The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 326 with Frederick Dunn October 3rd 2025

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

This is the audio track from today's Q&A YouTube:  https://youtu.be/pDFTVCF3vXg

Welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, October the 3rd of 2025. This is Backyard, Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 326. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. We have a beautiful day outside here in the northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. And I chose to be inside with you. So see how that goes? I could be outside. doing fun things but no I'm here answering your questions if you want to know we're going to talk about please look down in the video description you'll see all the topics listed in order and some other helpful links that will carry you to

other parts of the worldwide web and get you more information so I want to start today right off by giving a shout out to somebody I want to say hello to Raymond from Seabrook Texas a fellow veteran retired and he watches every Friday and people were posting a photo of Raymond watching my show, and I really appreciate it, and just wanted to say hello. So thanks a lot for being out there, and I hope you're watching right now. So welcome. And a lot of people want to know, I know you do.

What's going on outside? What's your weather like? Well, it's 77 degrees Fahrenheit. That is 25 degrees Celsius out there, two mile per hour winds, which is three kilometers per hour, and the pollen is high. How do we determine high pollen count as beekeeping? We look at the landing board and we see how many pollen-bearing foragers are flying through the entrance.

And right now, it's right around 18 to 20 per minute. Fantastic, which means the environment is still kicking in, doing good things. Air quality is good. The government puts out air quality reports. The best day coming up, and of course this may vary depending on where you are. This coming Sunday, right here in the state of Pennsylvania, it's going to be 79 and into the 80s. That's going to be epic. So the reason I say that is because if you're looking for the very best day

to catch up on all your beekeeping stuff, including harvesting honey, which we're doing right now, if you want to get everything sticky, get out there and harvest some honey, 79 to 82 Fahrenheit is fantastic, and that's 47 to 50 Celsius for the rest of you. And you might be wondering, hey, is there any rain in the forecast? Because it's really dry right now. We can't even burn stuff. That's right.

But I understand that that's really good for ticks because it dries, them out. When I say good for ticks, I mean good for controlling ticks, not good for the tick itself. They dry out when it isn't enough rain. They hide in the leaf litter and then my chickens come along and eat them. So Tuesday, we have upcoming thunderstorms. I'm sure the weather people are going to be spot on. They're almost never wrong. Almost. And so if you're trying to get pictures for Halloween, right, it's the month of October, get out there under the stormy skies and the rain. look all sad, hold trick-or-treat bags, dress like skeletons, whatever you do, it's a lot of fun. Warms and rain, you can't beat that combo. So I also know you want to know what's going on outside

as far as forage still. The golden rod is turning brown. It's a sad scene out there, but guess what's replacing it in the landscape? Asters. The asters are super bright and colorful, and the bees are all over them. So as I said, pollen's coming in, nectar's coming in. The harvest that I did recently of the flow hive that I posted this past week. they're filling it up again i was going to pull it off just clean it out and pack them down for winter but because they already instead of just cleaning out the frames for me they're putting more honey in there i have to leave it because it's still in production they're in the game so i'm not pulling it off yet asters max a million sunflowers those are perennial sunflowers fantastic if you haven't planted those

and you've got an area where it's kind of rough you don't want to mow it i highly recommend putting in perennials like max of millions these things are over six feet tall and the bees are all over them this year so for some reason it's a great year also this is my first year with marigolds and i'll put up a picture of my grandson standing in the marigolds i have never seen marigolds that tall the miragolds are over four feet tall so i went ahead and got a hold of the seeds uh that i used last year i'm gonna forget uh land pride or something like that anyway i'll put a little link down to the video description so you'll know where I got the seeds for it on Amazon. And I want to grow a significant amount of marigolds because here's the thing.

They also deter deer and rabbits and stuff like that. And the honey bees are on them. And I asked Annette to go out. She's my wife and I wanted to see how long are they spending on the blossoms? Are they really getting anything out of it? And I sell some interesting behavior too. There were some bees that just landed on the marigold blossoms. all they do is fan their wings. They're not getting nectar. They're not getting pollen.

Just fanning their wings, spreading the scent of the marigolds. If you know why they do that, put that down in the comments section, because I want to know more. And my searches yielded nothing. So, Cosmos are still good. And as I said, Goldenrod basically write it off. Marigolds are great. Clover is still decent. And that's it. So, you need to make sure please put out fresh water for all your bees. Think of all the bees that are in the hive that aren't even old enough yet to forage. They get thirsty on these hot days. And the only way they can get the water, because there's no condensation, this time of year going on inside the hive, they need those foragers to go get it. So if you can make that convenient for them, they control climate with that. They have to keep the brood humid, by the way. So when it's really dry like this, they need to go ahead and keep that humidity under control. right around 65% relative humidity inside the hive. And they do that with fresh water.

So keep that going. That is about everything. So shout out to Raymond. I did that. And let's go right on. You can submit your own questions. You might wonder how you could do that. You go to my website, the wayto-be.org.

And you click on the page, mark contact, and you fill out the form. There you go. You may just have an idea of something you think I should think about. Some people did that today and I thought about it and I've written my responses. So I hope you're ready. So we're going to jump right in. Oh, I've called this question number two even though I didn't have a question number one. So question number two comes from Kevin Smedman and this is the YouTube channel name.

Kevin from Hudson Valley, New York. I plan on treating my hives with Formic Pro this week end of September. They say to remove the entrance reducer. That's true. It's also the start of robbing season here. Can I treat the bees? Bearding will be enough to hold off the robbing? What would you recommend?

Okay. So here's the thing. This comes up quite a bit. I also would like you to look at an interview that I did with Heather Brockard Bell, who represents Nod and is one of their head scientists there, and they produce FormicPro. So we talked about a lot of details.

So here's my thing on that. When you put in formic pro, formic acid, so it's an organic treatment to kill varodistructor mites. For those you don't know, the two-pad treatment will kill the mites underneath your pupa covers, so the capped cells of developing bees. And it's really effective, but here's the thing, it's highly volatile during the first 72 hours. So my concern about robbing is basically non-existent during that first 72 hours. because robbers they follow the scent of honey and stuff like that this time of year they want to get in there they want to get that stuff and get out they don't want to fly into a formic vapor so i think you're pretty

safe for that initial 72 hours beyond that that's when i would consider because the volatility has greatly reduced and that initial blast of that aroma is gone i would say then as you see your landing board activity and the bees return to normal in there that you would be safe probably now I'm just guessing but it makes sense to me that then you could reduce the entrances a little bit so the initial blast is what you really want them to have maximum ventilation follow the label I have to say that but for me personally if I were using formic pro and I were concerned about robbing because it's a highly productive hive and the honey supers are still on or you've put back honey supers that you just extracted and you want your bees to clean

it up so that honey scent is in the air the formic I think will help reduce their, you know, their appeal to the robbers out there. And don't forget, while we're talking about that, robbing screens. You might want those on your hives, and don't forget that there's a new version here. The people that got these, and I have them, of course, is sitting right here, that helps your bees defend themselves. So, lots of ventilation with a reduced physical entrance, but a big screen area.

So this would help. Like if you left your hive entrance, if you pull the entrance reducer out, but you'll put a robbing screen like this there, you've got a lot of ventilation here, and you don't have to worry about the robbing. That's actually a fix. For that right there.

Those are by B-Smart Designs, not sponsored. Okay, so question number three comes from Keith in St. Louis, Missouri. Hello to St. Louis. Kirkwood, go Pioneer. fighting pioneers beat Webster turkey day game anyway any update on if the supervisor reclaimed his hive tool he knows it's here he didn't reclaim it though we talked about it yesterday and the other part is what method does he use for sterilizing his hive tools and this is very important because he is a very you know detail

oriented 10 year old now and that he likes the clean hive tools. So he's got all these magnetic strips with all the hive tools lined up on him. And he puts them in a friar. So a friar pot, you know, the teflin-coated ones. And he boils his hive tools. He puts on heavy leather gloves. He boils his tools. And then when they're all clean, because he wipes them off on a cotton cloth, and then he puts them back on the magnets that he has on the wall. So the reason that we do that is so that we're not transferring potential disease from hive to hive. So what diseases you might be wondering, does boiling your hive tool protect from? Nozema, primarily.

If you're thinking about American fowlbrood and European fowl brood, you would be shocked to find out that even if you boil it, which means 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 Celsius, it's not enough to kill or defeat American fowlbrewd spores. That's right. If that worked, all we'd have to do is boil all our hive equipment and then we save it, but we don't. We have to burn it when American foul brood is discovered inside one of your hives.

So you might be thinking, well then, what's the next step? This is a step I don't let him do, but if I were concerned at all, if I were an inspector and I were going to other apiaries, and I was looking at things and I thought maybe there's some foul brood issues. You just get out your propane torch and you torch your hive tool. listen to this. Torching the hive tool, just surface torching isn't enough. You have to make it glow, which defeats the temper of the hive tool. If it has any temper, I don't know. It might be totally easygoing, or it might have temper. I don't know what's going on. But you have to make it glow red if you're trying

to kill American or European foulbrood because those spores can handle boiling temps even at extended periods of time. That's impressive, not fun. But that's what he does. He's in charge of all hive tool cleaning. The first step, of course, scraping off any physical residue that's on it and then he takes it through a freshwater cold rinse to get all the honey and things like that off of it and then they go into the boiling pot so there it is question number four comes from timan two three nine that's a YouTube channel name Fred will you add the horizontal hive adapted for flow frames to your varied collection the short answer is no and here's why so I was talking with Ricky Rourke at the

North American Honeybee Expo he has horizontal bees.com and he had flow frames in some of those and people were buying hides and having them designed to accommodate because those frames that look like this do not go in a standard Langstroth space even though they go you know the flow hive is considered a Langstroth hive but anyway these are the frames So they were building them out and then they had a cutaway in the horizontal hive so you could see them And I personally didn't think a lot of that and here's why when it comes time to harvest these frames by the way and the other thing is because they're custom as far as where they sit You can't like move on farther and closer you know to and from the entrance

So it's a locked in position The bees also have to work under it and around the ends. There's no way for them to go through the middle of these So for a horizontal hive because keep them two these are right to the top so if you had cover boards it would probably rest right on these so you've eliminated a transit area there too the other thing is that I noticed is the long hives the horizontal bees hives you would have to tip that segment you want these to be at least two degrees tilt when you're draining the honey off of them unless your plan is just to let them fill

these up and then pull them out, but you've got to put something in their place, otherwise it's going to be a bunch of feral comb in there, straper, comb, so on. So I just, that whole situation is not personally something that I would try to do. And I like the vertical format. I also know that not every hive is going to get flow supers. So the ones that are super productive, the ones that every time you look at them, they're just advancing their honey stores really fast. That's candidate to suddenly in a short amount of time add a flow super to it so every horizontal hive wouldn't necessarily get there but I can tell you this my long Langstroth hive this year is overproductive they made a big mess for me

they went under the follower board because apparently I wasn't keeping up with them enough and I was using that area for storage so long horizontal hive entrance over here whole bunch of frames all involved It looked like I was keeping up with them because all you have to do, it's lazy beekeeping. You just pull the extra frames from over here, put them on the inside of the follower board, and they continue to draw out the comb. Well, I wasn't keeping up with them, so they went under and around the follower board, and I had a big open space and then a bunch of frames stored,

and didn't they draw out comb right onto the cover boards in that open space behind the follower board? So now, what was I doing all morning today? crushed comb. So crush and strain. So I took the honeycomb out. It's very soft, very new, all-capped honey, and just crushing it up and straining it through a strainer. What a mess. So I could have, for example, put something like that on there, but you just don't know. So the way it is at the end of that, when you find out that they're filling all the space, now you just move your follower board and install more frames, which now they have. But the horizontal hides this year have been extremely productive, including those new topar hives.

They are doing it. But I don't have any desire to be able to add a super on top of that, the horizontal configuration. Nor do I want a specific design cutout section that's just for flow frames. Because I think we can do that with vertical boxes with the Langstroth. Some people do it, though. And if you're one of the people that has a horizontal bees version and that worked for you, maybe you could share down the comment section what some of the challenges or benefits were so that was question number four moving on to question number five from cynthia

who lives in john day oregon do you think your bees has a lot of horizontal hive questions today which is interesting do you think your bees do equally well in your long lang versus the lands did you experience any cross comb or attached comb between between and near the bottom of your lands frames. What's your favorite and easiest way to remove bees from honey frames with horizontal hives? Since bee escape boards and fume boards aren't really applicable, but they are because of today's thumbnail. I've been given some thought to this.

Now, I don't like to pick favorites, but if I had to choose, let's say I have to get rid of some of my hives. and let's say I have a bunch of layens hives, which I do, and I have some long langstroth hives, which I do. I just doubled the number of long langstroth hives, by the way. And which would I prefer? I would keep the long lankstroth over the lands. And there are problems for me. Maybe you keep layens hives, and they're perfect. But they do cross comb a lot.

They sag at the bottom in some place. which is interesting to me because I know there's people keeping them in much hotter locations than I am. And I have problems because I have to do cutcomb harvesting on those because they do not have an instructor. Now that's on me because I have to have an extractor that would be big enough to handle those big frames. But they're all foundationless, by the way. They have vertical wires on them. But if I had to get rid of a hive, if I had to make a choice between Lanz and Langstrath, Langstroth. I'm staying with a long lang. So now moving on to how do you get your bees out? So we all have follower boards. So when you've got any horizontal hive configuration, you have a

follower board, which is solid, which as far as your bees are concerned, it's supposed to be the end of the hive. So you have an entrance, you have all the involved frames along the way, and then you have a follower board, which is a movable end of the hive, which lets you expand and contract it super easy by the way for packing down unless they built a bunch of wild comb everywhere because you were a negligent beekeeper like i was but here's what i have this is for the top bar hive because it occurs to me how would you get your bees off of the frames that you want to harvest so we would use a bee escape so it does work just like a vertical system so cirracell i really like those when it comes to the vertical so if i've got a standard

Langstroth hive with a top super and I want to get the bees out of it. Put it on there, leave it for about 12 hours overnight. Morning comes, they all start foraging again. They migrate out of there. They don't get back up. So then I have an empty super I can just collect. So I was thinking about these top bar frames, and for me, because they're new, the comb is really soft.

What if I wanted to harvest some capped comb? Now I'm not saying I'm doing that yet. I'm planning ahead because my colonies are new. The hive is new. There are two colonies existing in one top bar hive here. So what if I wanted to get them off a frame? You can't shake it because the comb would just fall off, especially when we're talking about capped honey.

It's too soft. But if I put this in there, this is a follower board. Two holes here. So I want to get the bees off of these top bar, you know, with the comb hanging down. I want the bees to leave. So your entrance is over here. Your top bars are here with a nice soft comb

that's capped that you're going to make chunk honey which is when you cut capped honey and you put it in a jar and then you pour honey around it that's chunk honey or you have comb honey where you're going to cut comb and then you're going to save that and sell it or use it as is capped honeycomb and it's perfect but we want to get the bees out so what happens is the bees need to make it to the entrance they need to go and get water and things like that so when they go through these holes they go out the ends here at the top corner and down the bottom corner you leave just enough space there for them to come out and move along and then what they do is they're smelling that their honey their frame is back in here and they try to get to it but they come to the screen here and they can't get back in so maybe in an extended period of time they would figure out that the hole is over here but the way this thing is configured

I bet you want to see one that's not mounted to the board oh look here it is that's what the inside looks like see those channels that they follow so they come through the holes of the follower board they go out around this around this out that hole and then they don't come back in you can mount this to anything now here's the thing I also put these on my feeder shims because they have feeder shims for my nucleus hives this goes on the underside of that there's a hole in the middle so the feeder shim becomes a B escape so if I need to

it because I have stacked nucleus hive boxes that are made out of wood and I use a feeder shim that has this skateboard on it you just screw them they come with holes already and then we put that on top of the feeder shim the bees go down through it now I harvest the comb out of the feeder shim without any problem with bees being on it where do you get these man lake is there discount no did I get them for free no go to man lake get these bee escapes they say Nico on them n i c o t and so i don't know who actually makes them but they're at man lake these b escapes and of course i bought a bunch of them because you can attach them to anything like follower boards you can make your own and it's good stuff and make sure to mention my name so that you can be sure to pay exactly the same

as everyone else so the other thing is about insulation so aside from the escape which yes you can use just started back up with bees this year using horizontal hive configuration so a learning curve for me my bees have been very patient the hives are insulated with r5 rigid foam walls and r10 in the roofs I have one of each layings and long laying debating which direction to go if I build more hives this winter you are a couple of seasons ahead of me just with these types of hives hence my question And for those of you who are building your own long Langstroth hives, I invite you to go to my website, the wayto-be.org,

and you click on the page marked prints and plans. We have free PDFs that have materialists and everything else for building a long Langstroth hive. So if you want to build your own, if you're skilled, if you have the resources and you've got the shop and you want to do it, that's a great place to go. I do want to give a shout out to the Monroe County Beekeeping. Association hosted me and I was there and gave a presentation in Ohio last weekend last

Saturday and there were two exhibitors so there were the Beersville Bees.com is one company they had horizontal hives and then there is Greg Burns which is Nature's Image Farm and they do the propola and the Endora hives so both of those were there and one of them, beersvillebees.com, those guys are selling long Langstroth hives that are insulated. These are substantial hives. So I wanted to bring this up early and here's the reason for doing that. So I get time to talk to people. They only had two exhibitors there. So it was really easy. And they have an insulated long Langstroth hive. They were also selling, if you've seen them before, the North American Honeybee Expo, they were selling layens hives as well. So I talked to them,

the layens hives don't sell as well as the Long Langs, so I think they're focusing on Long Langstroth. When you look at these hives, and I hope you go to their website and look at them because they're insulated, and they're very well constructed, and if you weren't going to build one, if you were going to buy one, this is the one that I would personally buy. Now, the thing of it is, they weigh 250,000, pounds. That's a lot. And it's one of the advantages and disadvantages of having a horizontal hive configuration. The cool part is once you build them and set them up, they stay put. We're backyard beekeepers. We're not hauling them around. They're going to hold up to heavy weather. My long Langstroth hive is not even bolted or screwed down to the hive stand that it's on.

and it endured in excess of 65 mile per hour winds in wintertime. So if you're thinking about something that's really heavy duty and you want it to hold up in all elements, these horizontal hive configurations can be built as big and heavy as you want to make them if you're building your own. Now the other part is I did look at their website. Shipping is expensive, as you might imagine, because it's freight. But those of you who are going to go to the North American Honeybee Expo

in January in Louisville, Kentucky, they're one of the exhibitors. I recommend that you look at the exhibitors that are listed by Kamen Reynolds and on their website. And if you're going there, get one there and bring it home, and then don't pay any of the freight if you want somebody to have built one or if you want to see one in person. Those are my recommendations. This is not a sponsored video, not a sponsored advertisement.

I'm just telling you that these are the things I see because I go to a lot of conferences. I see a lot of people's work on display. I see a lot of hive configurations. I see a lot of woodwork. And the quality of the woodwork is fantastic. So, Beersfield, B-E-A-R-S-V-I-L-E-B's.com. And Nature's Image Farm is, of course, naturesimagefarm.

If you want hives that last forever. But he sells standard Langstroth Hive. but he did a really nice presentation and again about the process of preserving wood so those are good if you're building your own I like that idea of the clad insulation wood outside insulation panel wood inside and then a good well-fit hive that will handle all weather that'll lock down and maybe even bears can't get into it bears will knock over your regular Langstroth hives you gotta strap them down make sure they're going to hold up to that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, it was the other thing. He's a very good tin bender. I am not. If you look at my long lanksroth hive, it looks like I turn the grandkids loose with some sheet metal and some tack hammers. And it's all goofy looking. But it's solid.

It's going to stay put. Long time. Bees like it. Do well. Question number six is from B. Smith. Kernersville, North Carolina. I recently heard you say the honeybee was comprised. of three casts. That's what I thought too, but apparently the powers to be have declassified it to two

female casts. The drones don't qualify as a cast anymore. Have you heard that yet? Okay. I know this is exciting to you, just as exciting as it is to me, because when we talk about honeybee biology, and yes, I've often said it, there's three cats in your hive, there's the queen, the worker, the drone. And then we can, um, we, we can't. get into the nitty-gritty because I mentioned before that there are entomologists. See, those are the really deep people, they're really complicated thinkers, those embedded in classification of insects, right? So some of them are saying that we need another cast. So that would add another cast of bees inside your beehive, and it would be the fat-bodied winter bee, which is a worker. And then cast,

when you get right down to the nitty-gritty, nitty-gritty. So they are along the lines of sexual orientation. So we have haploid and diploid. So the diploid is the queen and the female worker, right? Haploid is the male, the drone. And because one is male and the other two are female, there are casts within the female lines. We have two, queen, worker.

And then the male is by himself. So he doesn't count in those casts. the drone. So technically, if you're an entomologist, you're probably going to say that there are two casts, the queen and the worker, and then there's the drone, a separate thing. Unless you're looking at B-books, and then you find out that they're all listed, even because I checked it out before I talked, you know, just me and you before we started talking today. Even Dr. Jamie Ellis down at the Florida B-Lab lists three casts, the drone, the worker. the queen and the ABC and XYZ the B Bible lists them as three casts the drone the queen the worker however

when you get really into the intellectual weeds for those who really need to know there are actually just two female casts and then the drone not counted as a cast so I leave it to you you can do a deeper dive you can find out so it's not like there was suddenly a change you know or in fact when people started noting the drone is something separate from the worker and the queen you're talking over 100 years ago so all these books that have been written all these basic biology about beekeeping because that's the argument they make well just to keep things simple for the beginning beekeeper we say three casts the queen the worker the drone See? Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, unless you're an entomologist trying to get a grade in college, you're going to need to know for sure.

So that's it. Happloid diploid. And I like my listeners who point that kind of stuff out because what it does is it makes me spend a lot of time studying things, wondering if I'm putting out the wrong information. Because let me tell you, I want you to get the right information, even if I have to say, darn it, I was wrong. moving on to question number seven from betsy in rockville maryland says i'm a new beekeeper i'm interested in learning about winter bees what are the factors conditions of the queen laying with her be eggs does she lay those eggs one time only or is it a gradual process so here again this is bee biology the fat-bodied winter bees which is this came up recently because friends of ours we're talking about whether or not they should wait to treat for varroa destructor mites

to get them under control later in October instead of right now, for example. And I'm going to tie this in because here in the northeastern United States, we are prepping for winter and the weather can change as it did last year, all of a sudden and never go back to nice weather. So the fat-bodied winter bees, how are they made, when are they made? So this is why I've said in the past, they actually should be considered dearth bees, not just fat-bodied winter bees. Because the triggers, this has nothing to do with what the queen does and everything to do

with what the workers do regarding the nutrition that they provide to developing larvae inside the hive. So these are the triggers, right? It's about nutrition coming in to the hive. So the amount of pollen coming in, the protein that's necessary to develop the brood inside the hive. when that starts to lean out what happens when the proteins are leaning out and the nectar resources that are coming in are becoming thinner what happens is the nurse bees that are feeding the queen start to back off on what she's getting and the queen senses that so what does the queen do then the queen starts laying fewer eggs she doesn't change what the eggs are like she just lays fewer So then instinctively, the nurse bees detect that the queen is laying fewer eggs partnered with fewer resources coming into the hive.

So lower proteins, less carbohydrates, that's the nectar that would be coming in. And then they start to change what they're feeding. So here's the thing. What they're feeding to the brood is slightly altered. And they have the ability to feed more. Why is that? because remember the queen is also backed off on her egg production which means that the nurse bees who have loaded up on their resources

to feed that brood have fewer brood to attend to so now they can fatten them up think about it so they're thinning down they're fattening them up because this brood this is again why I want you getting your mites under control ahead of time because those are responsible for providing the nutrition to those bees must be at their best so that your fat-bodied winter bees are at their best. They get fed better than any other bee at any other time of the year. And I'm going to put a link down in the video description.

For those of you want to do a deep dive on that, but it has everything to do with the nutrition that the nurse bees are providing, nothing to do with the eggs that the queen is producing. So they're going to produce these super fat bees. fat in their heads, fat in their thorax, fat in their abdomen, they are fat bees. Now, those bees do not forage. Those bees do not work. Their job is just to maintain the colony and live longer. Flying bees are dying bees, as they say. So the flight muscles activated, flapping their wings, traveling different places, burns out the bee, which is why this time of year,

they're living about six weeks. the fat-bodied winter bees, what's their job? Why are they like that? Why are they fat? Not physically. You're not going to be able to look at that bee and go, there goes one. Here goes one of the fat-bodied winter bees

that's going to carry us through until spring. It doesn't work like that. They hide it inside their exoskeleton. So when we look at them, their job then is two at a time when nutrition is scarce, where resources are not available coming in, and the colony of a cluster of bees that's inside your hive, in the winter cluster that does nothing but dwindle through the year,

the rest of the year, these are held in reserve because they will be the ones that continue to keep a skeleton crew, if you will, just enough to keep brood going, just enough because the queen is going to still produce eggs. You're still going to have some brood inside your hive, even in the middle of winter. And then these bees have within their bodies what they need to provide the nutrition necessary

to continue to maintain brood that will guarantee the existence of your bees in a cold climate when they can't fly and get resources. Or remember what I said before, a profound dearth hits the hive. Resources become thin. They can create fat-bodied bees in a place that's not a heavy winter like we have here,

just a place that has an extended dearth. And this is why nutrition becomes critical at the time that they are being developed. This is why viral loads need to be reduced. So what are the number one things inside your hive that are spreading the virus load? Forodestructor mites. So I hope you're on top of those things.

And then we like to deliver the one, punch. So the one punch is right now. If you are my mentees and you are where I am, then I am suggesting that you get your mites under control and your treatment is taken care of right now. And then at the end of November, beginning of December, which we waited for last year and then couldn't even get to the hives because of the blizzard conditions, you will have the lowest number of brute available, which means your varroa destructor mites are vulnerable to organic treatment. which means you can really get them and the reason i like exhalic acid vaporization at that time of year is because who's going to tear open a beehive at the end of november to put a treatment in

all they have to do is pull a quarter 20 threaded screw out of the back of the hive put a exhalic acid vaporization unit in there on the one warm afternoon that we get and then we hit it with exhalic acid vaporization and get 96 percent efficacy roughly give or take but you will knock some mites down and then they're clean coming into spring that's what we want that's the goal so this ties in with uh betsy's question there so that was good the triggers are for the nurse bees not for the queen herself the queen packs down from in her response to nutrition just like in spring the queen ramps up her production when those tree pollen resources start coming in and as she responds then as your bees do to what's going on in the environment.

And to me, that's the perfect world. If you've got bees that are colonizing and brooding up and brooding down at the right time of year in sync with the seasons where you live, this is why dealing with regional bees, bees that generation after generation after generation are handling the climate where you keep bees. Instead of buying in bees from way off somewhere else, try to work with what's already there because every year, they are adapting, right?

So they are producing stock that clearly is capable of getting through winter where you live, and then when they mate in the springtime, we get those genetics too because we have drones flying around that have come from Queens that overwintered. You get the picture. So that's it.

Next question number eight comes from Ellen in southern Missouri. Termites in occupied Long Lange with wooden legs. They have moved up the legs to the top back edge of the hive. No sign of termites in the frames going to cut legs off the hive and place them on cement blocks. If I move bees and frames into new hive, will the termites go into the frames? Anything I can do to save the hive box. Okay. So for Ellen, if you look at my beehives, every single one of them out there, there's not one that has wooden beehive stands.

None of them do. They all have some kind of metal stand that they're on. So that's number one for those who are listening that haven't yet put their beehives on stands. Try to use metal. Because termites need wood with ground contact. They need access to moisture. And then that contact area is how they continually access the soil, get the moisture that they need to excavate the wood inside.

and of course continue their lives. And as far as going into your bee frames themselves, I've never seen a termite get into a beehive frame. So I think that's incredibly unlikely. I also think that once you eliminate the wood to ground contact, termites have a big problem because what you just did is you cut off their protected conduit. In other words, their ability to go straight from the wood into the soil

without being exposed because birds and every, will eat them. My chickens would stand around and eat termites. They stand around and eat ants. Ants can't even climb up my beehives. But anyway, just word to the wise for the rest of you out there. Wooden legs are not something I would personally prefer. I always like metal iron teapost, pipe, metal conduit, whatever it takes to set your hives up or plastic. Be smart designs. hive stands are plastic. The termites are not going to get into that and survive. So you have to eliminate wood to ground contact.

Some people use pressure-treated lumber, and that, of course, is designed to resist termites. So you have other options, but I don't think it's going to be a big problem. Once you cut off their resources into the ground, I think you've handled it. But I wanted to mention that because of wood contact. Be aware. question number nine comes from darrell from arcata or arcada california it says it seems everyone i've talked to has a different answer beekeepers

uh in my 32 frame long langstrot hive with four frames at the entrance with honey and pollen stores then eight or nine frames of brood then eight frames of honey this thing is huge by the way where do I place a single frame frame feeder for winter feeding my hive has a flat roof but a two inch bottom foam inside blue foam and next to three inner covers with the three inch slot-ed holes that have the B escapes in the slots no chance of feeding above inner covers okay so the frame feeders they're out there I use them as placeholders by the way so if you're pulling you might have to bring back later using frame feeders as placeholders they're kind of a universal tool and where would you put them so first of all it sounds like this hive has almost too many resources in it

but this is california so very different from my climate here i wouldn't have all that honey on but if you're going to put any kind of feeder on regardless of the configuration if it's horizontal right So we've got the entrance, we've got the brood, we've got a combination of brood and bee bread, and then we've got nothing but honey stores. I go to the far end of the honey stores, which would be right up against your follower board, or if you've maxed out your hive, it's at the end of the hive. I put it right there. The other thing is I insulate that feeder.

So if you're putting an in-hive frame-style feeder, and they make them for Langstroth, horizontal hives, the same one that fits, this is another reason by the way why if I had to make a choice between layans and langstroth just the availability of all the other gear the versatility that just all the options are there for you anyway you put your frame feeder in at that end and so entrance over here frames frame feeder follower board insulation because we want that frame feeder to have I'm guessing that you're going to put syrup in it you can also put fondant and things like that in it because it's a placeholder and it has a cut out just below the

cover boards so that your bees of course can get in and out of it so it's good for all of that but we want that to be as warm as the interior of your horizontal hive so that's what i would do if anybody else has ideas about that so yeah find it by the way we're in the fluff section already so that was the last question of the day we're probably moving right along i don't even know what time it is But, so I did put a thing on my posts on my YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn, that there are scientists doing research that need beekeepers to talk to to interview. So I was one of the interviewees. I got to talk to these people.

I was very interested in what they're doing. And they're funded by the National Science Foundation. The group is called OB1 Technologies. So if you are at all interested, I said, I'm going to put this link down in the video description. I have no connection with them other than I volunteered to also provide my beekeeping information, but I'm in the northeastern part of the United States. They specifically said that they want to talk to beekeepers who are in the southern and western United States. So what you do is you end up doing like a Zoom interview

with them. And they just ask basic things like, what do you wish you were doing different in beekeeping? What tools you wish you had that you don't? So these are a group of scientists that are onto a new innovation that I'm not going to talk to you about. They will explain it because I don't know what's in public domain. I don't know. I did not have to sign any kind of NDA or anything like that. So you get to help them form a consensus, which helps them maybe even redirect what they're working on, what they're hoping to develop that will benefit beekeepers.

So the bottom line, what I get out of it is that this new thing, thing that they're working on will save you a lot of time as a bee manager so for back-air beekeepers like myself i'm a patient beekeeper i end up spending a lot of time doing very routine things because it's a combination of fellowship with the bees i like to get out there and just be around them so i'm not necessarily trying to be expedient and get through all my hides really quick so i can get back inside or even when i'm collecting honey which is what we're doing right now i have I can waste a lot of time on just one hive and just looking at everything and thinking about how cool everything is.

And then, of course, figuring out new ways to get my bees out of the hive if it's a nuke and stuff like that. Because we've taken nucleus hives. I know I'm all over the chart here. Just bear with me. Nucleus hives have become regular hives. They're supposed to normally be just an install or an insurance policy or a resource hive or brood builders or comb builders.

or something like that, but my bees move into them on their own. I can't even just have one stored sitting on a rack somewhere. If it's exposed to the outside, bees find it and move into it. In fact, I went to pull a feeder shim. This is my life. I went to pull a feeder shim off. I just put it on another rack to get it out of the way, and I couldn't lift it.

So I thought it was really glued down with propolis. Must be something like that. No, bees got into the feeder shim, and they built the entire thing is full of natural comb. There are no frames in it. It's just a full deep that had a feeder, bottom board built onto it. So now I have all these bees in there with comb. And they did everything on their own.

It's wall-to-wall bees. So I'm leaving it there. If the inspector comes, I'll have to take it apart because we're required to have removable frames. But until that happens, I'm leaving them just to see what they do. But I highly recommend that you participate in an interview just so we can provide them with more information, more beekeeping practices, what you face, what your challenges are, what do you like the most, what kind of tools do you like to get, if any, are you have bare bones, top our hive beekeeper who uses no tools and won't even wear a B-suit, or do you like every gadget that comes along, things like that? So that's the link. Anyway, your instructions for the coming week, plan of the week,

I am packing down all my hives for winter, which is hard because we have an extended nectar flow all of a sudden. I don't know what's going on. They're not slowing down, but we have to be prepared. So I want to pack them down. Final mite treatments, if you're doing them, if you're a treatment-free beekeeper, then this is your last chance for integrated pest management.

they are backing off of course you're not going to get a lot of drones this time of year you can keep your screen bottom boards and collect those mites in the bottom and stuff like that robbing is about to intensify so robbing screens if you don't already have them or reduced entrances see I don't have to worry about it because my entrances are the same summer winter all year round three-eighths of an inch high three inches wide no mouse can get through that's the other thing mice are showing up everywhere right now the deer-meas mice are showing up on my cameras. I have a robbing station that I've built this year that I've not made a video about yet and it has probably 25 exposed frames that were pulled out of honey supers

after they were processed and just to see what comes to them and it's off the ground so the skunks and things like that. In fact, I'll add skunk videos under it at the end of today's video. So the skunks come and they just clean up the ground around it underneath. nothing can reach it raccoons have come and that's it I've got a whole bunch of cameras on it because I want to see how the different animals that otherwise you know you put out frames for robbing and the next thing you know you know it's raining or you didn't bring them in and they're sitting on a picnic table in your backyard somewhere and so the next thing you know the following morning raccoons got them

and messed up all the comb that's not what we want we want them to clean out the leftover pollen that stored in there if any we want them to to clean up all their residue from honey and we want them to even in some cases they groomed down the comb quite a bit so the bees and the wasps and the hornets even the european hornets are showing up so myself and the supervisor were out there yesterday you get to see every species that is around your area and they're all doing a great cleanup job just for you and if you're not allowed i get it i know someone's going to write and say hey open feeding is illegal I live okay then you can't do it but I can because I live in Pennsylvania so but that

robbing station is very interesting because we get to see what visits it day and night and it brings me to of course what I was already talking about the deer mice are showing up they're camping around everywhere and so be ready for those if you've got storage areas that mice like to move into you might be thinking about making sure all your entrances are closed up rodent proof mice if they can get on your stuff remember they eliminate as they walk so they're just little plato fun factories of waste material and it's not friendly stuff so uh free choice oh yeah some people like to give that last little kick of nutrition so for those you have dry pollen substitute and things like that we're coming up on the time of year where the bees will make use of that it's not going

to be a significant difference it's something that you can do here's what you're I like to do it. Put out dry pollen substitute only during the day. I don't leave it out at night. I don't use pollen feeders that sit out. They get full of pollen and then you leave it out there. I don't do that. I wait until I have a perfect temperature. You know, it's 60 degrees or better. It's after 10 in the morning and we take it away before, you know, the sun starts to set and dew starts getting all over everything. We put it in those cardboard egg cartons because no bees get stuck no bees die and then the bees can just come and go and get pollen substitute and it's the same old series of pollen sub that we've been using so apy 23 mega b or what's the stuff called for man lake

anyway ultra b pollen sub so ultra b mega b and then apd 23 those all are good choices all they're doing is we're occupying them so they're not robbing somebody. That's what we want to do. I want to keep these forages busy so they're not turning on each other and robbing each other silly. Oh yeah, when you clean up your honey supers and you put your frames out for cleanup, I notice it gets accelerated if you can take a bottle of fresh water, just a little spritz bottle. And if you lightly, when they start slowing down, if you start spritzing it with fresh water,

it helps them clean it up even better and they clean up all the water and everything. little spritses open face frames and stuff like that and don't forget to reduce your entrances mouse guards robbing screens that's about it so i want to thank you for joining me today if you like what we're doing here please i invite you also to subscribe to this channel so look for other things coming up this week and post your own questions down below or go to the way to be.org and click on the contact sheet thanks for watching and i wish you all the best and your bees this week Thank you.