The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 274 getting ready for summer's end.

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/mAGUUn6ElVw

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, September 6th, and this is back here at Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 274. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is The Way to Be. I'm really glad that you're here watching and it's good to be back. I was actually in Vermont last weekend. Had a fantastic time. And I know you want to know what's going on outside right here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down to the video description and you'll see all the topics in order. There are some links that go with today's presentation, so you want to check those out too. I hope. 69 degrees Fahrenheit outside. It was supposed to be a lot warmer. We already had rain come through.

So I've been busy this afternoon. What happens when it's warm after a storm? Expect a swarm. So that's what happened. That's right. 15 minutes ago I was outside bagging a swarm. Couldn't let them go. They were too big.

So they're in a butterfly net sitting up against a beehive, making up. up their mind whether or not they want to go in three mile in our winds outside 92% relative humidity expected because it's been raining anyway so saturday and sunday here in the northeastern united states state of pennsylvania by the way the weather report that i'm giving you is local of course what's going on where you live is probably different so anyway rainy windy cold the coldest day here in northwest pa tomorrow in the low 60s and uh they're guaranteeing us rain. It keeps wee washing around 40 degrees, 60 degree, 60% and so on. Bad for beekeeping. Anyway, on overcast days, by the way, like this, as I found out, even when collecting a swarm

from a tree branch, which they should be happy that I'm there, helping them find a hive to get into. They stung me pretty good. So, learned my lesson there. They got me on the legs, because I just, you know, grabbed a jacket because it's so easy to get them. But on overcast days, your bees are likely going to be testy, so wear personal protective equipment. Anyway, the dew point is 66.9 degrees Fahrenheit, so it's easier going to get to that overnight. So what happens is a bunch of empty space inside your beehives that are oversized for the colony that's inside the beehive will result in condensation inside your hive, wherever the surfaces reach those temperatures. And this dew point changes, by the way. So, but high humidity, low

expect moisture inside your hives. The other thing is expect there to be a lot of bearding because we're in the middle of a nectar flow, thus the swarms. So and you can expand your hive, you can put ventilation on it, you can do a lot of things, you can follow the book completely and your bees still want to reproduce out here. I realize that down in the south you have like one swarm season. Good for you. I think that's fantastic. We have two swarm seasons, but you also have just one big nectar flow too and up here we're on our second big. nectar flow you can smell everything by that I mean honey you know the bees are processing it so we've had skunks every night in the bee yards and not one of those skunks has been able to get up and scratch at the landing boards and get the bees to come out so it could eat them why not because they're all

elevated off the ground if I had hives sitting on the ground or just on one cinder block which is about eight inches they would be fed on by skunks all night long and since I don't want to hunt out and kill the skunks I had to elevate them 16 17 18 inches in some cases so but that's a good news we have cameras out there we get to see what goes on I highly recommend you have some kind of security camera or game camera or trail camera so that you can see what's visiting your apiary and then you can make adjustments if you need to so we'll save a lot of this for the fluff section at the end if you want to know how to submit your own question or topic for a future discussion please go to the website the way to be

dot org and click on the page mark the way to be also uh just posted another video which was an interview with two experts so part of my interview with expert series and we talk about something that's really important to beekeepers this time of year yellow jacket wasps so we talk about vespaday and things like that and the answers may not be what you expect you might actually be won over just a little bit. I'm guilty of killing wass in the past and I've like created little things that collected them and put out wasp traps and things like that. But starting to shift my thinking on that again. You know, watch that interview if you're at all interested because we also talk about spiders and other things which are a huge favorite with most

people. With most people. Okay. So this is also a podcast. So, If you want to drive and listen, you go to Pod Bean, or you can just Google the Way to Be podcast, and you can listen. So the whole series, it's up, it's live, it's ready. And I think that's about it. So we'll just jump right in with the very first question today, which comes from Sue in Mishawaka, Indiana. I'd like to hear your thoughts about using robbing screens. I cannot believe I don't have a robbing screen sitting right here. Oh, yeah, I do.

Okay. Have you used them? Did you find them effective? Well, here's the easy part. Through the years, I've posted over 1,100 videos on my YouTube channel. And if you're just listening and not actually on YouTube, the YouTube channel is called Frederick Dunn. If you go to that channel, there's a little search bar up there with a little magnifying glass.

If you just type in robbing screens or robbing bees, you'll see all the videos on my channel that are about that. So I have a great demonstration, active robbing going on, and I did various things to see what it took. to stop the bees from robbing another colony. So this is a very good question at the right time of year, by the way. Probably the most popular robbing screen that you see that you could buy somewhere. A lot of people make their own and there are lots of tutorials on how to make a robbing screen.

But this one is by Be Smart Designs. If you're in beekeeping these days, I'm sure you've seen something from Be Smart Designs. I use a lot of the equipment that comes from them. The robbing screen features here are important. So even if you're making your own, right? This goes on an 8 or 10 frame standard Langstroth hive. Now, the top of it has opening, so you open one side or the other. When do you put a robbing screen on your beehive at night?

Not in the middle of the day, although that's prevention. If you walk out and you think you hear a swarm. And instead of seeing a swarm happening, you see bees fighting on the landing board, scrambling and grappling with each other. and you see this big intense fight going on. Or you see bees coming in and out and they don't seem normal. In other words, their behavior is not as casual as it should be.

And you don't see a bunch of pollen just coming in and being expected. A lack of guard bees on the landing board could be a warning sign. But here's the biggest warning sign that you're being robbed. There are bits and pieces of bees, wax, and cappings and things like that on the landing board, it starts to look messy. So when you see that, and you've got all that,

why not fail safe and put a robbing screen on. So there's another one by these are sold. Better be a lot of places sell them, but I'll go over the features just in case you're thinking of rigging one up on your own. Another great robbing screen with distinctive colors. Tops open up. Cereocell, another good company. You open one side at a time and the color coding may help your bees orient to that.

By the way, your bees are visually orienting to these entrances. So one thing I want you to notice here, if the robbers come in, they're following their nose. So in the case of bees, they're following their antennae, right? Because they're smelling honey. And so they'll go to these little vents right in the lower section, but where's the entrance up here? Notice there's no venting near that entrance because we don't want to draw the robbers who are unfamiliar with the hive to the area that is the actual entrance, which your resident bees will figure out. So actually, Beesmart Designs, This blocked out zone has a purpose. So if you're making your own screened version,

try to keep the screen area down low and near the actual entrance and the actual entrance up above and away from where robbers or even wasse would smell honey and try to get in. So that's a good pointer there. These tabs can be taken off for smaller hives. And you'd have to adapt your own for a nucleus hive, for example, because Be Smart Designs and a lot of other companies don't sell them for nucleus hive, so you're on your own there.

But yes, I've used them. Yes, they work. This particular one comes with its own pins already in here. So you take those off and you just push pin it, assuming you've got a pine hive. If you've got polystyrene, it also works very easily. It goes on there. So what else can I say? It's also designed to have pins go on the sides here and lift it up. So it creates a 3 eighths inch opening. What's that for?

So not only is it a robbing screen for bees, but in the winter, time this can be used as a mouse guard so by lifting it up three eight seven inch off the landing board even the short tail true cannot get through there so win-win you can make your own but be smart serious sell those are the top two that I know of they work very well and if you want to see the video I'll put a video link also down in the video description you can see how ridiculous things get it looks like Black Friday at Walmart with the bees all trying to get in shoving each other out of the way and everything.

Moving on to question number two comes from Scott, Claiborne, Texas. Hey Fred, I think I've sent this before, but I'm not sure if I did or not. Just a little FYI, Datant, D-A-D-A-D-A-N-T, carries the Bee Buffet. So for those of you who don't know, the Bee-Buffe is a hive top feeder that I really like. It fits Mason-Jar-style feeders upside down,

wide mouth or small mouth this is what it looks like it goes right on top of the hole on your inner cover and it stays covered so that the bees can't get up into that space right and then you close up now when the jar is here it's closed up so you pull the jar out it doesn't expose you to the bees so you can check on your liquid feed which is coming up day or night day or night cold or warm makes no difference the bees can't get out to get to you so you can check it fill them they're good for solids here's the thing the couple that did this actually the daughter of the inventor is who I met at the North American Honeybee Expo maybe even hive life before that so her father was unable to come and show his product is designed so they had a couple of designs

there but they were specifically hive top feeders and I liked them I tried them out I use them now on a lot of hives and they've gone out of business so in other words it was you know if you just have a couple of products it's very difficult to keep a business going so I'm very happy to learn from Scott here in Texas that Dayton is carrying these so thank you Dayton by the way day didn't better be I name a bunch of companies that I shop at a lot and they carry things that other people just don't. So I'm glad for these companies that do bring it all together and keep these products available for us. So thank you for that. And thank you for that

question. So high top feeder, very good design, very well made. It's going to last a long time. Moving on. Question number three, Fran, Jeffersonville, New York. Just purchased a used bee vacuum. She does not say whether it's the everything be vac or the everything, the Colorado bee back or which one it is but anyway it looks homemade guy said he got it from an old beekeeper years ago it's really a nice design my question is how much vacuum should I have on the hose end I know it needs to be enough to suck bees and not too much to kill them there are two gate valves you can open up to adjust the level I did use it to get bees off a fence post and it works great but I did have some dead bees in the cage any ideas would be

great. Okay, so for BVACs, there's just a couple of, you know, really basic things. One of the things I look at when I see someone presenting a BVAC, usually it's at our B Club or something like that, and if you do not currently belong to a B association, I highly suggest you join one, even if they may not see eye to eye with you exactly on how you want to keep bees, you're going to make friends there, you're going to see things, and maybe you'll get some ideas, or maybe you're the one that brings great information to the club meeting. So anyway, one of the things I look at, I see a regular shop vac hose. So I look at the interior of a shop vac hose that's on a bee box, right?

On a bee vac. If it's just as corrugated on the inside as it is on the outside, your bees are going to get the rough tumble through that thing. So when you're using a be vac, of course, try to keep your intake hose as straight as you can. The one that I have with the longest intake hose is a Colorado be vac and it has a 30-foot intake hose, which means I can go quite a distance.

Anyway, the interior of the hoses I use are smooth. So you don't see the ribbing. Okay. So that's step number one. The other thing is how much of a vacuum? So they have these bypasses because when you turn on a shop vac, it basically has one speed. It's on or it's off.

So to date, the only people that have a modulated controller on the motor for the BVAC is the everything BVAC. The Colorado BVAC is on or off. off so we control the suction on that thing by opening up a bypass valve which now they've changed so even they've modified theirs but to start off with leave your intake or your bypass valve wide open and then of course hit your hand on the end of the intake nozzle and see how much suction there is because it makes a little thunk-dunk sound when you're in there away from the vacuum and you're at the business end of that intake hose if it does that then it can suck up some

bees because that is the lowest intake that you can have and just rake it across don't shove your vacuum into a big collection of bees on a fence post or something skirt along the edges and just gradually suck the bees in now if you're not sucking any bees in that's when you start to close that intake bypass valve just a little bit until the suction picks up a little bit be aware that if you shove your hose in right into a big cluster of bees you can actually create a blockage in the end take hose. So then if you do that and you really crank it up, it's not the way to go, because now they're stuck. You have to fix that. Now what happens if the suction is too high? First of all, you hear the bees rattling and tumbling through the hose. And so it just sounds

like a bunch of little beebees or marbles going through it. You know it's too high then. They're really getting slammed because guess which is the most important bee that's going to make that trip? You're a queen. So hopefully, you get a bunch of peripheral bees first to get things primed in there because now we have bee cushions living bee cushions inside your back and then when the queen tumbles in there she lands against a bunch of other bees and she gets this off landing and then they'll take care of her while she's in there but the other thing is the discharge from the be vac system itself needs to be spread out so if it were a regular you know want to spread out the suction that they're being drawn against so you want a couple layers

because the only intake pressure is what really controls it. That's what we care about to get the bees into it. Once they're in, that exhaust can be a large surface area. And then, of course, it tapers down where it actually creates the vacuum by pushing air out. See, push air out. It needs air to come in to fill the vacuum. So anyway, the next thing is when you look at the bees that are in there that are dead, right? There are a lot of reasons bees can be dead inside your bee vacuum.

one of the big reasons that a lot of new beekeepers fall for is a huge swarm and then a moderate-sized bee vacuum box you have thousands of bees in there if the swarm is clustered like this and you've got one box and you're going to put all the bees in there they are going to suffocate on one another and they're going to after talking to steve rpassky who's got lots of experience with bevaks and collecting the bees they regurgitate what they have in their honey stomach, their honey crop, and that creates dampness for all the other bees. And so you can actually find clusters of damp, dead bees in a hive, in a hive, in a vacuum, if you overload it. So that's another thing. And this is why, like, when it comes to the everything bee bag, okay, but it only came with one bucket, and they don't sell a bucket by itself. You have to buy the kit that comes with the be bag in two buckets, the pro system, or something, like that. I just want an extra bucket. I don't have one. I don't want to buy another full

vac. So with the Colorado BVAC, and so if you're making your own, same principle, have multiple catch boxes for the bees. And I like the Colorado BVAC because it is a 10 frame standard deep Langstroth box, and the BVAC is made around that. It has the lowest number of kills in it of any BVAC I've used. So, and that's part of the adjustment, the type of hose that it is, the amount of section that you use, and the configuration of the box, and the fact that it looks like a pegboard on the surface. Again, I have a full review of both the Colorado and the everything BVAC. If you want to see what the features are, I go over them in great detail. So I have multiple boxes, and there's a lot of advantages to that. One is I can go and click multiple swarms on the

same trip and just put them each in because the motor comes off and the cover is part of the motor and we just put it on the next box and there's a nice screen already built in so we have a screen transit box that's later just going to be put on a beehive and we can put them on several different beehives and I made an adapter for that so I can put it on nukes and things like that now the next part of is your vacuum pulling the bees too hard if you're looking at bees that are inside the bee vac when you dump it out in your hive or dump it in front of your hive or whatever your method is if you see a bunch of bees with their stingers out parts of their stomachs distended and things like that that was too much vacuum force on those bees going through that's the softest part of their body

and the first injured when your bees are under suction like that so if you see bees with their stingers and the minute you dump them in they're coming out of the front how do i know this stuff because i've watched it done it to the bees myself. And that's how I knew, wow, we got to do something about the vacuum pressure on this thing. So more bypass pressure, more bypass relief then from the vacuum pressure. And I'm sure there is an instrument that measures vacuum pressure. I don't have anything like that. But so start wide open and work your way down from there. The other thing is on the interior of the bees of the box that you're collecting them in the everything be vac has chicken wire in it the chicken wire initially was low in other words it was right in front of the blast gate so look inside your

collection box and see if there's anything in the way of the blast gate which is what's going to allow them to get into that container that holding container for your bees the chicken wire was low and in the front of it. Some of the bees were being sucked in and just getting chopped right against the chicken wire. So when I bent that up and out of the way, ta-da, fewer dead bees. So pay attention to what they're going to interact with on their way through. The Colorado Beavac, and I'm mentioning these because these are the ones most of you would be familiar with. They have standard blast gates on them, which are used for, you know, dust collection systems in wood shops and things like that. So if you look at the hole going through and the way your hose plugs in,

if that blast gate doesn't get completely out of the way, that was the other thing. It might be cutting into the diameter of the entrance there. And so then you need to modify where you're hooking it up to give them a smooth bypass for that. If that blast gate, that hard edge is right there, then some of the bees coming through smack against that, and then they're damaged also.

So we want to get as many obstacles out of the way of the bees as they travel into the vacuum and then they end up circulating around in there and there should be no focused exit point that sucks them up against it really tight so a nice broad exit area protection for that so those are just the things that i've thought about looking at my own and things that you've fixed definitely no hard edges that they should encounter no wires that they should hit against it can act like a guillotine so just be very careful and i think you'll be good to go so That was question number three. Moving on to question number four.

This comes from Andy Damo from Toronto, Ontario. Hi Fred, will you concur with me that using Hungarian hexa cells for the brood section and the Finnish bee box smart system for the honeybee section sets up the beekeeper for good honey production the first year? Okay, so first of all, the Hungarian hexa cells. is actually what we call Bettercombe here in the United States. We're sold by BetterB and they have a deal with that company that makes them. And I do mention these a lot.

And by the way, there are people that do not like this. There are people that have written articles against this specifically. Why? Because it is not actual beeswax made by bees. It is made by biochemists and it is an imitation bees wax that follows. the chemistry of beeswax as closely as possible. So anyway, it says better comb right on it. It is not beeswax, but it acts as beeswax.

The advantage is, this time of year, by the way, this just came two days ago because I ordered a whole box of it. Why would I do that? Because we're at the end of the year and the bees will not draw out new foundation. So if this were spraying and we had lots of time ahead, this would be my choice.

It can be a wooden frame or a plastic frame and then have the heavy waxed plastic foundation. Okay, this is acorn heavy wax, smells like bees wax and the bees work it right away. They will not draw that comb this time of year where I live because it's getting cold at night. They don't do it. So I have a swarm that's hiding itself right now. I just know they're just going in the way I wanted them to. I primed the deep brood box with bell. better comb. Now here's the advantage so the way this is written will you concur with me? Okay so I don't know that it guarantees more honey from your bees for the

first year but I have had bees start off from a heavy you know prime swarm in spring and not only produce more than abundant population inside the hive but give a surplus honey and that's something else that kind of we need to talk about because not every bee is going to make a lot of honey. And this doesn't always have to do with what the resources are, the configuration of the box. It has to do with genetics. So better come this time of year if you're going to be like me

in hive late season swarms. We're in September. A lot of beekeepers won't have anything to do because they don't want to feed them. They don't do anything else with them. But my bees have three weeks left where they can be bringing in resources and storing things up on their own. to talk a little bit more about that in the fluff section at the end today but absolutely i

tested this stuff when it first was offered through better bee and your bees will use it first for honey storage but of course they mend it all up so see these open gaps on the edges they will completely seal that to these wooden frames and better be put these together so these came fully assembled and they had little wax paper dividers to keep them from running into each other because i was a little concerned the ups driver parked it right in the sun the box is a miracle that none of this drooped so this is really good stuff for late in the year because now here's the conversion rate that you hear a lot pound of honey ounce of comb so it takes your bees a pound of honey to build an ounce of comb well an ounce of comb is actually quite a lot so the cheapest route for

For me, even this time of year, is if we're hiving a swarm, as is going on out there right now, and it's a nice, big, heavy swarm, I can keep feeding them light syrup at this time of year and get them comb building and get them to make as much of that resource as they possibly can. If we take that need away from the bees, in other words, we provide them with a bunch of pre-drawn comb. that's actual bees wax from other hives and things like that. Or we boost them with one of our overpopulated hives, which I'm sure a lot of you have. And you just pull a comb that is loaded with brood right now,

and you park that right in the center. That will draw the bees in there right away. That's another thing. See, they're kind of being stubborn about moving in. And while I'm talking to you right now, answering this question, I'm thinking about I have an overpopulated hive right now that's bothering me a lot. I can pull one frame of brood, put it in there,

and get all those bees to go. straight in. What do you think? Good idea? I think it's a good idea. So it allows them to mend this synthetic comb right away and then they'll start putting resources right away and then the resources gradually get replaced with actual brood. So and the first year I tested it and the colonies that I put that in, that stuff is expensive. So we're not playing games here with it. It's going to cost you a lot. So if you're pinching pennies and you want to make sure that you get in the most, out of your bees is probably not worth starting a colony this time a year. You might just try to fish out the queen, remove her, and get them all to go back to the colony that they came from.

But if you did want to give them that boost and it was springtime, it's unnecessary, I think. But if you really wanted to boost them up, I would checkerboard them. Every other frame could be better comb. And then they would get a boost. It would start using it right away. And then you would save them that pound per ounce conversion, right? So, but honey production, the first year for the beekeeper, it's happened for me. And that was in the past. In fact, recently, I was kind of griping about, you know, my bees aren't making a lot of honey. It's a little bit embarrassing to have as many hives as I have and not have, as other people often do, barrels of honey to show for it. And I was forgetting kind of some of my fundamentals, you know,

because I focus so heavily on, wow, they really chew mites. Wow, these are varroa-sensitive hygienic bees. Look at them uncap that pupa. Look at everything that they're doing. Well, they're doing all this great work, and it's true, the varro destructor mite numbers are down, but guess what else is down? Honey production.

So they also tend to swarm a lot. No big secret, my colonies swarm a lot. And there's some discussion, too. Are you breeding for, you know, by rehiving, these swarms that you get, are you not keeping the genetics of bees that then swarm a lot? And they're terrible for varomites and things like that. So I think I've gone so far and away from the Italian line of bees, which is, and so this is what I was thinking about early on. I said, you know, when I had like five years experience keeping bees, you know, just a few

hives produce a lot of honey. And I thought that's because, well, are my bees over harvesting resources from the environment have they exhausted the environment no I'm using different bee genetics so what I want you to know the listener if your goal is massive amounts of honey then the Italian line of bees really does perform extraordinarily well for that and here's the problem with them and why I got away from them because keep in mind I'm not a honey seller that's not how I make my living. Because in the wintertime, they also had these massive brood patterns. So they kept up and there were the reason that I had to have 74 pounds of honey for them to consume through winter.

But guess what? They produced the 74 pounds of honey necessary to get them through winter. And they produced a surplus that allowed me to harvest honey and have jars and jars and jars of honey, right? So, just thinking as I'm talking here, the bees, the Italian line of bees, even with their big brood and their big demand on resources going all through the winter, they actually produce far more than my hygienic, sensitive lines of bees that have those great traits because I'm too focused maybe on the Veroa destructor might and the demise of that might. and the vigor of these bees because what they do, they're also locally adapted. So they keep their populations down, except wherever that swarm came from because it's huge.

But they keep their brood down. They also back off on brood as the temperatures go down. And they can easily go through winter in smaller boxes. So they can go through in a single eight-frame deep Langstroth box. with you can put a medium super on it depending on the colony size, the 10 frame boxes. So they have a hard time filling a 10 frame box, number 1 to number 10. They fill number 2 through number 7, and then they want to go up. So that's why they work so well when I use them in these nucleus hives and things like that.

So the genetics that you've chosen to go with will have an impact on whether or not you've got a surplus of honey because this is the logic and it's very solid logic. You have an apiary with so many hives. So if the issue were that you have too many bees for the area that you're living in, well then how do you explain hive number 22 over there that has three boxes of honey on it? And then you have hive number 10 or whatever over here

that has a lot of brood and they're super productive and everything else, but they're also policing themselves and they're hauling out, they're opening and uncapping brood, and they're getting varroa mites out on their own, but they're also only producing about 40 pounds of honey. Same area, same resources available. This is why they even have different flying patterns, and some will fly earlier than others,

and some forage farther than others, and some forage on different resources than others do. So it's very interesting. I think today that, if you are getting into beekeeping and your goal is to just get mountains of honey, which is not my goal, but if that were yours, Italian lines would, or Italian genetic sources that maybe have some of the other traits that help them fight verro-destructor mites and things like that.

Chalk brood is not a big issue with them and things like that. So then, you know, you've got another colony to manage that you would, one of the reasons I got away from the Italian line, even the Saskatraz bees, which were supposed to be the answer to cold weather, beekeeping, they actually ended up with the highest mite counts of any bees I ever kept. And the Italian bees, like we talk about the beeweaver line, and some people were concerned, oh, aren't those hot hives? The hottest hives I ever had were Italians.

So that would follow you all the way down the driveway to the point where we would tell people, don't come to our house right now. It's not good. In other words, if we had people coming to our home, I could not work the Italian bees. on the same day or they would just get attacked by these overly zealous guardbees and as somebody pulled into the parking lot. So genetics plays and I've forgotten, you know, to mention that to a lot of people because I also forget that honey is a goal for a lot of you. And so look at the genetic traits and those that are big honey producers, that's what you would be looking to expand from. Not just those

as I've had tunnel vision, small numbers of pharoamites, which I wanted to push through my entire apiary, and then, of course, outward to all of my neighboring beekeepers by sending out my drones. So, all that from a better comb discussion. But it does play because some bees are much better at building wax. They do it more prolifically, and others are very tight about it. They build exactly what they need.

They use it, and then that's it. They stop. So it's interesting. Genetics, very important. Question number five. This is an interesting one the way it was written. Wallington Filming is the YouTube name. It says, just a quick question from one living legend to another. So thank you for suggesting that I'm a living legend.

What's the best way to decrystallize honey? I've heard some people say, put it in the microwave. I'm going to stop right there. please do not put your honey in the microwave if you want to keep your honey as close to natural as possible you want it to smell great like the floral sources it came from and if you don't want to damage the enzymes and all these other things you put it in your microwave good chance you end up with just a sweetener that's very bland and all these great floral notes have dissipated so not good don't microwave it next is put it in hot water for long period

of time. So there is time and temperature. This combination will have an impact on the honey that you have. So depending state by state, the food and drug and groups like that, food inspectors, right? They have methods that they can share with you that tell you how to keep and preserve if you want to classify it as raw honey. There are limits to what you can put your honey through to have it still be called raw honey. So I like raw honey. So a super hot water situation on its own is not enough, but hot water is close. That's what we want to do. You just don't want to overheat it.

Oftentimes when somebody gives me honey and it's really thick, really dry, I suspect often that it was overheated. Some people get so anxious to get rid of the potential for the honey to crystallize. that they might run it up to 135, 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and then drop it back down. Now, again, time and temperature. So there are methods to bring honey up to higher temperatures for shorter amounts of time and bring it back. I don't personally recommend that.

So the other part of here, can I buy a slow cooker and just have it on the lowest setting to keep it at certain temperature? Have you come across the problem? Yes, I have. I have a pretty expensive tank heater for honey that I don't like. It has bands that heat up on it, which means that right next to the band, it gets really hot, and then gradually it has to migrate through to every part of this tank.

This is why I tell my backyard beekeeping listeners as often as I can when you collect the honey from the hive, when you process your honey, please get it into your final jars as soon as possible because if it solidifies in a jar, easier to cope with. So today's picture, the thumbnail, is my preferred method. And guess how I even know that this is the way to heat the honey? Because of viewers. Viewers like you who took the time to say, Fred, you never heard of this thing,

and it's called a, I know I'm going to mess it up. It's a suvidé. Let me spell it for you. S-O-S-V-I-D-E. So I thought, what? And no wonder you can't find it. If you go on Amazon and you just look like for a water heater or something like that, you're going to get everything but this. You have to know that it's a culinary tool and you have to know what it's called.

And this one is made by ANO-A-N-O-V-A. I'm going to put a link down in the video description for it, but you can also just Google for them. and then make a couple of different ones. Now here's the thing. What's the range on this? That's really interesting too. So you can set this to 33 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you were someplace where it's really cold

and you just wanted to keep things cold but just above freezing, this would do it. The advantage to this is, well, there are lots of advantages, but one of the big ones is that remember the belly band thing, the tank band that would heat the honey and decrystallize it right, or maybe just heat it to.

get it ready for processing or running through finer filters or whatever people want to do. I don't like that it's stratified in there. So moving the honey around, right? So in this case, moving water around. So the water doesn't just get hot at the bottom, for example, and just wait for it to rise. This thing has a circulating motor in it. So it moves water around. That's fantastic. The other thing is, it's digital at the top. Once you turn it on, you set the temperature. And it tells you what the current water temperature is and then you have the set temperature and when it gets to that temperature it holds it there so the next thing you probably want to know is what temperature should it be at to melt crystallized honey and not damage

those valuable properties you hope to preserve 110 degrees Fahrenheit or 43.3 Celsius is the highest that I recommend now you might think well that'll take a long time to get the honey liquid at that temperature you're right You might have it in there for 24 hours. These are actually designed to cook with hot water. So if you also have comb honey, sometimes comb honey, if it's not kept in the freezer, which I've recommended that you keep it in the freezer

until you're actually selling it or giving it to the consumer, right? It can crystallize in the cells of comb honey. Now you're in a pickle unless you put that in a Ziploc baggie that is guaranteed not to leak. and you take a straw and you suck all the air out just like a vacuum sealer and you put that in the water and you put this in the tank right so your pot has to be deep enough to accommodate this and see it goes right to the bottom if you use a shallow pot won't work the other thing is now this will circulate the water so if you've got them in little Ziploc baggies comb honey for example but if you've got your pots or you've got your cans or your you've got those little plastic bears, right? Which I don't use.

So I don't use any plastic honey jars at all. All my honey jars are glass. Personal preference, do whatever you want. So the other thing is I don't want those glass jars to sit right on the bottom. Now here's the thing. I want the water circulate underneath. This does not sit on a stove. It looks like it should.

It doesn't have to. You can wrap this entire thing in double bubble. I highly recommend that you do. make some kind of insulating case on it so you're not just losing heat everywhere right because this can sit on a counter anywhere doesn't need a stove and then you just plug it into your wall 110 120 whatever that is and turn it on and then of course you put your jar of honey in there all the jars have to be the same size because we want to bring the water level right up to the bottom of the lid you also just crack the lid the tiniest bit because when you

When it cools down, when you pull it out, first of all, while it's warming up, there might be a little air in there that expands, needs to escape. The other thing is when it's cooling down, it's going to cinch up and create a vacuum seal, almost like those canning jar lids. They pop in when things get cold again. Because we don't want to add water to the jars of honey. So then you just run it. And you can put quart jars, you can put pint jars. There again, the water level has to be up enough so that this thing will operate because it has to have. a minimum water level associated with it so how do you elevate your jars use a trivet

this is a trivet that comes from who else be smart designs which is where that came from but you can also just go to any culinary thing and look for trivets or standoffs or screens stainless steel that sit on the bottom that create an airspace or a flow area underneath your jars so you can even heat these work so thank you to be smart designs that's not what that's for the trivets are designed for people that want to put winter patties or something like that inside their hive on top of their inner cover and by giving the bees access all the way around guess what they can go after the small hive and chase them out of the hive so that's what that trivet is for but you can find a lot of uses for it it just keeps things off the bottom so anyway and then you run it because at 110 degrees

Fahrenheit it does not degrade your raw honey it's still going to smell right it's going to taste right and it's just going to liquefy it again now some of Sometimes I do take the jars out if there's some stubborn stuff on the bottom or whatever and I'll just turn the jar and over and gradually But you have to be careful about manipulating the jar because then you end up with these ultra fine little fuzzy bubbles in your honey right when it cools So if you do the turning and turning it over and over to kind of accelerate getting the crystallized honey to liquefy again Then you put it back in and let it go for a couple of hours to make sure even the finest bubbles come to the surface you may get a little foam at the top and then you can just put plastic cling wrap right on the surface of the honey and then lift it off and it takes those little bubbles with it if those bother you they don't bother me at all but some people don't want to see it when they're buying honey so yes this thing and I'm sorry I don't remember the name of the viewer I think it was multiple people that basically were just stunned that I have no clue about this S-O-U-S-V-D-E-S-V-D-E.

So, Sue Vite, those of you who are chefs and culinary experts know exactly what I'm talking about. But that is it. That will work. Oh, by the way, you might be wondering what that thing costs. I looked it up for you right before I came on today.

So there's a Wi-Fi version. So that means you control it with your phone. Okay, I don't know why you need to do that. But remember, it's not a one-trick pony. In other words, this thing is actually designed to cook food for you. That's why it has this upper end of 197 degrees Fahrenheit. So you're supposed to be able to put food in Ziploc baggies and things like that and drop them in the water and then cook them, you know,

whether it wouldn't dry out or anything else. So anyway, Wi-Fi. It's normally $83. It's on sale right now at Amazon for 74-25. Now often, I give you the name. name of it and everything so you can look for it on your own but often the things that I list down in the video description are considered affiliate links right because I can get a percentage if you buy something and it has an affiliate from Amazon that link goes through cost you nothing different

but if you want to avoid that you don't want to give me the nickel or whatever it is that I might get then just search for it yourself and just buy it outright it's perfectly fine either way so but yes do not microwave no it's my grand do would say no no no no no okay question number six comes from jason windsor ontario canada so i have a hive that i'm fairly certain will only fill out 10 frames would you know which has a higher statistical chance of making it through winter just a 10 frame single or a 505 frame nucleus hive if i had two 10 frame colonies In other words, would you newspaper and combine them to one colony and make a double? This is my first year.

Okay, I wouldn't combine them. But here's the thing. This bothers some people, actually, which I find entertaining. The nucleus hives, the five over fives, five deeps over five deep compared to a 10-frame, single-deep horizontal hive. Now, Steve Raspki knows a lot about getting bees for winter with single-brewed boxes. And he does it. So the 10 frame box, no problem, insulated under cover, a feeder shim on top of that so you can keep things going. And he takes everything off, and that's it. Single brood management.

It's pretty interesting. I'm sure you can find a lecture about it. What got me really excited about the nucleus hives is that I was taking really lame colonies. Let's be honest. They were weak, they're small, they weren't going to make it. So you're not, you know, you're emotionally invested in that colony. they're just they're not going to make it they were pretty silly you know they're on a branch at the end of september and they're this big and they just can't they have no chance of getting through winter uh now the advantages let's go back to pre-drawn comb so i just happen to have a bunch of extracted frames that had fully drawn comb on them they're just empty no resources in them and uh so i put them

And I find that a single five-frame nucleus hive, the bees don't even want to occupy it where I live. And maybe again, this could be genetics. But they didn't have the numbers to go with a double. Okay, so my rule of thumb was always to start them off in the five-frame deep. But here's what happened. They produced too fast. They put many resources in it right away. They got honeybound.

So they filled every frame, every cell with honey and pollen and resources. and there was very little space for the queen to lay. We need a space of the queen to lay eggs because we need replacements to get them to survive winter. So the 5 over 5 is my minimum configuration. Okay. So I want to explain that. The flip side of this is, if you've got the money, if you've got fat stacks,

if your wallet is too thick and you're worried about it damaging your back, right? You need to thin your wallet down so that you sit evenly and your back is healthy, your spine is aligned. that's when you would buy the Appame, 7 frame, nucleus, hive. Those things are insulated. They have feeders on them that are fantastic design. The entrance to that, you just slide it to open it, close it,

and anything in between. And so that has the best chance in my book of getting a small colony of bees through winter. Now let's flip back to the wooden five-frame deep, with the ones i have of a built-in bottom boards they don't even have a removable bottom board and the entrance is a three-quarter-inch entrance right on the face of it with a control dial so put those together five over five and uh the miracle of miracles is that they make it through winter now the way i configure that is they have migratory covers on them which means single three-quarter inch

wood on top but i put the double bubble reflect text whatever people want to call it get the the thickest stuff that you can put that on the top of the backs of the top frames right and if you have to have a feeder shim on there because you're doing this too late you need to have a feeder shim let's see below your insulation so you'll have then a fondant pack or something like that straight on the backs of those top frames then a inch and a half to two inch feeder shim and that's where then you put your insulation and the cover on after that that so now you have to make modifications if you plan to feed now i put them on there and just written them off in my mind and just put an insulated top didn't feed them and made a point of saying

look they're not even fed look at them flying in january you know in a warm day doing cleansing flights it's a miracle they're alive because the only resources in there are the ones they gathered and then in spring they were alive and they filled their hive too quick and they swarmed so That did not happen with the 10 frame or 8 frame single deep brood boxes with late season swarms or small colonies. So I have to derive from that that the smaller nucleus-style channels vertical are doing much better going through my winters here in northwestern Pennsylvania. We don't get 40 degrees below zero here. We get a miracle night where it drops a 20 below. or something, but it's not sustained.

It's not a long period of time that it stays like that. So they've done extremely well with just the top insulated and an insulated cap, 2-inch rigid foam board over the top of that, just like a little cap that keeps them sheltered from any horizontal wind and stuff. So to answer this, I'm sure other people have many ideas. This is Ontario, Canada. So I would be looking at a lot of insulation for those. In fact, I would think that, now here's a problem too.

I might as well address this. We're talking about Apame hives. Let's say you listen to this right now and you go, well, I'm going to get one of those apame hives. They're insulated. That sounds really good. I want you to think about, yes, I have an Apamehive top feeder sitting right here. This has vents all the way around the edges.

And the first year that I tested their hives, I left those vents open. Now, here's the thing. if you are putting one of these together this time a year, right? Your bees are not going to have the time and resources to propylize all these vents because they want to. Every one of my Apamahis has every vent and opening that's accessible to the bees is now sealed up with propolis. But if I were putting this on right now with all these vents, couldn't do it. So I had a talk with the guy that represents a company that shows up at all the big conventions,

and I'm sure we'll be at the North American Honeybee Expo where I'm a presenter this year, so I hope you come. If you've heard me before, go listen to someone else because it's a lot more of the same. I have worked up new stuff, but watch somebody else. They're going to be much more entertaining. Anyway, just take a layer of this or even a layer of plastic. Anything that stops the airflow.

That's all we're trying to do. So if you cover this underneath, then now the air doesn't pass through and they don't lose that passive heat through what is an insulated top on the Apamah hives, but they're vented front and back, and there's no slider to close those vents off. I close them off with, of course, double bubble.

And sealing those off because I already know in advance if the bees had the option to seal that up, they would have. But we installed them in that hive late in the year, and then they didn't get the chance to you. So I let them run through the year and let me know what they wanted, what the bees wanted, was it closed off top. Now the advantage of these feeders, wintertime, you can put fondant in here, you can put syrup in there. So whatever you need to do, this is very versatile. I like them. If you're against plastic, that is not for you.

So I think that answered Jason's question. So moving right on here to question number seven. Do you do anything to the bee vac to make it safer for the bees so don't get injured by the vacuum? Now that's from Karen Johnson 6649, which is the YouTube channel. I think I already answered it. So in a previous question about a BVAC, I don't know if something's going on about BVACs right now and why people are asking these questions, but it's interesting. I think I answered that.

So if there are still BVAC questions, please look at the VVAC reviews that I've done, but I think I've kind of given a good description of how to assess your Bs, so see what kind of trip they're taking into that B vacuum. Question number eight comes from John O'Foothill Ranch, California. So, let's see. Talking about packing down for winter, just wondering about the horizontal hive, whether the bees are away from the entrance.

I suspect the brood is three or four frames down from the entrance, and the honey frames are five, six, seven frames. Two and three may not have honey in order to condense space. Would you remove frames? one and two and replace with honey filled frames and leave frame six and seven and so on let me make this very simple okay um right now and by the way hands down horizontal hive easiest hive management of any beehive i've ever owned so specifically the long langstroth horizontal hive has the most equipment compatibility of any hive if you insulate

it works fantastic the population is great the bees manage it great they move horizontal through the frames just fine everything is great now that I've said that this time of year so my entrance is at one end and if you want to know what my configuration looks like if you go to the website the way to be dot org and there's a page for hive prints and drawings it's in there so all the details are there it's set out so that you can make your own or use it as a baseline and make your own modifications for whatever suits your climate and your B management practices. So it is my favorite hive. Anyway, so this time of year, as described, we have the entrance at one end. As it gets a little cooler, those first couple of frames only get partially used really at any time during the year.

So it's almost wasted space. I almost should make a plenum and have the entrance down there and then the entrance comes. through and then we start with the frames right we almost don't need those first couple of frames there but they're placeholders so we leave them now as we get through the progression is predictable and easy to see so as you get to the frames it started to have brood in them and then of course first little brood patterns and they're a little bigger a little bigger a little bigger and then we get four or five frames in a row they're covered in brood and then it starts to taper off again like a basketball smaller smaller smaller and then all we have then is resources

that the bees have stored. So that's when you get the pollen is there and then you get near the end and this is the tempting part. It's really hard for me not to just grab out the frames of honey and take them because it's so convenient. It's right there. You pull the coverboard off. You see it right away. In fact, I like to have people once we pull the cover boards off run their hands across the top and tell me where you think the brood is. It's very distinctive because it's the hottest part of the hive, especially on these cooler days in the 60s. So anyway, now, Now we have the frames of honey. So there is a transitional area where they're consuming and backfilling and consuming and back filling.

So the two or three frames just after the brood going towards the interior. Those are filled and drawn off pretty frequently. So it teeter totters back and forth. Now we're getting to colder days going into late September, right? So I'm forecasting. Don't do it now because they still may backfill all those frames that are right next to the brood. So what I would do is as we get near the end of September, and we get those late season warm days right before we get into October.

That's when I would pull frames that are only partially full of honey or not fully involved with resources, no brood on them. Pull those out, slide the frames that are fully capped and full of honey right up next to those last brood frames. Then take those partially filled ones, just don't remove them completely, run them all the way to the other end. So that they're just placeholders. Now, this is part of packing down, right?

So we have to visualize it. It's horizontal. So think about a 10-frame, deep box, and then how many resources would you have above it if you had a solid, in my case, in my environment, a solid medium frame full of honey, right? So how many frames of honey do I need? So if I have deep frames and I've got six of them and they're all a cap, that's all I need. Because I have the history with this hive of every year going through and finding. in spring that they had a lot of honey still left over. And last year, last winter I did an experiment

where I offered them no emergency food resources at all. No sugar syrup at any time of the year, no fondant packs at all in the wintertime. And they have the feeder holes because here's where it's important for you to know what's going on in the hive. Thermal scans at the outside of the hive. Where's the cluster? Now we know when we did the inspection where all the honey is and where the brood was, So if there are only three frames over, and it's already the end of January, beginning of February, I know just by looking at the thermal on that, you may not have that advantage, but that there are still frames of capped honey beyond that. So they're still good to go, and I don't have to worry about it.

Now, here's another way that your bees have a great advantage and that you have an advantage as the manager of the bees when springtime comes. We have this, you know, polarized method of beekeeping. where some people say they rotate boxes. Some people will say that bees never go back down. Okay, well, my personal experience has been very different from that. They certainly do go back down. But there again, I have a configuration that may be a little different from other beekeepers.

I don't have top venting. I only have an entrance. That is the only source for air movement and for bee movement in and out of the hive. And they naturally move down their brood towards. that as the year warms up. But now we're talking a horizontal hive, right? So because also my boxes are incompatible because my brood boxes are deeps, then I have all mediums above that and in some cases shallows, right? So those are for comb honey and things like that. So now we have the horizontal hive and we hit springtime and we find that the cluster is in the middle of your

horizontal hive, which means that from the beginning of the cluster all the way back to the entrance, you might have five frames that are empty, that are not involved. Guess what you can now do? We don't want to take them all away, take all of it two. And then leave those first two right by the entrance, if you're configured the way mine is with a single entrance at the end. And then we just move all the brood and everything else back down. And where do the frames go that we just pulled out?

At the opposite end, now they're ready for your bees to expand into as the season goes. So this is the equivalent of swapping boxes, taking them the top box that's fully involved with brood and everything in spring, making it the bottom box. Instead of doing that, we're taking the frames, sliding them over, removing empty frames, and they're putting the empty frames at the other end so they can fill them up as the season progresses. You also have the option to just remove them all together and move them and remove the empty frames, leaving those first two. and then the bees have less space to manage so you have a follower board that creates a solid barrier as far as your bees know that is the end of the interior space available to them so the frames that you've just pulled out of there go on the other side of the follower board so that when you're doing

inspections in spring as you need more frames as the colony needs to expand you just move the following board and you leapfrog with those frames and add them in wherever you want them to B. That is the easiest method for managing bees. The only thing you're lifting is a single frame at a time. It is easy peasy as they say. So anyway, that's what I would do. Long explanation for a simple question. Question number nine comes from Burt from Balson, North Carolina. What is your proper way to handle frames with Brewd in various stages. How long is it safe to have a frame out of the hive and can I shake bees off back into the hive to get a clear view of brood? Now this is key. We're trying to look at brood.

Brood is the most sensitive. These are the most sensitive frames in your hive. Now I'm going to mention something that a lot of people don't like to use because they're expensive, but let me tell you what, they're super effective. If I'm inspecting a hive and I have to pull boxes apart and I'm to pull out frames and look at them it's important to keep these frames in order i don't hang frames of brood outside of i have frame hangers the really good ones right super stout super strong will support anything i hang frames of honey out there no sweat but when comes a brood i don't hang brood out there i don't lean brood frames against the hive on the ground i put them in hive butler toots and uh i wish i could encourage you to do that also

When you put your bee frames of brood in a hive butler toad, there's no wind on them. There are no other bees visiting them. It holds 10 deep frames or mediums, of course, anything shallower than a 10. It has enough space under it, so if there are queen cells on there, you can keep it upright and it accommodates the queen cells. It also creates a space between the frames, keeping them in order in the hive butler tote while you do a lengthy inspection. Now, this is another area where a lot of beekeeper. will say you should be spending no more than 10 minutes in that hive max you should be whipping through there closing up and getting out of there well i'm not most people because i'm super curious and i want to

stare at things so the question is handling so a lot of this has to do with how warm is it outside are you doing this on a 62 degree day is it overcast is it windy so these things are more sensitive to your bees i know that some people uh like to just pull their frames out and say the bees are going to warm that right back up is not going to hurt anything chilled brood and things like that doesn't even matter well i don't know if these people go out and look at the landing boards the following day at sunrise to see how much of that brood is dragged out and is on the landing board now because you just had to see the frame on the coldest winter day um so anyway the amount of time out minimize the amount of time that you have brood apart from other brood frames because the proximity to one another they

warm themselves right getting bees off of brood should you give the brood frames a shake now i know some people are collecting nurse bees because they want them to help out maybe they're trying to boost a hive or something like that and that's fine you can collect nurse bees that hive butler to comes in handy for that too because although i highly recommend you not give them a shake you take the frame and you take a brush or some people use turkey feathers and things like that here in my yard my kids grandkids find turkey feathers every day. You can just sweep them off, sweep those nurse bees off, and let them fall right into a tub.

They don't fly out and they don't go back to the hive the way foragers would. So we're not shaking the frame. I don't shake brood frames ever. Now, why would I tell you that? I mean, how do I know that it doesn't hurt them? Here's what you should know about me is that I teach you fail-safe methods. In other words, if I tell you, not to shake your brood frames and it doesn't hurt the bees because you didn't shake them

there's no harm right but if you know no it's fine once they're capped you shake away you just give them the old you know the thumb drop you know you you hold your frames like this and you bounce it against your thumb and bounce it against your forefinger like that and you shake those bees off now if that caused some damage or some liquid came out or you've got open brood open larvae in there and they got disrupted, or you've got pupa that are in there that are in a stage of development that keeps them in a very sensitive state. You just damaged them because I told you it's okay. Just shake them right off. The fail-safe part, the no-shaking, sweeping it off, that guarantees that that that's not going to happen. So where the shaking, you have that potential.

The other thing is, this time of year particularly, we have nectar coming in. It's really wet, right? So when it first gets into the hive, this is why they take up all that real estate. all those cells are covered. It seems like you're going to have a honey bonanza. And then you come into it in a couple of days and it's occupying half the space. Did they really get rid of it all in there? They condensed it.

They're getting rid of the water. But I've seen people tip a frame just like this to look straight down to get the sunlight in it and just watch the wet nectar just drip out all over the hive below it. And hopefully the hive is under it. So at least they're going to recover it because when they step away from the hive and they tip it to look like that

and they flip it over to look down at it. And you see these drips coming out. That is lost labor. So keep them upright. Look down, give it a little tip, but don't tip them flat to look at them. So that's another method of holding your frames to look at eggs and things like that. Keep it vertical as much on the vertical plane as you possibly can. So I think that's about it.

And that was question number nine. So that is the last question for today. So we're in the flow. section but yeah you never hurt by doing less agitation there have been studies done and it's very interesting that the vibration the people that bump things like some people will take a frame like that and then just go boop and knock it on the backs of the other frames and get the bees off so they can look at things that vibration unsettles your bees by the way when bees are nervous and active from being disturbed, right? And you are a disturbance. They perform lower. They live less long,

right? So, and they do these tests to when things are going on at night around a hive. So if there's vibrations and equipment and vehicles coming and going that vibrate and these vibrations carry through, it has a negative impact on the bees. So what you should really be trying to do, is removing as much as possible all the vibrations that are coming from you when you're interacting with your bees. So that includes abrupt movement, hammering, banging, banging, tapping, knocking. All of these things should not be part of your bee management. Smooth as glass, carefully prying things out, carefully lifting things, sliding frames over, pulling the next frame so you don't roll your queen between frames. All of these things are very

important when you're managing your bees and now when you come to your honey frames and it's all capped honey and you just want to get the bees off of that so as you can put them in your tote or something like that then you can give that a good shake because it's capped honey it's ready to go try to keep it vertical but that that quick movement shaking the bees off is one way to get them off the frame but you can still also resort to a nice brush or feathers or something like that anyway moving on I think I've made my point. Let's say, oh yeah, so if you've got light colonies right now, start lifting your hives.

We're in the home stretch here. Hopefully you've done Veroa might counts. Hopefully you've decided to do something to mitigate the Veroa. We're kind of late in the game, but better late than never. And this is checking bottom boards and stuff like that because I pulled bottom boards on my observation hives, and I found two Veroa on one. And one of them was still alive,

so I videoed it. It's a lot of fun to see them. But I was amazing how incapable the little Varroa mite was. It like it crawled along and it seemed like it was doing its thing but then it grabbed a little bit or piece of wax or propolis or something and tried to climb on it and it flipped onto its back and then it was stuck. And there wasn't even any adhesive on there. The little Verroa destructor might just flipped on its back and now its little feet are just there and wow super delicate. They could almost make you feel bad for them except that they're terrible for your bees so we hate them all right moving on back

feed your colonies so you know you're still at a time where you can use light syrup right now heavier syrup of course your bees get more out of it if you've got light colonies you have to build them up to make them survive winter we just want and this doesn't mean open feeding every colony in your apiary so selecting colonies that needs your help anyway skunks bears other predators Be aware of that. Look at pack down grass and things like that. Look for muddy landing boards. Look for evidence that something might be harassing or eating your bees at night. The other thing is I was looking at skunk scat. So if you don't know what that is, that skunk waste.

Do they actually eat the bees or they chew them up and spit them out? They do both. They chew some bees and spit them out. They also chew bees and eat them because it's showing up in their waste material. parts. So skunks are eating bees. The good news is in my bee yard, as I described at the beginning of today's Q&A, they're collecting already dead bees off the grass, so no problem. If you've got electric fences and things like that, this is time to drum around them, get them ready for wintertime, make sure everything is intact because bears are getting ready for winter. And if you're in bear country, as we are, you're going to start to see social media posts about how bears came to your apiary and things like that. So be aware.

and keep the bears away. Don't leave robbing frames out overnight. So if you've done an extraction and you've got frames that you want the bees to clean up the honey, I'm perfectly in line with that. I think it's a great way to do it. So you take them out at 10 or 11. Same feeding station.

You'll find out that your foragers once they discover that you put out honey frames and things like that for them to clean up. They visit those every day to see if there's any resource there for them. But just don't forget and leave them out. overnight because in raccoons and other things come after them I've butler totes I just mentioned that great way to store frames transport frames temporary holding for

frames while you're doing configurations for your hives particularly with the brood and that company offers you a discount that has my name in it Fred five I get absolutely nothing it's just something to do for my viewers that would be you so ask for the discount Fred five and if it's not if it doesn't show up contact them and say hey what's the discount for Fred Don. Anyway, process and bottle your honey as quickly as you can. Please don't leave it in the tubs and give yourself a mess to deal with. Because remember, the tubs and things and filters that you use to screen your honey,

so we use a 600 micron filter, you get to put those out for your bees to clean up too. So get your processing done. Anyway, also have your, if you're going to be using sugar, if you're going to be using fondant, if you plan ahead, and you buy these things on sale, Sam's Club or whatever you belong to. Get that stuff set up so that you can provide emergency resources on the colonies that you know are going to need it. We know that High Live Funant has worked extremely well getting our Beast for Winter, but do not put that on now.

Wait until the nights go below freezing. So when you get below freezing nights and we're late in the year and they've already gotten all the resources out of the environment that you think they're going to do. get that's when you put on hive life fond it otherwise the bees move up too soon they consume it when they don't need it and on it goes flow supers for those you with flow hives a lot of people want to know if they can just leave those on in winter time please do not take your flow supers off your queen can and will lay eggs in there if there's no queen excluder which sure shouldn't be going into winter so all your queen excluders are off going into winter unless you're one of those people that moves your queen exluder up on top of the hive and uses that as a feeding rack to put

winter patties and things like that on remove them because your bees need to be able to migrate through it with the queen and everything else so don't leave this on take your flow supers off flow hive frames not for winter it's not because the cold weather does anything to the plastic is because we don't have the bees up in that because they're ultimately when springtime comes if everything went perfectly and they had the right amount of resources. That's where the brutes are going to be up in your top box and your top frames come springtime. So and with the weather coming through, the cold weather here in the northeast, of course, and rain followed by warmth.

If it's warm after a storm, expect us warm. So I want to thank you for being here today and for listening to me. If you still have questions, please write those down in the comment section below. and of course if you have a question that you want to submit for future consideration please go to the way to be.org and click on the page mark the way to be fill out the form and hopefully you make the list for next Friday. Thanks a lot for watching and listening and I hope you have a great weekend.