The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 268 LIVE-Stream Edition.

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

This is the audio track from the last Friday of July on YouTube LIVE Q&A  https://youtube.com/live/-HAmREw9dfM?feature=share   CHAPTERS: Provided by Adam Holmes 00:00 Introduction 05:38 Do all larvae get fed royal jelly and if so is it the same as the queen? 11:35 How long after treating with OA should you wait before testing again for mites? 22:42 Should I combine weak colonies or let them die to not spread diseases? 28:10 Can a queen take more than 16 days to emerge? 45:35 Should I take my swarm traps down now that it is summer? 51:00 Have you heard about treating for varroa by using a biofloor? 58:37 I noticed a hive had swarm and emergency cell. Do you think something happened to my queen? 01:02:02 How close to the front entrance can you put electric netting? 01:06:07 How would you feed fondant in a layens hive 01:10:41 I have a hive getting slimed by small hive beetles. At what point is it to gross to give back to a hive to clean it?

So I just came on. This is super fast. Keith, you must have been right there ready to push the button immediately. I'm glad you made it, by the way. Muggy Foothills of North Carolina. So anyway, happy Friday. Hello and welcome. This is Backer to Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 268 live edition because it's the last Friday of July. So my name is Frederick Gunn and this is the way to be. So I'm glad. that you're here. Ross and Keith, two regular people hanging out. Both moderators ready to show people today. How are you guys doing? I'm glad that you're here. I don't know how to make a waiting room, so I don't have one for live stream. Somebody asked if I would make a waiting room so people could mill about smartly and talk to each other while they're waiting to go live. And I was caught a little bit off guard. So this came up early today. So anyway, I'm going to talk about what's going on outside. Let's do some filler while people show up. It is 75 degrees Fahrenheit outside, hot and muggy, and that is 24 Celsius, 69% relative humidity. Not too bad, but the humidity is really

going to pick up. It's going to get super hot around here. In fact, I think Sunday is going to be the hottest day, northeastern United States, northwest PA, zero rain until Monday. So that's good. We're fine. So what else is going on? Oh yeah, how about that wind? Wind gusts right now up to one mile per hour. So the wind is at zero miles per hour. Nothing, which adds to the feeling of the heat. And what I've been doing this past week is talking about honeybees. I know. That's a shocker. That's rare. And we have the Tom Ridge Environmental Center. And that's on Lake Erie near Presk Isle, which is a fantastic place to go and visit. And the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association

had an exhibit there, complete with live bees and a flyway, kind of an indoor screened environment with a bunch of flowers that bees don't care about so that it looked like a good habitat for honeybees. And guests could come and talk to a beekeeper. That's what I was there for. And, of course, see an observation hide. They painted the thoraxe of the queen bee green.

kids could see that and then of course get a sticker if they spotted it so that was a lot of fun and if you happen to be joining today or watching this later and you were at the prescile days in erie pennsylvania then fantastic so i'm glad that you were there and some of you said hello and that was good i'm also glad that you're here knowing there was a very good chance that i would be here and you'd have to listen to me so let's talk first about what's going on outside right now because we need to uh Talk about what's blooming. What are the bees going after? Soy blossoms, that's my target this year.

I want to see honeybees on soy plants. These little tiny white blossoms in clusters for the soybean plants that are out just to the south of me here, a little over 300 acres of soy. So we wand around out there, and I did. I got video and photos of honeybees on the soy flower. So I don't think they're all that valuable to the honeybees, though, to be honest, because here's what they were doing. They were skipping from flower to flower so fast,

I almost couldn't get the shot. So I didn't get sweet videos of the bees collecting nectar. So they work it, but they work it so fast. I think that it's probably not a huge benefit to the bees. Milkweed is dwindling. So the milkweed is already going to pods, and I'm not happy about that. I wish it would stick around longer.

And the bees are running out of options when it comes to that. Cosmos flowers are opening and those I plant myself, their annuals are supposed to receive themselves. They don't do a very good job of that. Also, I see that Mark has a question in all caps. I'll get to that, so I'm not blowing anybody off here. I just want to get through this. Cosmos opening, there'll be more of that. By the way, it's a fantastic nectar and pollen plant for a lot of pollinators, not just your honeybees.

White clover is so pretty steady, but I understand it's going to probably be running out here in the next two to three weeks. weeks. Goldenrod, starting early. I don't know if it's starting early where you are, but Goldenrod starting early is not great news. But it lets us know that we need to super things up because we might be running out of environmental resources for the bees, honey and nectar too early. These things are blooming much earlier than they normally would. So that's kind of going on. Borege is a flower that I added this year. Fantastic. Bees are all over it and it's got plenty of blooms yet to go. So it's blossoming for a long period of time, heavy on the nectar because the bees are spending a lot of time on it. Plus, it's flowers face down. So even when it's rained or something

like that, the bees can still go up and find that. The nectar is not diluted. So Borage, B-O-R-A-G-E, was great. And no aster's yet. That's good news. And there shouldn't be any aster's yet because that would be too early. It's already bound enough that the Goldenrods blooming. So let's first check in here and see who might have posted a question already. And let's go to Mark. It says, do all larvae get fed royal jelly and or is the Queens fed a more concentrated jelly? So for Mark Bidwell, right here in the live chat, that's a question that comes up a lot.

And I just want to explain something. very early on, it was thought that Royal Jelly was fed only to the Queen. Well, it's much more complicated than that. So the Royal Jelly is actually fed to all casts on some level. So the drones, the workers, and the Queen. The thing is, the Queen gets more, and she gets fed more frequently, and she's also developing faster than the others. Remember that a queen goes from egg to adult in 15 days,

and that's remarkable. That's amazing. So they are fed constantly. If you've ever watched the nurse bees feeding, developing queens, then you'll see that they're constantly in and out of the queen cells. So they do get a variance of that mix, and these are complex proteins. These are complex nutrition. And so it's just not that easy.

But they all start off with some form of royal jelly. It's just a matter of the quantity and for how long they get fed that. So here we go. Glenn says, Fred, please update on your experience with Hivegates thus far. I've used them on my last few lands builds, curious about any feedback. So the HiveGate, for those of you don't know, is a blue entrance. It might look something like this. Here's the HiveGate.

And we did a citizen science thing on this, and Be Smart, Not Be Smart, Better Be, was impressed with the results enough that they started carrying these here through their website, which is BetterBee.com. The guy that developed them definitely did a lot of studies that dealt with air circulation, protection of the hive from predators and things like that.

I put them on several of my hives for two years. And I don't have as big a problem with yellow jackets, for example, but I also know that I frustrated the designer, the inventor a little bit because I use slatted racks. The way the hive gate is supposed to be used, By the way, it has roughly a 3 eighth-inch opening, a very long entrance, right about six inches.

And then when you get inside, the bees come up through the top, but this is also the pathway that they vent through. So it offers bees a lot of benefits, but your brood box needs to be sitting right down on the bottom board. And the bottom board needs to be with the 3-8s or a 3-quarter-inch space or depending on winter or summer position. but this sits in there and then there's an entrance reducer around it so that the bees can only go through this. There's a single and a double method. So what I want to say is that people did like them. They worked really well. And the big advantage, and I know that Kyle that invented them,

will like people to know that they're more capable of things other than just helping your hive defend itself from predators like Yellow Jacket Lost. But in the state of Washington, for example, the feedback was heavy. that beekeepers there that generally lose a lot of their beehives in the late summer and going into fall, were able to defend their hives or allow the bees to better defend their hives with hive gates. And they did publish some of the results. We did surveys. Getting people to respond to surveys was not easy either, so it's a small sample group. We only had about 85 participants.

So that was it for me. I had them. They work. They work particularly. I have kind of dramatic video footage of yellow jackets coming in through here, meeting guard bees and then being repelled, of course, easier than otherwise would. Because at the entrance of your hive, if your attackers, whether they be bees looking to rob another colony or wasps looking to raid a beehive, particularly when it's still cold in the early mornings and your bees are not yet fully awake, the guard bees are not on the landing boards, wasps fly colder and therefore they could enter and scoot right up the interior surface of your hive brood box so with this the wasp had to go through the channel and then where did it come up directly under the cluster where there were bees and where the cluster is when it's cold and they could defend of course against the encroaching wasps and they didn't have the advantage of getting up through the interior surface this is an oversimplification there's a lot more to it than this this but if you want to look up it's called hive gate and you can see what's going on there and the

website is b iq solutions dot com and you can check it out and read more about it it's very complex but it is positive but not significant for me here in the state of pennsylvania so my bees were doing well on their own they're defending okay and they were of course building resources and things just fine. So it was an additive for me that I could see why it works. I could see how it's a benefit, but not a significant improvement over a hive right next to it, similar size population of bees, and then of course with a standard reduced entrance, and then of course the hive get right next to it. The benefit for me personally was that the yellow jackets didn't have the advantage they normally do. So I hope that helps. And let me scoop back up and you guys are doing the right

thing, by the way, I know some people are just now joining us. Some people get upset because I think people are yelling by typing in all caps. But if you type in all caps, those are questions for me. If you're just talking to one another, and I recommend that you do that, use your normal lowercase. And that way, I'll know you're just talking to each other and I don't need to respond. So the hive gate, good stuff. Okay, so here comes from Donna. After an OAV treatment, for how long should you wait to retest and treat again if needed. So this is from Donna Raleigh, and I'm glad that Donna mentioned this because I just treated my observation hives this morning.

And the interesting part of that is I like to see the die-off. Now, the general rule is, and what are we, what's the die-off going to be? Well, Varroda strike your mites, I hope. And we're actually in an odd situation here. The brood seems to be smaller in a lot of the hives. So when your brood is small, and there are fewer, developing pupa underneath those caps, you have access to varodistructor mites. Also, I'm glad that this comes up as a question because we want to get those varro mites under control well ahead of the

production of fat-bodied winter bees. And so we need healthy bees to produce those at the end of the season. So this is the time to be counting your varro mites. So the question is, how often should we count? When should we check? Well, because I have removable trays, I like to look at the might drop. So, and that's what I was doing this morning. I thought, you know, I'm not going to wait two or three days to see what the mite drop is after treatment. So this was interesting. For those you don't know, acolyc acid can be delivered as a vapor as a driver, dribble as a spray. And I did the exhalic acid vaporization on observation hives, as I just mentioned. So within an hour, I had varomites on the removable trace underneath the observation hives. This was a lot of

really interesting to me because not only were there varodistractor mites on the trays, some of them were still scooting around. So they were recent drops. So in other words, they fell off the bees because of their exposure to the excealic acid. So then I looked at them and I started to get videos, macro videos of them, but you know what? They were expiring right in front of my camera. So they were capable of moving a little bit and then they slowed way down and then they stopped moving and then they just died right there so the mites lose her ability to locomote they can't scoot around and get on other bodies of bees and the bees can more easily then of course groom them off they fall through the screen which is generally a number eight screen on the bottom of your hive

and into a tray or some other collection system that I hope you have uh in your hive if not then when they of course get groomed off or they just die on the bottom board your undertaker bees will clean those up and carry them out of the hive. So within five days, you would generally do another mite count or you could do what I do, which is do a follow-up treatment in five days. And then this is oxalic acid vaporization again. And you want to do this. I did this early morning. You can do it in early evening as well. And the reason we do that, we want that vapor in those particulates to get on the bodies of as many of your bees as possible. And so now I just look at the might. drop. So after the second or third treatment, five days apart now, in the very beginning,

they wanted us to do them seven days apart, three cycles, 21 days. And that was not proven as effective as dropping that to five-day treatments and then continue to do five-day treatments. Some people do five times five, which I've never had to do because I'm looking at, again, the trays underneath the hive to see the drop. So I am not going back and putting the bees through, you know, the mite counter, which if you've got a mite wash system, something like this one maybe, you would, of course, collect 300 bees, and then you would shake them up with, in my case, I use the Dawn Ultra Free and Clear with water, and that causes a very good mite release, and you can find it out that way, but I have relied on just seeing what the drop is

on the bottom boards, and when it dropped to one or two, I figured that I got. got them. So now this has worked this way year after year. So I don't have to go in, open it up, pull a frame of brood, and get the nurse bees off of it, and then of course, kill the nurse bees and count mites on them. And I don't have enough drones. My goal this year was to collect more drones after the interview that I did on drone research and the fact that drones attract Roe Destrictor mites. But I didn't have any hives produced full frames of drones. I could have forced them to do that. But I was hoping to find drones in one of the frames of brood that would be at least 60% drones or something like that so I could cage them, let them emerge from their cells. And then

it would have live drones that would then serve as living magnets for the varrode instructor mites because a two-day and three-day old drone actually draws more mites to their bodies than the nurse bees do in the nursery of your hive on the brood. So that's what I do. Now, I don't always assume, for example, if I'm just looking at hives and I pull bottom boards and I don't find any frames or any examples of varro mites on the bottom, I don't just assume they're varro free. In fact, I get really suspicious about that, and I've worried about them. That's why I did this treatment in my observation hives, and then we go on to assess other hives afterwards. But treat for mites, and if you're trying to be treatment-free, you're going to have to use other mid-aids. mitigating methods such as drone brood removal, swarming, things like that, maybe caging your queen, creating a brood break.

There are a lot of other things. It's very intense, and you can do those in addition to an organic treatment like exhalic acid. And I've had very good luck with that. So, how long should you wait? So that's it. What do you do with partially filled frames when you need to remove supers? This is from Keith Faithful. partially filled frames so what we're talking about is honey supers and if they're partially filled maybe they've got nectar in a lot of open cells and for some reason you're going to pull the super anyway i would put the entire super or the frames that have open cells in them in your dehumidifying tent or drape this is very easy to do just run fans just uh let it warm up on its own or you can put one of those really cheap twenty dollar heaters inside there and you can drape

it with like a painter's drop cloth or something like that. If you don't have a grow room, like I have a plant grow room that I use as my dehumidifier and it's got a rack and I put honey on that and just dry it. And then you can take an eyedropper and you can hopefully test for the water content of those open cells. And if you're down below 18%, I would consider that ready to extract. So that's what I do. Because this happens at the end of the year when we're We're pulling supers and packing down hives, and we want to get those top boxes off because now there's too much space for your bees to manage well going through winter. So we pull them off in some cases ahead of a storm coming in, and sometimes we have frames

that are half still uncapped, for example. So it's really important to test those for the water content, and then go ahead and harvest them, extract them the way you would, even the capped honey, and then just dry them down with dehumidifiers or fans just like the bees do. They fan it, there's air movement, and then just the warmth, and you might be wondering how warm would you do it? I would let it go right up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and hold it there.

You can generally bring it down one percentage of water every 24 hours. So let's see. What else do we have? Let's see. A reminder, your doc will prescribe you an EpiPen if you tell them you keep bees, even if you're not allergic. Two weeks ago, I nearly died for my first sting of the season. Previous stings were mild.

So this is from Andrew. If there's a program like that, that's really great. So I guess the thing is, talk to your physician, your general practitioner, and find out if there's a way for you to get an Epipan. Epipens are expensive. So now, as a past EMT, I have to say we're not allowed to administer epinephrine to people. They have to do it themselves.

You can help them. You can give it to them. They have to make that decision. But if you can get them for free, nothing wrong with stocking a couple. So no honey, money this year from DC's bees. Dang it. And by the way, I want to say this to Andrew,

I'm glad that you did not have profound medical issues after that. Being hospitalized or having an increased reaction to honeybee stings is rare, but it can happen and people can develop sensitivities over time. And so we do need to pay attention to how we might be becoming more sensitive to bee stings. I know some people like to say get stung frequently and it will help reduce your sensitivity. And in some cases, that's true. In cases like with my grandfather, my grandmother was a beekeeper up in Vermont. And he was stung several times and he was always fine until he eventually developed.

the sensitivity and it became life-threatening and that's when my grandmother stopped keeping bees. So let's see what else we have here. This is from Carmine. Hi Fred, with so much technology and research, why have we not seen a video of a brood cell bee being capped? Now I haven't, that's a good question. Is there really no video out? there of a brood cell being capped so let me just you know what can add it to my list capping a cell the brood worker let's see if we can't do that because we have observation eyes you might be wondering why am i even wearing a black shirt right now am i depressed no because it's in with the observation hives i wear black so i don't get reflections on the glass and

i was videoing a lot of activity in there and uh black clothes, black camera equipment. This is a coffee cup that actually looks like a camera lens, but all my lenses are black, all my gear is black. You can even wear a black veil and just have a hole for your lens to go through. So you're only using your viewfinder. These are tips for people that don't want to get a sweet video of yourself on the glass of an observation hive. So that's a lot of fun to do. But let's move on here. Do to do. Now here's a question to me, even though it's not all in caps, the honeybee compound. Fred, I keep hearing everyone say that this is the time to combine weak colonies. I've always thought to let the weak die and not possibly spread viruses to the strong colony. What do you think? That's a great question. And I am a fan of combining weak colonies with strong colonies and it's up to you to assess the health condition and why they're weak. Normally this time of year, if I've got a weak colony, It's because they lost their queen and they did not re-queen adequately.

So barring disease, it's pretty easy to determine if you've got a colony that's unhealthy. For example, if they're overwhelmed by barod destructor mites, if they're queenless, sometimes this is a chance that you can treat them now. Would you migrate a bunch of bees full of varroa destructor mites into another colony? Well, if you could clean them up first, I would. You don't lose a bunch of workers that way. here's what happens anyway with dwindling colonies of bees. They tend to drift to other colonies.

In fact, they can drift until there's nothing left except for a couple of laying worker diehards that are still in there producing drones that they can't keep warm. And that's why sometimes you open up a hive that you haven't looked up for a long time that dwindled. And then you look at the brood frames, and they're spotty brood, and it's all drones and nothing but drones. And the reason that spotty is because not only do they not lay a great pattern,

but they also don't have the residual bees to keep them warm on cold nights. It dropped into the 50s here last night. And so this can become even too cold for a small colony that doesn't have the bees to keep their brood warm. So then you have a bunch of dead drones on the landing board and things like that too. So if you've got a sick colony, yeah, get rid of it. Treat it or get rid of it. Whatever is wrong. Somebody may be wondering, how do we know about the treatments that we might have or what the

condition should look like, and I'm going to mention this publication again, honeybees and their melodies from Penn State Extension, PSU.edu. I don't care if you're a new beekeeper, an old beekeeper. That's a great list because a lot of us have looked at healthy hides for years and maybe haven't come across some of the issues that can go wrong with your hives. So having a booklet like that that has really good pictures in it that lets you self-diagnose. And then when you're out of your depth a little bit and you think something really bad is going on time to ring in the inspector from your department of ag to look at your stuff and help you out with testing but here we go yeah if you've got a healthy colony combine them that's what by the way historically i'll jump the tracks here a

little bit historically i used to gather late season swarms and just for kicks and giggles i put them in hives just to see how long they could make it and and if they survive winter and Often they did. It was a big surprise to me. So we would get these late season swarms, but what does that also say? Not only did you have a swarm at the end of September, for example, but that means that somewhere in your apiary,

there's a colony without a queen. So this year, after all these years of Cuban bees, instead of hiving them to see how well they do and potentially losing the colony that the swarm emitted from because we don't have a lot of drones flying around at the end of September, I wasn't just playing games with the swarm to see if they could make it as a tiny colony going into winter, but I left another colony without the bulk of their workforce. So now we'll go back and find out which colony generated the swarm,

and then we'll be restoring them to that colony and keeping the queen cage so she can't get away or eliminating what we consider to be the weaker queen. But if you bring the swarm back and into the hive that they came, from and in the meantime this is I get criticism for this but that's okay I like to put my swarms in front of the hive so they go in on their own if this the hive they just came from they're unlikely to go back in so you take the swarm and you have to hide them in another hive but here's the thing when it's in a butterfly net or something like that which I really like to do this is time-consuming I get

to see when the queen starts to make her advancement either up to go in the hive or she might be going up that net and then flying away. Whatever she's deciding to do, she comes up to the top and you catch her in a queen clip and you can remove her and then where do those bees go? Back to the hive they came from. So if this is a late season swarm and by that I mean, you know, third or fourth week of September, then you can get those workers back to the colony they left and you've got the queen and you keep her in a little holding pattern in a nucleus hive,

until you determine that all of your colonies are queen right. And if they're not, finding out if they've replaced their queen, if they haven't, you've got an insurance policy to restore. So, yes, small colonies combined with larger colonies to get them through winter, and you'll come out with much stronger spring colonies. It's just one of many methods. But this year, that's what I'm doing with late season swarms.

So, Carmine, wait, let me go back. Uncle Reifer. Uncle Reifer. Okay. Will a queen sometimes take more than 16 days to emerge, waiting on day 18 and 19

here thinking I need to move on to plan B. You need to move on to plan B. Because yeah, 19 days something's happened. It's not good. You're going to have to move on. So 15, 16 days, the queen should be out. Sometimes the bees will actually

keep a queen longer in her queen cell, and she wants to emerge, and that'll be right there. She's trying to cut her way out, and they are using beeswax and closing them right back up and keeping her from coming out. Sometimes she comes out and you don't catch it, and it looks like it's still capped,

but the workers have sealed that back up, even though there's nothing in it anymore. So I would inspect that cell to see what happened. But I think she's gone already. So, What else? How would you might treat a five frame deep frame nuke full of bees with five frames of honey on top? It's the same. I use exhalic acid vaporization. So that's what I do. It's approved in my state, state of Pennsylvania, for honey supers being present. So you can use that. And I don't have a whole list of treatments. You can look up organic treatments, but that's a small. hive and xalic acid can be prorated by the size of the hive. I have to tell you that you have to follow the label and then of course you'll validate whether or not it was effective by the mite drop that you have.

So here comes American Bee Lady Fred, farm chicken eggs during the extreme heat and you're non-refrigerated. How long can you keep? So unwashed, farm fresh, kitchen counter. Okay, so now we're talking about chicken eggs. Okay, from American Bee Lady. Chicken eggs, if you get your chicken eggs from your coop, and you're putting them out on the counter, which, by the way, is the way they used to be sold. My grandparents had the Mill Village store up in Crasbury, Vermont, many, many years ago, and eggs were sold individually,

egg by egg, and they were not refrigerated. The deterioration of an egg unrefrigerated is seven to one. So seven times more deterioration per day, So if you had an egg on the counter, it degrades seven times faster than one in the fridge. So let's put them on the counter. How long are they good for? You're going to have to put your eggs in a glass of water, and then you're going to see if that egg tips up at all. If it goes right to the bottom, it's okay.

That's the gauge. I can't give you a set amount of time, and here's why. Not all eggshells are created equal. the bloom that's left on the eggs by the hen that produced it is not always equal. And so your test for an egg that's been out is to see if the egg air cell is getting larger. And if it is, when you drop it in water, it'll tilt up, tip up a little bit. And if it does that, don't eat the egg. If it doesn't tilt at all, and by the way, the water should be warmer than the egg.

And so that it doesn't draw in anyway, if it doesn't tip at all, you're probably good to go. That is your best test for whether or not an egg is still fresh, viable, usable, edible, and so on. So here we go. Westcliff Honey Company, do temp limitations for various mite treatments apply to polyhives, given their internal temps remain a consistent, ideal, brood-raising temps? So I think we're probably talking about, there are temperature limitations,

but they're talking about the weather outside, not to treat hives, for example, when it's above 80 degrees. And I know that makes sense because inside the hive, if it were in the 90s, then of course we've exceeded what the limitations would be. And I'm going to tell you, rather than cite the temperatures

that different treatments are good for, you always have to look at the label and follow the label. but when they do that, they're talking about environmental temperature outside your hive and not the temps that are inside the hive. So those limitations are because your bees cannot cool themselves if they want to. So the volatiles that come off of some of these organic treatments can be too intense for the bees and can kill hundreds or thousands of your bees during a treatment at a high temperature.

So that's outside environmental temps, nothing to do with what's going on inside 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit at the brood. And to my knowledge, that would always be the case. So you would not, because where do they go? These patties go directly over the brood. So I don't consider that a risk. Follow the label for environmental temperature. So Westcliff Honey Company, that's it.

Let's see. What else do we have? Little Red Bird. I am seeing Golden Round of Bloom, are you? Yes, it's just starting out, just starting. And that's too early. way early. So a lot of people are reporting that. DC's bees, says Fred, not a question, but I wanted to say thank you.

I'm not sure. I'd be in my third year of beekeeping without you. Well, thanks. That's good feedback. If I helped you keep bees alive and kept you interested enough to stay with it and keep bees, I'm very happy for that. Thanks for sharing. So this is from Poncho Par. Poncho Par has anyone tried putting two five-frame nukes under a 10-frame super on top with queen-excluder on top of nukes, have two different hives feeding one super. Yes, a lot of people have done that. In fact, the two nukes with a single combined super,

that's sold by a lot of bee companies. So it's the five-frame nuke, five-frame nuke, and then they have little individual feeders, by the way. The ability to feed or not feed individually is important. And then the queen-excluter, and of course the combined nuke-a-buncabody. that or not nuke but a full-sized box above that for honey supers that's been done a lot of people do it um and i will mention there's a company called the keepers hive and they had a fundraiser so if you haven't seen it or don't know about it you can just google them and look them up they have this

strange asymmetrical um hive so it's like an eight-frame brood box and then there's a five-frame nuke sitting on top of it and the point is that you can pull the frames out to the side because they've got this design that keeps the bees from gluing down the frames so you can pull them out inspect brood and then above the brood box is a queen excluder and everything is a honey super so the honey super is only five frames going up i thought that's cool i have one they're neat but what i wanted to do is similar to what's described here although i'm going bigger they have a one queen system which i just in a very basic way described but they also have a two queen system and they did a fundraiser through indigo go so i bought it so that is two full-sized deep brood boxes and then of course in the

middle above the queen excluder will be your honey supers so for me um a lot of the drawbacks to using the flow hive supers is the fact that we don't get enough b power to really load us up because it's a full deep super instead of mediums like people would normally have on their hive and if i can put two hives together in that two queen system that the keeper's hive is making, then I'll have a flow hive straight above it that then I can use as I would any other flow hive. But that's what I plan to do. So it's bigger than the double nukes with a single size deep on it. And then instead I can use the double queen system with full size brood boxes and get a super super super whatever you want to call it. So just to share that that's what I'm doing.

But yeah, that's been done. Combining nukes to create underneath a full-size honey super has been done. And they sell those, by the way. Let's see. Here we have JKD-0114. Do you think a master beekeeper should be well-versed in all styles of hives and climates to be considered as such? Okay, well, if you're going to be a master of anything, you should understand it's not necessarily all styles of hives and all climates. You should understand a master beekeeper better understand the biology of the honeybee and then be able to look at a modification of a hive or some design that's being presented when it comes to beehives and realize whether or not that would work well based on the biology, the biology of the honeybee and what it needs to sustain.

itself in a given climate. Now, for example, I'm a master beekeeper. I'm no expert in keeping bees in northern Alaska or northern Canada or something like that. However, I do understand the biology of the bee, and I can see pretty quick what the challenges are going to be, and then I can help people look over what kind of hive configuration they have and have some idea as to why that might work really well, or may need some changes, and of course, practical testing is part of it. But a master beekeeper, what you should know about that title is that there is no standard in the United States for what makes a master beekeeper. So you can have all experienced levels.

There are master beekeepers that have only had one or two beehives in their whole life. And if that is a standard that's okay, what they're really teaching them then, or validating with the candidate that wants to become a master beekeeper is that they understand honeybee biology. They also need to understand the diseases and challenges that the bees face. That keeper is not required to understand

layens hives, long langs, flow hives, all the other hive configurations that might be out there, top bar hives, and so on. They just wouldn't. There are people that become master beekeepers with just five years experience. You almost wouldn't have time to even have learned or have exposure to all of those things in just five years.

So it means a lot of different things. There's no standard. You're kind of going to have to look at master beekeepers based on what kind of consistent information they're putting out, whether or not they're dedicated to continuing to learn and share valuable information. And what we can talk about is the purpose of one. And that is that they're supposed to be educators. They're supposed to be sharing and helping others learn to keep their bees, and they better be very well versed in honeybee biology.

So that's kind of all I'm going to say about that. So, for example, if you were a master diver in the Navy, you have used every piece of dive equipment that there is available, and you will know how to do it. Now, if you go out in the sport world and you become a dive master, that is an entirely different thing, and you're in no way to be compared one to the other. So it can mean a lot of different things

depending on what's involved, what the standards are, and there is no standard. So you can get a title from a state, from a school, from an institution, and from a beekeeping organization, I think you kind of understand. So you'll just have to take each person based on whether or not they consistently give good information.

So, let's do. This is my new. Oh, I can't even say it. It says, got a hobbyist running SB management on two hives midwinter. Here, left full depth honey, super underneath. Should I pull out the run, double brood, concerned they'll leave the queen behind. Oh, I think we're saying queen excluder. Okay, let's talk about queen excluders in wintertime. So you should know, you know, right off the bat, I don't use queen excluders, even though I did just mention it for the Keepers Hive. The reason I leave the Queen Excluter on the Keepers Hive is because I'm evaluating that as designed until I develop my opinion about it. So if I just whipped it out and didn't use it as a design, then I couldn't say that the design is good or bad.

So when something new comes out, I use it the way they design it and then includes the queen of exclusive. Now, moving on, as we get to the end of the year, where I live, we have winters here, where bees cluster together and they're going to be migrating up through the resources as winter progresses. The queen excluder question comes up a lot. And if you've got a queen excluder that has a honey super above it, that is something that needs to come out so that the bees then during winter can migrate up into the honey resources without having to have. abandon the queen down below because what they'll do is one of two things well there might be more options than that but one of two obvious things would be that they're so hungry they migrate up into that food resource up above and it is so cold that they can't transfer those resources throughout the colony and then because any brood that's happening in winter and there is always some brood

in your hive in winter even here where i am an agzone for so that queen excluder really impedes that and they could leave the queen behind. So I take the queen excluders off, make sure none of them have queen excluders on if there are significant resources up above in your honey supers. So but part of packing down here, somebody may be wondering, well then what's your winter configuration? So I take off all my honey supers at the end of the year. So the last nectar flow in September, we take them all off and then we hope that the bees will backfill their cells going into winter and it can start to appear honeybound that doesn't bother me either but i end up with a deep and a medium and that gets them through winter so they'll backfill empty cells and things like

that assuming the weather's cooperating and that they can do it and there's nothing above that i used to when i first started beekeeping keep several honey supers on thinking more is better and what really happened was the bees could not manage that the cluster was low And that meant that I had a couple of boxes above my bees. And that meant then that the secondary heat that was coming from the bees, because back then I used to, I bought into what I was told early on in 2006 to leave little shims and let the vent come out through the top there. And what that did was created a cold area.

And the stored capped honey up there became a heat or cold sink. And so when it would warm up the following day, condensation would form on top of that stored capped honey. and then of course as it warmed up, it would drip down onto the cluster of bees down below and you had a bunch of wet bees. So every time I thought I had a super colony, they were too far away from the resources

that they were never going to use during winter, and that turned up to be an area where mold grew, where the wax had a white bloom all over it, and condensation formed, and wiped out my hive of bees. So two-fold, remove boxes that your bees are not going to use during winter. size your colony so they have just enough surplus to get through winter with their resources.

And here that's about 47 pounds of honey and no queen excluders on. Now that I've said that, someone asked recently about a queen excluder on top of the hive in winter, and I think I might have misunderstood the question. Because they were talking about feeding on top of a queen excluder. So I thought they meant a honey super. but I think they were using the queen excluder as something to set fondant on and therefore the workers access it. So you'd have a queen excluder, the food is on it. So that would be okay because that then becomes a feeder space and your beast can get through that.

But we know then that they wouldn't build comb up there and have brewed up there. So that would be okay. But if there's going to be a super above your queen excluder, I highly recommend taking it off for winter. So moving on. Let's see what else do we have. And here we go. So no more caps. By the way, if you're just joining us and you have a question for me, please type it in all caps. And that way all know the questions for me. You're more than welcome to answer each other's questions, talk to each other over there. And I'm going to move on with the questions that were submitted during the past week. So let's get rolling here. I'm running late. That was really good. A lot of questions right off the bat.

and I appreciate it. Question number one that was submitted during the week. It comes from Pete from Green, Ohio. And it says, here's the thing. I put a swarm trap up in early spring, had lots of lookers, even thought one day I had a swarm move in. Then the next day or so,

activity slowed down and shallow frames with foundation only in a swarm trap of similar dimensions as specified by Dr. Seeley. So should I take it down until next spring? So for me, swarm traps, yeah, put them away until early spring, by the way. But one of the things that was in here said that they had honey in the corners. This is one of the things I want to tell people that are thinking about swarm traps, swarm boxes, and things like that. Don't, please don't, prime them with honey and sugar syrup and things like that,

because the bees that are visiting that might just be robbing and interested in those resources and you're not getting the same scouts that you otherwise would get that are looking for a residence. So what you're trying to do is attract your bees. Now, full disclosure, I don't use swarm traps anymore. None, zero, nada. Dr. Sealy's a genius. The man is an animal behaviorist times a thousand. But I don't need them anymore because what I learned, and this is something brand new beekeepers

probably don't have a bunch of hives that have been used for years that they can use then as traps. but they are used in the bee apiary. If you can just clean out your dead out, clean out your dead out, make sure all of the frames and everything are healthy and in good shape and put the whole thing back together, put the entrance reducer on it, put a single deep together, just as if it were occupied by a small colony of bees,

leave it right in your bee yard and guess what happens? Your bees will occupy the box. Swarms come and move into those box. as this happened, now that I have a supervisor that checks the beehives constantly and runs back to tell me all the news, we had bees that aren't ours, fly right in and go right to our apiary and install themselves right into a winter deadout that had been cleaned up and prepared for a swarm to be installed in.

So this happens so often that I no longer put out swarm traps. Just spread your hives around, let them have plenty of space between one another, and it's amazing how quickly they can get occupied and you can have a hive where you didn't even know you had one. But Swarm Commander, fantastic, works really great as a lure. It is not just lemon grass oil. And then, of course, leaving well-used comb, so that part's good.

Don't put dirty things in there expecting them to clean it up. So if you, for example, had a bunch of wax moss tear things up, just get rid of that stuff. Don't try to use that to appeal to scouts that are looking for a place to live. So we want to smell like it's been lived in before, and we want that apartment to be furnished, i.e. frames of drawn comb in there that you were otherwise maybe going to toss out. So for me, I keep my frames of drawn comb, particularly brood frames, five years, beyond five years to start rotating them out, and I pick the ugliest, darkest comb, and I get rid of it.

You can render it into beeswax, but you'll, find that there's two-thirds of it is going to be gunk. We did that just for kicks. My grandson and I did, and we ended up with a really sweet small block of honey, not honey, but bees wax that we otherwise wouldn't have. So it was just an experiment to teach him about it and look at all the sludge that we had. So some people call it slum gum. I get rid of all of that. And if I'm priming a box to attract bees, I try to do that with the cleanest wax I can find and brood frames that still smell good. So think about it. If you were a bee, would you want to move into it and set that up? So yes, take them out through the winter and then do that. Okay, what are your thoughts on the bee barn

from Vino Farm? This is from Nathan Ward. Jim at Vino Farm spent a lot of time, put a lot of effort, super insulated that thing, created a deeper frame than the standard Lankstroth. I'm glad he did I'm glad it works for him. My opinion is he's an excellent craftsman and he's doing well for his own beats. I think it's good. And innovation like that is fantastic. It's not something I personally would need here where I am,

but if I were living in a much colder climate than I am, I'm in the snow belt, but the snow belt doesn't mean minus 20 Fahrenheit rate. It means a lot of snow. So it's not for me, but I do appreciate the amount of innovation and the skills that. he used to develop his bee barn, and I'm really glad it's working for him.

So let's see, what do you think? That's it. And J.K. Photography, hi from the UK. What's the best Veroa strip treatment? Mightaway, quick strips. Single answer, only answer. Might away, quick strips. Those are great.

Okay. And good, I'll go on to question number two. And it comes from Neil Gateshead, England. That's interesting. So, one of the questions here was, what about bio floors? Now, he didn't say bio floors. So Neil said, was chatting with the beak who spoke about a forest floor method for natural varroa control.

They literally take woods, forest floor debris, and place it on the open mesh floor, critters like airwigs, pseudoscopians, these along with other microflora and fauna e. Keilverroa that drop groomed off bees. Okay, so he only opens hives a couple of times a year. Dr. Leo Shirashkin also only opens his hives a couple of times a year. I can't get away with that where I am. But I will talk about the bio floor because that question actually comes up a lot.

A lot of people for some reason want to know my opinion about it. And the thing of it is, if bees had access to all of that detritus and forest floor material, beet moss, and everything else that people want to put together, it seems good and organic and all that, it absolutely would not work for me. And here's why. In the wintertime, for example, a bioflora that the bees do not have access to, and that's what it is. There's a screen, and underneath it, there's all this other stuff. Pseudoscopians are cool.

I've spent a lot of time videoing them, photographing them. I think they're neat. I don't think they can keep up with the varroa destructor mites. And again, we're talking about mites that have already been groomed off of the bees, fallen down through the screen into this biomatter. And then we're hoping then that the organisms like pseudoscorpians will then munch on the varotomytes down there and eat them up. There are other claims in here about the warmth and everything else generated

and it creates a better environment for the bees. Well, I'll say this about that. And I like with Dr. Tom Seeley. says, which is what would the bees be doing if we were doing nothing? And one of the things is that they would be cleaning that up and getting that stuff out of there. That's why it has to be protected from the bees. Bees clean up the bottom board, the bottom space of the cavities that they occupy. And we know this because we also look at bee trees and we put endoscopes in there and they are clean. There isn't a bunch of detritus and forest floor material at the bottom of the hive in the cell in a tree, for example.

So we know that the bees will get rid of it if they could. So they don't access that area. The other speculation that I get from people too is that the pseudoscoporpians will move up then into the hive and hunt out varroamites. Well, I think that's highly unlikely, and here's why. The varomites are on the bodies of the bees. And the bees aren't going to allow pseudoscorapiens a clamor all over them and hopefully get a hold of it with their little pincers and pull a Veroa destructor mite off the abdomen of a nurse honey bee. The other thing would be where else are the varroa destructor mites?

They're in cells while they're capped. So once again, pseudoscoprions and other tiny organisms like that, if the bees allowed them to move all over that area of the hive, would not be able to access the varroa mites that are then in cells feeding on developing pupa, the workers, or the drones, for example. So I'm not a fan of it just because of what I find when the bees are left to themselves. And it seems good. It sounds good.

It seems organic. And to have that decay down there. But the second part of why it wouldn't work for me is I'd have to get rid of it when winter came along because when the weather gets cold, condensation goes down the interior sidewalls of my hives. And it would go through that screen and collect down there. And now I've got a very high moisture environment. and it would not be healthy for the bees. So it just doesn't work for me.

Now, I wish there was more research on it. I wish that more people tested them out and did real good follow-ups on it. I have seen a lot of people put together bio floors and then make a lot of speculations about how good this is going to be for the bees, but then I don't see scientific support for it and I don't see adequate follow-up videos

showing exactly how that benefited the bees. So if the varro-destructor mites are coming off of the bees because they're grooming them and following through there, there already are little organisms, even lace wing larvae, by the way. I've seen those in the trays and eating the little bugs and stuff that are down there in your catch tray. So I think a normal tray that could be washed and cleaned out and dumped periodically would be much more of a benefit for the beekeeper and the bees than to have an actual. forest floor kind of replica inside a hive. I don't think that for me personally, that that would be a really great way to go for it. Okay, so it says here,

Midaway Quickstrips are not available or will be out or something like that. So Formic Pro is the next. If they have that, Formic Pro, use that. Now, here's one of the things I'd like to mention about Formic Pro pads. And again, the temperature thing comes into play. So it's environmental temperature. Remember, if you put Formic Pro pads, there are two methods.

One is with one pad treated for about 10 days, I believe, follow the label. Don't follow what I'm telling you. But you have an option to use two pads at once for 10 days and you're done, or one pad at a time, 10 days, and then 10 days. So one of the things that gets reported is that it doesn't work on might. that are under capped pupa if for example you're using the one pad method but here's my opinion about that if you use the two pad method it's a very intense very strong response from the bees you are going to lose some bees and there is some risk to your queen it's very powerful so and it does kill the mites

including under the caps but here's my thinking so correct me if i'm wrong you could put the one pad method on weaker, fewer dead bees, kill ferretic mites, mites that are in the dispersal phase. We used to say ferretic, they're exposed, they're in a dispersal phase, which means they're moving around, finding a new host. So, and exposed to treatment. So then if you put one on for 10 days and you have a treatment killing mites for those 10 days that are exposed, and then you put a second pad on, after that, you've gone to 20 days. So there's only one day in the entire development cycle that you have not had access to the mites that are in the hive. So I personally would choose the one pad treatment one after the other and get an extended lower dose that doesn't kill as many

of your bees and does not risk the queen. A lot of people use the double dose and requequeen anyway or pull the queen out, put her in a nuke, treat the hive, bring her back. So there's some options there, but formic pro then. If you can't do might-of-way quick strips, that would be. my third choice so all right that's it for the bio floor one let's see do i have any more nod and by the way yeah okay i've read my own quick strips no longer available in the uk could you please suggest some else instead right and darren says ape of our strips here's number three this comes from emma from hillsborough northern ireland so i inspire to one of my hives last Saturday, and it had both swarm and emergency cells. Do you think this

means something has happened to the queen after their swarm instinct kicked in? I made a split with one cells on each half to be on the safe side. So that was actually what Emma just did here, is exactly what I would have recommended. So swarm cells and emergency queen cells. The emergency queen cell would come out in the field somewhere of your normal brood. So that means they grabbed either a very young larva or they took an egg and they just built out from the face of it because they didn't have time to build these cells over time and make normal swarm cells, which tend to be on the periphery, on the fringe of the brood frame. So I would have done the same thing, but I also look them over. You can see that the bees are showing preferences for different queen cells

based on all the work that they do on it, and the nurse speeds that are actually guarding the cell. They tend to cluster around it, like they're always ready for it. And sometimes they vibrate. You'll see when grab it and give a little shake, particularly when you're coming up to a time when it might actually emerge from the queen cell.

So you can actually see what they're preferring. I do like the idea of splitting them up, particularly if they're on different frames, that would be really beneficial because the emergency cell in the middle, I would put that in a case. or in a nuke somewhere. And then I would also set aside those other cells.

Because we want to make sure that if they emerge, that they're good and they're going to make it. And then we can combine them again later and choose your favorite queen. So, and I'm going to recommend those queen cages again. These are queen isolation cages instead of queen introduction cages. You can put those frames in because here's what's cool about those cages. They're big enough to accommodate a cell that's on the face of a frame that comes out and goes down. And of course, then you would push the back side against one side of the queen isolation cage and have the queen's cell with the most space on that side. And then just see how

it goes. So I hope Emma lets us know how it worked out, but I would do exactly what already the plan is. But do I think that this means that the queen is compromised and they made some kind of emergency that they've already got the swarm cells built up around the fringe, then they were already planning to go. Now, they may have suddenly lost, or you could have been injured or something like that, so they made an emergency cell. But we've also seen where they'll make a bunch of queen cells like this, and then one queen emerges, and within a couple of days, sometimes they'll change their minds and chew away a bunch of the cells on their own. So the workers also can decide that they don't need a queen anymore, and then you'll see a bunch of cells gone. And the other thing is, they can wait for

the queen to emerge and if there hasn't been a swarm and you haven't lost your queen otherwise so you can do a detailed search for an existing queen but if those queen cells are capped she's gone so if they're uncapped she still might be around but she's on her way and do a detailed search for the queen but keep them exactly as described here i would create two nukes out of that and see who does the best and then bring them back together with the strongest queen of the two that she set aside Question number four comes from Diane from Warren, New Jersey. How close to the front entrance can you put an electric chicken netting? It occurs to me that the bees don't require clearance,

but there may be more to the story than I can imagine. I use the nets for ranging chickens and have discovered that they are also quite effective to keep coons and skunks out. Can you think of a reason why I couldn't set the fence 12 inches apart from the front of the hive. Okay, so yeah, a lot of reasons, actually. Whenever there's an electric fence, and I see these around apiaries,

and I understand they're great. They work for a lot of things. Leave yourself space to work around the entire beehive. So if you can't comfortably, me personally, see, I'm thinking of myself right now. I want to sit in front of that hive and I want to stare at that landing board. Now I can do that outside of the electric fence.

I would rather not. So the first consideration is personal access. Maintenance of the electric fence, how close is that thing to the ground? So if you're keeping skunks out, it must be close enough to the ground that the skunk would encounter it, get a zap, and leave. The second part of this that I was thinking about when I saw this question was, what about the impact on the bees that they're very close to it? So bees close to electrical sources tend not to like or they react to the presence of an electrical field. And so bees are very sensitive to static electricity, let alone when you hear an electric fence going,

you can hear it ticking away. The ticking sound that you hear on the fence itself means there's arcing and sparking going on between the conductors on the fence. So other than the controller that also has that cycle going, but you can hear the little sparks and bits. So wet grass and things like that all impacted. My personal takes, this is just my opinion. since bees are sensitive to electrical fields and their behavior can be modified when they're in the presence of an electrical source.

So I would get that away from the hive. So I would give myself plenty of room around if you normally work with a cart or something like that. Think about those spatial requirements when you're setting up an electric fence. I'm always interested in why people put an electric fence right up to their beehives. when even those poultry nets and things like that, those can be a couple hundred feet long, and why not give it a wide girth around? And that also keeps the predators well away from your hives

before they encounter the fence. So that's my take on that. We know that bees accelerate their behavior and activity when they're under even high voltage lines and things like that, which are hundreds of feet up above them. So there have been some studies. The studies were cursory. I did try to find information.

about whether or not an electric fence specifically would have a negative impact on the honeybees, and I really couldn't find any substance for that. So it's going to be practical as far as your ability to attend to your hives and getting to and from them and observing them and things like that. So then it's all on you. Okay, so I'm going to answer another question here real quick. John McNeil says, has the supervisors harvested from his flow hive? yet. I should let him tell you that, but no. He checks on it several times a day because, of course, panels come off.

You can look at the windows and everything. But we're counting on the nectar flow that's going to come from the golden rod, the asters, and things like that. That's going to be the heaviest nectar flow of the year for us. And the population is strong. Everything else is great. So I think it's going to be okay, but they are not full now. So we'll move on to question number five comes from Denny in Montesino, Montessano, Washington. Hi Fred. How would you go about feeding fondant in your horizontal Lans-style hive in the winter? Okay. Layans hives, they are a challenge because these things don't work.

So here's the thing. What would I do? I don't feed them in winter so I can start with that. When it comes to the land's hive, they're insulated, top sides, bottom, everything. That is a super insulated hive, deep frames, plenty of resources. So even my land's hives right now, I only have two of them. They're absolutely set for winter right now. So I wouldn't need to feed them.

Now, I have to answer the question. So what would I do if I knew I wanted to feed them or needed to feed them? Fondent specifically, because it has to lay on top and they have to get through it. So here's what I would do. As the temperatures become cooler and as the year wears on, because you don't want to put your fondant on too soon. And for those who are wondering, specifically, I'm talking about high-live fondant. Some people make their own.

There are a lot of different fondants available. HiveLive kind of took the lead everywhere when it comes to fondant because it is doing so well. And it comes in these packets that make it easier for us to put on our hives. So what I would do is I would make a block of wood just the backer of the frame. So the top bar of a lay-ins frame. That's the size it would be lengthwise. And then width-wise, it would probably be a couple of frames wide. I would drill a hole in it.

That's inch and a half in diameter. Now that's a random diameter. It really doesn't matter. The reason I say that is because I'm also going to cut an inch and a half diameter hole in the fondant pack and lay it over that. Now, normally through the year, they then, of course, would build comb on that. You'd have a frameless, you know, comb of honey or whatever there. But in the cooler times of year, your bees don't build new bees wax. so they don't build new comb when it's cold.

And that comes at a time when you would want to probably put your fondant on. So I would manufacture that piece of wood, lay it there, and the question would be, where would you put it? Well, I would put it, if you've got the brood frames there, right, you don't need to put it over the brood because the brood will shift as winter goes on, but I would put it at the fringe of brood and honeycomb, right, that's got capped honey in it, that is your winter resource, and then I would put that on top and put my fondant pack on top of that and the fondant would cover the hole that you put in it. That's why you can't just some people have said and maybe it worked for them.

Spread the frames apart, leave a gap, lay your fondant on there. But for me, that means now we've got edges at the ends and bees can just go up and be in the upper cavity there. But if you put a piece of wood on it with a hole in it, now you've got a feeder plank, put it on there. And then when things start warming up again, get in there and pull it off, get the wood out, push the remaining frames back in place before they start building a bunch of comb in there. Now, I have to tell you that I've not done that. So all I'm doing is speculating. It's an idea. That's something I would try out.

There's no vertical way to put fondant in because fondant, when it's warm, can start to settle. So if it's in a pack or something, it would like slowly ooze down. Or because it's exposed, it would force your bees to consume it or use. use it when they didn't even need it just to prevent it for making a mess inside the hive. So that's what I would do. Inch and a half diameter hole, plank on top, spread the frames or remove a couple of frames and have it next to your capped honey frames, not directly over your brood. And the reason that I say that is I don't want to spread my brood apart and have the facing

brood challenge the bee's ability to fill it with bees and, of course, maintain and keep their brood warm as they migrate through their frames going into winter. So I think that would work. Just an idea, though, haven't tried it. So if it fails, that's, let's see. So here we go. Question number six. It just comes from Atlas 4-2-25.

So this was, I posted saying that this is the last Friday of the month coming up. So it will be live stream. And then Atlas 4255 snuck in a question in the comment. saying it sounds good. So I have a hive that was being slimed by small high beetles larva and wondered how gross it is too gross to give back to a hive after the freezer. Okay, well, here's the thing. Bees will clean up a lot of stuff.

Bees are fantastic and some beekeepers like to leave messy hives for bees to clean and mess up frames for bees to clean and make right again. When it comes to slimed-out small hive beetle larvae, I've seen it. I haven't had it. So once again, I'm just going to tell you what I personally would do. And a slimed-out honey super with small hive beetle larvae is a mess that your bees will not tackle. So I would take it out of there and I would wash it all out. I would not just freeze it to eliminate eggs or whatever might be there.

And then return it to the hive hoping that they deal with. with the slime because something happens to the properties of that honey and everything else and your bees won't touch it so hose it out clean it off make it suitable for them and if the comb is too far gone i wouldn't even try to put it back in there i would give them fresh foundation or if you're foundationless and of course put in nice cleaned up frames and put that there so i would not restore slimy honey super frames to your bees hoping that they can do it get rid of it it makes a really good fire starter cook hot dogs or something cut that comb out hard no uh so here's my last question for the day question number seven uh oh here's craig fred i was removing honey last night and saw

open swarm cells. I found the queen and placed her in a three-frame nuke. What to do now this late in the season? Well, you've saved the queen that they were trying to get rid of. I would keep you did the right thing. She's in a nuke. And hopefully there's a frame. You only need one frame of brood and one frame of honey for them in that nuke, by the way.

So we can leave her there and keep her as the insurance policy. you satisfied the swarm urge because she just left. You took her. So then the next thing is we want to wait and see. This is actually not too late for them to actually do that. But you have to wonder to why they wanted to swarm right now. But I would then try to remove all swarm cells because I don't want to deal with a swarm this late in the year. So cut out every remaining swarm cell that you can find and then still leave the queen with a frame.

of brood and resources in the nuke until you make sure that they don't make other queen cells or that they don't actually generate a swarm. And then once you're safe and they haven't, you have to leave space for these frames to come back. So I use frame feeders. I don't use them to feed. I just use them as spacers. And they are mother load company is what makes the black frame feeders that I bought. I talked to them at the North American Honeybee Expo. I like the product, but of course, as I do with many things in beekeeping, I looked at it for another way of using it, and that is as a spacer. So when you do that, put something in that holds the space so that then you can bring her back. Now, if you miss it and they still swarm or something happens,

then I would bring her back after they swarm and get rid of the new queen. I would. So I wouldn't let them start fresh right now. But carve out all of the queen cells that you can find. Be very detailed, very careful to get rid of all of them. Hold your insurance policy. Time passes. Bring it all back together. Remove your spaceholders, your placeholders,

and put them all back together. And then let us know how well it went. And then you can thank me for my advice later. That is it, you guys, for today. do. That is it, you guys, for today. It's 515. So we've been on for over an hour. Let's see if there's any last minute questions, here's your chance to ask. Otherwise, those who are watching later, of course, can comment down in the comment section below. This is also available as a podcast on Podbean, which doesn't help you because you've already

been here for the whole thing, but you can just Google the Way to Be podcasts, and you'll find it if you want to relisten to some of the things we talked about. Also, if you want to post a question of your own for next Friday, which will be back to the normal presentation, you can go to my website, the way to be.org, and there's a form on the page marked The Way to Be. If you're also watching this later and you've got a question that you have to have answered right now, please go to the way to be fellowship on Facebook. And you're going to find a lot of the people that are over here in the comments section,

also present there. And everyone is super friendly and will be more than happy to address whatever issues you might have. And then hopefully get you right on track again with your bees and beekeeping. So I want to thank everybody else for being here. I appreciate it and spending your time with me.

And I hope you have a fantastic weekend ahead. And please stay ahead of the soon-to-come-nector flow here in the northeastern United States. So thanks a lot to the rest of you. Special shout out to my gatekeepers, Ross Millard, Keith Spelman. Thanks for showing people the door if they were rude. But I'm told that we never have rude people. So bonus round. Thanks again. Have a great weekend.