The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A 323 September 12th Does the moon impact honey bee defensive behavior, and more.

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/qInKpqmMK4A

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today's Friday, September the 12th, and this is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 323. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. All the topics were submitted during the past week, and they're related to Back Air Bekeeping. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down in the video description, and you'll see all the items and topics listed in order. And below that, related information. information and links that will help you, I hope. So also, you may not want to look at this. In other words, you may be traveling or working or, I don't know, mowing your yard, or working with your bees, and you want to hear this through your earbuds. So go to Podbean. The podcast is the way to be. You can also just Google the way to be and way to be podcast and you'll find it. I'm sure to work. So all these topics were submitted during the past week and there's a lot going on. You probably want to know what's going on right now outside. Well, it's hot. and it's not raining. So what am I doing in here? Because I care about you. That's why I'm here.

So I'd rather be out there in the heat with my bees, which by the way is swarming right now, which does not make me happy. Let's move along. 75 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 24 Celsius. Pretty decent wind right now too. 4 mile per hour consistent winds. 53% relative humidity, which is fantastic because you can almost cut the air. It's so heavy with honey. They're dehydrating everything. So bees are bearding and yes, I hate to admit it, they're also swarming. There's no rain in the forecast here in the northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. So no rain, which means what for you, the beekeeper? If you're in my neck of the woods, it means that you better make sure that your bees have lots of fresh water available and water options if you can do it. So if you put out salted, water, water. for your bees one teaspoon per quart of sea salts also make sure that you have freshwater options out there too we want to keep our bees out of the swimming pools public pools are closed already kids are in school so mid 70s all the way through Tuesday here so this is it this is we didn't get this last year it's gonna

cause a dearth though which means that the nectar is going to back off which means what for the beekeeper high risk of robbing because bees are at their peak. I mean, they're swarming for Pete's sakes. And if they're swarming, they're healthy. They have enough surplus and there's enough going on in the environment that they feel triggered to go out because I've done my part. I gave them the space necessary to expand. We'll talk about that more. So if you look outside and you want to know, you know, I used to give the pollen report. I used to say, hmm, pollen high, and then kind of list what the items are. But that's not very practical. You know, why? Because a lot of pollen.

that are out there are not accessible or necessary or desired by your honeybees. So what could you do? You just go out there in the middle of the day around noon to one or two and count pollen coming in. And you'll be able to keep your own records, write it on a calendar so that you know when things are great in your area for your bees. And I started counting. You count how many pollen loads come in on the corbicula of your bees per minute. below 10 you got troubles you need to look into that hive see what's going on more than 10 we can make an assumption that there's a laying queen in there and that things are good and so i was looking at one and it had 25 per minute i just stopped counting then the grand monkeys are in school so i can't send them out to count pollen anymore i have to do the hard work myself air quality is also good

so everything's good what are they on Ooh, think about the opening sequences from today. Aside for the fact that they are on goldenrod, clover, sunflowers, maximilions, and the usual cosmos and things like that, the swarms are going on, but it was really interesting because part of what you're seeing in the opening sequence is a swarm that's going into a hive, of course, because I don't dump them in anymore.

I let them go in on their own. A couple of interesting things were going on there, Battle Royal. And by that, I mean, the colony that I thought was in. It was a nucleus hive, five-frame deeps in there. It had been inhabited by carpenter ants. And the carpenter ants out of the blue, as I saw the bees start to go in, they started getting really active and really animated.

And I thought, what is going on with these bees? And I saw guard ants were coming out, the big carpenter ants. And mandibles wide open, trying to bite the bees, and the bees didn't even care, and they just started flooding in, and there's a whole nest of carpenter ants inside the hive. the hive. And then while I was sitting there watching this take place, and of course I made videos

of it, which you don't see in the opening sequences. You just see the bees going in. Then I hear some wood being knocked nearby. So within 10 feet, the chickens are eating something on a half barrel. And I thought what's going on over there? Another swarm. That's why you see this ultra-close-up sequence of ants swarming. Ants swarm just like bees. They're related. They're used social insects and they also spread out and send their queens all over the place, which as soon as I'm done right here I'm going outside. I'm going to hope to get videos of them landing on different spots because they don't get very far. Ants are terrible flyers. So the conditions that are conducive to ants swarming are interesting too because if it's high winds, there's such bad flyers. They can't even go anywhere. They just get blown around. So that's what's in the opening sequences. That's why

they're there. It's warm. They're interesting. You should be aware of what's going on around your hives. So let's kick off with question number one. And that is from Susan Trelisse. T-R-E-A-A-S-E, that's the YouTube name. Can you add sugar supply to the outside near the entry? Hope there is a queen in the tiny colony. Okay, so this is about the top bar, be mindful hive that's out there. And when we did the inspection, the other inspections coming up, the follow-up, and it's going to be good. Trust me. Because we have to look at them to make sure that they re-queen because the queen was gone. They were kind of in trouble, a bunch of queen cells, and so we need to know what's going on. One of the issues was the fact that they were behind in feed. And so a lot of people wrote in and said, hey, you need to do this, you need to do that, and you need to try this and that and so on. Top our hives are not set up for feeding.

is there are some people that are so strict about natural beekeeping or Darwinian beekeeping that they don't want to feed anything. In other words, they make it or they don't. And that's fine. For those that want to do that, I invest in my bees. If they're behind, I'm going to give them some feed. So what I did was I went to the other side of the follower board because I noticed it had a little crack in it so the bees could get through, which is the space between two colonies. So just to lay it out for you, it's a top bar hive, there are entrances, it comes this way at each end. And then you can set up the top bars at each end. You can have a colony with a common space in between that they don't have access to because of follower boards.

So one follower board that I made in my foresight, I made it a little irregular. First of all, I've learned people are not comfortable around perfection. So I make errors on purpose just so that people, will be okay in my presence. And one of those intended errors is that opening that the bees I noticed could get through. And then I just poked holes in the hive alive easy feed packs, which I didn't really know how I was going to use them. They were just kind of sitting around in a box. And so I put those in there two at a time with the holes in them. And the bees went out and they've been through six of them, six packs, which is good news because that means they're all used up. And I could help

them out. But then what are you going to do after that? So after the packs are done, now how will you feed? Good news. Be mindful. Sent me a feeder. This is it. Of course I have to show their logo, but this is their frame feeder for a hive that does not have frames. Top bar hives just have top bars. And then the bees draw down their comb from the top bars and that's it. But this is, looks like quarter inch plywood and here's the opening has feeding slats this is interesting too the feeding slats are on both sides

and then I thought how will you know when it's full well this is wide open very easy to see and it does look like they use the sealant in other words that could just be wood glue for example it doesn't say so but if you use wood glue like Elmer's and use Elmer's wood glue

the ultra, the new super good wood glue. It is certified for immersion. So if you notice that's wood. So this is something else I want to talk to you about. I am going to make a video about it. You're going to see it. When we do the two-week update inspection, I'm going to show you these feeders and how they work.

I have two of them. So we are, for those of you who are concerned. We're going to take care of the little colony at the end, which are underdogs. We're going to put that feeder in place of the follower board. And then the follower board will go. just on the back side of this. So we'll have the entrance over here,

top bar, top bar, and then they'll have access to the feed here, and then the follower board will go right up against this. So that'll be it. It's going to work. But because it's wood, I want to make sure that we don't get any mold in there.

So I want to, for myself, you can follow suit if you want to. Light sugar syrups, so we're talking one-to-one, even lighter in some cases, because what I've decided this year, is why wait until the last moment and then heavy syrup feed them, hoping the weather cooperates,

hoping your bees don't fall in and drown and so on? This is a topic that I've thoroughly covered in the past, but this is why I'm doing it. I'm just trickling along, and these are for colonies that, again, are not going to provide us with honey supers that we're going to draw off and put in jars. These are small colonies like this top bar hive colony

that need our help. It's not across the board the entire apiary. So we're just going to keep them fed up. We're going to see what happens. Get them comb building, keep them comb building. So that's it. But this idea of setting a sugar syrup container outside of the entrance, not good. Remember I said robbing is going to increase. Colonies are maximizing their populations, which means they have a lot of surplus foragers. As the environment starts to go to sleep, because right now we're dealing with tall golden rod, which is kind of the last one. There are a bunch of different varieties of golden rod. In fact, one of them is even called early goldenrod.

So they cascade through, which is a fantastic thing. But I think golden rod's going to run out here within the next two weeks. And then what's going to happen, robbing? So if you put out sugar syrup for your bees outside the hive, first of all, that means any other colony can come to that, and they can get it, and they will. and then when that runs out, they look at whatever is nearest to that, which is the entrance to the hive,

and in they go. Because they're frenzied. They've lost their sense of reason. This is like Black Friday people, which is why I don't leave my yard. There's people out there. And when they need to shop for a deal, they don't even care.

They bowl over the Walmart greeters and things like that. This is honeybees when they need to get to something that they want. They have this frenzy. They need. to get as much sugar as they can for their colony to get through winter. This is how they survive. Don't put feed out right next to the entrance or on top of a hive. That's the other

place where I see feeders sometimes. Don't set them directly on a hive. That hive could be in trouble later. At the very least, they have to spend a lot of their time defending themselves. So for Susan, we got it covered. Please don't feed outside your entrance. Question number two comes from Dennis in Burlington. Iowa. I checked all of my hives last week, and although there were lots of bees, there was little honey in any of the hives. Very similar to your inspection of the horizontal hive you did recently, so that's a reference back to the top bar hive we just talked about. I figured it was the result of my hands-off process and letting nature take its course. I heard you say that you

needed to feed your horizontal hive bees after the inspection, or they would be in trouble. I shared my situation with other beekeepers in the area only to find that many others were in a similar predicament this fall, and many southeast Iowa beekeepers were reporting little to no honey to harvest right now. Last year this time, we all had lots of honey. I've been going about daily zeroing in on watching the Golden Rod, which is the big one here in Southeast Iowa, saw every type of bee or wasp there is in the area. showing down, chowing down on the golden rod, but no honey bees. Similar reports by others around the area. Last year, I watched them swarm the golden rod. Did a test this afternoon and put some honey out on the board to see if it would draw some bees.

No activity. I'm worried. Something is going wrong. And it says, help me, Obi-1. Okay. So, but here's the thing. Putting out honey, by the way, for your bees to come to, that is the toughest for them to get and bring back to the hive

and because of the high viscosity and everything else. It is interesting. Also, depending on how you've processed your honey, your bees are not that interested in it. It's heavy. If you put out honey right next to one-to-one sugar syrup, I'll bet you they go for the one-to-one sugar syrup. Now, if you put two-to-one sugar syrup out,

it's almost a consistency of honey. It's very thick, very viscous. So the other part is, how do you deliver it to them? If you have open surface area, expect lots of dead bees in honey. If you do have a feeder system that can protect the bees from getting in direct contact, the slightest wind, the slightest bump from another bee, they fall into the honey and they're stuck forever. They can't even get out.

So the sugar syrup is what I recommend. If you're in a position where all of the beehives in your apiary are light and you're trying to resuscitate an entire backyard apiary, then open feeding's okay. If you get a bunch of bees that are coming in from somewhere else, and you don't recognize them, you don't know their names, they look like strangers to you, then here's what you need to find out.

Are those your bees coming to your sugar syrup that you're putting out? We don't want to feed the neighbors. So you take dry powdered sugar, and you take one of those confectioners, sugar sifters. I have those. And then you dump them right on top of the bees that are right at that feeding station. Do you know what that does? First of all, it clears the feeding station out.

They don't like that at all. But you can see where the bees are going. And now we can follow these bees that are covered in dry powder sugar. And you can see what landing boards they go to. And if they're not going to landing boards in your apiary, because once they fill up, they go straight home. Stop open feeding. Because, number one, you're feeding your neighbors.

You don't know if they still have feeders out. or if they have supers on, this should be wrapping up here in my neck of the woods within the next couple of weeks. Third Wednesday of September, I will be pulling all of my honey supers and that's the end of it. After that, we can open feed if we're sure we're not feeding a neighbor's bees and or they've also pulled their supers and they don't mind. Now, if your neighbors out there feeding and they're beekeepers and they're open feeding, good for you. That means now you're bees can go over there and get their stuff. So see what's going on. But as far as my colonies are happy, so it's not something that's happening here. They are on the golden rod. They are in the

environment. So I don't know, sometimes we get alarmed and think there's a trend that there's some causation out there that we just don't understand. Or it could be also, and this is something I want backyard beekeepers to consider, you might have saturated your area. I know I have. So in other words, the buildup in colonies of stored honey is greatly reduced when we have a lot of colonies in close proximity to each other. When I look at some of these AZ hives set up some things that have 40 honeybee colonies, shoulder to shoulder, box to box, and three or four tiers high in a building, those are really knocking out the resources in an area where they are. so they need a lot of forage of every kind, nectar, pollen, all of it in the environment of support, not only those honeybees, but also the native bee and pollinators that are out there. So I know that I am oversaturated.

When I go by and I look at a single goldenrod plant and there's a field of goldenrod. And on the plant that I'm looking at, I see five or six honeybees within six inches of each other, that's oversaturation. There are too many honeybees. bees. And I'm having a tough time scaling back. I'm trying to scale back. I tried to do it last year. And the problem is I'm undisciplined when it comes to not collecting swarms. So I'm out there right now. I took a, I collected a swarm. I took the queen out of it. I removed the queen. I want to see the bees go back. No. So what they did is now there's another swarm on a branch. Where do those

bees go? Do they go back to the hive they came from? Which is what they should do. No. they joined another swarm so now I have a mega swarm on my hands right now while I'm sitting your docking to you a huge swarm that's covering an entire branch like bigger than a BVAC could handle even the Colorado BVAC that 10 frame deep can't take this swarm so I have a pickle here so taking queens away and letting them all go home doesn't seem to work either so then I end up hiving swarms and building an a period that's larger than it should be even though I gave away so many hives this year. And so maybe it's just karma.

Maybe if you give stuff away, more stuff comes back to you. I don't know what happens. But here, we are not having this problem, but I want you to think about the number of colonies that you have, and if you can reduce them, you may see a much higher per colony yield when it comes to honey. The other thing is with the swarms, this is stuff I'm going to talk about in the fluff section at the end,

But, you know, when the swarms are hived, they are spending all of their time and resources on the brood they're rearing. So you're not going to see surplus honey there. And they're going to need help, which, again, you know, is why people don't do anything with September swarms. So keep lots of water available. They really need that. Feed your light hives and pull back on protein and pollen patties, by the way. Even though I think the pollen patties have done fantastic work. this year and I've been using global patties that were well global was contracted to make

hive alive patties and they're the pollen patties which are 15% pollen which is like the top yield you can get in a pollen paddy and then we put those in tiny colonies and made from those big colonies the reason I say back off now is we don't want them to continue brooding up all the way into October when there's nothing in the environment to feel. them because what you have is a whole bunch of brood and what does a brood do consumes your honey see what happens so what we want them to do is kind of match the environment going into fall we'd like them to build super healthy this is my thinking so I'm just I'm just sharing what I'm doing and why so I decided this year because

I've never done it before I never put pollen patties on my hives so I put pollen patties on the smaller colonies because I want them to brood up and be strong and very fortified vitamins, minerals, stuff like that. And of course, the pollen, even during those rainy periods that we had. And it's been cold. By the way, how cold did it get over the past couple of nights? It dropped to 41.2 degrees. That's 5 Celsius. When it's cold like that, another time that they use a bunch of their resources. So anyway, the pollen paddies are going to build them up and give me these super fat-bodied winter bees, super healthy ones that are going to carry me through winter. They're going to do good. you're going to find out it's going to work and in spring what will that mean huge colonies which you

don't want i don't want these giant colonies that the minute the weather warms up they're swarming and making you go outside and do work i want your bees to match the rhythm of the environment i know this is counterintuitive i'm feeding them sugar syrup i'm giving them pollen patties when winter comes i'm going to give them hive-alive fondent packs because the colonies that had fondant packs on did so much better than the colonies that did not have fondant packs on them. They had rapid rounds with dry sugar in them that is not the way to go anymore because we had an extended winter. So they did so much better that now I'm just fondant packs.

It's easy. Take a whole box out there. You go colony by colony. You cut the hole in it. You put it on your insulated inner cover, whatever you have. And then you've got emergency resources for them when the weather turns cold. And you don't have to worry that they starved out because of you. See what happens?

So question number three comes from Scott from Zug, Zug, Switzerland. I was wondering if you had any experience with bee behavior around a full moon. I was in my hives the other day and my colonies were much more active and aggressive than they've ever been before. I was trying to figure out if it was the weather causing this, or maybe the bees were annoyed because it was the end of the formic pro treatment. Then my wife said that it was a full moon today and I thought maybe that has something to do with it. I know that the full moon affects some people's moods and was wondering if there was any evidence that it affects bees as well. Now when I first got this question, I thought, that's silly. I'm not even going to look into that. But, you know, full moons, you know, why does it affect a lot of people?

I'm not just talking about people that are Twilight fans or whatever. I'm talking about people are more active on full moon nights. There's something called the hunter's moon where you can go out and do things because you can see without a flashlight. Go out sometime in the dark when there's a full moon. Let your eyes adjust and see how much you really can see. You can see a lot.

And in the wintertime with snow everywhere, that's why it's called the hunter's moon. You can move around. You can be like a wild thing. So what about the bees? Does it really matter? Well, I did find a study. But there were differences.

there was a study conducted in Brazil that hemolymph lipid composition was altered by lunar cycles. In other words, it matched lunar cycles. And guess what the follow-on studies were after that, none? So that was literally the only study. But then we had to get into another group of bee species. So this is not apismalifera, which is what we're dealing with here. there were another bee species that also forages at night and during full moons as long as it wasn't heavily cloud covered they did more foraging so they did better at night night blooming plants wherever

these bees are not apismalifera and they were able to of course glean more resources on full moon under that light that's it that's all i could find so as far as making your bees more aggressive I could find nothing on that. However, I would like people to be aware because what is going on this time of year, unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, of course, because my number three audience is in Australia, so hello to the people in Australia.

What happens is we have a lot of animals that are also preparing for winter, which means their appetites are up. We have wasps and hornets, and all hornets are wasps. All, no. All, yeah, all hornets are was. All wass are not hornets, if that makes sense.

So anyway, their numbers are increasing. Dragonfly numbers are increasing. Predators on the wing overall are increasing. This stresses our bees because competition for resources, and they're being predated upon. So the other thing that happens to, and this recently caught my eye, is I was looking at my APMA landing boards.

if you don't already know, Aphamah hives are made out of plastic. Pretty sturdy plastic. One of the landing boards was all scratched up. Really scratched up. Do you know how many scratches it takes to really scuff up a APMA landing board a lot? So I had a skunk out there who is after my bees.

These, and so the thing is, when I set up cameras right next to that hive because I wanted to catch the culprit in the act, the bees were coming out and attacking me right away. So it was uncharacteristic for that colony, which meant they were ramped up, their defenses are high, and they're touchy bees because they're being attacked and preyed upon at night. So if there are things that change with your hives, and if you have things that are after your bees, then you can expect your bees to be getting a little more short-tempered with you as well.

So I would highly recommend trying to find out for Scott and others that find themselves dealing with bees that have a change of attitude, see if other things are happening with those bees, with those colonies. And then, of course, just be very zen about how you manage your bees. I was listening to a talk from Randy Oliver. And so people can antagonize their bees a lot, by the way. People that slam and bump and move and knock and tap on things

like my six-year-old grandson does because he likes to tempt face. He slaps hives. He does all kinds of things. Miracle of miracles, he never gets stung, and he doesn't wear any protective clothing. It's very interesting. But Randy Oliver said his background in martial arts and his Tai Chi methods help him move fluid and not bump and knock things around. And it's worth trying. If you go into your beehive and you want to see you've got a touchy hive. If they're already attacking you and you're half a across a bee yard, it's not going to work. But if you are one of those beekeepers, it seems to start okay, and, you know, it got into the hive, it took the lid off, took the inner cover off, everything seemed okay.

But then you bump something, you dropped a frame, or you set a box down a little too hard, and all of a sudden they shifted and started coming after you. If you could try slow, steady, non-percussion movements, then you may see that your bees respond to you in a very even way. I think about that all the time when I'm going into a beehive. I move everything really smoothly. I move everything quietly.

I don't have Randy Oliver's background, but it makes a lot of sense that they are vibration responsive. And so if we're knocking and clanking and bumping them around, we could get a rise out of our bees that we don't want. So that's just another thing I'm thinking about. So moving on to question number four comes from Erica Martinez. That's the YouTube name. It says, why are they called Africanized? Why not Europeanized or just call them killer bees?

Genuine curiosity, since killer bees are the hybrid between African land bees and European honeybees, but why are they just Africanized bees? This comes up a lot, and this is in response to a video that I posted, where a couple of beekeepers had a colony that got out of hand and just rinked. after all of their animals them he was stung through his bee suit 50 times their chickens were killed they had a chicken that had so many bees on it only the feet were showing that's an angry colony of bees so I volunteered to go there and assess the situation with them and so then because it's in the title or whatever that these are Africanized bees

people want to know why we're calling it that. Well, first of all, I don't have the authority to change the name of a bee. So when you reach out to entomologists, they're the people that like to correctly name things. So just saying, Africanized bees isn't actually the term we're supposed to be using.

What's the term that we're supposed to be using? Africanized honey bee. That's the official entomological term for it. So if you don't know, the Brazilian experiment started back in the 1950s. The whole point was in Brazil, they wanted to start with bees that could handle the high humidity, the high temperatures down there, and be used in agriculture. So an entomologist, a very prominent entomologist, brought African honey peas. So we have to name those things.

They were scudalotta, I believe. So I didn't write it down, but that is, Scudalata, the African honey bees. And then they came and they were blending them with the European honey bees because they wanted these mild-mannered bees that would have a high honey production and then they wanted to blend them with or hybridize them with these African bees. So then this hybridation became Africanized European bees. So and then what happened is in 1957 and there's lots of stories about this. One of the stories is

that the chief entomologist that started the study when he left to do something else he had a lot of people that were interested in learning about it so we had these kind of volunteers or students that were working that apiary and one of the stories is that one of the students said well i know why these colonies aren't doing very well look they have queen excluders on the front of the hives and if we took those off they would really be prolific and we wouldn't have to worry about you know the queens leaving because they're a settled established colony. This is one story difficult to validate this stuff, but 26 swarms emitted from that apiary when they took away the queen excluders that should have controlled the genetics and kept the queen right there. And because you understand

that when you have a queen excluder on the front, you do constrict genetic spread because there's only two ways that a colony of bees can get their genetics out into a geographic area, which is why it has to be controlled. Drones, the male bees and the queens themselves, because the queen can take off and start another colony somewhere else. So the queen excluders keep drones and queens in. And I could understand probably if somebody looked at that and said, yeah, it's too restrictive, let's get those off of there.

See, it wasn't just the queens that they were opening that up to. They're opening it up to drones getting out as well. So these are managed research colonies. So by 1985, they were in Mexico, and they hit the United States in 1990. That sounds really recent to me. But I guess that's when it happened. And that's when all those great movies came out about killer bees, and they had forecast. And they were going to move through the entire nation.

But remember, those genetics are for hot weather. So they don't do well up where I am. This is why that particular couple that this question is assigned to from Erica, is because they suspect that somebody brought up a package of bees from the south, and then, of course, it wouldn't winter here, but they did have time to build up. And Africanized bees are known to be incredibly defensive. In other words, their response is rather than send out 20 or 30 guards, which can be very unsettling for backyard beekeepers.

Even I've had people say they have hot hives and they just can't manage them, and then you check it out, there's three or four guards that come out, and they're very persistent. They hit your veil and, like, continue to rev against your veil because they're trying to get their stinger in. I get it. That's unsettling. You don't want that.

But it's very different, a situation like that, to a situation where a nurse came up to me at the Veterans Hospital and said that they had so many bees on his veil that he couldn't see through it. Covered in bees. That's a defensive colony. He did not want to talk about it. He would not let me visit it. his apiary. He did not want anything documented. So all I had was the story in the passageway

at the Veterans Hospital. But that's unsettling. Imagine yourself you can't see you get out of your apiary because you have so many bees on your veil. They want you that bad. So that's what happens with these really defensive colonies. And they swarm often. So they tend to be smaller colonies with a lot of cycles of reproduction. And they practice something that a lot of people are unfamiliar with. It's called usurpation. So when the queen, an Africanized colony queen, goes out and takes over another colony, they can actually move into a colony that has a queen, kill the queen, take over the colony as is, and they have usurped the leadership in that colony. So usurpation is practiced by these bees, which increases the speed at which they can spread

to other colonies. So their barriers are really weather-related. which is so it's all interesting they love warm climates they like warm areas they're in florida they're in our border states of course and a lot of people cannot stand them and some people choose them but small colonies not a huge honey production some people say they like them because they have low for romites and things like that but they're going to swarm all the time the trade-off seems to be not a very good one So why would you want bees that would attack and kill your pets? And try to kill you every time you have to work the bees. If you have to put on a suit of armor to go out there, what is the fun in that?

So personally, I'm a fan of bees that don't cover your veil, that don't kill your chickens, that don't attack your hogs, and sting through your bee suit 50 times because they're drilling into every little opening, every little nook and cranny that you have. So, but that's the history on it. they got here in the 90s and they're called africanized honeybee because entomologists have called them that and those are the authorities those are the people that can assign names to things question number five now this youtube channel name is a hard one the greats the g r8 stm 8

oh the greatest mate maybe that's what it means see quick like this clever easy fix Time will tell, will you plug with Bondo before winter? So what happened is recently, and I'm using this stuff on a lot of things, this is foil tape that's designed for ductwork. This, by the way, is one of the cheaper ones. And the reason that this comment came out is because I had one of those issues. You're going around, you're looking at your beehives, it's middle of the afternoon, and you see bees coming out of a hive where they shouldn't. Usually it's between the boxes.

Usually it's in the corner somewhere where the box joints come together. And they just don't hold up well. Or a screw was missed or there's no nail or it wasn't properly glued together. Any potential issue with the box. So then I thought, you know, because in the past I've wrapped those with, because winter came and I wrapped it with the same cloth that you used to protect your trees from bunny rabbits and stuff like that. But then I thought I've got this aluminum tape. and couldn't I just peel this off and stick it on there because I think the bees won't chew through it.

Ants shouldn't shoot through it. I mean, why did I have it to begin with? I'll explain while I'm talking about it. Because we talked about feeding in winter. This is that B-smart designs insulated inner cover, which, by the way, you lose the little black plastic thing. So I have this wooden thing for that. This is your insulation insert. Ants can eat this stuff.

so there is an entrance there was the way it comes but you see my illuminated or foil tape on there that's what I put it on there for because I don't want I don't need the upper vents and stuff so the whole point and it's a good point

by the designer be smart designs to have the option for people to have ventilation through the top and then just let the bees regulate it but what I found what's happening is the bees would even chew this that's right bees can chew

polystyrene. So I wanted to not only produce it so that the ants can't chew into it because ants were moving into these. This is your insulation block. Inside here there is a hole in this riser column. Look what's here. Foil tape because I don't want my bees to get in here and start excavating the polystyrene. So now I just put this tape on it and it's also on the inside because I wanted to double layer that entrance. And I don't want anything getting in because I never use it. Summer or winter. I don't use top venting anymore.

And so that's why I did that. So I had this tape. And then that led me into other things, other uses. So then I was going to repair it. And I thought, is there better tape? Does this stuff come in different grades? Because the other thing was, I don't know if you've ever peeled this off on the end. leave a buddy tab here that means you peel it up and bend it over so that you can

access it later why we call them buddy tabs I learned that in the Navy I guess when people got taped up or whatever there's a lot of radcon stuff occupational 107 workers I think they were because I used to be one yeah where you walk into the reactor compartments and stuff and you taped all your stuff and then this made it easy to peel it off the other thing is leave the tape on the back and then it's easy to peel apart later so each time you take a little piece of foil off of it leave some of the paper so that then you don't have to hunt around and you don't need long fingernails to get in there is one better than another yes it is

look at this stuff and look at the paper backing by the way and of course i left this too this is extreme i saved the label this is extreme temperature and uh general metal repairs and it's called 330 x and the company is Nashua trusted tape products extreme temperature and minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit to 260 degrees Fahrenheit so I thought is the adhesive the same and it isn't this adhesive is stronger is the foil the same it isn't the foil on this one is a little better than the foil on this one so we can use this for beehive repair and I'm just this is my first year with it so the quit and it seems like a good thing is that a temporary fix well I want to see if it's going to stick all winter long I'd like to use it in every place where I've ever used duct tape in the past I want to use the foil tape instead foil tape I'm sure rodents could chew through it but they're less apt to chew through it the metal they don't like it they have open rooted teeth I don't know if you've ever chewed on an aluminum ball before but go in your

kitchen right now get some aluminum foil and roll it up into a ball and chew it and see if you don't get little electrocutions through your molars if you've got fillings you know so i won't be using bondo what i am doing is in the future whenever i put a brand new hive box out of my apier it's going to be glued 100% clamping and gluing works when things are brand new uh when you try to do it after the fact once it's warped once a joint has failed it's a huge pain So the other part of this is, you notice one of these is really wide, the other isn't. This stuff is expensive, by the way, so you won't be using it to wrap whole hives or anything over the top like that. But I could actually, I thought about this after the fact, why did I just wrap it around the corner?

And it worked really well, by the way. It kept the bees from coming out. But I could have wrapped the entire joint between both boxes with this stuff. And then in spring, if I need to cut the boxes apart, I just take a box. cutter and go right through it because the foil cuts really easy why not just do that ants are going to eat this stuff up and a bunch of people viewers like you were really good about it they said use uh there are these plastic squeegees that they used to really push it on and really get good contact with the wood if you've used this stuff i'm finding more uses for it all the time

there's a guy that does electronic stuff that sticks these down and because they're conductive because it's foil they use it it's part of their circuitry so very conductive stuff there's another thing i mean just it might be endless the things that you can do with it but that's what i'm doing it's not a temporary repair i'm going to leave it on there the other thing is it works with double bubble it's another reason i have it so that reflect text uh the insulated bubble wrap i can make covers on my hives because i'm doing super top secret testing it's not really it's just laziness window that broke on a building that's out by our pond and rather than fix it right away and this was years ago I just ran out there in the wintertime and I got some bubble wrap and some a staple gun

I stapled up the whole window and left it there for years and you know what it held up for years so I'm thinking we can make caps for our hives I mean it's not tough but we could shape your bubble wrap, fold it over, make your 45s like you do on your bunk every day, and then wrap it with aluminum foil on the corners and create these great removable caps that go under your telescoping lid on top. What do you think about that? I think it's going to work. I think I'm onto something with this stuff. It's going to work great. So Bondo, no. I'm going to keep that foil on there for, for a little bit. as long as it lasts and then I'll be able to say this is why we keep B logs.

Maintenance and repair, your 3M system, your quarterly, your daily ones, your weeklies, keep a maintenance log and then see what you did when, how long it lasted, and when did it need a repair down the line. Don't forget your situational requirements either. So now we are in the fluff section already. I know it seems like time is going really fast. Anyway, after the third Wednesday, I'm going to stop. Third Wednesday of September. This is where we're shutting down. We're pulling all the supers off and they were going to sustaining our colonies and boosting them to get ready for winter. If they need boost it at all, some of them won't. Some of them won't need it at all. So at the third week in September, start packing down for winter.

And this includes, by the way, I'll get to that. Let's go on to feeding light. Colin so I'm one-to-one sugar syrup is it no dead bees in the feeders at all wrap it around everything no dead bees keep the sugar syrup light Vast improvement anyway update on top bar hive is coming up so we're gonna do that video I'm gonna be installing these feeders I also want to remind you that when you put a when you have a wooden feeder like that or a wooden reservoir is very porous you could get mold in that very easily so please be sure to you mix something in with your sugar syrup Honeybee healthy, beekeeper's choice, pro-health. Whatever you add, they have essential oils and everything,

which keep, extend the syrup and don't let it get moldy. I'm going to be putting hive alive syrup in these because I want to again try to address the nozima and things like that that the bees might be going into winter with and that has improved things through the years also. So that's what I'm doing with that. Top our hive we're going to see the video on that and I'm going to show how these work by then we'll have had them in long enough to see how they go Swarm installed an empty hive carbon ant

So that video is coming up It's going to be like a quick tip almost I know a lot of people are not at all interested in ants I've heard from those people they only want to see bees Our bees are interacting with a lot of different species out there and so I'm interested in those things and so I'm interested in those things I'm not laser focused just on bees. I'm interested in their impact on the environment and the environment and all the other animals that are out there, what their impact is on the bees.

When I see something new and weird, I document it. I video it and I share about it. And I know ahead of time when I post a video like that, a lot of people are not going to care. And that's okay. Because for me, it's a way of creating a log, a video log of what's going on out there. Some people call that a vlog.

So I'm just going to see if I can get this close to ants that are swarming and create a video, I'm doing it. It's fun. They're interesting. So configure all your hives for potential emergency feed. Yes, this was a huge frustration. Last winter, you know, storms have come through. We're doing thermals on hives. I can see that the bees are all the way up underneath their inner cover.

And you need a configuration that allows you to provide them a winter resource. A lot of my hives just had migratory covers on them, or they just had rigid foam board insulation covers on them. No spacer, no opportunity to put life-saving fondant on those colonies. So this year I'm making sure that every single one of my colonies has some kind of feeder option. Whether you use it or not, it's there. You can't create the option in the middle of winter if you've got starving bees that are already at the top and you're just going to lose them People have a saying that a lot of people do they say swarms are cheap swarms are free no they're not

Swarms are expensive gather a swarm this time a year you're going to be feeding that thing that's an expense So when we're hiding these swarms taking care of them is not cheap now in spring I'll agree in spring when they generate swarms these prime swarms they're going to do their own work you don't even need to feed them because in springtime everything is great life is good your bees are finding their resources and the other thing is we don't want them to ramp up exponentially we don't need them to do that i don't i know commercial people totally different take totally different thing i get it they've got these huge trucks with these big totes on the back and they're they've got pumps and everything and they're filling every beehive all the time and uh that's not what we do as backyard beekeepers we don't have to

But for right now, these late swarms, that mega swarm that's out there right now, that's an expensive swarm. Because what are they going to need? They're going to need everything because they're going to have to build comb and all that. If you think I'm handing them prime comb, I am not. Or might I? I don't know. I do happen to have a bunch of drawn comb. I could really help them out. I'm changing my mind.

I'm going to feed that swarm. We're going to get them in there. The two queen keepers hive. People keep asking me, how do you like it? How's it going? How's everything? Okay, it's a great hive. I can't lie. The Keepers hive, that two-queen system, I had Byers' remorse at first. People were telling me, oh, you're going to have to really deal with that. That's a lion in your bee yard. Actually, they're fantastic. You can put stuff on a Keepers' Hive,

twin queen or two-queen system, two-colonies system combined through the center. You can put stuff on there, and they will build so fast. It is to the point where if you had a couple of those, you could really satisfy your supervisors the nine-year-olds that have to sell honey you can provide them with more honey than they can sell almost not that not that far but two queen systems are really kicking we're going to get a big honey yield off of that they are doing great so I'm a fan and we're going to do of course a video of that is we have to pack them down for winter so that's going to be an educational video the keeper's time in general has some unique things about it when you go to pack down for winter.

You have to move your queen excluder down and everything else. We'll talk about how they're situated for winter resources. They were a late season setup, by the way. So a buildup that fast is remarkable. It really is. And we did super splits to do it. Anyway, that's coming up. Just a reminder.

I want you to make sure you have plenty of fresh water out there for your bees. Everything collapses without adequate water. Everything. Every function your bees have. it is the number one thing that they need it's the number one thing that they do their waggle dances for water resources fix your gaps we talked about the tape also think about storms how with your hives the way they're set up deal with heavy wind real heavy 60 mile an hour plus winds you don't have to run out there and tie your stuff down shipping straps putting out bricks and stuff on top of your hives is great for

when everything is going well and it's convenient and easy and it's so easy to take care of your bees when all you do is take a couple breaks off and start getting into your hive but uh think about the storms and the cold weather and everything else shipping straps are fantastic so if you don't have them consider what your plan is uh oh yeah the new ape of solace so this is what i've been using on a lot of my recent videos so if you're like what's up with the vape system where does that come from Well, this is Apalus, and this was at the North American Honeybee Expo, and I think they've been there for two years. Anyway, I've been using this.

One of the things that you'll often hear people say is my bees don't even respond to it. It's a total waste of time. They don't react, so they don't move away from it. So I've done that, but it's part of the Zen thing, where you move in there really quiet and just light pus with this. And you get this out, and it's not smoke. it's vape. So it is a formula that comes from these people. So the other thing I wanted to show you is I've had this all this time. I haven't even used 25% of the bottle of the vape fluid. The bees do

move away from it and it's a very mild response. They're not bothered. You ever oversmoke a hive and you just keep smoking now the bees actually not only are not calm. They have now turned on you because you've oversmoked and you've really bothered them. Here's a little bit of them. another thing I want you to think about when you're smoking your beehive smoke vape makes no difference you are pushing bees away from what you're trying to do and into another part of the hive because they're escaping smoke vape whatever you're using so when we have these really tiny hive configurations because I watch young people do this I watch grandkids do it the light puff at the entrance gets the guard bees off the entrance so stop right there light

puff. We don't want to push them in to seek deep shelter from the entrance. Follow me for a second. Then let's say you heavy smoke the entrance now they've all pushed away from the entrance. Where did they go? They went up. What did you do then? You opened the top. You opened your inner cover and then you heavy smoke the top. So we're pushing them back down. So you've pushed them in from the entrance and now you've pushed them down and watch someone do this on a nucleus hive. Where are your bees supposed to go. They're trying to do what you're telling them to do. You're puffing them away from over here. You puff them away from over here. And we're teeter tottering them back and forth. So a light puff at the entrance is just to get your yard bees away. Stop after that. Then when you open your hive,

open the cover and the area of interest, light puffs, let them move away from that. And this stuff worked really well in the top bar hive video. And it worked really well when I was doing the foil repair. and then I remembered because I was in a a Zoom meeting with the people that came up with this to talk about how it could be used and what would be better. So for those who did not like the formula, and the reason I want you to, I had troubles finding this myself. This is what's on the cover of their original formula. Okay.

So by the way, they didn't ask me to do this. This isn't something that I'm doing in response to an email I got from them. Don't forget to promote our stuff or something like that. I wanted to know because when we talked about what they were doing and what the innovation was, there was a new formula coming out that would get the same response that you would get from actual smoke. So I went to their website and I found it and I bought it. I bought it with my own money. because the new formula is as potent as smoke as far as getting your bees get their

behavior suppressed get the defensive bees out of the way get the guard bees calm and so even though this is would probably last me for years I bought the next one because I'm going to make a comparison because if they're really going to cook off I would rather do you know how convenient it is to pull this out of your golf cart or your wagon or whatever you're using when you're out in your back apiary and you're checking your bees. If I decide that I look at a landing board and I think, oh, I need to look into these bees. Now I can go light my smoker and I'm not against that. Switchgrass pellets for the northwest, northwestern PA Beekeepers Association.

Go to that website. Those are great. So if I'm using a traditional smoker and lighting the fuel, the switchgrass pellets are the way to go for me. they last a long time so if you're going to do a lot of work and continue going i'm still on board with that that's okay but when you're dealing with honey supers and stuff the number one particulate the contaminant that shows up in your honey comes from your smoker think of all the places the smoker particulates are going plus you the beekeeper now just back here beekeepers were not as in jeopardy as those who are what what are considered occupationally exposed to smoke

If you're smoking constantly, listen to people cough and stuff. They get too much smoke. Or they set up the smoker upwind, and then it blows the smoke down over the bees that they're working on. So they just keep a constant flow of smoke. This is not good for you. So this is a trade-off because some people do cough for quite a while, and your bee suit smells like smoke, and you smell like smoke.

Nothing wrong with that either. If that's what you like, that might be how you're remembered, because your olfactory senses become a very important part of memory. I can smell pipe tobacco today and think about my great-grandfather. So it does create a memory, the stinky people embed themselves in our memory. So but anyway, the new ones out, I wanted to talk about that. It is on their, I don't know what their website is, Apisolus, let me spell it, A-P-I-S-O-L-I-S.

So that's what that is. and yes somebody else asked are they rechargeable yes you plug in a USB right in the top every single thing in this is user friendly so you are able to service it like if you need to change a battery or something you can do it and this reservoir holds that fluid it lasts a long time so again feels like an advertisement I get absolutely nothing if you go to Apisalis and ask for their stuff you can mention me and pay exactly the same as everybody else. I would like to start a little whispered campaign if you would help me.

When you go to any beekeeping company, I don't know who they are, what you're buying, where you're going, better be anywhere. Always ask for the Frederick Dunn discount. Because even though the discount may not exist, what a good salesperson would do is how about free shipping or how about it would give you 5% off. Some companies have established a discount.

for my listeners apisolus isn't one of them better pee doesn't do it um but it doesn't mean you shouldn't ask you should always say you know i learned about it from bread done so anyway i want to thank you for listening today and watching and i hope your backyard apiary is doing very well and uh i hope this is going to be a great productive week or so here in the northeastern united states weather is looking great those of you in the southwest are baking right now so you've got super hot conditions. If you've got something you want me to know about, please go to the way to be.org and click on the page marked contact. Fill out the form. Let me know what's going on. If you've got a question and you want it to be considered for a future Friday Q&A, please let me know. You

never know. Thanks for being here. I'm Frederick Don and this is The Way to Be.