The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 328 with Frederick Dunn

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/is2Q-wvAfn4

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, October the 17th of 2025. This is backyard beekeeping questions and answers episode number 328. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. Thank you for joining me. Hopefully I'm getting this out early this Friday because they have things to do. I have to go out in the bee yard. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please go down in the video description and look at all the topics listed in order. there you'll go. If you want to know how to submit your own topic for a future presentation, please go to the wayto-be.org and fill out the page. There's a form there on contact. And you can just submit a topic or something like that if you want to, and you'll find out if you go to that website now there's been a facelift. It used to be Fred's Fine Fowl and honeybees. Now the way to be has taken over. So oftentimes I should mention this also. If you

to that website, you might get a security alert, a warning that says the site is unsafe. The reason for that is the site actually has many domain names associated with it. So let me just run them down real quick. So you'll understand, because even though it's the way to be.org, it is also free range chickens.org. It is also fredsfinefowl.com. It is the way to be.com also. So what happens is your security system, notice.

This is what, the name that you typed in, even though it takes you to that website, the website has a different name. So you're not putting in your security information. You're not putting in, you know, shopping information there anyway. So there's no risk to you of being robbed. It is a secure site. So I just want to clear that up really quick. If you've got a question on your mind right now and you need to talk to somebody, one of your peers, not somebody to dictate everything to you. Go to the way to be fellowship.

It's on Facebook. So you can just Google the way to be fellowship and go there. And that's where you can share pictures, video sequences, things like that. What's going on with my bees? What's happening? And there are people there from all over the world. The moderators are also from all over the world. So 24-7 you can go there.

The other thing is, maybe you want to mow your yard. Maybe you want to drive down the highway while you listen, as many truckers do, because they tell me about it. This is also a podcast. So you can actually Google podcast, the way to be. And you might be surprised to find out it's already on your favorite podcast carrier. So let me see what else. That's pretty much it. Let's get right into what's going on outside because I know that's what you want to know.

Well, the weather's pretty decent. Although I'm going to make a comparison because I want you to understand what goes on this time of year. So at 7.56 this morning, do you know what the temperature was outside right here? and by right here I mean the northeastern part of the United States, the northwestern part, the state of Pennsylvania. So things will be different where you are. But it was 29.7 degrees Fahrenheit early this morning, which is one point minus 1.2 Celsius. And then by 1239 this afternoon, it was at 59.9 Fahrenheit, which is 155 Celsius. So that changed. This is why this is so important. well, one of many reasons, but that jump in temperature, if you've got feeders on your hive,

if you're still trying to get rid of sugar syrup, for example, and this is your opportunity to do it, because we're going to have a solid week of decent weather, even though at nighttime it can fall below freezing, but we have it warm enough during the day that you can actually start to unload any of that stored or leftover sugar syrup to feed those colonies that are run behind. If you have an inverted jar with the little holes in the lid, probably one of the oldest methods of feeding sugar syrup to a hive or feeding honeyback to a hive or you put a bucket on your hive that's upside down these temperature exchanges like that's a 30 degree rise in temperature in just a few hours what happens is overnight that air space inside those inverted containers contracts what's it do it pulls air in through those openings

and then when it warms up again what happens positive pressure, pushes the liquid out, and hopefully it's not directly over your brood. This is why I don't use inverted closed systems. There's only one that leaked out so slow that it almost didn't matter, but the jars, buckets, things like that were past that time. So you could actually be damaging your bees. Let me go a little farther on that. Because they're on top of your hive, and some people even have them exterior to the hive.

So they've got a special cover board and then a hole in it and the jar on it. So just imagine, and it won't freeze because of all the high sugar content. So even though it went down to 29.7, that sugar syrup would not freeze. However, then when it warms up and it goes down, the syrup has not caught up, so it's not very warm. So the syrup is under 50 degrees Fahrenheit likely, and when that drips down, that will stop your bees from being able to respond. It's too cold for them. If it's a heavy syrup, it can actually kill your bees.

It can actually drown your brood. And you wouldn't necessarily know it. So I'm just going to, I just wanted to mention that because it is something that I feel not enough people test out. They just see it being used that way and then they use it that way themselves. So reservoir style feeders are better in my opinion. That could be a rapid round like this right here. solid or liquid, that's what those are good for, and there's no enclosed systems, so there's no positive pressure that can push it out because it's a reservoir.

And so also, CRSL makes a high top feeder that, again, it's just a reservoir and not a closed system. So APMA, also, there are a lot of others. So that's the kind of feeder I highly recommend, not any of the closed jars or containers. So the wind outside. So we establish temperature, wind is 3.4 miles per hour. I don't think that's terrible, which is 5.4 kilometers per hour, 66% relative humidity, which guess what is the targeted humidity for your bees inside the hive. And hopefully they're not trying to dry out honey still.

If they are, they can still do it. But their target, if they're trying to add humidity to their hive would be right around 65, 66. we'll talk more about that later. Robbing potential is high. So if we had it like a traffic light, green, no problems, yellow, watch it, red, it's going to happen, red. We're in the red zone here. Where I am. And that's because we have this huge foraging force right now.

And what's going on outside, there are not enough resources for them. So they are attacking other colonies of bees. Far worse than the wasps, by the way. Sunday, October the 19th, that is going to be your warmest day here in this neck of the woods, 72 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 22 Celsius. That is your chance to get out there and pack things down. You have a 50% chance of rain during the day, 70% chance of rain at night. So if you've got a sunspot in there, time to go.

We're in crunch time right now, so just hopefully you're doing it. Incoming pollen right now is very low. So you could count the incoming pollen in my area. It should be the highest on Monday for some reason. I don't know why, but they forecast pollen, which is interesting. Air quality is good. The opening sequences that I showed today, I'm packing down hives. So I'm using escapeboards and things like that.

And what I do is I pull off the upper box, take a look at what's going underneath, and we're always pulling apart honeycomb between the boxes between the frames. And that results in a bunch of open honey, right? So that's what you're seeing in some of the opening sequences. The bees are on that honey while I'm doing that exchange. Then once I pull that off and put the escapeboard on and then put the box back on, the bees clean up all of that periphery. It's really interesting.

And I do have a video that I'll be showing later, not in this one, but later on this weekend. So robbing is high, and we want to keep that out of the bees. One of the things that this is not very practical. If you're a backyard beekeeper, you can do it. But it's a little bit to mess with. So this year, I bought a couple of those insect or mosquito net canopies. And they're for kids' beds and stuff like that. They're supposed to hang from the ceiling, from the ceiling light, something like that.

They're very lightweight, and they're very inexpensive. You could Google it and find out what I'm talking about. They're designed to go around a king-sized bed, for example. You can put up two ladders. run a rod between the ladders or two by four or something like that connect this thing to that and then because this is a colony let's say that you have to get into but they're in jeopardy of being robbed so we put that insect net around you and the hive and you can actually do an inspection then because what happens is on a nice warm day two o'clock in the afternoon perfect for getting into the hive the minute you open it up we have wasps zipping in and we have honey bees from adjacent colonies zipping right over to see what's going on. If they get into that honey and they get that home and while you're doing your inspection unless you're in and out really quick, if you're going to take a lot of time, do a lot of frame manipulation and stuff

like that, that's when these things get out of hand. Because by the time they get there and start robbing the colony, when you're done and you button it up, all those bees have received the information that there's an open resource and there's no better resource for them than finished honey. And they all converge on that hive. So, that I realize is not practical for a lot of people, but it works. It's easy to do. I had thought about this for years. I wanted to use a whole frame system, but then you move the frame over the hive as you go, but it was so easy just to put up two ladders, step ladders. You can put a broomstick handle or whatever you want over that. It connects to that and drapes the whole hive with you inside. Pretty

decent. Then you get your work done and it works on horizontal hives anything. Try it. You'll like it. So that's to deal with robbing. As far as forage goes, we still have Cosmos. That's fantastic. We've had some hard frosts here. So it got nice and cold. And the Cosmos is still doing well and I hate to keep harping on this. But the marigolds are impressive and they're still blooming and they're still doing well.

And those are annuals, by the way, but I understand that marigolds will seed themselves pretty decent. I don't know if that's going to work. I went ahead and bought a whole bunch of merry gold seeds ahead of time. I will put a link to the ones I'm using down in the video description. Otherwise, you can just Google it and get your own stuff. Squirrels are robin squirrels. I know that has nothing to do with beekeeping, but it is a sign of the times. What's the number one reason that squirrels lose their nuts?

Other squirrels are stealing them. So, yeah, they're after each other. No spotted lantern fly sightings here on my property. We just had a discussion on Wednesday about that. So the spotted lantern flies apparently in southern areas or warmer areas in my state, the state of Pennsylvania, there are abundant spotted lantern flies. And that's not good news. That's bad news for growers and others. But just since so many people have asked me, I'm just going to say it, I don't have any of those yet.

Loverroa numbers. So that's making me suspicious because I've seen this before. Although this time of year, the Verodistractor mites, if you don't know what I'm talking about, they are parasitic mites that feed on your bees. They're probably the greatest single detriment to be keeping today. So because I have so many trays and bottom boards that I can inspect, which I'm gradually shifting and hopefully almost all of my highs will have removable trays so that I can look at them, clean them up, clean them just before an exhalic acid vapor treatment,

for example and then inspect afterwards see what kind of varomites I have and so even a tray underneath an entire colony is only producing three or four mites that i don't want to get a false sense of confidence over that but i guess i have low mite counts this year so that's good news i'm still going to treat with exhalic acid vaporization and those who are doing treatments if you use formic pro things like that it's cold enough this is a great time of year to do that on your strongest colonies exhalic acid vaporization a lot of people are reporting low brood production which means what happens the varrodestructor mites are exposed that is when exhalic acid vapor is its most effective so don't play games save them last year we tried to plan it so that at the end

of november beginning of december which is normally my lowest brood cycle time frame here that's when I would do a treatment, but we were in three feet of snow. Hopefully we don't get a repeat of that this year, but all the weather people that know stuff are saying, we're in for it. I don't know what that means, but whatever it is, we're in for it. So, and I say that because do as much as you can while you can while the weather's decent. The observation hives, I was in checking those out. They're honeybound.

So wall to wall honey. all the face frames are capped honey it looks fantastic in there I was concerned about the colonies because I didn't see a lot of activity at the entrances but why were they not active at the entrance because they have everything they need they're all inside clustered and hanging out no work to be done no place to put anything so that should be interesting we're gonna see how that goes I upgraded their installation this year last winter I lost all of my observation highs because unlike most observation hives,

these are in a building that is not heated. Observation hives are supposed to be inside your living room, your bedroom, your attic, somewhere where you have control over the environment and out there we don't. But I was spoiled because year after year they did just fine. Now we're changing things. And there are so many colonies in there that they're actually raising the temperature inside the building,

which is really interesting day and night. So we get about a 5 to 6 degree temperature increase. So I'm planning to do more insulation of the building itself as well. Why not? Can't hurt. So anyway, the fact that they're honeybound just means that now that it's cold, now that they're not foraging for resources, eventually the cluster, which is over-capped honey, will uncap it, consume those resources, and those will become the cells that they get used for brood.

It's really easy. So this is your chance too. for those of you like to feed pollen substitute, I frequently get the question, can we put pollen substitute inside the hive of a few of my bees? Please don't. It's better if you put the pollen sub out wherever you're robbing or feeding station is

that is your ideal spot because the bees are already scouting there. And you can pull the old switcheroo on them, which is use ultra bee, which is from Man Lake, which seems to draw them in from a distance because of the ingredients that it has, put out a scent, the bees are interested in and they zip up to it.

But then we pull the switcher route. It's kind of like if we teased them in with pizza and then we switch to broccoli once they get there. So then you go to AP 23, which is the top performing one. Or you go to, and you know, it's not going to change everything, but it gives a forager something to do. And did you know that every one of your worker bees eventually is going to have pollen in their midgut

when we get to this time of year? So even your workers inside the hive are consuming pollen. So it's not just for nurse bees that are fortified to provide nutrition for developing larvae. So it does get around. So you might be boosting them a little bit. So why not get the best that you can? So there's AB23, MegaB, and then UltraB. So UltraB attracts them by far the fastest.

So it's time to put that out. And don't leave it overnight. Please put it away. And that's it. So I hope I didn't forget anything. And we're going to get right started here with David from Houston, Texas. Says my hive configuration is one deep, one medium. I normally remove the column they build between the deep and the medium frames.

Is it okay just to leave it on the bottom screenboard for the bees to repurpose? There's a lot of discussion about bees picking up bees wax. and reusing it, which they often do. But if you're asking me the scrapings, I always keep a bucket with me, and I clip the bucket to the side of the hive stand. And so when I'm doing inspections or pulling frames, I scrape propolis and beeswax,

surplus beeswax right into those buckets. I recommend not just leaving it on the bottom of your screen. So, I mean, you could try it, but there's some discussion about this. In other words, they can't handle big chunks of beeswax, by the way. And it has to be warm enough for them to work it now. In Houston, Texas, it might be warm enough for that to happen. But just in general, I don't recommend leaving detritus at the bottom. We've all done the little scrape off of the top and lost control of it. It fell between the frames

and went to the bottom, and it magically disappeared. So they did something with it. But as far as intentionally leaving it for the bees, I just personally don't recommend it. But I am interested if one of my listeners or viewers has done that and seen it. Because I was thinking maybe we could chop it up in a little manageable bits that individual take it along with you kind of size, that any worker could nab it with their mandibles and run up and stick it on to something. So if we chopped it up in a little bits and pieces, that's a lot of extra steps, which most people don't want to do.

But if we want to find out if bees will actually collect bees wax it was really good stuff then I think we should provide it in tiny chunks that they can pick up and move it around but they do repurpose and recycle and reuse bees wax all the time although sometimes I've seen them uncap stored honey for example and I've seen the almost translucent cappings fall on the bottom and then I've seen you know clean up bees flying them out and discarding them which to me huge waste because it's really good beeswax. In fact, that's like the purest, newest, most usable beeswax in the hive,

so I don't know why they discarded it. Question number two comes from Wendy from West Seattle. Tram out your winter configuration of a 10-frame deep brood box with a medium-full honey super above. 62 degrees and sunny today. I just did my last inspection as I was transferring the brood frames into an epa may ergo 10 frame deep. That's a big hive, by the way.

Those things are heavy. And I was alarmed to discover five frames of capped brood. Four frames, wall-to-wall, caped. One film of eggs, I think frame rather than film of eggs and larvae. The rest of the five frames and the deep, varying amounts of honey, pollen, nectar. Also returning home have huge yellow pollen pants, worried when all. all these will all these winter what's going on bees emerge they'll come out of room okay so um that's actually not a bad description of a box that's really headed for winter's survival

10 frame box five of the frames are brood still which is fine that sounds good to me and then the rest of the frames mix with resources including open nectar or ripening honey we might say and of course capped honey. So and then with a medium above that that's full of capped honey, that is it, especially in an apame hive. For those of you don't know what an apame is, it's an insulated hive that's encapsulated in plastic. It's very well appointed. And so because the sidewall installations, the hive top insulation, which by the way, I'll talk about the feeder a little later because they have a question about the apame feeders from a viewer. But it actually sounds like they're in good shape. Now, I don't know what the weather conditions are in West Seattle,

Washington, but if you have an opportunity to backfeed, being that you've got an Appamee feeder, an Appamee hive, they can feed solid and liquid at the same time if you wanted to. So if you've got the time when your daytime temps or flying temps for your bees and it's going to extend for like the next week, I would backfeed those. So just to make sure that they have what they need. I think everything is going to be fine. There was nothing alarming about that story to me. Question number three comes from NCTG popcorn and that's the YouTube channel name. Where and how do you store Apaisalas? For me if I store in my 24 by 24 workshop the scent is too strong I cannot remain in the room. So that's the thumbnail

for today. Those are my Apisalis eaters, not eaters, vape, not smokers. So on this, I already wrote this back because I didn't want this individual to wait, but these are one gallon Ziploc baggies, freezer bags. They fit right over them. And I know the smell you're talking about because these don't get left out in the shop in a place that gets heavy winter. So I have two of these now. The original one was given to me so I could review it from the Apisalas Company. And the second one, which has the new stronger formula, I bought this myself. which is the greatest vote you can give for a product is when you use your own money to get it. And so it has the new formula in it, but here's the thing. I keep them right in this room throughout the wintertime. And if you've been out doing inspections, and I have, yesterday I used them a lot, the room stinks. So, Ziploc baggie. It also seems kind of normal that there would be some kind of plug that goes in the end of it,

but I figured why not just in case the entire thing. but it is important for those you that have them and did not read the instructions, which a lot of people don't. They shouldn't be left out where it's going to freeze throughout winter. I don't know why. They don't explain it. They just say not to do it, so I'm not doing it. Brought it in.

And Ziplike baggies take care of it. No stink. The same is true of a conventional smoker, by the way. I think we all know. I leave the smoker outside until it's fully extinguished and cooled down completely before I bring it inside. and that's because everything's going to smell like smoke. You've ever been around a campfire and all your clothes and everything smells like campfire smoke? It's kind of like that and that will stink up your whole shop too.

The other thing is those, we have to wait until they're completely extinguished, but we put a cork in them. So I'm just going to refresh something about those who are using traditional smokers, switchgrass pellets, which are a fundraiser for the Northwesterned Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association in concert with Ernst Seeds. And so the switchgrass pellets are, that's all I put in my smokers anymore. So I'm either using the Episolis, as I did all day yesterday, and I'm using these more than ever now that they have the new formula, which gets a really good response.

But the switchgrass pellets, once you light them, they stay lit. You don't even use a whole can of them if you're a backyard beekeeper. And then we put a coric in it. They go out pretty quick. They cool down, and you can relight them and get a lot of use out of that. but if you go to the northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association website or if you Google NWPA beekeepers and then look for switchgrass pellets you'll find it this is a non-profit all of the proceeds get used to educate the public and membership about beekeeping

so there I wanted to throw that in there but yeah that stuff stinks and not everybody likes to smell some people do you'll see lots of YouTube videos where people puff that stuff right in their own face and sniff it. At the North American Honeybee Expo, the Apisalas people, were puffing them next to their booth. So there is a difference in smell between the early Nova mild formula. That was really nice.

And the next one is a little stronger, and the bees do react exponentially more to the new formula. And they get out of the way. I could almost clear a honey super with it. which doesn't work as well as to skateboards but it was impressive and I'm using it more and more but yeah Ziploc baggie closed it up seems obvious once we think of something and I hadn't given it a thought until I got that question I thought huh how can we isolate it oh zip like baggie because those things are good for a lot of stuff including feeding late season syrup to your bees

that won't leak into the hive so question number four it comes from Pt What is the best way to prevent my bees from swarming in spring? I only have two hives, so I'm at risk of losing my bees via swarming. From everything you have said about swarms, there are two good options. One, inspect regularly for queen cells and crush them. Two, use a two deep queen isolation cage from Better Bee. It's right over here on the side. And the isolation cage sounds like the best approach

because it doesn't require inspecting the brood area every week. Perhaps the best time to put the two brood frames in the isolation cage is an early spring when the numbers are small and the top part of the hive. So anyway, what are your thoughts about the best way to prevent swarms, one or two colony beekeeper? So the best way to prevent swarms,

no matter how many hives you have, but is to relieve congestion in that brood box. So this past spring I did something different that I've never done before and I just want to share that it worked really well. So in the spring, first of all, you have two boxes. So a brood box and a super that gets consumed through wintertime, then by springtime, where's the cluster? They're up at the top.

This is why some beekeepers practice box rotation. They take that top box, they put it on the bottom, bottom box, they put it on the top. I don't do that, never wanted to do that. And aside from the fact that if we're using a medium up above and a deep down below, we don't want to swap and have a medium on the bottom and then the deep up above. And although I do see people even do that, and then you'll see these funny configurations with a medium super at the bottom on the landing board

and on the bottom board, and then you see the deep super above that. But you don't have to do that. So I'm here to report that what I did works really well. So I bought a whole bunch of, and remember, when we're doing things differently, I highly recommend if you've got a bunch of different B colonies, at latest count, we have 43 colonies here. Don't do some kind of modification or some practice to all of them at once. That way you don't know for sure if what you did is just a lucky strike for that year, that time of year, or something else is going on. So we need to do just a few of them and leave the others. the way you've always managed. So when you've got just a couple of hives, I understand.

That's hard. I also understand the concern about losing one, but two is one, one is none. And this is why I get a little bit concerned when I have mentees that only have one beehive. But of course they know if they lose that colony, they can come and get another colony from me with a beehive and everything. And take it home because I get rid of a bunch of my beehives. I'm trying to reduce my numbers. It's a failure point. Now, with the queen excluders, and I like the ones right now, if I have a favorite, and I do, is from BetterB.

I have no affiliation with BetterB. They are not paying me. I just like what they're doing. Dr. Peck is a friend, and yes, he's from Better B. And so, anyway, they have the best Queen Excluter right now. In the past, I did not like Queen Excluders. and it's because early on, and I've been keeping bees since 2006, I did my own backyard testing of queen excluders to see how much of a struggle it was for bees to get through them, and they were not getting through them very well, if at all. And at a feeding station, they would just give up. Or squeeze through and then be stuck inside and can't get out.

So it was very telling. But these metal queen excluders, first of all, the wooden framed versions, I like those. hands down. My favorite queen excluders period. I also run that whole wooden edge through eco wood. So that's a treatment that will prevent rot. And so now I doubled the number of queen excluders because what I did in spring is I took the top box off because that's where the brood was up above the brood box. So there might be a little bit of brood down in that bottom box, but most of it was up right underneath your feeder shim or inner cover. So then I put in the queen excluder,

took the queen out of the top box, put her under the queen excluder into the bottom box, which is 60% wide open now with nothing but drawn comb, and then closed it back up. That made it so easy because what happened is, now they're migrating out. We have nurse bees that will join the queen and take care of her. She has her retinue.

If the queen is well fortified and cared for and protected, she will start laying eggs. Now we start to build a brood. Meanwhile, above the queen excluder, you've got the capped honey or the brood that was in process when I took the queen out and put her down below. And as they emerge in their cells, they'll start migrating down below. So this accelerates the movement down below and it makes the queen, and of course her retinue and the nurse bees sink, there's lots of extra space. In some cases, people like to vent the top of their beehive, particularly in spring or when there's a nectar flow on.

And if you don't have a queen excluder, then that upper venting incentivizes your bees to keep their cluster up high because they keep their cluster of brood near an entrance or a vent. So the way I've shifted to doing it, and I used to vent the top of my hives. I don't do it anymore. So now when I have the single entrance down below on the landing board, they're also gradually going to migrate down to that entrance. And then everything above the brood gets back filled with honey, right? So this actually worked out really well and does reduce swarming.

You still have to do your inspections and stuff. So the other thing that was mentioned, we might as well get to that, these cages. And the thing about the cages, yes, they work. But you know what, beekeepers, even those with just a couple hives, find this to be a very cumbersome move. So this particular queen, this is a queen isolation cage. They make another one that's called a queen introduction cage. And the difference is the spacing of these bars.

Queen isolation, workers can get through to attend to the queen. Queen introduction, they can't get through. at all, which means they also can't kill your queen. But we're not introducing a queen in this case. We're just isolating her. So when you put your queen inside, and this is, I hope people are paying attention when they get this, because so many people kill their queens with these cages,

and I want to explain something. See the sidewall of that? See the top of your frames? They're equal. And this is a very tough learning experience. They'll get their queen, put her on the frame, and she's scooting over the top, and they go like this. Got her! And then they go to put it back inside, and then they go to check the progress, and they pull this off, and there's a smashed queen right on top.

That's a sick feeling, because, yes, you killed your queen. You did it. Nobody else. It was on you. It's all you. So I make sure the queen goes down, and don't ever, don't do this. do this in fact get it three quarters of the way covered here's my queen put her right between the two frames and then when she scoots under finish sliding this over and then set this back in the hive right in the center

okay and once you've done that though this has two frames in her but it takes up the space of three frames so now you have to pull another frame to make room for it push all your bees together and Now we have two deep frames in here. So how many sides is that? Four sides? Three thousand bees per side roughly. So we actually have a lot of brood production going on here. So the queen is confined. Brood is confined. Now here's the thing where a backyard beekeeper, if you're a high production beekeeper, this isn't what you want to do. Because you don't want to reduce your queen's development, right, and your workforce development. So, but this is a great way to isolate, reduce brood.

You can then pull this out, treat the colony if you do something like that, but this works really well, but I will say the number one drawback is when people are just figuring it out, doing it for the first time. There's a lot of smash queens. And it's just because of the way they handle this lid. The other thing from the company, when they have the queen introduction cage, it's got a piece right here that folds over the end. So see that cover? It's wide open, which means, and I understand, when you put it in the hive, the rabbit joint is there the queen can't get out right but what I like to do is what if I want to do this in a queen muff by the way it's an enclosure that goes around the whole thing you put your hands in you're going to open up a queen especially if you're introducing a queen or something like that you don't want it to get away it gives you a lot more time to play around and if the queen flew off she's inside the muff and you can still control it and if they had these ends folded up

I'm going to make my own ends to this. This is just the way it comes. When you put the lid in on the queen introduction system, you can carry it around or set it on the bench just like that. The queen's not getting out, no one's getting out. And it's good to go, but this one has open ends. So until you put it in the hive, she's not trapped in there. But these work very well. So, and if you are going to the North American Honeby Expo and you're looking for something to put it in an order in on and pick it up in person those are the ones better bee does not give me any oh this is the queen excluder i prefer see the wooden frame around it the next thing that people are going to

say often is that hey you're giving them a hiding place for small high beetles around these edges no i'm not you are so here's the thing you can take this whole edge and you can drip bees wax into it the whole thing run the whole trim around inside if that's a concern because I don't have small high beetles. I'm spoiled. I realize, but it's very easy to fill it up and not have an open space for your bees. But that is it. And it comes from better be. You could probably get them other places. I don't know by now, but those are fantastic tools. Queen introduction cages, queen isolation cages, and yes, for those of you who are just, this sounds like an ad and I'm sorry that it does. I'm not advertising anything for them.

I'm sharing with you tools I use that work for me. So if you have all medium supers, they sell all of these cages for medium depth frames. See, there's two of them over there. They're just on exhibit here because I like tools. I like gadgets. So that's pretty much it. That's what I would do. I would also mention that another thing that involves Queen Excluders is the Demeray method.

So the Demeret method, and the whole thing is based on, because I did research on this guy, I wanted to find out more. Demery gets mentioned so many times. And the thing of it is, it was in the American Bee Journal that he published an article, and then made some corrections, and then published another article on how to reduce swarming and congestion. And again, it's by pulling brood, putting it up above, and then having drawn comb in the bottom with your queen, and just relieving congestion of the brood, which takes away some of their incentive to swarm.

And people can tell you all the tricks. Now, the other thing that was mentioned here that you told us to go through and smash all of the queen cells, and that's true while we still have the queen, because she's our insurance policy. And while she's in a cage, there's another advantage to the cage or having the queen sequestered in the bottom box

when we no longer see eggs up above. and we don't see them producing a queen cell. Because remember, they have to have young brood. So they have to have newly hatched eggs, so newly hatched larvae, to make queens that would then replace them, right? So we want to make sure that that area is clean. And once it is, we know that they've lost their ability

to produce a replacement queen and therefore lost their ability to swarm. So we've got the one and only queen down below. Now they can of course make another queen cell down there and it can go on and on. I would say that the most frequent feedback I get from people that are trying, the Demeray method, is that it's so involved. You have to continually manipulate, continually inspect. And so that's not me, even though my whole thing is spending time with my bees and finding out what's going on in the hives. Just moving the queen down was the easiest thing ever that I've done.

and look it took me all this time to figure out that that's a good practice and that keeps the bees out of the upper boxes because then what they'll do is they'll backfill that medium super that'll become the honey super once that's done they use that as a honey bridge and so it kind of confines your queen down below and then you might start thinking i'm just going to leave them in that bottom box and leave the queen excluder on and get nothing but honey up above because often people go to pull honey and they find out oh darn this one frame that's full of capped honey has a little band the tiniest band of brood in it and now i can't use that for honey extraction so if you keep the queen excluder on you can avoid that too but i've had very good luck with the honey bridge concept because those bottom two boxes are just for the

bees anyway i don't use them for anything else i will share since we're i realize we're talking about swarming but I will share something else that got more honey going this year than in the past and that's because the demands of my supervisor he's 10 now he's all over me he's trying to get over here today I dodged a bullet he's not coming so anyway um you get more honey when you do this so I start with that deep brood box the medium super medium super he gets full of capped honey take that box off put your flow super on if that's what you want to use or another honey super and then take the cap one and put it all the way on top because we've run this kind of race in the past where you know we want to keep them producing honey we want to keep them filling those cells keep them drawing

comb and doing all the things we need them to do and i've often said when it's 70% full 80% full you better get another box on there because if they fill it completely they'll think it's a cap and then they don't go further so then you have a box on top that just never gets touched and you're thinking something's wrong with my bees so then pull that fully loaded frame of honey off put it on top put the next box directly the empty box down on top of that bottom box so now they have another thing that worked so much better they fill it out so much faster It is a trick that in the past we've used sometimes to get them to use the flow super by putting a box of honey on top of the flow hive super and then that moves them through it

and they just start storing resources there. Yesterday I went to grab an empty flow super off of a hive and they had just not filled any of the face frame cells, which is when you pull the back off and look at it, it just looked empty. So I was going to grab an empty super that did not get used. and this thing is heavy. This thing is full. They filled it through the center

and just did not fill the end cells. It was a joke. It was a practical joke that is working on my benefit because now I have a full honey super that I have to go out and take care of right now because it has a skateboard underneath of it. So anyway, that's it.

I hope I cover the ground. Everybody has our own method. And I will also share something else about that you can do all those things you can do everything perfect heaven forbid your colony swarms without a replacement queen or the ability to replace their queen that's very rare but they can still swarm so I always recommend that you have an insurance policy

which would be a nucleus hive and I still like those stand with them five frame deep boxes and transfer a frame of brewers and your queen into that if you want to. This is if you're not using the cage method that has already been described. And then you just create an insurance policy. You've got a colony of bees that are there in the event that suddenly you end up queenless. So that'll do it.

Question number five comes from FLX, FLHX diver. How much clearance do you have between the bottom board? and the bottom of the frames. I was looking at your PDF plans, and it shows three and a half inches of clearance on this video. It looks like about a half inch. Wouldn't the three and a half inch be too much clearance? So I want to talk about this a little bit,

and first thing I want to do is tell you that there are plans available for both my Langstroth configurations and the long Langstroth Hive configurations. There are options. So this is a shimmy that's at the bottom so they're made out of two by 12 side walls and then that holds the langstroth deep frames and then if you wanted to you could add another two by four to the construction and give a bigger space underneath and so that's what this question is dealing with so you can go to the website

the way to be dot org click on the page marked plans and prints these are free pdf i sketch these out and then uh ross millard of the Suburban Hive Company, finalize those and made the PDFs for us. So there again, these are all free. You can't of course reprint and circulate them and things like that, but they are free for you to access and then you can use them as a starting point or build them exactly as is. But I will explain the space underneath. Like so many things we need to look at as I often do.

Like I was just doing family photography recently and they had a tree. All I cared about was a bee tree. I wanted to abandon these people and stop taking their pictures. I just wanted to mess with the bees in their tree. Because I also just happen to have an endoscope with me often, and that lets me look inside a hive. Well, I always look to see when bees are in spaces that are not managed by people. This is why Jeff Orchoff, Mr. Ed, Randy McCaffrey, which is Dirt Rooster, they get into these ripout situations, these cutout situations, and they get to observe cavities used by bees that are not under our control. And what's really interesting is how much space is often left underneath.

So they build from the top down, they build their comb up, and then they'll often be a big gap underneath the comb. And that's how detritus falls down there and stuff. It is also a very good defensive mechanism for the bees. And that's because critters that get into the hive that would be at the bottom that might be going up the side walls. stuff if the honeycomb connected to the bottom could you imagine how dirty it is plus accessible to other things that would then be attacking the resources and stealing

from your bees so they often have these big spaces underneath and this is the premise of why in this design we gave you the option to have a shim space that left a wide open gap the full length of the long Langstroth hive that then the bees have the option to build additional comb underneath those frames and if they want to and they mostly don't. But when they do, nine times out of 10, it's drone come, which gives us great opportunities. One is if you're one of these people

that likes to manage road destructor mites by removing drones in their capped cells. That's a very effective method, by the way, proven time and again, study after study. So you can pull those off, you can cut them right off of the bottom and harvest them and also collect the bees wax and use it for candles and things like that if you want to.

But often they don't use the space underneath of there and is not a detriment to your bees. I see it as a benefit and only because we see it so often in cavities that are not managed by people. And that's where they came from. So it's purely optional. And the ones that are in that video that's subscribed here is about a half an inch. So it is very close to the bottom. And it will share this when it comes to observation hives.

So if you're building an observation hive, the observation hives that I like, and of course I've designed my own, and of course made all the changes that I wanted. And one of the big changes for me is when it comes to the bottom tier, because what happens is they'll be made of triples or doubles of deep Langstroth frames, and they go up three or four levels high. Well, for me, the minimum has to be three per level and three levels. Then when we get to the bottom level, the bottom of the frames, I want a wide open space, and none of the commercially available observation hives have that. What they have is a very small space underneath the bottom frames, and then we have a screen bottom board or whatever, and then the entrance off to the side,

and that profoundly limits what you're able to see underneath your frames at the bottom of the hive. which is something I really want to see a lot of. I like to see all the activity down there because we get to see bees that are dead on the bottom, bees that are sick on the bottom, the activity of bees coming and going, and so I like that added space. And so observation hive-wise, same thing,

normal clearances from the top bar to the bottom bar as they go up, but on the bottom, I want a three-inch space underneath of it. And most of the time, they do not draw out comb and fill the space. it gives you a visual access. And it mimics what we find in trees and a lot of other things. Now, there are occasions where they do build their comb all the way down.

The colony continues to expand because what they've done is they've filled the space. They've run out of space for the colony. So now they run their beeswax all the way down within a half inch or three-eighths of an inch, even in some cases of the bottom. And that's just because they're trapped. they can't expand and they're just condensed in there and that's where that's kind of the beauty of the long langstroth or the langstroth hive in or any vertically stacked box hive as the colony gets full as they start to eliminate all available space you can then add another box and increase the space available to your bees

and so that's it that's why that's that way and if anyone else has feedback on those and i want to just just again thank Ross Miller because he's a very busy man he did that totally free for me and we just partnered up and he's done a fantastic job and that's why those exist and if you see him in the chat sometime or you see his name in the comment section please thank Ross because we do that free to you this YouTube channel is free to you there's no membership there's no fees ever the only way that people contribute to me is just your donation or Patreon And there is a link to that, but there's no mandate for you. We don't have any levels where you can only get to see this video right now.

If you join my club or my, you know, whatever membership there is, we don't charge for anything. So I want to make that clear and thanks to Ross. Question number six comes from Honey in the Coop, 803. That's a YouTube channel name. This is my eighth year of beekeeping and my first using Appamee Nukes. I was wondering about feeding this winter using hive alive fondant. With this style of feeder, it seems like a bad idea to use the feeder and have the bees breaking cluster and traveling up through the feeder. What are your thoughts?

Okay, so my thoughts are already pretty well established because it's exactly what I do. But this is also important this time of year to talk about because this is why we cautioned people not to put the fondant on too early. So kind of the kickoff for that is when we get below freezing pretty consistently at night. So that's a threshold that we're hitting right now this week. So now it's time to start putting fondant up. And remember, it's your emergency feed resource. So the concern is because these APMA feeders, the way they're configured on the top, the bees could end up inside that space, so the cluster would move up. But see, once they've been, establish their brood down below, they don't abandon that. So we'll talk a little bit about what goes

on inside the hive during the wintertime. And the way bees, because there are even water bees inside your hive. So when we have the cluster and we've got the core group, the nurse bees. In fact, the fat-bodied winter bees are not doing any jobs other than caring for brood and being part of that internal circle. And then we've got something called the mantle, the outside cover. And there's a lot of workers there. And then there are bees that will move out of the mantle, out of the cluster. And they'll gather, for example, water from the side walls of the hive. And they'll bring that in through the cluster and provision those bees that are in the center. We also, when we get these warm days, you'll get, and by that I mean mid-30s,

but your hive is in the sun. So the southern side of the hive gets exposed to sun, it warms up, and your bees get active. You'll get what I call internal foragers. So they're really food and resource bees. They don't have any part in feeding larvae in the middle of winter. And they're the ones that go up and get into your feeder shim. And they're the ones that get that resource, bring it back,

and then through trophlaxis. They'll start transferring those resources. to other bees whose jobs are so important that they don't move out of the mantle and they don't go up into other parts of the hive. So this is very valuable and I have that feeder here. The seven frame and I don't know that this is particularly the seven frame size because I think that one has two narrow feeders which is actually a pretty good configuration because that means one side could be liquid and the other side could be candy or some other solid material. So this is a nucleus hive version.

Like this one would sit right on a five frame standard wooden nuke or you find these impairs that sit on. Earlier on we talked about the ergo, the 10 frame, so this would be sitting on that. Appamate does not make an 8 frame. But I just want to show you quickly how this works. This is where the fondant goes. This is exactly how I put it in.

This fondant is sitting in a Ziploc baggie so it doesn't dry out. Big fan of Ziploc baggies. but this reservoir can be used with solid food and you have the settings it's marked candy on one side and it's marked liquid on the other so we switch it to the candy side for winter open gap right there open gap on the other end when i take the fondant pack from hive alive i cut it right down the middle so it's split in half this happens to be the two pound pack five pound packs also fit put that in there of course without the Ziploc baggie we just have the fondant in there with one side open i have never found a cluster of bees because another question earlier on on another Q&A was would the bees

move into this and live in the space they never have and so we found these little packets completely empty and so it works really well and it does not artificially accelerate the cluster up underneath So and what we see from underneath these are their access slots here. These are these holes that are vents that come that you can cover up and I recommend you do. I cover them with double bubble. So I create a cap over the whole thing with double bubble, which on my upcoming video that I hope you watch, which shows how to pack down your keeper's hive. I also show how I insulate this style of feeder. And so yeah, putting them up there, it's not a concern. Nothing else can get in here from the outside.

And if you put these feeders on early enough, and I hope that this configuration stays on year round, it's not just something you put on in the wintertime, because you'll also see there's little vents in the plastic covers here. They propylize those shut too. Your bees are telling you at every turn they want to seal the venting. And if they're in the candy setting, which means your bees can roam the whole thing,

in the liquid setting, they only access from here, access from here and they can't get into the space for obvious reasons they would drown and die but if you have it in the candy setting now they can go through on a warm day although we're past the propolizing phase I think in my neck of the woods but they would even fill all these tiny holes which here again capping the whole thing with double bubble reflect tax or some other insulation material prevents that so yes that works I've never had it fail or draw my bees I up ahead of time because remember they'll have their commitment is to the queen and to the brood so the

brood and the queen anchor them right where they are have you ever put a a bee escape on or a fume board on top of a hive and try to get bees out of a box and they just wouldn't budge they wouldn't leave it no matter what you did and you think the fume board doesn't work and the queen the queen escapeboard or the skateboard in general doesn't work but then you find brood up there that's why they stayed if they've got brood in the box they're not going anywhere they'd rather die then leave the brood and keep in mind these bees have never been outside anyway so there's a lot going on there question number seven comes from peter in morrisville vermont says how significant an issue is positive humidity within the hives. As an occasional expensive cigar aficionado, I keep them in a

humidifier or humidor at 65% relative humidity. If a hive were in dry states in the U.S. Southwest, would a easy-to-buy-buytinger work? Again, now this is really interesting, and I don't know if I did it, but I was going to title today's Q and A, treat your bees like cigars. Because what's really funny here is what Peter's doing with the cigars, that 65% relative humidity is targeted. That's right on. It's right on the money for brewed.

And so when you put temp and humidity sensors inside your hives, it tells us a lot about what's going on. And the most monitoring I've ever done is on my observation hives because in the dead of winter, I want to know what they're doing. And 65% relative humidity is the target. If you drop below 50% relative humidity inside the hive, that's a huge stressor, and you risk drying out your brood. So we're talking about the open brood that gets fed royal jelly and everything else that they need to develop, depending on what cast of bee it is. And so below 50, they're in jeopardy.

So bees are desperate for moisture to keep that humidity up. This is why often in the dead of winter, it's a puzzle to me, but it's a lot of fun. to watch. Go out there as soon as the sun hits your hives and it's warming up and it's melting the snow off of the top of your hive and it's dripping onto the landing board or whatever. You'll see bees out there desperate for that water right away. Because in the dead of winter you can get low humidity situations and where are the lowest humidity situations inside a hive putting your bees in jeopardy also those who vent their hives in winter. Those who are locked into drying out the inside of their hive in the cluster in the middle of winter venting it off. They need minimum humidity there,

or it's a huge challenge for them to humidify that. So the closer they are to 65% relative humidity, the better off they are. And one of the things that, I suppose I could talk about it now is for my, I'm trying to keep for road destructor mites alive for as long as possible. So I can see what they do, take their photos, make videos of them, see how they feed on. And I'm drone brood and things like that so pupating drones so then I kept them at 65% relative humidity and of course brood area temperatures so 95 degrees Fahrenheit roughly so of course there's a range for everything but the high humidity is a problem now they have to dry it out which if we have a high

humidity climate that's very challenging for your bees so the V is actually recovered and maintained better even small colonies can handle it if it drops a little below so in the space because we also monitor humidity in the space as well as in the enclosure and i have one of those jungle foggers it's called this is for reptile keepers and exotic plant keepers so instead of course bees bring it in because all i have are varroa mites and the larvae they're feeding on then you know i don't have bees running in and and bringing in moisture and controlling that climate so you have to do it yourself so these sensors cause it to puff a mist in there and so on but so the more your bees have to work to do that

is they're going to wear themselves out even in the wintertime so keeping them blessed healthy capable and not too dry drying things out is also hard on the road of distractor might so I'm sure you're concerned about that They can desiccate, desiccate, dry out. And so which pharaoh destructor mites are in jeopardy that, not the adults. They don't give a hoot. It's the developing baby pharoa destructor mites that I want you to care about. This is why some bees, when they detect, that a pupating bee worker or drone,

under a capping, has furrow destructor mites present, and they chew open the capping. That doesn't really damage because, that relative humidity is trying to be maintained by your bees because inside the capping the humidity is a little different too then those little offspring die isn't that sad so if they dry them out they die so humidity is critical both for the larvae themselves especially during the open phase and then when they're capped the higher humidity is critical for the varodistructur mites and they breathe through the cappings too so but that's why chewing it off kills a road destructor mite does not kill the actual pupating bee and then the bees

sometimes come back and reseal it which is another very interesting behavior but i can't tell if peter was trying to do this as a joke but it is right on the money so if you are actually let's say we were building a space that was going to be insulated and climate controlled to make sure that our honey bees this is hypothetical this has not been done but if you're trying to create a climate and treated your bees like, you know, orchids or something. So you wanted to control humidity and temperature so that your bees would put forth the least amount of effort to sustain themselves through winter and develop brood. It would be at 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit, and it would be at roughly 65% relative humidity, and then your bees would not have to work either to

humidify that or to dry them out. So dehumidification is really, hard on the bees if they're in a high humidity environment and it's way above that their only solution to that is to do a lot of fanning and fanning means moving their wings and the more they move their wings the less life they're going to have in them so that's hard on them so if we could keep it at 65% relative humidity you'd be right on the money and so there's a lot of discussion about especially these commercial beekeepers that pull truckloads pallet loads of bees put them into climate control building all through the winter, controlling the humidity in there, and the temperature is very, very important to keep them in a state of torpor, which is different from hibernation. So we want to

lower the metabolic rate and make the bees not work so hard to sustain themselves through winter. So that was an interesting question. Set me down a little bit of a rabbit hole there, which was really funny. So optimum relative humidity for bees, 65% relative humidity, 95 degrees. And by the way, the humedores for you people that collect cigars like Peter, the relative humidity is targeted, but you won't be keeping those at 95 because there's some kind of tobacco beetle or bug that if you're warmer than 70 or 71 degrees Fahrenheit

apparently gets into your cigars. I don't know how it gets in the humidore, but that's pretty much it. We're in the fluff section now, if you haven't figured that out. So question number seven from Peter was the last one. And this is the plan of the week. This is the final push for if you've got, now this is for the northeastern United States,

but you'll adapt to whatever the climate and forecast is where you live. This is a push. If you've got premixed sugar syrup and stuff, ready to go, this is your window of opportunity where I live to use it up because they only have until the end of the week to dry it out. I can't guarantee you what goes on beyond that, Since the weather people have told us what's going to happen this week, we are locked in and sure about exactly what's going to be happened.

Temperature-wise, humidity, rain, everything. So this is it. Get rid of your sugar syrup if you've got it. Final pack down, strapping your colonies and using bricks, leveling everything up, tilted towards landing boards. It doesn't have to be much of a tilt. But if you're perfectly level or tilted backwards a little bit, that means condensation inside that hive is going to stay in the hive.

If you've got solid bottom boards, you can tilt towards the entrance. any surplus condensation in there is going to drip out the front. Insulate your inner covers and outer covers. If you have the ability to do it, please do. Clear debris from around your hives. That means weed whacking and all that stuff because sometimes leaves and stuff pile up. Some people, because I get the question a lot, and I'm in horse country, cattle country. There's a lot of farmers around here.

People have access to hay bales and straw bales, and they want to pack those around. around their beehives as a windbreak, and I always recommend not to. You're going to have mice underneath those hay bales probably in 48 hours. They're going to be right there. And I've done enough testing and practical evaluations of my hives. I never face the entrance towards prevailing winds. All my entrances, for the most part, face south now. I still have the few that I'm sacrificing just to see the differences that still face north.

but they're in a minority. The bulk of all my hives have entrances facing south, southern sun, through winter. So clean the debris around your hives. It's weed whacking, getting everything out of the way because mice and rungs and stuff moving under there. The other thing is debris holds moisture. And we want things to dry out. There are people that, even in my neck of the woods that have small hide beetles. Like it's not geography, I don't think. It might have a lot to do with a microclimate. but there are people in my area that have small high beetles. So one of the things to look at is, are you in a high humidity area? We've got some low country, you've got some wetlands, and I'm very close to the French Creek watershed here.

So if you had hives on wet ground, that works against your bees. If your hives are setting on the ground, then the humidity levels are higher at ground level than they are just a couple feet above. So aside from getting out of skunk range, and the skunks are super active right now, skunks, raccoons, possons. They're all very active right now. So clear that debris away and also consider

if you've got ponding water ever, like after it rains a lot and you've got areas right next to your hives that are just ponding, saturated ground. For next year you might be considering a new location for your hives where it's higher ground, where it's drier. Higher dryer is better for your bees. So remove any Empty boxes that you have if you got boxes that you just can't get rid of you have to keep them there Because there are three or four out of eight frames are solid Consider the empty space that you have up there if you could put some kind of insulation material in there

That would probably be a very good idea We want to have insulation and jot not just open spaces So what else? Scrape down all your gear so remove your empty boxes clean them up and just get ready for spring because we think in the backs of our minds, at least I do, that I'm just going to get out there and do it during wintertime. No, I'm not. I don't want to be working in a shop that's at 29 degrees Fahrenheit. I just don't. So while things are warm and while you've got them out, go ahead, scrape everything down and get everything ready for spring setup, spring supering, everything else. 24 and 25 October, I'm at the Ohio State Beekeepers Conference. So if you're going to be there,

say hello. I'd be happy to see you. The other thing is when we put our equipment out for robbing and clean up, so we like the bees, woths, and all the other things to clean it up. I do. That's what I'm using them for. It's worth having a shade over that. We don't want to put our plastics out, including your frames, in exposed to the sun areas. And because a friend of mine put all of his flow frames out in direct sunlight

for an extended period of time, and it degraded really fast. Flow frames cannot handle exposure to strong ultraviolet light. So be careful about what you're putting out. Also, I was asking about the hive butler toads. How well are they set for being set out in the sun for extended periods of time? They're not. I've never had one show that it was getting brittle from sun exposure,

but I was told that they're not good for sun exposure. There's no UV protection materials built into those hive Butler to. coats. So keep those protected and shaded also. Your B escapes and your queen excluders. Don't forget them. It'd be terrible walk out there in the middle of a winter storm, and you see that the top box of honey is blocked with a queen excluter. That means the workers can get up there, but the queen can't. So ultimately you're forcing them to divide, and the cluster can't move.

A good place to just put your queen excluders right on top underneath your outer cover. and then it's there for spring when it comes time to use it. Big fan of keeping as many things on the hive and out of your storage shed as possible. And so Queen Excluders, B escapes are something you're going to take off and, of course, put in storage. The Keepers Hive packed down video, so I'm showing there is some interest in the two queen system, which did extremely well, and I'm going to show you the honey that they made, which is ridiculous, considering how late it was, but they were super splits, remember. So we started with pretty full brood boxes, but they performed extremely well.

And I'm going to show the packdown video. It went really well, surprisingly, better than I thought it would. I was putting it off a little bit because I thought it was going to be kind of tough, but it wasn't super easy. So that video is coming up. What else? Edinburgh University tomorrow. I will be there.

The Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association, Edinburgh University. See you there. So I hope that you enjoyed today's conversation, and I hope that you got some new information, or at least get the wheels going. And I just want to say thank you for being here with me. And if you like what you see, I also invite you to subscribe to this channel. That's free too. So thanks a lot.

I wish you all the best, you and your bees this weekend. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has been The Way to Be.