The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 265

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube video:  https://youtu.be/ql0ZKpfYIXk

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, July the 5th. So I hope you had a fantastic Independence Day here in the United States. This is back here at Bekeeping Questions and answers episode number 265. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here with me today. We have some topics that are going to be interesting. I hope they were all submitted over the past week by people just like you. If you want to know how to submit your own questions. someone asked that last week. Go to the way to be.org and go to the page, mark the way to be, and you'll fill out a form,

and I'll be able to see the topic that you're suggesting or the question that you have. Maybe you're in a big rush right now. You need an answer to something. Join the fellowship on Facebook, The Way to Be fellowship. And you'll get in there and get your answers immediately. I know the first thing you want to know right now. What is going on outside where I am? Well, I'll tell you what, the bees are super busy.

Did you notice the opening sequences? That was all filmed this morning. In fact, early in the morning, before they even hit full tilt. So that's just a bunch of beehives right here in my own apiary, and it's hot out there. How hot is it you might want to know? 86 degrees Fahrenheit, and that is 30 degrees Celsius. And to make it worse, the wind isn't very strong.

one mile per hour. So the good news is 59% relative humidity, which means that's why the bees aren't all bearding outside the hives and trying to dry out all the nectar, and we are in the midst of a big nectar flow. And then you're wondering, what are they on right now? Where? In the northeastern United States, the state of Pennsylvania, agricultural zone four, milkweed, stronger than ever. I have been so happy that through the years I've allowed milkweed to spread on its own. And not just honeybees, pollinators of a wide variety are all over it and we don't have to tell you, the monarch butterfly depends on it for reproduction. So the linen trees, they're finished. They lasted about 10 days, 11 days, and then the flowers are done.

So the good news is when you have linen trees, they provide other services. They shade the ground. And with heat like this, you'd be very happy that you planted some big. shade trees. So linen trees are done as far as the bees are concerned. Comfrey, by the way, normally not accessible to the honeybees because the confriffy flowers are too long and the honeybees can't get their little tongues up in there to get the nectar. But who's helping them out? The bumble bees. The bumble bees are chewing right into the side of the flowers and they repeatedly visit those holes and guess who discovered them? The honeybees. So the honeybees are all over the confree, more this year than I can ever remember.

The other thing is now, let your grass grow a little taller, let your clover blossom, and let your bees go after it. There's a lot of different varieties of clover out there, but the white clover here in my yard is what the bees are on, but it's kind of neutral. I don't think they're really heavy after it, and we've had plenty of rain. We've had lots of stimulation for growth, warmth, rain, sunshine, all the essential elements are there. And look up sweet clover, by the way. A friend of mine wrote me, Bill, and he sent me pictures of some clover in his ditch in his yard or in rough areas. And it turned out to be sweet clover. There's yellow sweet clover and white sweet clover.

So those are a little different than what you think clover may look like. So there's also an app for your phone. And this is really fun to have. Plants.net or something like that. Plant net. look it up, see if it's a good reputable app, of course, before you download it to your phone. It allows you to take pictures of blossoms, leaves, bark, and things like that, and you get answers to what you think a plant is, and then that way you'll know what you're dealing with,

and you can also log different times a year. Here's the exciting part, Borage for the first time for me around here is about to flower. It's not flowering yet, but I just know ahead of time that when it flowers, the bees are going to be all over it. What else has just started to flower? the cosmos. They're doing really well too. They're going to flower. So all this stuff is great to look ahead to. And the nectar is just coming in. So whatever's blooming out there, the bees are finding it and they're bringing it in and every single hive is gaining weight.

And I went into my old standard, the observation hives to see what's going on in there. And all of those observation hives are in three levels in groups of three, three frames, over three frames, over three frames. And as I often say, the farthest frames from the entrance are the ones that are going to be capped with honey, and they are capped right now. So that's key. That is finished honey. So that means that it's consolidated, it's condensed, and it's down below, roughly 18%

water that can be variable, but they've capped their honey. So what's that mean for the coming week here in the state of Pennsylvania? Time to pull frames of capped honey to keep your hives from becoming. honey bound or start creating those leaning towers of pso we see everywhere where people just keep stacking supers on top of their hives so that's your option uh keep stacking more supers on so that the space continues since your beads continue to fill those frames with honey or pull every other frame of capped honey and replace it right away with another frame of foundation or drawn comb drawn would be best but it allows you to harvest honey right now and not leave your bees

destitute we don't want to leave them without honey that's why my configuration i'll just refresh the information deep root box followed by a medium super all of that for the bees leave it alone when that's full or 90% full or 80% full start a super up above that and then you can take whatever there is above that for your own use for your sales, recover some of the expense associated with keeping bees. So heavy nectar flow right now, it's great. Take advantage of it. And that's it. So we'll jump right into the questions that we received. And the very first one comes from leaf hands, L-I-E-F, H-A-N-D-S-3-389. That's a YouTube channel name, by the way. Just says, hi, Fred, does the flow hive super fit on APA? That's it. That's the

thumbnail for today. So I didn't want to bring a full-size Appamey box down here. This is the seven-frame Apamee nucleus hive, which for me right now is the most versatile Langstroth-style hive I have in my B-yard. But the thing of it is, look at the shape. Appame did a great job, by the way. These are expensive, not going to lie. See this little shoulder right here? And then you see. see the surface here. The top of these, there isn't a seven-frame wooden hive match, but they are compatible with your wooden hive equipment, so that means it's also compatible with the flow super. So in other words, your brood box, your medium super, or in this case, use all deeps for the nukes here on these. In fact, all my five-frame nukes, if it's a

nucleus hive here, at the way to be, it's going to have deep frames in it. I don't even play with medium-depth nukes. The thing it is, woodenware will sit right on top of these and match them. 10 frame Langstroth hives wooden will sit perfectly right on top of the apamah hive. I've got some out there right now that are set up that way. Here's the thing. This is plastic. So the apomah hive, this surface right here obviously does not grip the wood very well. So the concern is that your hive could slip around a little bit. So I recommend wrapping this joint right here. Now the other thing you'll notice, what if I wanted a wooden box below the Appameh. So let's say I wanted a wooden brood box on a wooden bottom box or

bottom board and then I wanted to put an Appamee super on top of that. Would that be compatible? It is because if you notice it flares out right at the bottom there and this will accommodate a wooden hive right up and under here. So I've put slatted racks, for example, underneath Appame 10 frame equipment and they fit right in there perfectly because of that overlap there's no side gap exposed to the weather so that design works really well if you're going to afford apame hives i give those the green light in every regard they're versatile they're well-appointed everything seems to be holding up it is plastic we're going to see how many years we can get out of that so i know cameron reynolds has a pile of them a lot of beekeepers out there have

appamah hives. They are extremely convenient and you can mix and match with your wooden hive equipment. Nukes don't match nukes though. So I did get the Appamea nuke feeders. They were supposed to fit my wooden hive wear. They did not. So that didn't work. But in other regards, they're good to go. So Flow super, Appame hive, yes. This answer is in response to Lian from Lincoln City, Oregon. And for some reason, my video camera cut out for a few moments, so I'm picking up in my response to whether or not it would be a good idea to remove queen cells in a colony that's producing a lot of queen cells and running a risk of several after swarms. So here we are again. Get in there and they smush them all or they pull them out and they cut

them off and everything else. Nothing wrong with that. You can look at it. You can look at it. the queen cells and they're called swarm cells because they're around the periphery there are supersedure cells there are emergency cells which often show up in the middle of your brood field area because that's they're unplanned they're unplanned so they're emergencies so they have to make use of what is already available if they're planning ahead then that's where you get a whole bunch of these big queen cells along the periphery of your brood frames so inspect for those it's good to know about So what do I want to wait if I were going to squash a bunch of those I leave insurance policies because I don't want to completely wipe out my high reproductive potential

And so what I look for would be the queen cells that are well constructed Lots of wax on them heavily modeled you'll see that some queen cells are just very smooth skinny not a lot of NURSEPs hanging out on them and others might have a good collection of recipes on them which which is why often you don't even notice that you have a queen cell because it's hidden under a bunch of beads. So paying attention to the perimeter of your brute frames and things like that adjacent frames or frames directly above them even and between frames nothing feels worse. Well a lot of things feel worse, but it feels pretty bad if you pull a frame off, if you're pulling an upper box and in between the frames, somehow you pull apart a queen cell. heaven forbid that was their last ditch effort to reproduce the queen and then of course save the colony but the good news is i got a message from leanne that says good news july 4th update queen spotted all good so there's a queen in there suspect virgin queen because she would be so new on average you're going to hear a lot of different stories on this but on average it takes about nine days after a queen emerges from her cell

to finish maturing, to get physically stronger, to exercise her wings. In some cases, queen honeybees even take orientation flights. That's interesting too. But about nine days, she should be capable of flying out. So it is reasonable to think that one of the queen cells produced this queen and that she is still a virgin. So she'll be flying out to mate sometime in the coming week, I would think, or shortly the week after. But it's good news.

Everything's good to go. Leanne has no problems. But I do recommend personally, create a nucleus hive. If you've got one of these swarm generators that just keeps going on like my observation hives do, I leave my observation hives alone

as far as that's concerned because they do continually replenish themselves, produce new queens, and send out their workers, which this year I've been harvesting and cycling back to other beehives. So if I have a weaker colony of bees, I collect the swarm off of the branch of the tree,

and I put it right in front of the hive. I want them to go into, and I've had very good luck with that. And I got called out on one of my videos that somebody was furious that I'm enslaving bees and using their resources for my own purposes and that my bees were obviously very unhappy.

First of all, you don't know if your bees are happy or unhappy. They don't have human traits. They don't have human emotions. But the colonies that I was being called out on are observation hives. I never take honey from those. Never, ever. Everything that goes on in there is just the natural colony of the bees. The only thing I do is I do take action if there are varroamites showing up on the removable inserts under the hives.

I might treat those hives for varroamites. So, no, they're not in service to me other than to allow me to look into the animals. workings of the beehive and see what's going on with honeybee biology on a daily basis if I want to without interrupting the bees normal behavior. But because these are small hives, they generate a lot of swarms. So even when you see multiple cells, often they'll only generate one or two swarms. There are some genetic traits that some other bees may swarm more frequently, keep smaller brood areas, and to even the swarms that go out are medium and size. They're not these giganto swarms

that we would all love to have and start an entirely new colony with. The other thing that you should know is we're into July now. And at least in the northeastern United States, it's a little late. Now somebody else had a question for me when I said that this is late to be cycling back a swarm.

And by that I mean you're not gonna get a bunch of resources from a hive that you start this time of year. Does that mean that they're doomed and that you should not put them in a hive? I say yes, put them in a hive, but me not wanting to expand because I'm beyond 42 colonies right now. I don't want that, so I'm trying to taper back. And so swarms that I find now were in the past, I might have hived them up in new equipment,

something like that. I am all out of new equipment. So I am reinforcing colonies that might be underperforming. Now, what's the benefit of that? The benefit of that is they get a stronger workforce already. They get foragers already. Whichever queen is preferred by these two colonies that I combine, that's the one that will allow to live,

and that's the one that will prevail for the rest of the year. So you can actually take weaker colonies of bees that you would have no hope of getting honey from, for example, if that's your goal. And by combining them and strengthening the workforce, you might see a marked increase in their ability to provide resources for the hive and build a surplus for winter because it's exactly what they're doing right now and guess what here's the best part the biggest nectar flow here in the northeastern United States comes about mid-August so that's when goldenrod and asters and a lot of other secondary nectar flow plants kick in and that's where me personally is historically would get the most honey is at the end of the year. Beginning of the year, we're building bees. So there's kind of a saying you're either growing bees or, you know, developing

honey resources because the two, if there's a lot of bees and hive, then they consume resources, blah, blah. So we can combine swarms with colonies, and these, I should be clear about this too, swarms that are my own bees. So they've come out of one of my hives, they've gone on a tree nearby, and then I'm cycling them back. Now, can I take that swarm if it, right back in the original hive that it just came out of. Yes. How do you do it? That's a self-re-hiving swarm. I caught the queen from a swarm that we just had and it was interesting because there was, she went right into the be vac right away and so I stopped collecting the bees

from that swarm just to see and just to make sure that I collected the queen. and a couple handfuls of bees right off the bat. And so now we watched the branch that the swarm was on. I see what they're doing. Well, if we really did get the queen, and I took her away and put her in a building, of course, so that her pheromone wouldn't draw a bunch of attention from those remaining bees.

Then what they did is they searched all over for the queen. They can't find her. So now what? What does a cluster of bees do with no queen present? They go back to the hive they departed from. So in that way, we did not lose the workforce. So the workforce goes back. Now I have this queen with a tiny cluster. What do I do with her?

She's in a five-frame nuke single-level box with her cluster of bees. So now that basically turns into a mating nuke, and we can see how she does. But in the meantime, we returned that swarm, that large cluster of bees, back to the hive they came out of. It's also a way to verify which hive did they come out of. It's also a way to verify which hive did they come out of because they move like a swarm again and they reinstall themselves right back in the hive they left. So where to the wise if you want to control and keep your bee numbers and not lose them all?

If you can find a way to collect your queen in the swarm and remove her from that spot, the remaining bees in the absence of a queen will return to the hive they came from. You're not creating a bunch of orphans. You're going to come back in an hour, and that tree and that branch will look as if there was never a swarm on it. Works. It's great. It's a feel-good moment when things go right. Question number three comes from Andrew Larbert, Stirlingshire, United Kingdom. If Fred had an empty nuke in my backyard and inadvertently caught a swarm. I've moved it to a site away from the other bees.

and after 24 hours, I gave it one to one sugar syrup. They have been drawing out comb, and after a week, they are still there. There's plenty of forage around, and the weather is okay. They are bringing in lots of pollen, however, should I continue to feed syrup? Thanks a lot. Okay, so here's the thing. For Andrew, first of all, it's great to be connected to people all over the world, but here's the thing. So we have a colony, we have a swarm that we collected or that hive themselves because they moved into a nuke that just happened to be in the garden. So first step is,

for those of you have empty hive equipment sitting around your bee yard or on your property, please make sure it's cleaned out and fully furnished. And by fully furnished, I mean closed up, intercover, sitting on a bottom board, frames in it, ready to accept bees. you never know when a swarm is going to voluntarily hive itself for lack of a better cavity somewhere else in the environment. So if your stuff is ready, it's a very high chance that a swarming colony of bees nearby will move into that box that you have hanging out. They do that so often here that I've stopped putting out swarm traps anywhere. I just don't put them out. I just clean out hive equipment if there's been a debt out or if there's an abscond or if I've done a

combination where I've taken one colony and moved it into another, then I clean up that hive box, put it all together, set it where I want the bees to be and wait and see if I can get them to move in and they often do. So anyway, the question here is how long should you keep feeding syrup? Well, when there's a nectar flow on, do you have to keep feeding sugar syrup? You don't. In fact, for most of the swarms that I collect, I don't feed them. If it's the time of year when there's plenty of resources out in the environment. Because these bees are ready to produce comb. They're ready to draw out comb.

They're carrying maximum resources with them. And on the flip side of that, they don't need it. They can survive. They can make it. But drawn comb is extremely valuable. So if you've got some foundation that's heavy waxed, it needs to be heavy waxed. Please get that. Don't try just bare plastic, very difficult for foundation. But it's a chance to keep feeding them sugar syrup and use that new colony that's full of wax builders to get them to continue to build frames of wax until either they stop on their own or you've just run out of room. All the frames are full. All the frames are full. All the frames. frames are drawn out because they'll use it to build the wax because they're building infrastructure before they start to move their stores in. So it's a great opportunity to just keep them going.

It's much more difficult to start them up again once they stop. So depending on the size of the swarm, the size of the colony and how well they're foraging, if there's a lot of activity, if they have a lot of extra workers and they're just able to do all the jobs in the hive with a surplus workforce, I would keep them comb building. Now, if you had all that, those resources you don't need anymore I stop stop feeding and the sugar syrup's costing you money I don't know what sugar costs where you are but anytime we're feeding our bees we're spending money to do it so much better that they should get everything they need from the environment unless your environment

dries up unless weather conditions take away the forage in the form of nectar and the form of protein from the pollen from the flowering trees and plants in your area so just be aware of what's going on in the environment If they have enough and they're bringing it in and there's lots of activity, you can leave them alone. But sugar syrup doesn't hurt. Not necessary for the backyard beekeeper. Question number four. This comes from Christy in Oregon. Oh, Gresham, Oregon, by the way. I need to buy more foundation and no, the bees don't really like to build comb on black foundation. Recently, when I've looked, there is white foundation available.

Do bees like to build on white foundation or yellow? The later in the year, the harder it is to get the bees to build comb. And that's the reason I wanted to respond to this, because the idea, other people have made mention of different colored foundation having different impacts on the bees. Someone recently told me that black foundation is hotter inside the hive than lighter colored foundation, which might be golden-colored, yellow, pale yellow, or white. And so I wanted to address that specifically because this statement,

I know that bees don't really like to build comb on black foundation. The honeybees will build comb on any color foundation. And in this case, we're talking about a wax foundation. So there are, and I want to be really clear about this, There are two heavy-waxed plastic foundations that I absolutely support, endorse, have no reservations about suggesting that you put them in their hive, and the color matters not at all to the bees. There's no thermal difference.

There's no preference on the bees part to choose white over yellow over black. And you have to think about what's going on inside the hive. How do they even see the colors? They don't. They don't see color. What they know is, sensory-wise, is this piece of plastic covered in real beeswax? If it is, that's a candidate for your bee to start working it. Is it a heavy coating of beeswax? Even more incentive for your worker bees that are in the wax-producing stage of their life to start to draw out that cone. Those are the keys. And there are two foundations that are recommend without hesitation. Acorn, heavy waxed foundation. And then premier heavy waxed foundation. I have found that the bees in my apiary draw both of those companies heavy waxed foundation equally. Now it doesn't matter at all what the color is. So that I don't even know where that information comes from, but I wanted to make it clear to my listeners. I want you to be educated about bees and get what appeals to you. Some people don't like to look at a black foundation.

Nowhere in a beehive would you find black foundation or black comb, would you? Yes, you would. Near black, it's dark coffee colored. If you're looking in a hive that exists on its own, you find that the brood cells eventually become so dark, they're almost black. And that's just after years of the bees walking on it, there's propolis in it, there is you know just dirty bee feet walking over it the pollen that they have attached to them works its way into the wax so there are a lot of things that affect wax color inside the hive so the whitest wax that you would see in a hive would be the newest so usually in the upper boxes and things like that so it's personal what you want to see when you open it frankly when I look at some of the

white wax foundation I have some it looks grungy to me after several years right? I keep my foundation, my frames, my beeswax, five years. Past that, I rotate it out. I try to rotate out after five years, 20% of each hive's foundation. Now, I've gone to wooden frames where I used to use one piece, plastic foundation frame all in one unit. Those actually right now cost more than the wooden frames with the heavy wax plastic inserts. So for me, the best choice is the heavy wax acorn or heavy waxed premier foundation inside a wooden frame. And the reason for that is also when we look at uncapping and using uncapping knives and tools like that, or even I noticed it particularly when my eight-year-old grandson was helping inspect a hive

and he gets right in there his hive tool, he's very confident and his hive tools are sharp. when he was scraping the burr comb off of the top of the back of a plastic foundation frame, he was also scraping some of the plastic. So, and because it was black, it was clear that he was getting little ribbons of black plastic frame into the honey that we collect, not the honey, that bees wax that we collect in a bucket. And then later we render that and we turn that into, of course, bees wax blocks that we use for a lot of things around here. So what's a likelihood that a little ribbon of black plastic would find its way into the finished beeswax rendering? Pretty much not existent because it'll be stopped by a cloth when we pour that beeswax through a single layer, loose weave cotton cloth.

And all that gets trapped in that. So I don't think it gets in there, but it bothered me the idea that little slivers, little bits of plastic would be shaved off. So now, going forward, I'm only going to have wooden. frames and I will have plastic foundation down inside the wooden frame and then now it's not jeopardy being scraped by a very sharp hive tool held and you know used by an eight-year-old that is really interested in getting every little bit of it so those are the two that I recommend and when you have choices of the beeswax on it get the heavy wax whatever the heaviest option is if you could pay 20 cents extra on a frame and get more beeswax

Real beeswax, by the way, smell it. When that stuff comes, it smells good. That's another reason why your bees are drawn to it. And that's also why I'm going to reuse my wooden frames so long as it's in good shape and that the joints are good and I use Type Bond 3 when I'm putting together my wooden frames. I don't buy the wooden frames with a foundation already in it. Might as well talk about that while we're talking about this.

When you get the plastic foundation, bees can't chew through plastic foundation. they can't make vent holes and transition holes the way they would in normal 100% beeswax or foundationless frames where they have the liberty to make the comb any way they want it. So always, always I recommend that you cut corners. Cut the corners on the tops of your frames. You can also cut the corners at the bottom. You lose nothing by doing that and cut a little V right in the middle across the top. And the reason that you do that is if the bees don't need to,

the hole they can fill it with comb if they do need it they leave it open and then they just close in the edges and stuff and they make these little transit ways which they use for ventilation for trance you know going from one end of the hive to the other and not having to go all the way around the frame for example so there are a lot of things that are practical to do when you have plastic foundation another question might as well hit this too i get questions frequently from people that think that plastic inside a beehive results in microplastics in your honey. That has been tested and time and time again. Those tests have been repeated in real labs, real studies, and microplastics are not coming

from plastic beehives or plastic foundation on its own. Now if you're in there mechanically scraping away at stuff, that alters things a little bit. But I do want to say right now, to those that are listening and paying attention, please, please. Please do not ever put Swiffer. A lot of the companies and the study that this was done, they don't name it as Swiffer because there may be some liability there, but I'll say it. Just because I'm giving you a basic recommendation,

this is my opinion based on scientific research. People put microfiber plastic claws like Swiffer claws in their hives on the top, and they'll even work it up a little bit what we would call friable if we were looking at asbestos and things like that they get these little fibers up and they're micro fiber claws they're counting on those to trap small hive beetles please find another way to collect and trap small hive beetles and the reason i say that is your bees have to pull away at these fibers and they're trying to remove it from the hive Microplastics with that environment and with that added piece of microplastic shows up in the bees digestive system, shows up in the honey, shows up in the comb.

So this is under your control. Please keep microplastics. They're already micro fibers, so they're already in little, tiny bits and pieces, and we're counting on our bees now to separate that out and remove it from the hive. please keep that out of your hive. It's very important. I will link that study down in the video description for those of you who want to read further,

but that's something under your control and it is known to show up in the digestive system of the bee in the honey in the bees wax. So keep microplastics out to date. There's no official study that has shown that the interior surface of a plastic hive and that includes the polyhives, apame hives, and things like that.

That is not showing up in the honey or in the bees' digestive system. Bees don't chew it, apparently, and digest it. Ants will chew polystyrene, right? So I don't even know what's going on with the ants. And so it's another thing is that it's going to be a choice that you make. I can't imagine anything chewing the foundation. In fact, one of the selling features of these plastic foundations, and the fact that you can power wash it and recode them with wax and they basically go on and on.

I've never worn one out. One of the things is that wax moths, for example, can't chew it so they don't chew through it. So pests that are inside your hives don't get to chew through it the way they would when it's just foundationless comb. And I'm not saying don't use foundationless comb. I'm just saying this is one of the selling features of a wax food grade foundation. So that's enough about that, but please pay attention to the microcloth, microfiber was a big eye-opener for me. I am very happy that I don't have to deal with small high beetles in the first place. But when I first got into the flow hives, they had that removable tray underneath.

Those trays were perfectly sized for Swiffer, the Swiffer dusters. And so I was taking those and putting one in each of those compartments. That didn't work out for me because it just filled up with bits and pieces of bees wax and propolis and little cappings and I wasn't necessarily trapping at that time foro destructor mites. The good news about that in a tray underneath the screen at the bottom of the hive, the bees cannot access it and therefore the bees were not ripping it apart and distributing it throughout the hive the way they do when you put it up on top and you're hoping to use it to collect small light beetles. Question number five comes from Joshua, El Paso, Texas. I can't help but think of Peewee Herman when I hear El Paso. Hi Fredo was wondering if you could go a little more in depth about what to look for in a good microscope. I know when it comes to telescopes, the advertising can be very misleading in regards to what constitutes an actual good telescope.

I don't want to waste money on a dud of a microscope, so I would like to get some input on what to look for. Okay, so here's the thing. I have more than one microscope. So I have a very basic what's called a dissection microscope, stereo microscopes. You know, they've got two optics on them and you can adjust them for the person and it's got a little tray that moves around and you can light it. You can have light from underneath. You can have light from the top and you're going to hear discussions about dark field microscope, right? So I will tell you, instead of going into all the details of what makes a good microscope, I'm just going to tell you what my favorite microscope is and the one that I currently use,

and I do microscopic photography with it. It's the AM-Scope, AM-S-C-O-P-E, Model T-490B-D-K. So that's AN-Scope, Model T-4-90B, that microscope does everything that I need and the reason that it's not you know this is not it's not thousands of dollars so these things are still kind of affordable it just you need to justify how much you want to use it I also recommend that people check with their local libraries for example here in the county that I live in the library actually provides access to a lot of scientific equipment like that

So it's not just computers and stuff. They offer a lot of other equipment and you can even talk to a librarian and say, hey, any chance a library is going to get a couple of microscopes or something? Now I realize you can't check out the microscope and bring it home. You have to bring your slides in and look at them there. But that's one way to look at it if you absolutely can't afford a microscope. The other thing is beyond the microscope itself, I look for auxiliary lighting. So there are LED lights that are on goose necks. so you can bend them around and point them at different things because I find the lights to come with your microscope

to be inadequate but keep in mind they're inadequate for the kind of photography that I do. So when I'm doing micro macro photography, I need really strong LED lights and those can run into a chunk of change also but I'm also going to mention it so that if anybody's asking about that, that's also AM scope. They're LED lights, just about all of them are these days, and it's six watts. Six watts doesn't sound like much per light, but here's the thing. That is 24,000 lux. The other thing is, when I use them, they are very close to the subject. So there are LEDs that can be focused, intensified, and you can get sharp contrasts and stuff like that.

So keep in mind, I'm doing photography, so I don't want the light to be straight down on the subject. I want my light to come in at a raking angle because I want to show the texture. I don't want to wash out color. And I want to do manual exposure photography to make sure the highlights are in, that nothing's blown out. And so that's the high end of it. I think my stereo lower level microscope is a celestron. And those are the ones that you would probably find in your high school biology class,

sitting at every lab and every station. And those are easy too. I like to look for features where the deck on the microscope underneath your optic has little wheels, little controls that shift it side to side and form back because it's very hard when you're at maximum magnification if you want to pan across something or get to another part of your slide. If you're trying to move that with your hands and just reposition the glass slide that you put in there, that's very tough. So also look for those that have micro controls to move the slide deck side to side, front and back. And I like dark field photography. Another thing that I would like to say, rather than go down the specs on different microscopes, because there again I've made my decision.

You should also know that I'm a researcher. So in other words, before I buy anything, I look into it. I find out other people that have used it. I find out if it's suitable for what my intended use is. so I'm going to make an assumption about you, and that is that probably the smallest thing you're going to be looking for, if, you know, of everything that would be the benchmark, would be the nozima spores.

Those are the tidesest, they require the highest magnification. So I'm going to send you to a very familiar website to most beekeepers. It is scientific beekeeping.com, and that is owned and managed by Randy Oliver. And Randy has a very good step-by-step guide on how to count nozima spores from your bees. He also describes in very good detail the fundamentals of the equipment capability

that you need to have in order to resolve those tiny spores in your microscope. So I'd rather send you there and have you look that over and make a choice then and get the best microscope that you can afford. When I was a little kid, I had a microscope. I had the Gilbertson chemistry set. I think the microscope in there would probably sell for $30. I don't know. That was a kit grade or a science, you know, for a kit at home to have that little single optic, the single piece going in. And the stereo microscopes for me are better. And some of them have a central opening also so that you can put an adapter on your camera and put your camera in there. I do not. I don't know if I should say, well, I don't like,

the digital microscope cameras that you buy that are sold for that purpose. I find those to be lacking in resolution. A really good one is like 12 megapixels. So depending on, if you're just trying to learn or see what's going on, that might be adequate. So digital microscopes can get you the information you're looking for. But to me, that just doesn't pass, you know, the basics when it comes to the quality that I expect if I'm looking at something because if I find something worthwhile I don't just want to see it really well I want to make a video or a photo of it so my standards for the microscope may be above and beyond what your needs would be for what you're trying to find out so scientific beekeeping look that up get your minimum magnifications and stuff

like that Randy does a great job of explaining that and then get it I will put a link to the microscope I use. In fact, both of them. And I'll also put a link to the LED lights that I use. Otherwise, you can just look up the model that I already named. Question number six comes from KD. Cura Bees. That's the YouTube channel name. Winter here now in Brisbane, Australia. Really? It's winter there? Sorry about that. Anyway, bees don't seem to have much food this time a year, I am feeding one-to-one sugar water. My question is, does sugar water give the bees toilet problems, i.e. runny poo. Okay. So wintertime. Wintertime is a lot of different things for a lot of different people, depending on where you are. I don't know what the temperatures are like in Brisbane.

If it gets below freezing and your bees cannot fly. That's where we do not feed liquid resources to the bees other than the honey that they already have in the hive that they've already capped and stored. When it comes to winter feeding, if the bees can't fly, that's when they can get dysentery, they can get diarrhea, but that's not what causes it. In other words, sugar syrup is not the cause. The cause of them needing to eliminate is the buildup of moisture and everything else in the bees and the inability to fly out to a cleansing flight. So I don't know if it's freezing there. So for when it here in the United States, when we get in a winter,

and my test or my benchmark for that is when we start getting nighttime temps below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, as we get into the fall, that's when I would call all stop on liquid feed. So the sugar syrup is the most common thing. The sugar syrup by itself does not cause dysentery. Lots of studies have been done. It's been looked into. And remember, it's just a sugar. It's just an energy source for your bees.

So if your bees do have dysentery, look for other causes. But I would stop feeding that. In fact, over the past couple of years, we've been putting the fondant on after we get past the freezing time. And that, again, is an emergency resource. We're going to be talking about that here in the United States. more as the season goes on, but because you're in winter right now, we should talk about providing emergency resources for your bees.

So, of course, the number one thing to provide for your bees would be the resources that they themselves have collected through the year and the honey that they've put away to get them through winter. So then beyond that, we put up emergency resources. If you put the syrup on, for example, too soon, they may show a preference for that and use it. They will use open sources of sugar syrup before they will cut into their own capped honey.

So some people don't mind that. And it's something we'll talk about here too as the year goes on because I don't want to be talking in the middle of summer or the beginning of summer about what people should do to prepare at the end of the year. But here, putting on emergency resources too soon. So whether that's sugar breaks, whether that is fondant and things like that that you can put on as an emergency resource in wintertime.

If you put it on too early, the bees start to use that as a resource before they're using the resources that they've stored, which is capped honey. And then if they do that, that means the cluster moves up too soon. So I always recommend not putting secondary resources of food and things like that too early because we want the cluster to settle, because in the middle of the cluster, there will be brood, and the brood is the anchor for the cluster. And then we can have, you know, the mantle bees going up and getting those resources and bringing them back. So I know that's more of an answer probably than you were looking for, but I wanted to kind of give a complete picture on that. And then, of course, the bees will consume those resources, but if they've got cleansing flights,

it's up to you whether you not you want to continue to feed sugar syrup. Later in the year, the mix of sugar syrup differs. So for example, if we were hiding a colony of bees right now that seemed weak that needed a boost just because they don't have the bee power to do all the jobs that they need to do, one-to-one sugar syrup is a light syrup. So then maximizing the sugar content later in the year gives the bees more with less effort. So the two to one sugar syrup is what would be fed as we're getting close to the end of the year. And so that when you really think about it, that's a lot of sugar. That is 16 pounds of dry

sugar added to one gallon of fresh water. So you really have to heat the water just to get that and it is a heavy syrup. So as we get into winter, colder weather and stuff like that, if you're going to feed sugar syrup, reduce the water content, increase the sugar content until it's a two to one ratio by weight. And I might as well add this in because I never know who else is listening. We don't want to think that raw sugar is healthy for your bees. So it's kind of backwards because it's a processed sugar, that's not good for anybody. Those are empty calories. It's true. And it's these empty calories that are providing the energy resource that your bees need.

If we're using raw sugar, there are other things in it. There's often molasses even, but raw sugar is known to cause your bees to have to defecate. So that's not clear here, it just says one-to-one sugar water. So maybe if it's not white processed sugar, if you're trying to feed some of the more natural sugars or raw or whole sugars, you do end up with a greater need for your bee to fly out and then eliminate into these cleansing flights.

If they're trapped inside, you can cause more solids to build up inside your bee, cause distress. And the worst thing that can happen is that the eliminate inside the hive, your bees would almost rather fly out and die than to eliminate inside the hive. So that's it. I hope that answers David's question. Question number seven comes from, we're gonna buzz, I think.

It says, we're gonna be ZZZ 4-648. That's the YouTube channel name. Says question regarding comb honey. My granddaughter and I harvested three frames of foundationless comb honey and placed them in the freezer. After thawing, cutting the combs, and boxing the product, does comb honey have the same shelf life as regular honey? Our county fair is early in the summer,

and before the honey harvest gets going, and my granddaughter is wanting to show comb honey next year instead of just liquid honey. I'm also curious how long it can remain frozen prior to processing it. Okay, so here's the thing. And I've tried to interview people that exhibit honey, that exhibit bees products, right? The winners, right? So that's Myra, among other people. When it comes to comb honey, here's the thing.

it's done right once you've cut it you've drained off the edges you've put it in your boxes and things like that there's no limit to the amount of time it can stay in the freezer in fact i highly recommend it stay in the freezer until you get within a couple of days or a day before you submit it for competition and now disclaimer i don't compete in anything ever anymore i don't compete in photography i don't compete with bees i don't compete with with honey and beeswax or any of that other stuff, I guarantee the outcome and remove all stress from my life by not entering and having any chance to win.

So there, now that that's there. But what I don't want to happen when it comes to comb honey, and for those of you that don't know what that is, that means the bees have built out the foundation themselves, they built the comb themselves, they put the honey in it, they cap the honey, and it's 100% from the bees. So the risk to me is, let's say that was late season honey that they did that with.

Let's say that that has a bunch of Aster and Goldenrod in it. I'm not saying that that's 100% what it is, but I'm taking kind of the worst case scenario. By worst case scenario, I mean honey that is prone to set or crystallize. We don't want a bunch of crystallized honey in the cells of comb honey that we hope to win an award with or give to somebody else to eat. I don't like to chew grainy honey in comb. So when you put it in the freezer, the honey never actually freezes. It just becomes very viscous and it stops moving around. So it also stops crystallization, which means that now you're going to have nice fresh liquid honey in the comb

at the time that you hand deliver it to someone or you submit it for your competition. So it's unlimited. You can keep it as long as you want. Now the other part of the question is, does honey in the comb have the same shelf life as honey in a jar? Sure does. It will last the rest of your life. The question is, is it going to be crystallized or not?

And that's pretty much it. On that, that was the last question of the day. We're in the fluff section. So I'm excited about some things that are coming up, things that we want to do here, other than the fact that my grandson is making me harvest honey this coming week. so we're going to be doing that. Anyway, so watch your nectar flow, stay ahead of it.

Just that bee activity this morning, you're about to walk out into your bee yard and smell honey in the air. It is, now, maybe where you live, that may not be the case. Here in the northeastern United States, everything is just this combination of rain at just the right intervals,

followed by several days of sunshine, then a couple of rainy days and several days of sunshine. you get the picture it's perfect for growing everything the environment is lush my pond is full everything is great so um so watch an nectar flow say this this is your plan of the week right now depending on where you are the other thing is i want to give a warning a big warning and i'm going to do a special you know short video about this in the coming week Excellic acid vaporization.

So here's the thing. I wear the full mask. I don't play games. So you have to wear, if you're using vaporization, I don't care what piece of kit that you're using to do it. It might be an open pan. It might be the instant vape. It might be the insta vape.

And it might be the Loravis vape. Whatever you're using, it is potentially incredibly dangerous. And so the reason I want to say that is you can't relax about safety equipment with that. Like I said, I was wearing the full 3M mask. I had the organic filters on and everything else. And the air was so still that while I was doing exhalic acid vaporization on the beehives out in the bee yard, the slightest breeze wasn't there to move the vapor away.

and I could feel a little bit of it get in. It felt like, and it was irritating my eye. So then I thought I had something in my eye because it just felt grainy, like you had tiny microspecks of dust in your eye that just would not get out. And so, yeah, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's in my eye.

And then it took me days later, it's better now on its own, thank goodness, to figure out that when your eyes are exposed, to exhalic acid vapor, you can get conjunctiva. In other words, there are lots of issues that can show up with your eyes and it can be extreme. So look it up. Look up the MSDS sheet. Look up what even the government says or what medical professionals say, eye doctors in particular, when you are exposed to exhalic acid vaporization. Now, we all think lungs, we don't want it in our lungs. That way we put these vapor filters on, the approved ones, the correct ones, right? And everybody that does a video about

exhalic acid vaporization, safety should probably the very first and the very last thing gets mentioned on those videos. Because some people just put the respirator that only covers your mouth and nose. Now sure, that protects your lungs. But exposure to your eyes can be a big deal. So you need to have safety glasses, the kind that are sealed around your eyes, not just, you know, projectile safety glasses. You need the ones that seal right up against your eyes. And better yet, though, it's incredibly uncomfortable, the one face, whole head mask. Because I had a very mild exposure while fully protected. So I am going to do a, you know, a quick tip coming up this week because I'm going to talk more about additional safety when using accelerators.

acid vaporization. I wanted to share that with you. This is not something that kids should be doing young teens. This is something adults only should be accepting the risk of using exhalic acid vaporization. Now you might be sitting there going, well, give us an alternative. Well, the dribble. So, in fact, look at, let's send you back to scientific beekeeping.com and look at Randy Oliver's current dribble mixes, formulas, and results. Keep in mind, You have to follow the label and you have to use things that are legal. But I want to protect your health above all else. Better to have Varroa and keep your eyesight than to take a chance

and find yourself in a cloud of exhalic acid vapor. Not good. Okay, so anyway, it's a great time of year to plan for next year's landscape. We're seeing what's working, what isn't. I have questions about how meaningful the nectar flow is going to be from soybean plants because we have hundreds of acres of soybeans around here. So I'm not going to plant soybeans, obviously. I'm not. But it is one of the stages that a lot of prairie reclamation programs have you do.

They use soybeans to enrich the soil to serve as a cover crop and on and on it goes. and my grandson and everyone was out last night after we did fireworks here, they counted 31 deer in one soy field adjacent to our property. 31 white-tailed deer. And there's bucks out there with velvet on their racks now and everything else. That is a lot of deer. Anyway, so I'm doing things. This is why this is in the fluff sack.

keep deer and rabbits and things like that out of your plantings last year I lost 100% of my sunflowers to a dough and two fonds who just parked in my field and ate them every night all night long very frustrating so now I use some people call it liquid fence it's deer and rabbit repellent worse smelling stuff you will ever use worth it so the reason I bring this up is I'm going to expand milkweed. As we know, if you've been listening to me, I have lost my blue giant hyssop that I was so excited and proud of, planted it all. And one of the deals that, one of the animals that survived winter really well and just goes after that stuff. And I don't

think liquid fence even helps with these guys. It is the voles that scoot around. They pulled out every single one of those. So I'm looking at other plants that don't require protection, right? So milkweed, nothing's eaten in the milkweed, so that's good. And milkweed is fantastic for our bees. So I did a marginal, a medium-depth dive on milkweed. And I'm going to tell you what my favorites are going to be for the coming year. I've already ordered mine, so I'm not worried about them running out now. Because it's the other thing, when you get to the time of year when all the garden centers are running specials and people are trying to plant like spring, and people start thinking in March, February time frame, and then you find out the plants you want, the seeds are. not available from the most reputable companies. So I'm going to talk to you about the

milkweed varieties that I'm going to be starting because so much of what goes on with the milkweed happens underground. If you can get them started, then I don't care if they reach flowering stage this year. I just want to get them started, get the root systems going, and then next spring they'll come back and now I'll have the stand of milkweed. Hopefully that works. Now I'm no master gardener. This is trial and error, but I have a really solid acre of milkweed and you can just smell the air, the nectar is heavy, covered in bees, and the bees are repeatedly visiting the same milkweed over and over. How do you know if a plant is giving a lot of nectar? How much time is a bee spending on the plant with its tongue extended?

And they're just getting a lot. So anyway, number one, showy milkweed. That's the name of it. It's good stuff. Zones 3 to 9. I'm in zone 4. So that works great. Grows about three feet tall. Here's the other important part. We want plants that fill in the nectar gap. So if you're in an area where your bees find themselves in a dearth, by the way, you have to plant a lot of this stuff to have an impact on your bees foraging and resource capability. June, July and August, that's the bloom period for those. Those are great times. June and July, these are otherwise, no wonder. they're all they're not paying any attention to the clover they are all over the milkweed so that's fantastic too uh next one to do to do to do rose milkweed also known as swamp milkweed also good for june july and august

and it's called swamp milkweed but it doesn't have to be in wet soil it tends to grow in other places too now the kick there is getting them started i'm not going to lie i've planted those every year for the last ten years I don't think I have one that's growing anywhere yet. So I'm going to improve on that. In fact, I'm just fortunate enough to have an expert on propagating perennials, and I'm going to hit her up for more information on this stuff. And we're going to be talking more about it. And here's the last one, World Milkweed, W-H-O-R-L-E-D, milkweed.

And the reason that I like this one, the reason I'm going to add it, it's also good for zones three to nine, but its bloom period is July, August, and September. So that pushes us later into September, where here the golden rod, the asters, and things like that, are also kicking in. So this is going to allow your bees to recover from the resources that you're probably going to take from them

in the latter part of the summer, right? And they only grow one to two feet tall, so that world milkweed, you're going to plant that as a border plant or something like that. and then just let them go. When people say, oh, watch out, those things are really going to take over an area. Well, they're native. And I would just assume they took over because we don't need more thistles.

My wife wanted me to get rid of all the thistles in a field. And the honeybees love thistles. So I'm just going to have a hard time finding them, I think. So that's it for the milkweed that I want to do. and I think that's it for today. So I hope you had a great 4th of July, those of you here in the United States that celebrated our independence,

and you should, it's a lot of fun, and you probably still have the weekend off. You have family around, and great time to start thinking about and planning well ahead for next year's perennial resources for us, the annuals too, but I really am looking forward to Borage.

So I hope you learned something with today's video, and I want to thank you for watching and listening. if you still have questions please make your comments down in the comment section below the video and have a fantastic rest of your weekend thanks for watching