dry, when they don't have moisture in them. And then once they're full, they weigh a little more. and then you can the instructions are right on it how to restore them they will draw the moisture out of the air while your frames are thawing you can put these in the bag if you've got a rack to put your honey frames on if you've already got them in a box and you just want to put them on a stand set these on top of that put your trash bag again around it because we want to control that microclimate in there and let these perform as a desiccant to dry out the air you can also if you want to you can put a humidity indicator in there but you'll find out that these will absorb the moisture of your thawing

honey and then you get it up to about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and process your honey that's my advice on that's really easy to do but these wise right packs I gave a presentation about cell phones this past week on Wednesday and that was one of the things I recommended that you have a dry pack tote just to put your cell phone in or your electronics or if you're a photographer you put your camera in there if you've been out in the winter freezing cold and you bring your camera in don't take the lens off don't uncover it don't expose your sensor put everything in a

atmospherically controlled tote and put wide-dry packs in there and it will dry it out as it gradually warms up then you go in and do the stuff you need to do same thing with honey you get a nice dry honey out of that and that's it we're in the fluff for today So part of it is I got a message from Premiere, which makes the Propylahives, which also makes Premier frames and other stuff, Premier Hive boxes. Anyway, it was an old message, and they told me they have a discount code for them. It's called Fred 10.

You should know. I don't get anything for that. So the Fred 10 code, all caps, F-R-E-D-10. So if you go to Premiere, use that. if you shop and then you will get 10% off. So I wanted to say that. Other people have codes and sometimes I don't even know about it. That's why I often say when you go shopping somewhere,

just tell them I sent you and you'll pay the same as everyone else, but apparently it's not the case. In some cases, people have written back and said, hey, I mentioned your name, they gave me free shipping, blah, blah, blah. So that's good. Premier makes the pro Prow-Lyves. So if I had to pick one thing that I like the most, that they are offering that they are making,

it is those propola beehives. Physically, the way they go together, the roughing up of the interior, I know, somebody's going to say, but I could use 40-grit sandpaper and rough up the interior of my hive. Yes, you could. Go ahead. This came out through research that was done

by the Minnesota Bee Lab, where Dr. Marla Spivek was. She was an advisor for this group that came up with the propola hives. the value of propolis to your bees and it works they propylize more which makes a healthier hive Fred 10 tell him I sent you all right so now I need to talk about the keepers hive that thing is a problem so here's what's going on we did a video and we put the keepers hive together we did a super split what is a super split well we go to a bunch of different hives because look

Look at the time of year. It's a tough time of year to be starting a new colony of bees. They're going to be underdogs for sure, right? So I have the two queen keepers hive system, which means two eight-frame boxes at the bottom, which takes up the space of two ten-frames. So they're sitting on two ten-frame bottom boards. They have a queen excluder. We have a divided full-size super on top of that.

then I went ahead and supered it here's the problem it represents six colonies of bees so on side one over here we put in six frames of brood two from three colonies this side I started with six frames of brood two from three colonies and I get overly ambitious because I found another colony that was too far ahead I needed to slow them down. Took two more frames of brood from them. Now I have eight frames of brood on one side, six frames of brood on this side. Did a cursory inspection of the divided super, full of honey, big problem. Put a medium super on that to get those under control. It's full of honey. I have a problem. Excuse me, the two keepers hive, the two queen,

hive system is too productive it's a good problem to have I feel like I have to work on the hives now or something instead of just look at them because it's gonna have to be super again here's what I'm gonna do to try to keep up with it I am going so now that we have honey supers on that are gonna be harvested no feeding no pollen patties I made a huge mistake I put the Apamehive top feeder on there and I put syrup and pollen packs in there. Brewed it up too fast, too productive, and too much honey. So no more feed, no more pollen patties.

And we're just going to keep going up. I wanted to put a flow super on there, but because I have one entrance going to the south and another entrance to the north, I don't have a side to harvest my, Flow honey.