The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 309 June 6th, 2025

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/y9dg73yH_1E

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, June the 6th of 2025. This is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 309. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. There's a lot going on outside. And if you're new, you want to know what's going to happen in this video. Please look down in the video description. You'll see all the topics listed in order and some relevant information. Now, if you want to submit a question or a topic for a future episode, please go to the way to be.org. That's the website. Click on the page. It's identified as questions or the way to be.

Somebody else was asking about the iron-on patches that we have. That's on that same page. Sorry, that wasn't even identified in the past. It's a miracle that people found it. So that's pretty much it. You can submit your question that way and find out what's going on. The other thing is, it's a podcast. on Pod Bean. So if you do a Google search, The Way to Be, podcast, you can go and find it and listen

while you travel. There's a lot of truckers that listen to this, so I hope you're not falling asleep because I found out some people do tune in to me just to calm down and fall asleep and they're not even interested in honeybees. Can you believe it? Okay. So I know what you really want to know. What's going on outside? Outside where? The northeastern United States, the state of Pennsylvania in the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. That's where I am. So whatever's going on with me may not match up with what's going on with you. I was told that I need to clarify that. So there you go. It is 68.9 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now. That's 20 degrees Celsius. Guess how much wind there is? None. So zero miles per hour. What's that in kilometers per hour?

Zero. So 97% relative humidity, as in its drizzling right now, just spitting lightly, just enough to keep things damp, which is actually pretty sweet out there. The UV index is one, which means, nope, not a good day for a tan. And Saturday, for those in the northeastern United States, or even in my vicinity here that are listening, Saturday is going to be your best day for working your bees. It's going to be warmer than today. How warm? Seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit, 23 Celsius. So I planted everyone. That's what happened around here. I planted all my seeds.

What did the chickens do? Followed me right away and went right into those prepped areas and started eating the seeds, of course, free range chickens. How about the health of the air outside right now? We're getting smoke and particles from wildfires in Canada. So we have different zone ratings. The green zone would be fantastic, but it's not. We're in the yellow zone right now.

So the pollen count is also very low, and the rain is helping knock these particulates out of the air, but we're in the yellow zone at 2.5 parts per million particles from the fire. So people that have asthma and things like that, if you're sensitive to particulates in the air, this is going to bother you. So what else? Right now, because the pollen is low,

based on what's going on outside, your bees are looking for pollen. So they might be finding nectar. Right now where I am, the nectar flow is down too. It's just an ebb for a little while because the next thing that's going to bloom will be clover. And when the clover blooms, we're going to get a strong nectar flow again. So be ready for that. I hope you are.

We had a lot of swarms around here. I have not been successful. I am entertained that people still ask me how to control swarms when I appear to be so bad at it because I'm collecting swarms. So if you want to look at the videos, go to my YouTube channel, which is called Frederick Dunn. and you'll see the last two or three videos deal with swarms this week, so there you go. So pollen, right now the pollen source is grass. And in my neck of the woods, what else is bothering us? Raccoons with their pesky little five-fingered hands reaching into the beehives and things like that.

They're not getting much. They're just annoying. They're setting off all the alarms in my apiary. Haven't seen a bear. Skunks come through. Skunks and raccoons are. crossing paths with one another and I noticed that the raccoons don't give a hoot about the skunks and the skunks are avoiding the raccoons which i find interesting because one of them is capable of bio-warfare

with an effective range of 10 feet so opossums they wander through they keep to themselves they're snacking on dead bees i like that i like the skunks and opossums to come through and much the dead bees because they're of no use anyway they're self-evicting from your hives your undertaker bees drag them out they leave them on the landing board the following morning other bees come through fly them away and then they drop to the ground still holding onto them then they fly back so why not have something eat them because what comes after them other than that will be ants and in some cases hate to mention it but spiders will come and get them off the landing board i highly recommend that you go out there at sunrise why not what else you have to do look at your landing boards at sunrise and see what's all

there if you have a bunch of pupa laying out there partially developed bees look at their wings look for deformed wing virus and things like that look for evicted dead drones this is not a normal time a year for that to be happening so you might identify colonies of bees that need your attention so please pay attention to that so what did I plant I know you want to know thousands of Cosmo seeds we plant those seeds by the pound by the way And borage put a lot of that out. I'm pretty sure the chickens are out there digging up all my borage seed because it's pretty conspicuous.

Marigolds, we planted because I'm counting on marigolds. Tell me if I'm wrong. I planted marigolds everywhere in amongst my sunflowers and other stuff because I'm hoping that it will serve as some kind of deterrent. At the very least, it's going to be good looking, right? It's going to work. And I have a wide variety of sunflowers. I know that you can buy the black oil sunflower seed that you put in your bird feet.

like I do. You can sprinkle that out there and then you can roll it in, which is all I do. I do some light tilling. Then I sprinkle the seed. Then I use a 700 pound roller over the top of that and that is it. That's all I've done for years and it works great. So you could grow black oil sunflower seeds. Here's my concern and why I didn't do it. Because let's say I throw a bunch of that out there. When I've got all the wild birds visiting the prepped ground, chickens go after anything where there's disturbed ground. It's just what they do. do their chickens, they dust bait, they do all kinds of stuff in it. They even go after the worms that come up, who knows. But I think throwing black oil sunflower seeds out there when other birds can see you do it is not wise because then they come and get them. Also, voles will go out and sniff through the dirt and eat the black oil sunflowers, which are now available to them on the ground. What do you think? So we did plant, let's see, the wide variety of sunflowers that I plant includes maximillians which are perennial i've planted the border kind of an l-shaped border of a two and a half acre field with just maximillians because that's going to be like a screen like a privacy screen i don't want to

see neighbors i don't want to go beyond my yard and see people so these plants will be visible barriers and who wouldn't rather look at maximilian sunflowers than a neighbor on their tractor i would okay So buckwheat. It's starting to flower right now. Weird little flowers are kind of small. Nothing's on them yet. So but the buckwheat's out there. It's going so far. As I mentioned before, no clover blooms yet. But when that happens, nectar flow, be ready. Maximilians are at 14 inches and you're robbing potential among your beehives right now where I live. Pay attention to your environment. If they're having problems finding forage, they're going to be looking to each other. They're going to rob each other's colonies. robbing risk right now where I am is moderate and that will change right away as soon as the clover comes into bloom and a bunch of other stuff that's it I think we can jump right in now do to do to do so the very first question comes from Vince Keenan 5919 that's the YouTube channel name says my neighbor had a swarm move into his house two days ago and I see the swarm above the drywall in

between the Joyce. Do you think if I put a QMP noodle out by their entrance hole that I could draw them out, otherwise I'm going to cut a small hole in the drywall and use a B-back. Okay, so this QMP, which is Queen mandibular pheromone, it is sold as temp queen. I used it in a couple of videos over this past week, so it's very effective. Add some things and not so effective. others. That's why it's important for you to know that you cannot lure a swarm out of a hive once it's moved into a cavity and they want to live there. It just doesn't work that way. First of all, I've been using it wrong. I just use it because I'm playing around the pheromones and trying to lie to the bees to get them to do what I want them to do, to impose my will on them and use a

synthetic pheromone in order to do that. So you're not going to get them out of an established cavity so likewise they couldn't set it in front of a hive that's active with a queen that's laying and expect to put a temp queen noodle out there and have them come out of that hive and join the noodle in whatever box I put it in it just doesn't work that well what you do end up doing is drawing off some workers of course they're the foragers because they're the ones that are outside the hive and they do have that risk of flying through that pheromone stream rerouting and joining the QMP noodle And so really interesting video. I hope you'll watch it and I want to thank one of my viewers

because I thought there was a swarm in the air. And so while they're in movement, while they're going somewhere and in a bivouac location, when they're in bivouac you can manipulate them with those noodles. So you can get them to go places. But when they're flying, actively hovering somewhere, if you come through and you've got a temp queen noodle, now keep in mind you have to have this stuff ready to go, you have to store in a freezer. So often whenever I go out and if I hear a swarm, I just run to the freezer and get a QMP noodle right away. Because then you can go out there,

zip tight to a stick or something and get them to go on to it. So that's what I did. And they all glommed onto my stick, which is the same stick I use for a queen on a stick and everything else. So who knows what other pheromones? It has residual. But they glommed onto it. So from zero bees on that,

stick to thousands of bees were on it. And I thought I was dividing the swarm. And that was wrong. Because I thought, you know, well, if it's a QMP noodle and if they had a queen, they're going to follow their queen. I'm not going to overpower her unless this is what I think I figured out. If the queen that they're flying with is unmaided, it's a virgin queen. And sometimes we get these tertiary swarms according to Dr. Ellis down at University of Florida. We get these secondary swarms that are a little smaller and they fly along in smaller numbers. And so the fair amount of an unmaided queen is weaker. Now it is enough to keep them, you know, they'll go somewhere with her, they'll establish a colony,

but you can reroute them. And so what happened was when I went from the videos called zero to thousands and five minutes. And it's because in the time frame of five minutes, they all went onto the stick. Now I thought I just had a bunch of foragers now they were going to be at my beck and call and I could just shake them off on any colony that I wanted them to reinforce

and then just hide away the QMP noodle right after I shake them off. So they can't just rejoin it. That's important. So, but what happened was when they were on there, I took very close up videos of all that activity and doesn't somebody write a comment. And now it's the pinned comment for that video

that says, I spotted the queen, at three minutes and some odd seconds. And sure enough, there she was. So I got an entire colony out of the air onto that stick with a $6 or $7 set of Queen MediBedipeliframone synthetic Queen Mediubilofaramone temp queen noodles. The other thing is some people were looking for those online.

They were trying to find them and they were finding only Chinese sources and they were asking me where it's made and I have no idea where these other companies are, but please go to better be.com and get your temp queen noodles there. Tell them that I sent you so you can be sure to get the red carpet treatment and pay the same as everyone else. But so what I really want you to understand is none of this

is the reason why they even produce temp queen. Think of it. What's the name? Temp queen. It's a temporary. replacement for a queen in a colony. So if you have a colony, you're doing inspections, you find out their queenless. We want to stop them from producing laying workers. So by putting in this pheromone temporary replacement, it'll allow you to locate another mated queen and get her in

that hive. And you won't have laying workers starting because they think, pheromone based alone, that there is a queen already present. Now then the next question, I'm sure there's instructions that I should have read, but I don't, that come with it. So if you don't know what to do or how it's supposed to be used, please read the instructions. I'm sure they also, because Bederby is very good at this, they provide guidelines on their website step by step, how to use something. I just use things differently, willy-nilly, because I like to find out on my own

exactly what it can get bees to do when I play with pheromones. So, and then I recommend if you've lost a queen late in the game, so it wins late in the game. Right now, they can still make their own. So if you've got eggs, you've got a colony that happens to be queenless, you can let them make their own. We're back-yard beekeepers. We've got time on our hands. And so you have to plan.

So think 30 days out from that. It's not that it takes them 30 days to make an adult bee, but 30 days before you're going to see new adult bee. B's out on the landing board doing adult bee things outside the hive. So the quick route is to insert the QMP noodle. Where would you put that right on top just inside the hive top bars where you can find them easily, right, later on? And then you order in your queen and don't remove the temp queen noodle until your queen has arrived safe and sound and alive, right? So most recently this year, I did buy two queens. I didn't buy any last year, but I bought two from the B-weaver fan

family, those who knew last year that tried to get some, they were out of them. I don't know what was going on. Breeding challenges or they were sold out commercially. I don't know what was going on, but right now they have them. So I got two and I installed two Pea Vee Weaver queens. They're nice, dark queens. Now, I won't know the temperament of the offspring of those queens for how long? Well, it's going to be 21 days before new peas emerge. And then before I start seeing them and getting the attitude, check because some people have reported that they thought they were hot. But I've never had that happen with those that I've purchased from them in the past. So what I'm doing is I'm supporting their genetic research, the fact that they use survivor stock and that they're trying to do their best, as are many others who breed queens, to get the genetics under control so that we

have Varroa resistant stock. And there is also another branch of varroa tolerant stock. And there is also another branch of varroa tolerant stock and then of course there are bees that mull veroes that chew their feet off so there's all these levels so daniel weaver has done the legwork and uh i spoke with one of their salespeople about have they had problems with any hot stock and things like that and apparently not so these are good so therefore i will know you know in a few weeks here how that's all working out but temp queen is just as a placeholder. So you would remove that hours before you install your new queen. Now, because you spent money for it, right, it's an expensive queen now. We can make our own queens. We can get free queens and stuff.

But if you're impatient and you don't want there to be a lag where there's a loss of production and a hive, you want to limit that because you can have a queen within days, you know, so if you order it on the weekend, you'll have it the following week. And keep in mind that for every day that you don't have a queen that's in production in there, you're losing 1,500 to 2,000 new bees every single day at the other end. 21 days out, right? So if we can get a queen in there, we're going to be in production. Now, that may not be important to you.

I'm just sharing if you wanted a rapid turnover. That's one way to do it. There are a lot of sources for queens, but that's the one. Anyway, that's how you use temp queen. That's what it's for. I just play games with my bees. and I am a failure at keeping my apiary under control and having it small. As someone pointed out, much appreciated.

Okay, moving on, number two. This comes from Frederick, Thornhill, Tennessee. I just watch your video on the Appameh and Indora Hive. This is the same setup I'm using. First Year beekeeper. One thing I did not like is the attaching to the bottom box. Decided to go with OA Vapor and with the ball. bottom being plastic can't put it there easily and did not want to shove it directly into the brood box.

My solution was to use a slatted bottom rack screwed onto the Apamay bottom and the brood box sitting on top of that. It allows me to remove the brood box if needed and so on. Okay, so here's the thing. A lot of my hides have slatted racks and if you don't know what we're talking about and probably you may not. look at the video that I posted this past week because Appameh is a hive company that makes insulated beehives and is a full system. Then there is Premier that produces propola wooden boxes. And what's propola? Well, it's a combination of propolis and Marla Spivak, Propola, Marla. So Propolis and Marla Spivak from the Spivek lab,

I say the Spivak Lab. It's really just the B-Lab University of Minnesota, but Marla Spivak, Dr. Marla Spivak, is such a prominent figure there that it just kind of gets called the Spivak Lab. Anyway, they did all as great research and found, of course, the benefits of encouraging more propolis to be deposited on all the interior surfaces of your hive. So now we have this healthier hive.

Then we go a step beyond that. Then there's Greg at Natives. Nature's Image Farm who came up with a treatment system to treat these wooden boxes so they'll last much longer and I think the final coat is beeswax but before that there are other things that displace moisture and stuff so you get this longevity for the wood from that treatment so they call it the Endora Hive so all these things have come together so we have a hive top feeder system that comes from Apameh and then this bottom board and that's what Frederick is talking about here The bottom board is a combination tool, basically, but it is made out of plastic. So it's got sliding entrances that you can open and close either side. There are a lot of variables there.

You can also open it so that it has access to a pollen trap or not. And so this is helping people that live in areas where they've had their bottom boards. This doesn't happen a lot to me, but their bottom boards rot out because they're made out of wood. So this was a response to beekeeper. that wanted wooden hives but they wanted a more durable material for the bottom board and they wanted the feed enhancements for the top of the hive and so that's what they get so that's what this whole accommodation is and if you want to see it please look at the video that i posted this past week and i'll link it so that you can see it if you want to find it down in the video description here

but anyway you cannot of course should not put you know oxalic acid vaporization directly in through a plastic component. So the slatted rack, which is a two-inch spacer, which I have on at least half of my hives out there, and just between the slats. So the slatted rack has slats in it that line up with either eight frames or ten frames. So they're built for the standard Langstroth brood box. They act as a spacer, a place for your bees to congregate when they're in the way. So these are foragers. It also prevents or reduces wind blasts in the wintertime from getting in through the entrance and just blasting up into your bees. It also, if you have bees that can't make it out in the wintertime that are dying,

they die on top of a leading board inside the slatted rack and don't block the entrance that way. So the slatter rack is where I also drill quarter inch holes between the slats so that I can deliver oxalic acid vaporization, which is a organic treatment to control varroa destruction. mites. So and the time to do that is after you've installed a swarm actually that's when it's most effective. So you install the swarm, give them about eight days, and do an exhalic acid vaporization treatment. Now the concern as described here by Frederick in Thornhill, Tennessee, is that didn't want to deliver exhalic acid directly into the brood. You don't have to. So that's the other part of this for those who are thinking, I don't want another piece of gear, I don't want a

slatted rack, I just want to drill a hole and deliver it right there. And you can do that. So you can actually consider the number one frame and the number two frame or the number nine and ten in a ten frame box. If you line up directly between those frames, they're usually not brood areas. Now you might think that delivering exalic acid vapor in that spot might not be very effective, but I've done a lot of testing on that myself. I wanted to see how bees move the vapor around themselves because as soon as you introduce it into the hive they fan their wings and it gets blown everywhere so it really kind of equalizes it so there will be no part of your hive that does not get exposed to exhalic acid vapor and therefore exhalic acid particulates and there was a really

interesting article recently in the american bee journal because we've not understood the way vero destructor mites are wiped out by exhalic acid we thought maybe it's getting through the little pads on feet it wasn't really understood and then that article which is very interesting it talks about the respiratory system of the broodestructor mite and how the particle size of the exhalic acid may be actually blocking up their ability to breathe so we know that our bees are bees and other insects draw their air in through spiracles and we know that mites are not insects So they have a different, they're closer to ticks actually.

So they have a different respiratory system and finer particles act on them differently than they would the bees. So that's why the bees aren't bothered and the varomites are and they die. So it was a very interesting thing. I hope you'll check into the American Bee Journal and look at that article because it's very interesting. But anyway, my whole point in explaining that is that the Xalic acid vapor goes everywhere in there with the help of the bees. Because the bees move suddenly away from it when it's initially introduced, but then they kind of come back and they just start moving around normally,

even though there's this dense haze of exhalic acid for a while. And it's very important to keep the entrance closed up for the 10 minutes required to get that treatment to work right. I've watched some very seasoned beekeepers just introduce exhalic acid vapor and not even close the entrance at all. And if you're trying to get maximum effectiveness, please close up the entrance of your hives and follow all the guidelines of that exhalic acid.

And by the way, I might as well plug EZOX, EZTAC OX. You can get your exhalic acid that's approved as I might aside right here in the United States from EZOX. The other option is APABIOXL, which you'll find it better be in places like that. Easy eyes. Look them up. Okay, question number three comes from Jobi Baker.

And says I have a swarm high up and a Douglas fir, well out of reach for about five days now. I have 12 empty hives, all different sizes, all deadouts from last year due to a brutal wasp situation. This is really interesting. So anyway, there seems to be quite a bit of interest in a lot of interest. a few of the five-frame hives as there is a lot of traffic and the question is is it possible that the queen is leaving for mating flights while the swarm is bivouacked in a tree therefore holding them up from leaving okay so this is really interesting and uh the idea that the queen would be doing mating flights while they're in a temporary location on a tree branch in a bivouac which is just a swarm cluster they're

not housed I think that's I'm not going to say it's 100% impossible however improbable and here's why they are actively scouting trying to get that entire cluster of bees to go into a cavity somewhere and you'll see waggle dances on the surface while they're communicating where they want to go the queen can definitely hold up that process by not leaving the branch at all if they because I've had queens contained in cages used to create a swarm like that and then when they fly away and she didn't go with them they all come back so likewise if the queen takes off on her own the swarm could then realize that they're without a queen just stick with me for a

minute on this one because the minute she's missing because i've been the reason they've been missing from time to time i just collect them with the queen clip and then they start searching all over the branches and you'll see the cluster break and they start tracing up and down the branches or up and the tree or the fence boats or whatever they're on they're actively looking for her and when they can't find her they take off they fly and they do this in a very short amount of time and this is why i think that it would be very unlikely for a queen to take off and go and get mated somewhere because they leave that cluster they're both in jeopardy now so the queen could come back without a cluster of bees to survive with right and likewise those workers they could dissipate and just join a

bunch of other colonies and drift away which is what they tend to do they also might just go back to the colony they originated from and that just leaves the queen i think it just messes everything up and i've never heard of that but it is very interesting not impossible but unprobable improbable for the reasons that i just uh cited but anyway this whole idea of losing all these bees due to swarms not swarms um lost bees due to wasps all right So in this neck of the woods, the was, I've never seen wass overwhelm a colony that was strong and queen right and everything else. Usually they've lost heart. You know, the queen's missing, the queen's not functioning, the colonies in decline, and wasst take advantage of the opportunity to get into the hive.

And also, this happens most near the end of our year. So when the temperatures drop, the wass, of course, are after all the nectar and carbohydrates they can get. and they're making queens for the winter. So what they do is they can overwhelm a hive. The Hivegate entrances have been most effective. I know it looks like a, somebody said this looks like a small chainsaw sleeve, and it kind of does. But if you look up HiveGate, and it's from B.I.Q Solutions,

it comes out of New Zealand, the number one benefit of this. There are lots of other benefits, but the number one benefit, was that your bees have this long channel to defend themselves against intruders and just for example the European Hornet that we have here and I've been watching them closely lately because one flew down right in front of me and Nabda Bee right off the entrance of a hive and flew away I was not ready to video it but this tiny entrance right here even a full-grown European Hornet can't get through that the Asian Giant Hornet can't get through that and yellowjacket wasps that are smaller

If they do get in through this, they have to come through this whole channel. And where do they come up? Right here. And this will be under the cluster, which is well defended. They don't get to slip in through the entrance and scoot up the interior surface the way they normally do. So they can access the honey stores, which are way up inside the hive. Instead, they have to run the gauntlet and come in directly underneath your cluster of bees. They can then sting them to death.

And what do they do? They panic. So let's be the wasp that comes. in here it comes out here goes over the edge gets attacked by bees races to the front and can't get out because it forgot that it has to go back in here down through the channel and out the front i've actually used a 200 thousandths of an inch diameter camera element to view the conflict that goes inside these and it's very comforting to see how the honeybees can then defend themselves So they don't just get past 1B and get in and up the walls.

They engage B after B after B until they turn around and run right back out. The goal is not to have them make it this far in. But if they do, they're still doomed. Because when they try to run out, they end up on the interior of the front and they can't get out and they just expire there. So it's very sad for the was. So Hivegate entrances, that's a good example with those kinds of losses. And they were really helpful in the Pacific.

northwest here in the United States with people that lose lots of colonies due to wasp. Here, I've not lost a colony for it, but I've seen it, and it's not fun. Question number four comes from Beth Carell. This is I'm very curious about these hives. Now we're talking about the ivory bee hive, IV-R-Y-TACB. And I've been following since they came out. I know the company is in the process of moving to the USA. That was news to me.

So ivory bee is moving from Israel to the United States. So I think that's cool. How's the hive standing up to weather? Also curious how you would take splits without another hive of this type or supplemental feed in winter if needed. Okay, so I've had it through several winters. It's an insulated hive. Again, if you want to know what this thing looks like,

please go to my YouTube channel, Frederick Dunn. Up in the top right where you have a little search bar there. You can type in IV. r y dash b and uh you'll see it because i walk you through the entire process it's the most involved assembly of a hive that i've ever done so it is insulated it's shaped like a barrel on its side and the bees use these round frames very well but like a lot of unique hive setups you do need another one if you're going to balance resources if you want to swap between hives it's not compatible with anything else so you would need others now it is on the porch of my way to be

academy building and we even made a custom cut out through the railing just for their entrance to the south and they're full-blown active now as an observation hive it's not my favorite we're looking at the edges of the frames so you can see the you know the cells that are attached to the interior surface of the 180 degree viewing area but because we're looking at the edges we don't really see face frame activity the way you do in a normal observation hive but as far as suitability for the bees it's fantastic they use everything there's 15 frames in it they filled them all they drew them all out they cap them all with come as far as supplemental feeding

it was never necessary so as a configuration for bees it's fantastic for the beekeeper it creates some extra work so not it i would say between that and the last lay-ins it's my least favorite hive to get into so just there's that the idea that they're coming here is very interesting so anyway consider all the hives but and if you're putting it together these are not inexpensive if you get them assembled they're over a thousand dollars so but they hold up to the weather also but keep in mind too that it's on a porch that is covered so it does get sun and rain exposure to some degree and it does get snow covered but it has probably six thin coats of marine spar varnish on it and so it's holding up so I like it it's curiosity it's fun to show people I like to

open it up because you can certainly see what the bees are doing you just can't see the cells and see you know them feeding larvae and things like that so it is an interesting hive Question number five comes from Bert. Balsam, North Carolina, says you mentioned spring swarms with sugar water mixture. Does that mixture also contain honeybee healthy to preserve the mixture in the spray bottle? Yes, it does. So you have options. When you mix up, because I have these spray bottles that are just hanging on a rack in the garage where I keep all my bee equipment.

And so if I'm going to go out and work the hives, especially if it's, is super hot, super dry day. If I can get away with spraying sugar syrup and some honeybee healthy mixed in with it, a little light sprits just to get those guard bees occupied, that's my preference. I don't even use a smoker then. Don't even have to. So honeybee healthy acts as a preservative. It definitely, you can smell it right away. And of course, you don't use this during high robbing periods, right? Because if we did this late in the year, mid-off, and on into September. If you sprits it with honeybee healthy mixed with sugar syrup, it kind of sends the smell into the air and there's a lot of lemon grass in it,

lemon grass oil, and what do bees do and then want other bees to come? They activate their nassanoff clan which actually smells like lemon grass oil. And some people even use lemon grass oil as a lure to get your bees to occupy cavities, so a swarm trap, things like that. So with the honeybee, healthy in the sugar syrup it is going to alert other bees around the area but yes it extends your sugar syrup life i mix it up in spring and what i've got in those bottles last me all summer long and right into september so the other thing is um to keep bees from coming and jumping all over a colony that i'm going to open up and if i'm going to lightly spritz it with uh honeybee healthy mixed

with sugar syrup uh i go ahead and spritz all the landing boards in the apiary that way give them all a little sense of that little taste of it and occupy them for the time that I'm going to be in the hive that I'm working with. And in the past, the bees have come out, tongues ready. As soon as they smell, just a little bit of it, the resident colony, they are ready to be fed. So rather see them with their tongues out, then there's stingers out. And it works. So that's it. And by the way, when I'm spritzing, we don't spritz every swarm. The ones that I'm going to shake into a most recently, expanded metal wire trash can. If I'm going to shake them off into a pillowcase or if I'm going to shake them off into a

butterfly net, I spritz them with sugar syrup first so it adds weight, keeps them together, and then they drop as a clump, and they fall off the branch really easy. I also start spritzing at the top of the branch over the top of the swarm because if the queen is near the top, she'll move away from that into the mass of bees. And it's kind of a guarantee that when you shake off even a small, clump of bees and the queen is going to be with them. On the flip side of that, if you're going to use a BVAC, Colorado BVAC, or the everything BVAC or something you've made yourself, never spritz it with anything.

Because, of course, it's just going to gum up your intake tube for your vacuum cleaner. So, hope that helps. Question number six comes from Alvin from Yonkers, New York. Did I say that wrong? Yonkers, Yonkers. Okay, anyway. says i fred i checked in on a recent split to find that they were superseding my old queen i found a newly hatched virgin queen as well as my old one who seems to be laying a lot of drones despite the small size of the split my old queen had great genetics is it worth trying to save her with another split or should i let nature take its course and have her daughter replace her thank you okay so Here's a personal decision on how you manage a swarm, or not a swarm, but a colony of bees.

Thinking about making a split, the old queen is there, and she's laying a lot of drones. Queens at the end of their useful life. And what's a normal useful life for a queen? Some people requeen every single year. Some colonies requeen themselves every single year. How will you know? You won't unless you mark them. This year is blue.

You can mark them with any color. that you can see and you can make up your own color scheme and keep it in your own log books but uh i used to like to keep my queens two to three years and uh get good production out of them these colors if we look at the standard kind of the international standard has five colors therefore we're kind of suggesting that queens don't go beyond five years i'm sure there's record breakers that have gone farther than that um but um marking your queens and uh keeping track of them is very important because you may find that they're superseding much more often than you thought until I started marking my queens I didn't realize how much of a queen turnover there is.

So anyway, at the end of their life, Smyrna Thika is empty, which means they can no longer fertilize the eggs that they're producing. They can continue to produce eggs. They can't produce more sperm because that would require more matings. So when they go off and they do their mating flight or flights plural. It just depends on the queen. When she comes back initially and she is made it, that's it. When she gets the end of her life, she'll start laying nothing but drones. And when she starts even misfiring a little bit, this is why paying attention to brood patterns is so important. When we start to see a really spotty brood pattern, it could be an indication of problems. The other thing is when she starts laying more drones and she said for the size of

the hive, you wouldn't expect the high percentage should be. drones unless it's a large colony of bees to begin with so now she's coming to the end of her life the bees recognize that that's why they're making these supersedure cells supersedure and swarm cells are different supersedure means they're kind of in the middle of the field a swarm cell is usually along the edges of the frames for your brute so personally I would just let them run around you could preemptively remove the queen and save yourself losing workers because if she does swarm, she's going to leave with the group. We have had bees in the past colony residents turn on a resident queen

when she stopped functioning well. And once we're creating the cells, the supersedure cells, or the emergency replacement cells that we have there, they turned on the queen and killed her. So that's another thing that could happen, but I personally like to take control. So here's where the personal decision comes in. I'd remove that queen, a single frame of brood with her, and keep her in a nucleus hive for observation.

Also, again, I say it all the time, but it's that important. She becomes an insurance policy, so in the off chance that she's still capable of laying worker eggs, then you'll have a backup and you'll have some emergency resources in the event that the queen sells that they're producing and that parent colony don't become viable, or if after they emerge from the queen's cells, if they fly off to get mated and don't return, or they just disappear, or they just don't work out, then you'll be able to bring your queen back

and you're back in business again. It also gives you a chance to evaluate that queen on that frame of brood in a nucleus hive, since you can see what her laying pattern is, and if she's still capable of creating workers, and if not, you'll just dispose of her. So lots of decisions there, lots of opportunities for experimentation. Question number seven here from Andre from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

This is my third year of keeping bees and I only have two hives. This year, my biggest hive swarmed on April 16th. I'm in southeastern PA. I collected the swarm. My other hive has been a bit more aggressive than I prefer, so I took advantage of the situation and removed. the queen from the aggressive hive and successfully combine the swarm with the aggressive hive. Then the queen took to laying immediately and has been doing great and the issue is that they have been creating swarm cells since they were combined.

I'm getting tired of removing queen cells every week and worried I will eventually miss one. The queen is still laying great and they have plenty of space. On May 30th, I performed the Demoree in an effort to deter swarming. I'm not interested in splitting and managing more highs. Would be curious about your thoughts on why they keep making queen cells. Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Okay. Well, again, people asking me how to prevent swarms is kind of turning into a joke

because I have swarms all over the place. because keep in mind we're doing something against what the bees want to do naturally. So the Demery method, it comes up constantly. Why would that come up constantly? Well, apparently because it works. So it also requires a lot of manipulation and active management of your bees, which I have to realize early on I just don't have the time to do. So, isolating the queen.

This is an easy thing to do. The queen isolation cages. If you go to, I hate to bring up Betterby again, but I will, go to BetterB. Look up Queen Isolation Cages. Okay. Now they have single deeps. They have mediums. They have double deeps.

Select the double deep. It's not like they're ever going to wear out. Once you get them, you've got them. It's a tool on the shelf. Now you find the queen that. you have that you don't want to lose you don't want them to swarm and so on and you're worried that you're missing queen cells right so we put the queen inside the double queen isolation cage with two frames and we leave her in there so she's still in production and everything else and she's isolated so it also

forces a reduction of brood right so she will lay her eggs and the nurse bees can go through the bars all the bees all the workers go through the bars drones can't and they will continue to work but now you're limited to two frames so this starts to relieve some congestion so in some ways this could be considered maybe like a Demeray without lifting the boxes off up above and having a queen excluded that divides the whole colony kind of thing instead we've sequestered the queen inside a queen isolation cage so now and once that's set up and now we've seen that the brood is clearing out we've got all this additional space because they're emerging from their cells and we see there's no new eggs we also know that there's no laying workers

and things like that then you can take the queen back out she's still there she's still in contact her pheromone is going everywhere and we've reduced the colony strength a little bit and guaranteed without another box at all so it's all done in that brood box then uh you'll know that you've reduced them until the threat of swarming is past one of many tools So, do-to-do to-do. Queen isolation cages. They're handy. They work. I've used them. Question number eight.

This comes from Colleen. And it says, you use the term resource frame several times during this presentation. So that was Q&A 308 on Friday. Anyway, so mostly related to building a super split from multiple strong colonies in the apiary. can you please describe the composition of this resource frame for example types of bees nurse in house worker field bees should there be eggs larvae or just cap brood i had several colonies that are about to explode with capped brood and are very full already i do not have an extra queen i can add and they do not have queen cells yet i'm interested in trying this but want to select the best resource frames to move into a new Okay, so the resource frames for the super split. This is good news. So there's no queen cells in these colonies. We just have high population, high density of bees inside each box. This is primed for a super split. So first of all, step one, you're going to need the frames that you're going to put in because you're going to remove frames. I'm going to recommend a tool that I always use the hive butler to tote. So if you're going to visit, let's say what's the size of your super split? if we've got a 10 frame box or an 8 frame box.

So we need 8 frames with probably wooden frames and heavily waxed plastic foundation. So you've got those ready to go. If you have drawn comb, that's fine. But keep in mind, we want to put them to work and we want to slow things down where we're doing our super split removal from. So when we go to each hive

and we're looking at the way the brood area is set up, we have active laying areas where the queen has eggs and you see brood of all ages and stages of developments. We have eggs, open larvae, caped pupa, things like that. So from all but one colony, we can't steal their queen because they're not making queen cells, and we don't want that big time lag that it would cause if we remove a queen from a colony that's not preparing to requeen on their own.

So instead, we want our super split to take care of itself and create its own queen. So for the first three or four, let's see you're going to pull five frames. So five hives would be targeted. We want the frames that have the most capped brood on both sides of the frame. We're going to take the nurse bees with us.

This is very critical. Do not steal their queen. So carefully look at the frames and carry them over, put them in your hive butler tote with all the bees on them. pull the frame out push the brood together that you just remove them from and add the empty frame not in the number one or number 10 spot but in the number two or the number nine spots they can draw out comb right so we push them

all together then we go to each colony and we pull the most full most capped brood frame you can find in each one so this just a matter of how big you want your super split to be because these things if you took five deep Langstroth frames of capped brood, you're talking about almost 25 to 30,000 bees, right? So when you put those into your super split box and you replace those, the last frame that you pull, or it could be the first one, just one frame of your super split collection needs to have eggs, larva, brood of all stages. It's not important that you bring a whole bunch of pollen and things like that with you. But if it's also partially filled with pollen, you can snag that too. We can also relieve some congestion on one of your other hives by removing a bunch of their pollen in the frame. So then we put that in and that will become the center frame in your super split.

And then you work it out and you have empty frames in the number one and two and then the number eight and nine and nine and ten, whatever size hive you have. So then that's your super split. It's really easy. And the thing is, those nurse bees start emerging right away. That's their first job. And so you get a heavily populated hive. And one of the things that people get a little bit alarmed about

is they create a super split and they look at it. They're not flying. They're not foraging. They're not going after all the resources that they're supposed to and there's so many bees in there. What's wrong with them? Well, here's the thing. We did bring bees with them, but they're nurse bees.

because they're on these frames and the ones that are foragers are just going to fly back to the colony that you took them out of and that's why the rapid emergence of these bees that are capped right they replace them but they're not foragers so they're not outside so it looks like you've got a colony that's not doing well so now it's up to you to feed them so sugar syrup on top one-to-one is fine this time of year the other thing is they don't need need a protein source right now, but if you've got brood that still needs to be fed and there was not a lot of pollen with it, you could put a pollen patty inside the hive also right on top of the brood frames and they'll consume that and they'll use it and they'll keep them going. So anything global patties is good. Hive alive, pollen patties are performing really well the 15% ones, 15% protein. And so anything that's got a great. reputation, look at the reviews, find out who's using them, and how they're brooding up with them. So that's just to keep the one frame that you've got that's got open brood, keep it going

so the nurse bees can continue to feed them. I don't think they're going to take a lot. But you do want to provide them with the carbohydrates they need, so that's the sugar syrup on top of that colony. So you've created a super split. All the other colonies lost, you know, almost 6,000 worker bees each in fully kept deep frame. both sides and so we've relieved some population stress there so while building not a normal split a super split because we'll have just as many bees in that split as any of those colonies had before you even took it so it'll be cool it'll work it's gonna be amazing keep us posted and if you've done a super split

write about how it worked reinforce the things I say don't disagree with me Not nice. Question number nine comes from Paul. Juneau, Wisconsin. I'm a first year beekeeper in the highest for heroes program. I have heard you talking about keeping your entrance hole small and not having upper ventilation. My small entrance hole is one inch by a half inch.

Should I keep it that small? Year round or upsized for summer next size, which is around three inches by a half inch. Okay. So I really enjoy the podcast. Here's the thing. This is what I showed in the thumbnail today. These are my entrance tests, right?

So I look to see entrance sizes that your bees would chew holes in to try to make it bigger. Ones that are too big that your bees can't guard them. And we also have to consider where I live the mice in the wintertime. And we have shrews that try to get into beehives. So here's the thing. The size that we arrived at, that's good for all year round. So Wisconsin is probably similar to us here in Pennsylvania. If you're in a desert, southwest region or someplace where the climate is profoundly different, you'll have to come up with your own. But here, three-eighths of an inch in height. And we're going to change the plans.

Ross Miller is going to change the plans on the Long Langstroth hive to match three-eighths-inch by three inches in width. width and then that stays that way year-round so we don't reduce it in wintertime don't increase it if you had a small swarm that you installed in a hive you could reduce it temporarily but three-eighths by three inches is defendable and the bees don't try to enlarge it and they don't try to back fill it with a bunch of propolis which they tend to try to do too when an entrance is too large But if they were choosing the entrance on their own, a remarkably small entrance actually gets your bees in and they can still dry out there, honey, and everything else, no top venting and stuff. And I know this is an area where people just open everything up, just like opening your screen windows in the summertime to get lots of ventilation so that your house is nice and cool. and oftentimes people forget that bees aren't people.

And the thing is, when we think something would be hot and stifling, it could be 85 degrees Fahrenheit, or it's hot and stifling, and the humidity is so bad. Don't forget that your bees are increasing that temperature from 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit on the brute. So if it's not 95 degrees in, there they're consuming calories to warm it to that point if the humidity level is too low because somebody decided to put a bunch of venting in you're venting off humidity that your bees are trying

to control so heat of the summer we open up top vents create upper entrances and all these other things I say we because I used to do it I used to do that the thing is the bees want to control their humidity. They don't want the brood area to dry out. So what are they doing? They're flying to water sources as fast as they can do it on a hot day. They're bringing that water inside the hive, increasing the humidity and evaporating it. So they evaporate for cooling, but the humidity levels have to be up. If their larvae dry out under those conditions, they lose the larvae. So desert southwest. It seems counterintuitive that when the air is really, really dry, but it's super hot. It seems counterintuitive that you would close up that hive's

upper entrances. Insulation is important. Ventilation through the top is not. Your bees can move air effectively through the hive in and out of that entrance on their own without you. So what we do is when we have these summer configuration, winter configurations, and we swap it around, your bees are arranging their resources, burr comb, brace comb, and the way the bees manage their nest is they're taking into consideration the airflow, the airstream throughout the hive. And of course, your brood areas have the most ventilation control. Then, of course, you know, we get excited because they've got so much honey in there. look at all the bees that are on the outside of the hive and we need to vent that off so they can dry their honey down

no wood additional venting help them dry their honey down quicker sure it probably would and you're doing that at the time of year when you've got competition you've got other bees looking to rob each other out and stuff like that at the end of that nectar flow so these upper entrances and upper vents if they're open enough for bees to come and go through you just created another entry point for the wasps that we talked about earlier or robbing bees. So would it increase ventilation efficiency for drying out honey? It might. Is it necessary? No, because they can still do it.

It just would go through the entrance. They line up one bee behind the other and the air stream off of each other. And they fan it out and they channel fresh air coming in when they're. they need it and the moist hot air going out when they want it to and when they don't want it to go out what happens every night so i'm going to make this case so let's say you're in the desert southwest you live in arizona or new mexico or something and you've got your bees okay because it got over a hundred degrees during the day and rather than insulate you ventilate okay so they're having a huge time trying to keep their brood humidified. Okay, and you're fighting them on that. So then also

what happens though, how cold does it get at night in the desert southwest? Do the temperatures drop by quite a bit? So aren't they now, have they dropped below 95 degrees Fahrenheit? Now some nights it probably doesn't, but on the nights that it does, they have to heat their hive even in the summertime. So we have to consider these day and night fluctuations too. So you're not going to to go out there and reduce the venting at night and then open it during the day and create more work for yourself and for the bees instead we just leave a single entrance because that's how we find bees when they're on their own uh dr tom seeley would say what would the bees be doing if we weren't doing anything at all well they wouldn't occupy a space that had an opening in the top of it so that's for

starters. So this ventilation thing that we add, we add, because we think they need it. So the thermal dynamics are perfectly managed by your bees, especially here where I am in the northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania. I don't need any top venting for those bees. The reason that I did it for so many years is because that's the way it came. All the equipment came that way. The intercover was notched out for venting. Everyone did it. They just did venting. So put nickels on the top and shim the lid so we had a passive vent all the time and then if you could pay attention as dr zeeley did with his research group uh to see how many trips they have to make uh to get more and more water to come in and raise the humidity inside the hive so that they have

the balanced humidity levels that they need for brewery we make that more difficult for them so i've arrived for my hives if i were custom designing a hive that we would would be my hive that would stay this way. The entrance would be three eighths of an inch high by three inches wide and it would stay there. Day night, summer, winter, it's manageable for the bees. Question number 10. And by the way, do both ways do several colonies different ways, you know, and make comparisons. Did you get just as much honey out of that colony over there with a single entrance and no venting as you did from this one over here that was completely vented with a large entrance or no entrance reducer at all now it's not that i've stopped evaluating that i still do that

although i stopped venting through the top if you had any kind of screenboard on the top of your hive which i did when i put on those feeder shims years ago that i made myself uh someone pointed out right away you have to put vents in the top of those feeder shims because your bees are going to need that Okay, all right. Let's find out. Rather than just have me give my opinion, let's see what the bees do. So we put number eight hardware cloth in the vent holes in that hive top, which is insulated for going into winter. It's a feeder shim and everything else. What did the bees do? They propolized the screen. They sealed it up. How many times do the bees have to tell us something before we realize they don't want it? So I stopped using top vents. The bees tell us enough.

Okay, off my soapbox. Question number 10 comes from Diane Warren, New Jersey. So a swarm escaped, but appears to have installed itself in a tree in my front woods. All well and good, but before I realized they were settling in as opposed to bivouacking, I baited my only empty nukes with a few dabs of swarm commander. Obviously, that's not going to do any good at this point, as they seem to be doing orientation flights to an opening on the tree. I was already planning some splits into the nukes for Monday when the weather is nicer. Will that storm commander cause a problem for bees, queen cells that I transfer to them? And if so, do you think I could swab the area with alcohol to reduce the smell?

okay so this is interesting so diane put swarm commander planning to use it for a lure and this is why i always say use swarm commander very sparingly just the tiniest bit if you can smell it the bees can really smell it now this is good news for diane because you don't have to change anything out they will still occupy it I recently collected a swarm in a trash bin, so expanded metal trash can, right? On the end of a pole, I took a frame of drawn comb, and I put the tiniest bit of Swarm Commander on it. By the way, for those of you who are wondering, Swarm Commander comes from the Blythe Wood B Company. So Blythe Wood B Supply, Google it. They developed Swarm Commander.

It is not just lemon grass oil. It is very effective stuff. It imitates Nazanov, which is how bees tell other bees where to go, where to be. So I spread so little just on the corner of that frame and then the bees off the tree branch because I bumped them with the trash can. They fell in. They glommed onto the frame and I used that frame and put that right inside the hive and hive my bees. They all moved in. And that's why I say it won't matter. You don't need to clean it, reduce it. Just let it fade over time. The bees can even clean it themselves if they want to. it had no impact on whether or not they followed their queen and whether or not they occupied the hive.

They didn't abscond later because they find out that, ooh, there's storm commander in here and this should not be a lure anymore. Because it's what they do when someone sets out a trap, even a colony moves in. They move in with the queen and everything, and it's been used as a bait pheromone to get scouts to check it out. Same thing, totally good. Leave it there. No problems at all. So here we are in the fluff section.

already can you believe it so let's talk about weather coming up here in the northeastern party United States state of Pennsylvania tomorrow Saturday is going to be the best day so that's actually good because guess what I'm doing tomorrow I'm going to the Lorraine County beekeepers field day and this is in Ohio it's at Queen Wright Colonies in Spencer Ohio and it starts at 9 a.m. It's free. And you probably have to register those. You want to go to the website.

Queen Wright Colonies, Google that, Spencer, Ohio. Go to the website, check out the event. And then you can show up for free because who's going to be there? Me, and I'm giving a presentation at 10 a.m. I know this is probably late notice. If you're watching this at 9.30, why are you sitting there? Get in your car. Go. Come say hello if you live in that vicinity somewhere.

So that's what's going on tomorrow. I'm going there. day for doing bee work tomorrow that's fantastic all right so when these big rainstorms come through and you've just put together a colony or you just hived a swarm I highly recommend that you give them some sugar syrup just to keep them going I know there are purists out there that want them to be given nothing it's like Sparta you make it or you don't and then we keep the bees that make it I don't do that if I've got a colony that I've hived and they've moved into one of

my apiary hives I'm going to to put one-to-one sugar syrup on there at a minimum just to keep them going and have everything be okay for them. The other thing is because remember when you put a swarm somewhere, they are comb builders and by adding sugar syrup you can keep them building comb and you can even add frames in there with foundation that they'll draw out for you, use them as a resource hive. So anyway, we don't want them to have a really hard time. It's early in the year and they have lots of time to catch up. Here, a lot of people ask, when do we super? What's going on? So I'm going to be putting my superes the third week of June because the clover is going to start blooming we're going to get this big

clover nectar flow a bunch of other stuff starts kicking in at that time so that's also you should be doing no open feeding or anything else if you have to feed a colony it should be inside so that you're not feeding somebody else's bees either we want nothing but floral nectar in our honey right so anyway that's it keep insulation on by the way we have insulated inner covers we have insulated caps on top of our hives, there's no reason to pull this off because summer is here. The bees benefit from that. It deflex heat as well as contains heat. So keep it on. If you've got hive wraps or things like that, I've never used hive wraps because if I'm going to put insulation on a hive, I want it to be something that's permanent, something that's

part of the hive that stays there. I don't want to store a bunch of stuff. So there's that. Okay. And also, if you're new to beekeeping and you're in an area where skunks live, someone mentioned today defensive colonies sometimes if your colonies are visited by predators at night the raccoons with their little wretchy fingers if you've got skunks that are scratching at the landing boards look for those muddy paw prints look for a smashed down grass around the hive if you've got a skunk feeding on bees at night and they will they'll do it for hours at a time and you can have a very testy colony of bees the following day they can seem like they got an attitude shift and that they're not manageable that they meet you with guard bees and they try to sting you there may be something going on

figure it out see if something else is impacting the behavior of those colonies 16 to 18 inches is the magic height for your landing board entrance to keep it out of skunk reach those are the highest skunks that we've had tested so that's pretty much it if you this is an age by the way just in closing if you see an advertisement that looks a little bit off and it's me talking about something, which I think is really hilarious, only it's not hilarious when you think about it. Artificial intelligence,

and I get their scams or phishing emails and phone calls. And here's what I learned. If they can get you to answer the phone, right? They're actually recording your voice. They also asked most recently to video conference with them to talk to you about some leadership opportunity that they have. It's really great. They think you're going to be a great fit. Can we just talk to you for a few minutes?

If they can get you on a video conference, they're going to capture videos of you. Now, for me, it's a problem because you're watching a video with me in it right now. So these AI groups capture my gestures, my voice quality, and they imitate me. And then next thing you know, I have an advertisement with a company that I'm selling B keeping equipment, which sounds right. But I don't know who these people are. I never did the advertisement. I don't know what's going on. I think here's the problem.

You're going to see more and more of that. For you, the viewer, if you're not already producing YouTube videos, if your voice isn't already out there, you have a chance to stop it because they're not going to copy your voice and things like that. for me it's more of a problem so if you see an ad and it's me and i'm talking to you about something that seems like a flow hive only it's not or it's a flow hive that is for a hundred dollars this is fake they are look at the website they're asking you to go to to get it i think um we're going to have to become huge skeptics when it comes to looking at advertisements and these pop-up advertisements that happen before YouTube videos. So these pop-up ads that show up, it's at the point

where it's almost more common to find a lie in those advertisements than to find something that's true and viable. So it's really going to get challenging. And right now we can spot the fake. We can spot it's a fake voice. The gestures are on a loop, you know, something doesn't quite match, but it is constantly improving. So I'm going to say, if you see me advertising something, be related that doesn't quite seem right. You're never going to get a flow high for $100. You're just not unless somebody's selling it on eBay

and they just couldn't put it together or something like that. But they're not going to be sold through any reputable company for that. So be skeptical, question, everything, get away from that and go to the actual site. there's only honeyflow.com sells those hives so if you see it it's not me uh it's a little troubling that there's so much of my face gestures voice everything is out there it sounds just like me looks like me not me they stole it okay question everything remains skeptical i hope you have a fantastic weekend ahead and i want to thank you for listening to today's question and answers in the video description for additional information and links have a fantastic beekeeping weekend