The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 321 recorded during a LIVE Chat Session August 29 2025

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtube.com/live/eWLqCByoP_E?feature=share

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. I'm actually late, so it's two minutes after four. I had no idea this taught me off guard. So obviously you have to log in, so you'll be seeing this later. And as people show up and hopefully chime in, you can ask questions by typing in all caps. So I want to welcome you, happy Friday. Today is Friday, August the 29th. It's the last Friday of August.

So that was fun. And Grayson's here. Glad to see you. And this is episode number 321. And I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on outside for starters. But I also want to say that if you're catching us later and you want to know what we're going to talk about in this video, please look down in the video description.

You'll see all the items listed in order. And there'll be some references and links to people that will catch you. up. I can't believe that Keith is here. Key Spelman is my bouncer, half tracks, and honey, you should check out his YouTube channel. And by the way, I want everyone in the chat. I should probably say this later. So let's get the regular housekeeping stuff out of the way because I know you're dying to know what's going on outside right now here in the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania, the northeastern part of the United States. Sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit right now, but let me tell you, something. That's 17 Celsius, but this morning it was in the high 40s and low 50s, not fun at all.

So that 17 Celsius, 62 degrees Fahrenheit right now. 67% relative humidity, chance of rain this weekend. Bekeeping days in the Northeast are going to be early in the week, Monday and Tuesday, 70s. So this is your chance to get out there and get in it. two mile per winds that's three kilometers per hour air quality is perfect so whatever is happening in Canada with the fires

that those particulates have gone elsewhere so pollen count low so I go to the pollen count government pollen counts because they're for people that suffer from allergies and you can go to those too because they let us know

what kind of trees and grasses and things ragweed is on its way and so our bees going to benefit from the pollen which makes other people sick. I see people are already chiming in with questions. We're going to get those in a minute. And for those of you who don't know already, as Craig has done, please type your questions in all caps. That way I'll know it's for me and not just everyone else in the chat. You're more than welcome to talk to one another, answer each other's questions. I don't mind the sideline stuff at all. So I just want to

talk a little bit about what's been going on here. We haven't had black bears in my or around my apiary or in my apiary for many years. It changed the way that I kind of protect my apiary. I have two designated areas here on our property. And just a couple of nights ago, we had two black bears here. And boy, didn't they come in close. But my defense system worked. So what I use, I took down my electric fences years ago. I had those solar-powered charging fence that people used for horses and cattle, and it would charge a 30-mile fence, so I thought, you know, for a couple quarter acre plots, it would be great.

And, you know, the grass gets tall, trees laying on it, and in the wintertime, you know, the snow gets deep and defeats your fence. So I've gone to noise makers. And noise makers worked fantastic. I have sweet video. some of you know me from social media and I posted the videos the bears were snooping around

and as soon as the alarms went off they ran away. So it worked again and I put out several video cameras to make sure and capture what's visiting and what their response is. So that worked fantastic. For those of you who have been following my wasst studies, the wasp study,

the relocation of an aerial yellow jacket wasp nest is over. Wash bears took out the nest. What's a wash bear? I know you want to know. Well, that's what the Germans call raccoons. And so, raccoons, I got them on video, climbing right up the tree and snatching that thing.

So I caused the death. I know this will make you very sad. I caused the death of many aerial wastes just by relocating from the tips of tree branches where they belonged for their own survival to near the main core of a tree, only about a foot out. And apparently, who knew? Raccoons can reach out and get them at that distance.

So anyway, failed WAS study, bears are scared off, and I went out there in the middle of the night with my shotgun. Not to kill the bear. My neighbors called us and wondered if I killed a bear. No, I'm just disturbing their brains. I want them to be surprised and to find a person where they don't expect to find you. and make them uncomfortable in my presence.

And that worked too. Okay. What's growing on outside? Anna's Hyssop is still in bloom, doing great. Cosmos, pollen, and nectar for the bees. Sunflowers are finally blooming here on our property. And native bees are really getting the most out of that right now. Goldenrod, we have the tall golden rod.

A lot of people like to write and say, golden rod's not blooming yet or the bees aren't on it. just like 20 different species of golden rod. What you have may be different than what's going on here. And they have really complicated names like tall golden rod, early blooming golden rod. But the honeybees are still on that. We're at the time of year when you can smell the honey in the air when you walk down wind of the apiary. So that's why we were a little concerned about the bears who are probably after, of course,

the brood among other things, but they'll certainly enjoy eating the bees and honey. napweed, it's an invasive, it's out, it's blooming, and the bees are on that. Joe Pieweed is finally blooming in abundance. And now that we have a bunch of people here in the chat section, please take a minute to say, happy birthday to Keith Spillman, half-tracks and honey, he's right there in the chat, and just wish him, well, because I can't believe he's here doing this today when he could be goofing off and doing whatever he's supposed to do on his birthday.

And I appreciate it. He's my bouncer. He keeps people in order here. So now we'll look at the chat and see what the questions are. So I'm going to go right up to the top here. First one's from Craig. How did your queen excluder change? My queen excluder change workout.

Did you move it up after the medium was full or just remove it? Okay. So for those who don't know in the past, I've not used queen excluders. I started in the spring. kept the entrances small, waited for them to move their brood down from where they are in spring, which is right up underneath the feeder shim. And that move down can take a long time. So what we did this year is, and not for all the hives, just for some,

we installed the queen excluder underneath the medium super, which is winter resources. So the configuration, bottom board, deep, which is brood and combination of resources. The medium, which is honey, this time of year would be wall-to-wall honey. And so we put the queen excluder under that, took the queen out, put her down in the deep by herself. And of course, nurse bees migrate right down there. And then those that are above the queen excluder emerge from their cells and join those down below. And it accelerated that move down. Now, for the hides that I did that on, I left the queen excluded there.

So I didn't take it off later because all of a sudden it seemed pretty darn convenient to have the queen down in that bottom box early on. but there again, I started realizing how messed up the frames are because they've had brood in them. So those bottom two boxes are all interchangeable brood and honey for the bees. So they're staying the same. And I did not pull them out. In fact, it won't be pulled off until in the next couple of weeks because we want them to be able to access that honey going into winter. So next month, winter preps. So that's a great question.

And if I don't completely answer the question, you have follow-ons, please continue and I'll keep going. Wildwoods Honeybee Farms, that's Grayson. It says, can Apagard kill Queens? I treated with Apagard last year, and during treatments, multiple queens died. Maybe something I didn't do right, or maybe a coincidence. Now, I don't use Apagard, so I have no history with it, and I can't speak from personal experience. If I did have a die-off of a bunch of queens in close proximity to a treatment, no matter what the treatment was, I always go to the company that generates that miticide. And then find out, let them know what all the conditions are, your regional location, your weather where you are, the time of year that you treat, everything needs to be documented really well.

This is why keeping records is very important. Temperature and humidity are key when it comes to different treatments. But Apagard, you know, my list of treatments are integrated pest management, which is configuration, and the removal, of course, of drones when you can, drone brood. And of course, the removable bottom drawers and screens, number eight screen underneath, which passively collects, vero destructor mites, which works remarkably well. And then if the mite numbers continue to build, then we go to, for me, personally, exhalic acid vaporization. I know that everybody's jumping on, well, everybody, a lot of people are jumping on Varoxan this year as a threshold treatment to keep them right where they are. There is some discussion about these organic treatments that are performing really well for some people and for others, almost no change. So local climate plays, hive configuration plays, placement, follow the instructions on every

miticide to the letter. I have to say that. I know there are a lot of people with decades of beekeeping under their belt who are more than comfortable simply willy-nilly changing dosage, application methods, and everything else. I don't do that. So I've never had to go past exhalic acid or exhalic. acid vaporization, haven't even used dribble before. I do have the varoxan sitting in a pack.

I've also got Formic Pro as a backup. If I have something overwhelmed with mites, I will try to use those. Exhalic acid vaporization, for example, can be used in topar hives. It can be used in layens hives, which have, you know, the back of the frames form the inner cover. So there's no way to apply things like Formic Pro. So a lot of things are good, and I'm sorry about those losses, but I would contact definitely and have the batch number and all the information about exactly what you use, Grace. And I would start with that. So the next one is the Morris Homestead, live in Western New York.

I just lost a queen from a treatment of Formic Pro. Is it too late for them to raise a queen? The hive is strong. Okay, so we're on the threshold, but you are in western New York. Let's see. So your climate's probably a lot like mine. It isn't too late, but with these cold weathers, weather streams at night, the temperature drops, they were actually kicking out drones already.

A lot of the colonies are. But I do, when I'm doing inspections now, I've noticed a lot of capped drones. So we are cycling up. Now, the key is, is it too late to raise a queen? If the queen died, hopefully they started to produce a emergency queen cell right away. And because of she died because of a treatment, sometimes the brute is also impacted. Although I did an interview with Heather Bell, and we talked about that. And supposedly, if we follow all the instructions, which includes not doing this on a hot day, follow the temperature restrictions, open the entrances all the way up, maximum ventilation during treatment.

I know that there are doctors at Penn State entomologists that do the double treatment, two pad treatment, which is at the same time, because that's what gets into the varodistur mites that are underneath the cappings. And that's Dr. Robin Underwood. We did a discussion about that. So this is for the people, I know it's too late because your queen is dead for whatever reason it might be the formic. I don't know. I do know that some of the commercial people that do that large scale cycle formic treatments in with their queen replacements. So they've already got queens ready to go. And I have suggested in the past, even though I don't have direct experience with that.

But if people are concerned, I've recommended pulling your queens on a frame and just have them aside. in a resource hive until you've done your treatment. And those first 72 hours are the highest levels of formic that's going to be released. And then, of course, after that, you could restore the queen for the rest of that treatment cycle and not take a risk that she would boil out of the hive and be dead. Because another concern that somebody else brought up, and this is just anecdotal, that during the treatment, somehow the bees got a little frenzied and confused and attacked their queen. thinking that somehow there's a correlation between the queen and the actual formic treatment,

and that is not scientifically validated. It's just opinions that people like to share with me, and I can't say it is or is not true unless you're in a position where you can actually observe the behavior. So, but we've had members of our bee club that said they put formic pro in their hives and lost a lot of bees. They say that you have to do it on a very strong colony. This isn't something that you do on a nucleus hive or a resource hive. These are full-blown big colonies.

I had a conversation with Kamen Reynolds about it. Sometimes we have these runaway colonies that are just brooding up and brooding up and expanding. And we'd like to kind of reel them in a little bit. And one of the methods we discuss about reeling in a colony that's getting supersized is you go ahead and do a formic pro treatment, two pads at a time, and suppress reproduction for a little bit. and hold them back a little bit. And then, of course, recovery is better because then they go forward with fewer mites. So that's about it.

But it's not too late to raise a new queen, but here's the timeline. You have to think queen production. You're looking at egg to a queen, if that's what we're doing, 15 days. Then we have another eight or nine days for the maturity and mating of the queen. Then we're 30 days out from that.

Look at your timeline. This is what happened to me last year with late season reproduction when I took queens from resource hives and fortified colonies that were stronger that had lost their queens. I have a couple right now that are in that situation. And then I left these other hives without the time to actually reestablish themselves. Winter came early, so it was a combination of things and we're pushing it. But you'd have the option of just combining them with another colony, but I would try it to see if you can get away with it How long after treating can I test for mites now this is from Vince? It depends on Testing for mites like post-treatment mite washes this depends on what your treatment is

I look at my drops with xylic acid vaporization over the next 72 hours and I look at those on bottom boards And if I have a huge drop of my drop after the treatment treatment on the bottom boards. That means five days later, another cycle. And then I look for the mite drop as my indicator of efficacy, which is just how effective it worked. You can do a mite count at whatever the duration of the treatment you are using is as defined by the manufacturer of the miticide. So if it's a 10-day treatment, then on the 11th or 12th day, that's when you do mite wash to see what residual mites you have. So it goes case by case depending on what might decide you're using. But for exhalic acid vaporization, you can count, you know,

five days later, four days later and see if you require another treatment. Do to do, do, do. People are saying, happy birthday to Keith. And Ross Wagner tosses in $10. Thank you, Ross. I really appreciate the generosity. And let's make sure I'm not missing anybody. being your balancer is a great birthday present. Okay, Keith. All right. And I don't think a lot of you know this, but Keith sponsored me last year

at the North American Honeybee Expo, too, by the way. Very generous guy with his time and his resources. So again, his channel is Half Tracks and Honey. Go Scope it out, and that's our shout-up for YouTube channels today. Keith says, he enjoyed the interview yesterday about feral bees. it seems they are not faring as well as many folks think they are. So what Keith is referring to is I did an interview with Dr. Margarita, your eBay, and we talked about the studies that were done in the state of Pennsylvania,

specifically with feral colonies of bees in bee trees. I wanted really to be a part of that study. And so I reached out in my own neck of the woods here. and we found about eight bee trees in this area. And there are people that I meet through photography and stuff. Like I would be at their home taking photos of a high school senior, for example, and they would mention, hey, we have bees in this tree over here. And then I would want to go and check it out.

And I was even doing a wedding at a location and they had bees in a tree. And so I go back and I just want to document them and follow up. And I get these people's information. I have an endoscope and I like to look inside and see what they're doing. Every bee tree that I found did not make it through winter. Last winter in particular. And I've reached out and I continue to reach out to people that have bee trees in our area and none of them have bee trees right now.

The reason this is important is because a lot of people want, you know, I want this too for us to have survivor stock that can exist without people's intervention and of course be treatment-free. One of the things that gets constantly cited, the Arnot Forest studies that were done, trees and cavities there in New York near Ithaca. And so the thinking is that if bees and trees are doing great, then there's something that we are doing wrong as bee managers, beekeepers, instead of be havers, people that just want to put bees in a box and then see how they go. So understanding what's going on,

we wanted to, of course, study the genetics of those bees and wanted to, they were going well down the line scientifically on that from an entomological viewpoint. So they were going to do testing of the bees. Well, none of them made it past two years. And that's 30 colonies. Now, that's not a huge collection of honey bee colonies, but 30 out of 30 at the second year was gone.

So this is kind of the cautionary tale about, and I'm not, you know, I always try to tell people as much as I can, if you've decided to be treatment-free, you have to be a very active beekeeper. You're going to have to pay attention to what's going on, and it may require euthanization of colonies that have high might loads to spare those that don't, and there are going to be genetics that people want to work with,

And then I'll talk with an entomologist that looks at me cross-eyed and thinks, that was bad advice. Unless they have hundreds or thousands of colonies, they're not going to narrow their genetics and have control to the point where that's a viable continuation. So this is an endless back and forth. So one of the Penn State studies that was reported on by Dr. Robin Underwood, which was cited by Margarita in the interview. And if you haven't seen it, I recommend that you look at that interview. It's on my YouTube channel. They were down to, they started out with treatment-free, organic treatments, and, of course, synthetic treatments that are used by most commercial beekeepers.

And the synthetics and the organics were pretty neck-in-neck, and by the end of the study, the treatment-free group had no representation. So one of the ways that treatment-free keepers end up staying. in the game, because I had 10 years of that myself, you have to admit that we're bringing in swarms every year and taking advantage of swarm season and restocking and refilling our beehives, and then we can start to feel good about it, but it ultimately doesn't work out in the long run. So then other places will be cited. One of the things that comes up frequently, Cuba, it's a treatment-free country.

And they have bees. I can't get anyone to talk to me about specifically how well things worked out there. And that's no great surprise to people in Cuba. I'm a nobody. So that's okay. But unless they're isolated geographically because there's an island, I think there's an island off of Nova Scotia that also is treatment-free so they can study the genetics. But they're free of the influence of other beekeepers and other genetics.

and other bees and of course things that would weaken that stance. So Dr. Uribe said, Yorabe said, we would have to let the entire system crash. So to work that out here in the United States, which means, you know, 30 out of a thousand colonies might still be around. And then, of course, the argument, the Darwinian argument is, well, those 30 would be fantastic and then we could go from there. But in the meantime, agriculture crashes that's dependent on commercial beekeeping.

So we're kind of having a hard time with that. So I know that's a kind of extended answer, but I always support companies and entomologists that are doing genetic research, and the genetics are washed down and defeated the minute they're out. out with other managed colonies from other stocks and other genetic lines, and they don't prevail. So there you go.

And these are people that are smarter than me that know what they're talking about. I'm just cycling back, but I know that it didn't work for me. I was fighting a losing game, just every year replacing what I lost. And treatment worked out for me, definitely. So Ross Wagner says, have two hives in a three-deep with one, medium of capped honey configuration i want to winter in two deeps and leave the honey super is it worth it to swap frames and leave the 20 best deep frames yes it absolutely is um because don't leave empty space in there i did this in the past where i thought more is better and it was at a time when i was still doing

top venting on my hives which i got my bs through winter with top vending and an entrance, you know, and everything else. And to keep the condensation out of the top box. And they went through 74 to 100 pounds of honey every winter. And that was cool. It made it. They did it. But since I've covered the tops, stop the venting, I get through winter with a full-size colony,

34, 35 pounds of honey is all I need. And there's honey left over. Even with this last extended winter, honey. was left over. So that was fantastic. So this is a great thing to consider. And if you've got deep boxes, then you can switch your frames around.

So looking for frames that are absolutely maxed out, not right now, but like into next week, couple of weeks in to September, that's when you start looking at getting rid of empty space. So in other words, if you've got these number one and number 10 position frames, and usually like the interior, The exterior facing part of that frame is drawn out and full of resources, but the exterior portion of that frame may not quite be finished.

But in another box above it, you've got full frames drawn out, capped all the way, replace them, and go with 100% food resources and loads. Kind of statistically, the deep and medium configuration here where I am. See, this will be different for people elsewhere. but that deep and medium is the sweet spot for me. It gets them through winter. It's a space that does not have a lot of dead space in it that is not occupied by bees. That's the concern. That is established over and over and over again.

If we leave on too much honey and your bees are down here in your bottom box where they should be this time of year, and you've got a box of honey above them, which is a winter resource, but then you've thought, I'm going to be even more generous. I'm not going to harvest the honey. I'm going to leave the third box on. And your third box is totally unoccupied other than unemployed foragers. What happens is when the real winter kicks in, they consolidate down and cluster where the brood currently is.

And now if you've got a second and third box above that, that's an area that the passive warmth that comes off of that cluster goes up, and we've got a heat and cold battery as far as the honey that's capped is concerned. And when it's that far away from the bees, guess what happens? It's not a problem at nighttime when it gets really cold. It's a problem the following morning

when things start to warm up, condensation forms of that honey that's so far away from the bees that now condensation forms and starts to drip down. And so that's when you get moisture on top your bees. So we want our bees close to the inner cover that's insulated, that's sealed for a condensing hive configuration, and that creates a warmth capsule that never achieves the dew point. If it's too much space, the dew point gets achieved all over the place up there, and we have

condensation above. We want to keep the condensation halfway down the cluster and the lower third on the side walls, not the interior cover. So that, because I've looked at colonies right now, I don't even know what I'm going to do with a couple of them that are too populated. But we can only condense them so far. I mean, if you've got wall-to-wall bees in there and you're going into winter strong like that,

then maybe three boxes is good. This is all going to be case by case, but if you've got way too much space up there and a bunch of extra honey, I almost wouldn't chance it because condensation is going to form. The other thing is even capped honey can take on moisture and you can end up fermenting stored honey. That's another cautionary tale. So do to do and Darrell enjoy the long weekend.

Thank you. And Darrell gives us $10. I appreciate that. So medium capped honey configuration and want to winter two deeps. And by the way, we did discuss this a little bit. it with Margarita. The configuration in the state of Pennsylvania, there's a published, it's not published. There's a study that's about to publish that talks about productivity and single deep brood management or double deep brood management. Now she kind of leaked a little bit

that the single deep brood box was outperforming double deeps. And one of the things that's frustrating about that, right, is when you want to swap combs around, you want to swap these frames, you want to do a Demire, Demare, however you want to say it. When we want to control swarming by switching frames up and down, different size frames can't do it. You see what I'm saying? It's frustrating. So the double-leave has practical applications, but I wouldn't go three. So John's here from Annapolis where the United States Naval Academy is.

Okay, where fall has arrived early. Oh, that's not good. Okay, so I'm going to get to my very first question here. And Maro contributed $9.99. Thank you so much. By the way, Maro leaves donations all the time, and I really do appreciate it. So everything costs money around here. So let's get right into question number one, finally.

This comes from S-G-R-A-D-A-I-E-I-E. G-H. And it says, I planted buckwheat after watching one of your videos, but I haven't seen any bees on it. You see how I can assign my intonation to someone's text? You can read this any way you want. But yeah, so I frost seeded a bunch of buckwheat this year, which I've never done before. And it came up pretty early. And then buckwheat supposedly seeds itself and then comes up again. Do you think that's true? It is, because I've got buckwheat. wheat out there right now that's three feet tall so the first batch was unimpressive and the bees never touched it so right now the amount of buckwheat that's out there apparently a lot of

pollinators like it those little uh sweat bees love it they spent a lot of time on the buckwheat flowers and the buckwheat is producing buckwheat pellets which are the seeds which i guess is what they use for cooking i don't know anything about it um but the honey bees are not on it and here's why because honeybees have a lot of other stuff they want to eat right now the golden rods alive with honeybees they're not going to many other things uh the other thing is uh the hyssup that i didn't even know that i have hundreds of anus hyssup plants i looked over my fence i've got an area there that i just ignore that in the past i've thrown seeds at it so i bought hyssup seeds and just chucked them out there one spring and

forgot about them. And now it's full of hiss up. So it actually worked. You can gorilla garden. You can throw seed bombs places and things will grow. So the honeybees have lots of other stuff. That's a good news. If you've got honeybees on things that aren't really yielding much of a resource, then you know they're getting desperate. Something's going on in the other side of a 100-acre cornfield that we have next to my bee yard. And when I say something's going on, it's because hundreds of bees easily are zinging up and over the corn in a very specific direction and they're doing it in a hurry. I suspect they might be robbing someone. I hope they're not. I hope I don't have robbers, but if they do, they're zipping out there and I think they're taking advantage of some resource

somewhere because they are frenzied about it. They're not wasting time. So there's lots of resources out there. When you've got something that offers nectar and pollen buckwheat honey is really strong, really dark honey. It's a unique flavor that some people don't like. I happen to like it. I think it's fantastic. And the good news is the buckwheat is seeding itself, so I'd like to see a lot more plants of that. But the good news is your bees are not starving. And if you want to know how much of a resource they're getting from any single bloom from any single plant variety, look at how much time they spend on it. So when they really take their time and are working it over, then they're getting a lot out of it.

If they're landing and going to the next one and go into the next one and just momentary, just zipping along, they're not getting much out of it, which that's problematic. Also keep in mind that once your bees start on one thing, they're not like bumblebees. And I'll explain that.

Your bees are floral constant. So the foragers that you've got out there, if they're on golden rod, and they happen to, and you're sitting there watching them, and look at all the buckwheat over here, you're bypassing that, you're not going on the buckwheat.

that I want you to go on. It's because a golden rod forager forages golden rod exclusively and just not go to any other plant variety. So they're dedicated. And even when they come back to the hive, they are not shifting. In other words, once a resource, this is kind of interesting stuff. Once a resource is exhausted, then the bees that were working that particular resource, which could be dandelions in spring, for example.

And once that kind of washes out, they kind of retire. They don't just shift to something else. And here's where native bees have a big advantage, like the bumblebee exploits a whole bunch of different flowers that our honeybees can't even do. I saw a presentation recently where they started out, who doesn't like tomatoes? And without honeybees, you would not have tomatoes.

And the first thing that came to mind was honeybees don't pollinate tomatoes. So that was really funny to me because we can actually hear the bumblebees buzz pollinating different plants. And so we think that our honeybees are pollinating a lot of things that they actually aren't. These are other pollinators. And so I was listening to the buzz pollinating morning glories of all things. So I was out there photographing the different morning glories trying to get the bees leaving it, but it was the bumble bees that were actually doing that. So they can exploit everything.

They can get the whole buffet. Our bees are going out at targeted resources. So if you're trying to set something up, then we need it to really show up in abundance. Todd says, second golden rod just started here in Vermont. So that's fantastic. And now I have JKD-0114. How's the top bar hive?

The top bar hive is fantastic. And I was supposed to get into it last week. and it rained all week long so we have two days coming up monday and tuesday the supervisor's coming out and we're going to open the top bar hive we have to it's actually too full that's too many bees so i have to make sure that we're expanding that and the top bar hive is coming up for those of you want to see that and we're going to do our we're going to go all out and make a really good video of that because they can't wait to see how they've configured their comb i also uh bought the longest bread knife I could find because I'm going to use that if it's we're going to come in from the

follower board and we're going to look in and then we're going to just cut away the sides wherever it might be attached as we start to lift those out that's going to be a lot of fun I was really disappointed that we had wind, rain, and cold this past week it's bad weather too soon so but that's coming up I mean I hate to make the promise but the weather is looking good and I don't have anything else on my plate. I have that and I have the two, the double queen keeper's hive that I have to continue to super because they're just ridiculous. All right. So the golden rod, or buckwheat, that's done. Number two, this is from Carol Ann from Geneseo, Geneseo, New York. One of my hives lit me up today because of the wind probably.

A short time later, I noticed a small swarm. I don't know where they came from. You have said, be careful, your actions could get your queen killed. I don't know specifically what those are other than rolling the queen. Be careful, don't do that. Do you think it's possible that I tick them off enough to swarm? I realize it would be his plan swarms, but by running the queen to lose, weight. I hope I didn't cause this. Thank you for all you do. Okay, the good news is for Carolyn.

I don't think a rough inspection got your bees to kick out the queen and start a swarm. But I do think it's a good idea to take a look at your beehives and make sure that they are not a beehive that swarms right now like one of mine did this morning, which is what I was doing, which is why I was late starting this, they're annoying me because. this isn't the time of year for them to be doing that. And I'm very careful with my bees. So let's talk about this was, there's the good and the bad of a late season swarm.

If you're like me, you're collecting data, information, stock, video, and cinematic sequences that you hope get used later by some big industry group. I got Queens piping this week. I have the best audio of Queens piping that I've ever recorded in all my days with bees. Part of that is I have a new system.

So I have new microphones. I have the ability to get into very tight spaces. I have an acoustic chamber. And I have the best recordings of queens piping and responding to each other. So that's the good news that I got all this great data for hours, by the way. I'm sure you'd want to hear it. And then what happened was, of course, what's that mean? Well, there's going to swarm.

So either they have swarm or they're going to. These are pre-emergent queens piping inside their cells. And the first one to come out is probably going to keep piping. And the others are going to keep piping inside their cells. And this is going to, through vibration, lead the queen that comes out first to go over there and chew into the side of it and sting them to death. But I have really good stuff. And that's bad news for me because they're going to cycle out. And they're going to have the good news is, though, that these queens are already in progress.

This is a planned thing. It's not like an emergency replacement queen. or a supersedure that means we have to go through the whole process, egg to adult, to mating, and so on, these are going to emerge within a week. So they're on it. We're still in time. Plenty of time for that.

But if you find queen cells, you're doing inspections this time of year, you better get a hold of your queen. And I hate to tell you, I'm not telling you what to do, but if you don't get a hold of that queen, if you come across a queen, you've got queen cells in the same hive. it's trying to put her in a resource nuke and hold her in reserve because this is what happens at the end of the year.

Colonies kick out these tiny swarms and in some cases big swarms like the one today that I had to deal with. And now they need their numbers to get through winter and we need them to replenish and they're going to be making fat, bodied winter bees at the end of next month. and we need those to get us through the long winter hall.

So this is critical timing. That's why I say if you can find a queen in a colony that's producing queen cells, keep her in reserve. And if they don't replace her within the next three weeks, you need to bring her back and reconsolate that colony. So you don't lose them in wintertime. So I just want to talk a little bit about what kind of cells you see where. If you see these big queen cells along the edges of your brood frames, they've been planning it for a while.

You just weren't aware. So pay attention to your colonies, look at their behavior, look at their defenses on the landing boards and everything. If you find a queen cell, little peanut shell being developed in the middle of the frame, then that's a supersedure or it's an emergency. So that's when you would go to the extra yard and really try to locate your queen. The other thing is, and you'll hear this term sometimes, people will say, I have. had a queen cell and it was charged. So there's a queen cup, which is they're constructing a queen cell. It's incomplete and there's nothing in it. That's okay. Don't be alarmed. That doesn't mean sequester your queen. You inspect that colony and you've got a half-constructed cell. It's the only

vertical cell in your hive for brood. And if it's got a developing larvae in it, it's half under construction because they continue to build it out while the larva is fed and it continues to grow until it hits the pupa state. If you've got that going on, they've made the decision, so now you need to find your queen. If she's already gone, you're too late anyway. But I find that they tend to cap the cell, and it's within a day or two of that that the queen actually departs. Don't just put a queen excluder on the front of your hive and keep her in there, because then you're just kill her. So that's another thought, though. Some people say if you just get rid of the queen,

then they can't swarm without her. But then what can happen is you end up with one of those young queens that's not mated, that emerges, that matures enough to fly, and it leaves with a swarm unmaided, even worse. So anyway, all right, that's pretty much it. As far as did you cause the swarm? No. What some beekeepers do is they can cause an abscond. You get in that hive all the time.

You're inspecting all the time. You're stressing your bees out. You put them in a space. It's too large. You have an opening that's too large and not defendable. They've got a lot of varroamites and pests built up inside the hive. If a bunch of things start to go bad in the hive, they'll abandon it. And that's an abscond.

That means you look at it and there's nothing in there. They took off. That is the ultimate insult for the beekeeper. Either the hive wasn't right, the conditions were poor, toxins were too concentrated, pesticide loads were too high, or some other thing was bad with where they were living. Sometimes people have generators and equipment that vibrates the ground and causes a stressor for your bees. That can cause an abscond. So I don't think that's what happened for Caroland.

So no foul, no problems, no ownership, and why they ditched you. So collect that swarm, though. and take care of them. So, do, do, okay, let's go to Bill Robinson,

even though, Bill, you have to type in all caps to get my attention. Okay, so it says, Greetings, question.

My son recently had a reaction to a sting from a bald face, he says, bold face hornet, and recently went to urgent care

for stings from yellow jackets. Antifelactic reaction. Thoughts on my bees. Okay, so now this is interesting. The proteins, by the way, a bald-faced hornet, also called Bullet Hornet. They're bad. They're not Hornets at all.

They just called that. They're just in the Yellow Jacket family. They have huge attitudes. I have no problem taking those out, by the way, if they're in your space. Because they are terrible. But the sting thing comes up a lot. And because I have grandchildren around, I have my supervisor here, he's nine. I have the other one, he's nine.

They put on their B-suits and go after Vespidae. So they're after WOS. And because they think they're just totally protected. So I've also got a six-year-old grandson who thinks he's Superman and he'll walk up and slap a beehive and he has no protection on at all. We don't know if he's allergic to bees. And I can't get his mom to get him tested because these venoms are not the same. So the proteins that are in a honeybee venom are not the same as the proteins that are in a wasp. So when you go to a medical facility and you want to get tested, make sure you want to be tested for Vespidae and the Apis line.

And so they do have those tests. They'll find out very low key whether or not you are at risk and whether or not you have an allergic reaction potentially. And so he had a reaction. So I'm wondering for Bill how bad was the reaction. Of course, antifalaxis, the biggest deal, anything that obstructs the airway, anything that affects breathing, because your throat can swell. You know, so these reactions are load and goes from a medical perspective. If you're an emergency medical technician, anybody under respiratory distress like that would be a load and go. And you don't want that around.

So that's a little history on the bald-faced hornets. I don't play games with them at all. And there seems to be a high number of them, but please find out, especially if you're keeping bees, people that come to your property. The number one thing I want people to know is we have bees everywhere here. And we need to know if anyone is allergic. And some people say, yeah, we're not allergic. Well, how do you know?

Well, I've never had a reaction. Well, when were you stung? I've never been stung. So we have to be careful not to be the source. of their very first stinging experience. The good news is the allergy-related reactions that are severe are relatively low, but it is the number one reason that people die from bee stings. And by the way, I don't know if you know this,

but the honeybees kill more people than any other stinging insects in the United States. Just letting you know. So here we go, Keith Spelman says, is there a definite trigger for when a hive starts making winter, Bees. Yes, and we've had this discussion. It's not necessarily the winter, by the way. And fat-bodied winter bees are produced. Which bee in the colony makes that decision? Well, the queen does. So they should actually be called, some entomologists say, dearth bees. And so what that means is any time resources are not coming into the hive, the hive could be facing hardship and ultimately the total destruction of the hive for lack of nutrition. the queen will go ahead and produce these fat-bodied stocks. Now, the triggers are the change in nutrition. So what she's trying to do is produce a core group of nurse bees,

which is really what they are. They are physiologically different from a worker honeybee because they have more capability to store fat in their heads, in their thorax, in their abdomen. The other thing is they're the ones that are consuming the pollen, and the bee bread and stuff like that, because they're storing up these proteins that they can then use in a dearth period,

so winter, summer, wherever this happens to occur. And then they will keep a core group of brood going because they can still produce what those bees need to develop, and they won't be able to brood up huge, but they will keep the colony from completely expiring. So they actually, the triggers are nutrition related, not seasonal. So unless the seasonal course is tied to a predictable dearth period.

A lot of people may wonder, do you have a dearth where you live? So I want you to get a website called B-Scape, B-S-C-A-P-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-A-P-E-E-E-Scape.org And find out if you have a known dearth cycle where you live. Because another thing that I talked about with Margarita in the interview this past, week is, you know, would she keep bees? Because she doesn't. She's, you know, an academic. They do field research and everything else. She does not keep her own bees. And so if she did, I wanted to know, you know, how many colonies would she have? Where would she keep them? Stuff like that. And so part of the issue for her would be whether or not the environment where she lives can even

support honeybees. So a lot of people don't even think about that. They just decide, I want honeybees. I get honeybees. I put my honeybees out. And they're not doing well. And I I don't know why. We need to understand if all of the needs for your bees are present and we'll be able to sustain the number of colonies you hope to keep. And that's the problem I have right now in my own apiary. More bees for me and more colonies for me means I can evaluate a wider variety of equipment. A lot of people depend on me to field test their stuff.

So more colonies aids that. Now, what it doesn't do is produce more honey for me. I was getting more honey per colony with 12 colonies than obviously what I'm able to do with 42 or 43. So we are over harvesting from the environment as far as when we get to these numbers where I am. And I'm in a prime location for as far as the northeastern United States goes for forage. And so too many colonies will produce. a bunch of bees that are just kind of getting by.

So they're producing enough honey to get themselves through winter. They're not producing enough honey, according to the supervisor, for him to satisfy his client base. And he's a number cruncher in a very impressive way. So reduce colonies, the number of colonies will result in a higher honey yield and bees not having to work so hard or forage so far for the same resources that they need to get through winter. But for me here, because we don't have a dearth, the fat-bited winter bees are produced when we have a huge workforce of the bees, and the forest starts to drop off at the end of September. And that's it. That's also when robbing keys up. So in the fluff section for today, I might as well mention it while it's on my mind.

What I really want people to know, they're in my neck of the woods anyway, but when you know the dirt is coming, please reduce your entrance. There's a lot to think about here, and so I was out making videos today of Yellow Jacket Woss attacking beehives. And that sounds grisly, and you could make that really dramatic. I could get a really sweet clickbait title out of that. Yellow Jacket Woss attacked defenseless honey bees that pollinator flowers and bring us honey. But what was really going on is they were taking advantage of the cold weather, and they were going to the landing boards, and they are eating bees. Now, if I left it at that, you would say, Fred, why don't you do something about it?

Well, what bees are they eating? The worker honey bees are dragging drones out onto the landing board at night, and because it's nighttime, they're not flying away with them. So they're just piled up on the landing board. And so this looks dramatic if you get out there at sunrise, 50 degrees, by the way. That'll cool your coffee off too fast. It's a very frustrating situation. and so I'm making videos of it.

So the wasps are chewing apart, the drones that are cast out on the landing boards and are flying away with their bits and pieces. The choice parts of a drone for these yellow jacket wass are the thorax, number one. All the proteins are there. They get rid of the abdomen and they don't even want it. So that looks grisly. But then when things warm up and the honeybees are back on deck, the yellow jackets are not getting in.

They're not getting past the guard bees. And I have really sweet, super slow motion sequences right now in the cannes. They used to say back in the film days, but now it's just video data. There's no more footage. You don't come in and say I got a whole bunch of sweet video footage. Nobody has footage. Nobody's processing the film. It's digital data.

And so I got it. The bees given a lot of what for to a bunch of yellow jacket. I'm going to put that video out probably tomorrow because it's ready to go. It's good stuff. And the reason that we talk about it is they're cutting back because it got cold, partnered with reduction in resources, which means they're not going to feed these drones and they're going to toss them out. So that's coming along.

And that's why this is the time to get your Varroa destructor mites under control. And I hope you can do it. I don't care how you do it. If it's IPM, if you're going to get rid of drone frames or drone puping, you're going to cut them apart and pull the varroa mites that way. But if you're going to treat, this is your window. This is your time. Because we need maximum health nutrition and a low viral load on your bees at the time when they are producing these fat-bodied winter bees that are going to get your bees through winter, aka a dearth period. So I hope I answered that.

So that's the trigger. Lack of resources. Okay, Philip Morris. Now this is in fine print, so lowercase. I'm going to read it anyway. Philip Morris says, I got this advice from Russell Coopman, and I am passing it along to Quinn. Quinn, if you guys don't know,

it's my grandson. He's the supervisor. He's nine. He's a capitalist. Smaller jars, higher prices, it works for me. Okay, I'm not passing that on. He doesn't need higher prices. He sells out.

By the way, I was looking at, ah, never mind, we won't talk about that. Brian Bennett says, why are a lot of my bees up high and few bees in the bottom boxes? Okay, so for Brian Bennett, do you have top venting in your hive? If you have a top vent in your hive, the brood does not move down to your entrance.

But what I wanted to get to really quick regarding the wasts and everything because people are going to be talking about robbing screens and stuff because this is what's going to happen when these resources, okay, Philip says, was not a question. All right, well, I'm not telling him. By the way, he's not watching anyway. I still have his hive tool.

So the supervisor who says he watches is, if he watches and he says, can he have smaller jars and sell them at a higher price? I'll do it. But he has to see it. Okay, so Brian, what are we talking about? Brian Bennett, what was the question? Why are a lot of my bees up high and a few bees in the bottom box? Okay, so he says, no, sir, there's no venting in the top.

Darn, that was the easy answer. So the next one is, and it's almost getting too late to move them down, what is the size of the entrance? So this satisfies many issues. I am not going to have to put on any robbing screens this year. I've arrived at my sweet spot for the entrance size. Spoiler alert, it also proved to help my bees defend themselves against the wassa we're attacking this morning. And I have the video to show three-eighths of an inch high, three-eighths. that's it three inches wide that's the entrance they can ventilate through that they can

defend it they can do everything they need to do they can dehydrate their honey they do it all without opening it up big okay so here goes brian small hole it's five frame nuke with three boxes and they're up in the top okay since brian's right here so we have five frame nukes three boxes high So what's in the other two boxes? Are they full of honey below them or something like that? Let's find that out. So I like those five-frame nucleus hive wooden boxes. Those things are sweet.

My bees have filled those top two boxes all with honey, and they backfill themselves down to the bottom are ready. They come with like a, I think it's a three-quarter-inch hole that comes in the boxes. So Brian, those bottom boxes are full of honey. This is easy. Take the top box, put it on the bottom, put the bottom boxes that are full of honey on the top. Problem solved. Oh, no, now it says pollen and nothing just drawn out.

Okay. I don't know what to say to Brian now. I'm at a loss. I tried to help. I try to do what it can from a distance. Okay, so this time of year, let's talk about that. He's got a triple. So that's 15 frames.

The bees are at the top. They won't go through winter that way. The other thing is, I really want every hive, regardless of its configuration, to have the ability to feed those bees if you need to. Here's an example of bees that we're talking about here from Brian Bennett. They need to be fed. You're going to have to backfeed those bees. The other thing is, we probably have to reduce that to 10 frames, so two boxes, because they need to fill. fill it up and they need to occupy the space.

And so Keith Spillman, it's given his advice too. I'd pull the empty or put on top and feed so they can fill it for where. I just, I just sent that. Okay. Thanks, Fred. Just move them down and feed. Do it. Do it, Brian.

And then tell us the good news later. Oh, what are you going to feed? Let's feed something that reduces nozema that improves their microbiome, aka gut health. Let's feed them hive alive syrup. And because it works, and because if you use Fred 10 as your code, you get 10% off.

So there you go. Shameless plug. Let's do that. Move them down and feed them. And Rachel Howe says, is there a good resource for knowing what is in bloom during the year and what the bees might be bringing in?

Also, when a dearth is happening. Yes, Rachel must have came late. It is B-Scape, B-E-E-S-C-A-P-E-E-D-R-G. And when you pull up the chart, you enter your zip code and it shows the geography around you, you will see that there are little plant things that you can click on. It tells you what's going to grow when, what's known to grow in your area. One of the most important things about that website, too, and what they're really accurate about is if you're thinking about a place to start keeping bees,

it also lets you know what your pesticide loads are. My pesticide loads are about a 40 here where I am based on their scale. Where I had bees in my son's backyard, 15 minutes to the north of me, they were at a 240, and we did not get any bees to survive there. The pesticide loading there is astronomical. So understanding that also kind of let you know. what your challenges are. And if you're in a high pesticide load area, that's where you can investigate strong microbials because they can tell you based on the pesticide load in your area, what you

could be feeding your bees, which helps them mitigate the pesticides that are guaranteed to come into your hive. And it's a very easy feeding system. It comes like powdered sugar that you just sprinkle in the hive, look them up and see if you're in a high pesticide load area. But that's it. B-scape. And I believe now that's run by Penn State. And one-tenth, I feed one-to-one-eighth hive-live. Okay.

Hive-lip works. I only have Honeybee Healthy. So Honeybee Healthy. What Honeybee Healthy has worked really well. for is keeping your sugar syrup from spoiling. So if you want to put sugar syrup in a hive at the end of the year to help back feed them and keep them going, by the way, don't wait till the hive is starving out. When they start to lean out at all, please back feed them. When you've got this bad weather coming, these cold nights and things like that, this is going to keep their numbers up. If they start to drop

off and fall back and then you try to resuscitate them with feed, it's much more difficult. But Honeybee Healthy is good for keeping your sugar syrup from spoiling. We don't want that black mold showing up in your sugar syrup, which can happen pretty darn quick. So following the Honeybee Healthy guidelines keeps that going. ProHealth also has the same effect. Beekeeper's choice also, same effect. It will extend your sugar syrup.

And a hive alive is, will extend your sugar syrup also. And I've gotten six months because I put a bunch of jugs of sugar syrup one to one on the shelf with all these different additives in them. And you can go six months before you start to see the black mold starting to form. And the ones that last the longest were hive alive. And I didn't even know that hive alive was considered an extender. These things are expensive. Use them sparingly and don't mix them together, please. So feeding this time of year, see.

seems to magnify the robbing for my hives, Ed's B's. That's right. Don't play games. Where you feed is critical. Hive top feeders are the best. And this year I'm gradually rotating out those. I'm using the Appame, the ones that are compatible with your wooden hive components. So I use the Apamee hive top feeders.

And you can put, if you put fondent packs on, there's a space. right in the center for that and you can also have liquid because those trays are separate. For example, the ciracell feeders, which I like those too, you have to choose whether you're putting solids in it or a liquid. So having the ability to put one or the other or both at the same time is really fantastic and if you use honeybee healthy, bees will come at you right away even while you're pouring it in a jar. So be very careful about that. again, entrance reduction is going to be really important. And we're not feeding anyway until after you've got your honey soupers off until honey production is at the end of the year. That triggers

robbing anyway, just getting into your hives. So having an enclosed feeder, that is so important. Open troughs are, they just dive bomb into them. So entrance feeders, please don't use them. Anything that's down on the bottom level where they exit and enter the hive, you're begging for robbing. And as I'm going to demonstrate in the video that I'm going to launch this weekend, cold weather favors the wasps. They're going to get right through the entrance early in the morning, and we have to wait for things to warm up,

for your bees to break cluster, and to get out there and start defending their hive. So if you've got feeders down at your entrance, these entrance feeders, they'll have access to that right away, and they'll be visiting that in large numbers. because at the end of the year, your wasps are just after sucrose. They're after this carbohydrate.

They're generating a whole bunch of queens and a whole bunch of drones, and they've got a bunch of workers, and their nests are at maximum size this time of year. So be very careful about that. And I don't know if this is true or not. There is time oil in the hive alive when you put that in your sugar syrup. If you've ever smelled it, it's like a licoricey smell, but the time oil is pretty strong. That does not trigger robbing.

So that was pretty interesting. And I learned that because I was invited to do a Zoom that was published on the Hive Alive website on their YouTube channel. And we talked about winter preps. And I learned that for the first time. I didn't know that it reduced robbing. So if you're looking at things that you can add to your feed that will benefit the bees, but also not trigger a robbing frenzy. Hive Alive, apparently, is strong for that. And for the bees, choosing what they like the most,

when I did the testing of all of those, they liked beekeepers choice, which came from the Blythwood Bee Company. That was their number two out of sugar syrup by itself with nothing in it. So that's it. Be very careful about robbing. So the type of feeders that you use,

bucket feeders, by the way. Now that's Wildwoods, honeybee farms. If you're in the south, bucket feeders work, inverted feeders work up here in the northeast. Just for example, today, we went from 47 degrees to 60, whatever it is right now, 63 or something like that. That will force feed your bees if you have inverted jars or a bucket on your hives. And people will say they can keep up with it. But my point is I don't want them to keep up with it. I want them to receive the liquid from that feeder that they want on demand.

I don't want it to automatically dispense on them. And I did that test over and over because I realized that that kind of practical testing was stepping on some toes. So we wanted to make sure that they were all in the shade, that they were not affected by sunlight, that it was temperature and thermodynamics only. And as those containers that have the contained air in them for interest, inverted feeding. As they dispensed down to half, they accelerated. So of course, there's more airspace,

there's more expansion, and then it expressed out the syrup, whether the bees were in a hive or not. So I highly recommend you try that out. If you're in the South, you can get away with it because the temperature extremes don't fluctuate so fast and don't dispense it. Here, I never put on inverted feeders of any kind that trap air in them. The only advantage that one, had was the B buffet because the B buffet sat inverted. The jar was in an open reservoir. So what happened was at night when that air gap contracted, it drew in the sugar syrup that was in the reservoir. It wasn't drawing in air. Where if you've got these jars, inverted jars, a classic quart jar, Mason jars, got little pinholes in it. If that's upside down,

then when the air contracts, it pulls air in through those holes. And then the following morning, when you go from 47 degrees to 50, 60, and so on, it expands, and now it's pushing out the syrup onto your bees. Where's the feeder? Dead center right over your brood. So I don't want the bees to have to keep up with that. And I'm actually glad that this came up because I don't want to use inverted feeders. So the bee buffet worked really well.

You can look that up. The only container that was completely enclosed that expressed the lease because it had fewer holes in it and it was tiny was a B-smart Design's one-gallon feeder. So that was a slow-release feeder. The rapid rounds, they don't leak down into the hive no matter what the thermals are. And of course, the new Aphamai line, they don't leak. Cereo cell, they don't leak. Those are just open reservoirs that your bees get up into. and because there's no trapped error for that physics to happen.

So the resources feeding this time of year seems to magnify the robbing. Yeah, be aware. I'm feeding they're not taking it down though. Okay, this is from Bryant. All right, now here's the thing. When they're not taking the feed at all is a very bad sign. Because I've noticed that colonies that are really healthy take sugar syrup, no matter what's going on.

Colonies that are in decline tend not to take the sugar syrup. Part of it can be temperature. So I know that we can put them in shock if we give them liquids that are at 50 degrees Fahrenheit and lower. So we did that backyard testing, by the way, and there's videos of it on my YouTube channel. What happens to the bees when they're drinking cold syrup?

They drink it, but it cools them down, and they park themselves right next to it for an extended period of time. But when they're not feeding at all, I worry about the overall health of that colony. If they have abundant honey stores, that's one thing. But if it's also clear that they're light, then they seem to be losing their zest for life. I would take a close look at that colony. And if that's someone that also has a bunch of pollen in it,

it, I would be paying attention to the brood production or what that's like. And we really want them to store resources. The other thing that comes along is some people will say that the light syrup, the one-to-ones, the bees don't store it, so you could actually feed them with honey supers on to sustain your bees. You need to assume that whatever you're feeding your bees will make it to the honey supers if they're still on. So the lighter syrups are closer to what they're getting anyway from the environment.

So I would take a close look at what might be wrong with a colony that won't take any syrup of any kind. Because I've had colonies that don't need it at all. And you put sugar syrup on and they take it down instantly. And they use that for a ready resource. It's just like this is a frustration for the supervisor who has a flow hive and another hive. They were filling up all the frames. So the flow super was being full. He was just counting his pennies and looking in those windows and watching them fill them.

And then we got the series of cold weather, rainy weather, windy weather, and what did the bees do that went out there and they consumed it all? The honey cells that are not capped yet are ready reserved. It's like kind of leaving treats out on the counter that aren't in containers. You know, you just go by and casually eat them. They consume those things first. So they won't open up capped cells of honey until a last resort. The other thing is, so when the nectar is coming in, that's why they consume the, that's why you get this big teeter totted it's so frustrating you can feel like your colony's filling up

it's getting really heavy but keep in mind too it's occupying twice the space and has twice the weight that it ultimately will because they're going to dry it down and while they're drying it down they're using energy while they're using energy they need resources the resources are what the open cells again of nectar that they're going to consume we get the carbohydrates they need and off they go so but that colony i am worried about Christina says, Fred, I have survivor bees that hatch from comb removed in a cutout. The queen drowned in honey. Yeah, that's.

So here's the other thing. I talked to the cutout masters, and Christina, this is interesting because Christina is a cutout master also, does a lot of that work. They separate out brood and honey. It's the first thing. Like they carry these big coolers, Randy McCaffrey, Mr. Ed. They have these big coolers. They cut the honeycomb out that's full of honey. They throw it in there.

They don't even bother to tie it up in frames. They take the brood carefully out. They put the brood with rubber bands into wooden frames, and those go into hives. They have to keep the honey that they're cutting out away from the brood for the reason that's described. Honey will kill your bees quicker than anything else if it's got an open surface area.

So we have to keep that stuff away from your bees if you're traveling and moving them and doing cutouts. So, and it's great that you have survivor bees, by the way. Yesterday I installed a bee weaver queen. I swear there is no laying worker, but they're ignoring the queen. Today I found a half-dozen larvae. Okay, well, hopefully she's ramping up now

with the half-dozen larvae. Um, wet bees a dead bee. You get that right. And wet with, I'm telling you, honey will kill your bees. You got to be careful. It wipes out the brood underneath of them and heavy sugar syrup that people are going to put on. I don't ever, I'm just going to do a confession right now. I don't ever feed heavy two to one sugar syrup. I don't. I have one to one. If I'm ever feeding sugar syrup, it's one to one. And I transition from that right to a fondant when the weather gets really cold. And, uh, that's it. Because, uh, your bees can survive one to one. They can't survive two to one if it gets all over the brood. Your brood, your open larvae have spiracles on their bodies, and they are respirating. If you have anything that plugs that up, it kills them quick. And it can end up with spotty brood for that reason too.

Yeah, so hi, honey says I process, all the honey gives back to the homeowner. That's good politics right there. And for those of you, by the way, Oh, the beeweaver queen is still in the cage being ignored. I swear there is no queen. Okay. I don't know.

Okay, so let's talk about somebody mentioned earlier, Honeybee Healthy. Honeybee Healthy, this is another application for it. You can speed the acceptance of an introduced queen by using what they call their drench mixture, which is light sugar syrup with honeybee healthy in it. You spritz the bees, you spritz the cage that your queen is in, you make everything kind of smell the same. And there is very good, consistent feedback that that helps with queen acceptance. Another thing that I would do, which Christina may not have,

queen introduction cages. These cages, obviously you're not going to run out and get one right now. This is the queen isolation cage, but the principle is the same. If you're trying to introduce the queen and you've got her in her cage, you can take brood. That's like it says here that there's a small collection of brood there. I would take that brood and stick it in this cage with the new queen and just nurse bees, not the workers that attack everything. And release the queen from her cage

into the queen introduction cage. And this is for the people that are listening and planning ahead and putting equipment on their shelves. Those cages and having that option gives me an opportunity to do a lot of things. So let's say we bought a queen. In this case, it's a Bee Weaver queen from Daniel Weaver.

When we get those queens in, And we want to know kind of what their quality is when we get them because we don't know what happened to them even in shipment. So by having a queen isolation cage, which that is, that gives the bees full access to the queen and she's loose there. But of course, if she's just being introduced, you also go risk them killing the queen. Queen introduction cage over here is so small that even workers can't get through the bars. So the queen is in there with capped brood that would be emerging.

So nurse bees come out. They get fed through the bars by your other bees. They attended the queen. They don't kill the queen. And we can see if the queen starts to lay. And of course, they'll take care of her eggs when they hatch on the third day. Then we'll know what her pattern is. We'll also know if she's well bred.

And we'll get to see that we have a viable, fertile queen. So for those of you planning ahead, queen, excuse me, queen and queen. introduction cage. It's trying to fight that cough there for a minute. But queen introduction gauge and as far as that goes, the other thing is getting your bees to accept her with if you've got honey be healthy, I would try that route. We don't want them killing that queen. Okay. So I have PTL Science 380. This is what would you recommend for managing my flow frame honey super over winter? I can think of two options one put the entire super into my freezer inside of a plastic bag then put it back

onto the hive next year when it is time to add the super again or two drain all the frames into a bucket store the entire super in a plastic bag proof box in the shed and dry down the bucket of honey to 18 percent in the food dehydrator or three something else thank you okay so we're going to talk about any of your supers that you want to store the flow super is almost no different The flow super has advantages because it is a plastic frame. Okay. So when you take it out, this is what I do. At the end of the year, first of all, we have to get them out of the super.

So my number one method for getting them out of the super is the Cereycelle escapeboard. They make the best a skateboard. Go to the Blythwood B company, check it out, veteran-owned company, small business, see if you can get one. I have a whole bunch of them. They're how I get my Bs out of the supers. So once they're out of the super, then I just, take it off because at the end of the year the flow supers don't stay on anyway. Your bees don't go up into them.

So you should have a medium box below that that is full of honey that's going to get your bees through winter. We put them all on a rack last year and we just drain the flow supers right into five gallon buckets. Normally that would be sacrilege because what you're doing is you're blending all the frames together and now we're losing all those individual floral sources in the frames. but at the end of the year, we're talking Aster's and Goldenrod primarily. So the honey is already pretty darn consistent. It's not like what we get in spring where you can really see the differences frame by frame. So we drain them all off.

I put them just as described here, right in my dehydrator. Get that down below 18% is my target. Legally, you can be under 19% in the state of Pennsylvania. And pretty much guarantee you won't get fermentation. Now the other thing is now that we've drained the honey off of it, I put it right back on the same hive it came off of for 24 hours. That's a feel-good thing to do because the bees are going to get in there. They're going to clean it all out. And bees do a better job of cleaning it than we can.

I also pull the plugs out and let the bees go into the trough area that they don't normally have access to. So we let them go in the trough area too and clean all that out because once they've gotten all the honey out of there, they just exit. So we don't even have to worry about them getting out of there. Then we just put them in storage bags. And I have these industrial, plastic, clear trash bags. I don't know how many mills they are. I think we get them from Home Depot. And they would work in like a 50-gallon drum. They would line a 50-gallon drum. Those bags have so many uses, by the way. So the clear ones, I just like being able to see in there. The other thing is I put wise dry, not these big ones. This is a wise dry rechargeable pack.

It's a desiccant. We can put those in there with them and that guarantees the condensation isn't going to form on the hives and spoil. If there's sugar in there, you run the risk of, of course, fermentation. So the concentration of sugar, moisture through condensation without closing it up and dehydrating it, we risk that fermentation smell that we often get when we go into our storage areas and look at our honey supers. So let the bees clean it, put it in the bag, desiccant packs, and they can be small packs. They don't have to be that size. And just make sure that they can't get ruined.

The good news is wax maws, by the way, I have a sweet series of videos of wax mauds recently, too, that my wife thinks is really gross. But wax maws don't chew those, so we don't have to worry about those as much as we do the drawn wax frames that we're trying to preserve for the following year. So that's what I do. Put them on 24 hours, pull them off, and good to go. So Christina says, I put my queens in a queen introduction frame. That's the best, I've given all my best tricks.

I don't know what else. Call B. Weaver. Talk to them about what to do. Maybe they'll know stuff. So, you know what? It's 526. If you have a question for me, please type it in all caps. And I'll try to answer that before we shut down today.

Otherwise, three-day weekend, by the way. This is it. This is historically a terrible weekend when I was a teenager. I hated this time of year because all the pools were closing and everything shut down. And everybody's going back to school. And the supervisors in school, all the kids are in school. I'm really sad. They're not around to bother me.

I mean, to be around during the day to. hang out and stuff. So I hope you have a great weekend ahead. And remember, if you're in my neck of the woods, northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania, we're going to have Monday and Tuesday are going to be fantastic beekeeping days. We have a lot to do in a short amount of time.

I hope all your bees are doing well. If you didn't get a chance to get your question in or you're looking at this later, please go ahead and comment down below. I respond to every comment on every video. And I'm going to thank those of you who join me live today for the chat. And Keith Spelman, happy birthday. I hope you get a fantastic cake and whatever else you like to do

and that you have no work to do. And I appreciate that you spent your time with us today. So thanks for being here. I'm Frederick Dunn. This has been The Way to Be. Thanks a lot.