The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 329 with Frederick Dunn

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

This is the audio track from Episode 329 on YouTube  https://youtu.be/_P81pO5pFfQ

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, October the 24th of 2025. This is back here to be keeping questions and answers episode number 329. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is The Way to Be. So I'm really glad that you're here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down to the video description and you'll see all the topics listed in order and maybe some additional information and links that might be updated and so forth and so on. and if you want to know how to submit a question or a topic of your own please go to the way to be dot org click on the page mark to contact fill out the form and there you go i read everything

they don't all make it to a friday q and a but i will look at it so also if you've got something on your mind right now you need to talk to somebody often i get people that want to post a picture they have a question or they want to put up a little video link go to do the way to be fellowship on Facebook. If you just Google it, the way to be fellowship, you'll find it. And then if you're not a member already asked to join. If you are a member, then you already know what's going on and you can just post your stuff, ask your questions. Who responds to those? Your peers all over the world. Hopefully somebody that's right in your region that can give you some helpful information. So this is it. I'm not going to lie. This is a bad week.

and by that I mean weather-wise, lots of wind, lots of rain. The rain just keeps coming and coming and coming. It's falling right now. So outside, right here, the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania, the northeastern part of the United States, we're soggy and cold, and the bees aren't foraging at all, and they're getting water, all they need right from their landing boards. So outside, what's going on?

First of all, sun rises at 7.43 in the morning. Can you believe that? So some people, this is, we're already getting to the time of year where people are driving to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. That is depressing. Thank goodness for those of us who never leave their yard. I don't leave my yard, there's people out there. So anyway, 47 degrees Fahrenheit right now, that's 8 Celsius, so it's damp, it's cold, and it's not any fun. Good news is it's not freezing, though.

What about the winds? 15 miles an hour. That's 24 kilometers per hour. And being that it's raining, what's the humidity level? 99% relative humidity. So they're not drying anything out inside their hives. I can tell you that because bees would prefer 65% relative humidity inside the hives. So this is a tough time for them.

They're trying to keep from getting too damp. The low did not hit freezing. Thank goodness. Also, we don't have any plans where I live for it to freeze, and that's good news because that means that we can still do things and that your bees are not being challenged, but the low is 38 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 3 Celsius. Pollin count. You can guess this already on your own. Point three. So no significant pollen. Your bees aren't getting any pollen anywhere. In fact, all of our flowers have taken a hit.

The only thing that even looks decent right now are the cosmos. And but the bees can't fly to them, so that's wasted. Best beekeeping day ahead in my neck of the woods. Where you live, it's going to be different, I'm sure. But Monday, October the 27th, we're going to get ready for this. 55 degrees Fahrenheit. It's going to be right up there. It's going to be awesome.

And from the air.gov website, the air quality is outstanding. That goes to reason because all the particulates are knocked out. So if we look outside at what the bees are for, foraging on, I don't have any foraging video because they're all, they do go out on the landing board though. They're like people, you know, they go out on their porch, stick their hand out and feel the rain and then go back in. So they're there, but the good news is there's no robbing between colonies right now because they're not flying. That's great. And so if you've got a robbing station or something set up, it's time to clean that up. Also, this is an example of the kind of

weather that you do not want to have your dry pollen substitute out for your bees. keep that stuff inside, safe and dry, and then when the conditions are optimum and you see bees flying, that's when you put out your dry pollen substitute if you need it. One of my viewers wrote to me, and I think their bees took like 16 pounds of dry pollen substitute over the past week. That is a lot. So if you've got it, put it out there, good time to get rid of it. It doesn't have a huge impact on your bees, according to the scientific studies, and those who really get into the nitty-gritty of whether or not it helps your bees,

at least in this neck of the woods. Other parts of the country may be better. Places that have absolutely no nutrition, no forage in the environment, tri-polline-suff will help them out. Other places like down in Florida in the vicinity of the University of Florida, so I'm told has little to no benefit at all. Also, at the end of the week, you can be putting on your, for those who have been frequently asking,

you can put your hive live fondant on, We're at that time just ahead of the freeze. And if you've got dry sugar, sugar breaks, things like that, those can go on at any time. Remember, these are emergency resources for your bees. We just don't want our bees to die. So I think that's just about it. We'll get right into the very first question, which comes from Scott, from Omro, O-M-R-O-Wisconsin. I use sticky boards, Crisco to count mites weekly.

I have seen treatment thresholds of single number or two numbers. That's pretty darn good, by the way. April, July, August, October. So that's a threshold. I've not seen how to adjust for single versus double brood box. I would like to think that the number of brood boxes might affect the treatment threshold. I'm a single box guy. So here's the thing.

And this actually comes up a lot. Even in a discussion with my wife, by the way. She was talking about the varro destructor mite, which you know, you should get a few as pets. I highly recommend it. Anyway, when you're doing mite washes, you're mite washing a set number of bees. That is supposed to represent a percentage of the population of bees in your hive, specifically the brood area right now. And so when you're getting ones and twos, that's not throughout the entire hive. So the size of the hive doesn't really matter.

It's a percentage of the sampling. So of 300 bees, which is the normal one cup of bee scoop that people do, that's the same, whether it's a nucleus hive, whether it's, you know, if you've got two deeps and they've got huge numbers of brood in them. So long as you're sampling the right area, the brood area, where the nurse bees are, nurse bees are prime targets for varodisturitur mites because they're soft, they're well-nourished, they're super tasty, apparently. And remember, even though the varodistrictor mites,

are eating some of the hemolymph, they are mostly consuming their fat bodies. Which is really rough because these nurse bees, by the way, are those that are nourishing your developing broods. So the impact is profound. And some people have reported in my neck of the woods that the brood is small right now. So what could you do? You could do exhalic acid vaporization because that means when there's small capped brood areas in your hives, you can put the smack down on some varodistructer mites. and that's pretty much so the single brood double brood management it doesn't matter it's sampling size so that's it question number two comes from patty could be pat p a t-te-e anyway from coopville wisconsin so here's the dilemma

i'm going on my ninth year of beekeeping so congratulations because you beat that through your threshold did you know 80% of backyard beekeepers quit after their third year because that's when the honeymoon's over. Sometimes they start to lose a lot of bees. Okay, so I have six hides. Three hives have excess moisture on the mite check board. All have screened bottom boards with might check boards. So I'm guessing those are under the screens. Eight frame double deep, ten frame double deep, ten frame deep,

and a medium. All my hives have medium feeder shims, double bubble on top of the inner cover, rapid round feeder, surrounded by two inch insulation, another sheet of double bubble, another layer of two inch insulation, the three hives that have moisture, I added another layer of two inch insulation. I hope this is clear. Do you have any suggestions? Okay, so this is interesting. It's very common to have moisture because now we're talking about the bottom of the hive. That's actually where we want the moisture to be. Sounds counterintuitive. But for those who have trays or removable boards, like in this case, the sticky boards,

you'll get moisture on those because the condensation, when does condensation develop and where does it develop? It develops wherever the temperature hits the dew point, and the dew point shifts, depending on what the environmental temperatures are. So inside your hive, where the dew point is, achieved so where the cool down zone is usually it's at the lower third of the cluster of bees inside the hive and there is some condensation that happens in there not in a really hot dry of course but when we have these really cold nights and warm mornings in particular and then the water drips down the side walls of your hive on the inside and goes down into your either solid bottom board so it goes on to that which is why your bottom boards if you're solid should be tipped towards the entrance so that water can run downhill

And then it can go into your trays through your screens. So it can go on to those core flute inserts, by the way, which I personally no longer use. The bottom boards that I have that have screens in them are completely enclosed, and they have trays rather than inserts like that. The only thing that I have that has the core flute inserts are my observation hives inside the observation hive building, and they have removable core flute inserts, which, by the way, I recently increased the space above. them so that when I open them and pull them out I'm not scraping the debris off of my inserts because I want to see them. I want to see them with magnifying glasses and under the microscope if necessary. It is a lot of fun to examine those. But water on the bottom of that

is not a problem at all. None, zero, not at all. And so if you have a tray, it is helpful to go ahead and remove your trays and empty them out and put them back in, especially if there's condensation or water in there that builds up but these traumatic and it's still coming for us here in the state of pennsylvania um when you get the freezing cold nights and then those temperatures go up 30 degrees and you have a nice warm day uh you get a lot more condensation on the inside of your side walls and the addition of insulation talk to the people that have lice and hives b max hives hives that are heavily insulated that are polycyron hives that are completely enclosed including the bottoms the bottom of a lice in hive is big

thick you know polycyrene they have lots of condensation in them so it's not a matter of insulation it's air flow it's the dynamic inside the hive thermal dynamics and moisture is going to happen so i don't see that as a problem at all and with those sheets the core flute sheets the water eventually just drips out the back or the front or wherever it's going anyway underneath your hive. So as long as it's down out and away from your bees, the reason we have to pull it if it's a tray is because the water could pond in there and then it just becomes a humidity issue that your bees cannot control because remember below the screen, bees can't get to it, they can't deal with it. Can't control it, so we have to do that. Also, while we're on the topic,

buy extra insert trays. And the metal, the screen bottom boards that I put in this year, that I don't have down here right now because I just took it out and added it to another hive. They have metal enclosures with wood trim holding all that together. So when you pull the tray out, it's a galvanized metal tray. So I put lunchroom trays inside that so that the detritus and everything that falls through, including moisture, it collects in that tray. And then I go out there with a stack of clean trays, and I pull the trays out of each hive and replace the tray,

one felled swoop, opening clothes, and you're done. Plus, it's really cool because you can bring those trays inside, put them at your kitchen table, get your magnifying glass out, invite the grandkids over, give them all LED magnifying glasses, and you can speculate on what you're looking at in there. What is that tiny white thing that's crawling around? What is that tiny worm? What is this? Is this probis? Is that beeswax? Is that pollen? Why would pollen be on the bottom? It's great. So that's it. That is not a problem at all. Next is number three from Wendy, Seattle, Washington. I know you have a seven-frame appameehive.

Several of them, by the way. And my question is, I have the same with seven over seven configuration. And the last inspection, October the 8th, they were doing great with three full frames of brood and 12 frames of honey and pollen. The bees currently super active bringing in loads of ivy pollen. And is this configuration big enough for winter? How do you plan on cleaning the dead bees from those entrance holes

and how will drones get out? I currently have only one side of the slider open, none of the air circulation discs, and so on. Okay, so here's the thing. with his Appamahe hives. This is something I'm guilty of too because I forget. Those entrances, by the way, and I talked to the guy that represents the company, Corrin. He is at almost every. In fact, I'm going to see him this weekend, so we're going to talk to talk. So anyway, the Appamate Company, I ask him that, you know, what's up with these mouse guards,

the little arches in the front? Because, and I can answer the question, first of all, drones can get out. There's a drone escape hole. It's a little larger hole, even just for the drones to get out. so it's already there. But what about the clean out? You know, we have these, yeah, these B-smart designs, blue plastic scrapers, these things right here that I like to use to clean out bees in the middle of winter. I get yelled at for this, by the way, especially English people. I think it's funny that the comment is that's rubbish, that activity. So I think they just mean it's not that great we should dispense with it. So my point is cleaning out the end. entrances and cleaning out dead bees is a very good practice in the dead of winter.

And guess what? For nine out of ten hives, it won't even matter, right? So I scrape out, I go out there in the freezing cold, and the wind is blowing, the snow is falling, and you're fogging up your, you know, your ski mask and everything else, just so you can go outside and clean out entrances. Now, for the nine out of ten that you clean them out, and it doesn't make a difference, but the one that you clean out and a bunch of bees fly out instantly into the snow, They've been trying to do cleansing flights, but they're blocked up with dead bees.

That's the one I'm doing the cleanup for. It's not wasted time. And it works really well. Now, with that entrance design the way it is, we have two options. So I'm going to get back to what I forgot about all Appamate Hives. We can just take the screws off on the ends and leave those screws off for wintertime. Because apparently, and I didn't test it, but it makes sense. when you lift those inserts out because they're fully adjustable.

I tried to bring one in, but they're all on heights right now. You can just lift them out and clean it out and then just slide them right back in because there's little grooves that it snaps into. So even without the screws, they hold their own really well and hold their position really well. Highly unlikely that a mouse is going to get out there and Mighty Mouse hit up and get in there. They're just not.

I'm going to pay attention to that. So now I have some without screws and some with and we're going to see what's going on. And in keeping with the tradition of years past, I have cameras out everywhere, ready to go to monitor all activity in the deer mice. They're zipping around all over the place. There's one in this building right now that's messing with me, but I'm on top of it. That's a video that's yet to come, man versus mouse. So anyway, the other part of this is, what if we left the screws on? remember what I just talked about removable bottom boards guess what they have there they have removable bottom boards so we can keep the appamate bottom boards clean too I just forget to pull them out now there is a screen above that so if there's dead bees up there they're going to be on the screen but you can see them and so keep that clean and the entrance take the screws off and you'll be

good to go so sounds like a good configuration I think Wendy's going to do just fine and the APA, by the way, that seven frame? Is that enough? More than enough. These narrow columns that are high, so that's 14 deep laying stroth frames in there. We might as well hit on that. With a feeder shim on top, built in, ready to go,

solid or liquid. Of course, we're transitioning to just solids. Now we don't want to be putting liquids, at least in my neck of the woods. And they winter really well, because these are well-insulated hives. They have no air gaps. By the way, the way they sit, one hive on top of the other, here's the outside edge.

They overlap each other, just like that. Very solid. We just had 45-mile-an-hour winds, heavy rains, stuff like that. We're more concerned about trees blowing over than anything else. But none of the hives budge, but Appamehives, winter-wise, winter storms, bulletproof. I'll go ahead and say it. There are tough hives, and they have special clamps on them. And that's about it.

they're good to go insulated cover now just word to the wise on those inserts the feeders that they have I put a single layer of double bubble over the top of the feeder and then I put their insulated outer cover on it just as

an extra step it fits really well it conforms to the cover and the feeder inside and it works perfect they're fantastic for heavy weather of all kinds it's never going to wear out they do kind of look you know like play school you've seen the play school

playgrounds that people have in their yards and how they kind of bleach out through the years and the colors get kind of pale and everything that's kind of what happens to the Alpamai knives I wish they would do tests like Consumer Reports does where they artificially accelerate weather exposure

and then they speculate based on you know the intense heat intense UV rays and intense rain and all this other stuff and then they just calculate based on the rate of degradation that this would be good for 20 years or something. I don't know how long an Appamee hive is going to be good for. It's going to get ugly, a lot quicker, long before it wears out, because they get moldy, mossy on the north side, of course.

And so I don't know what we can use to clean that up. So that might be something coming up. Anyway, question number four comes from Beemazing Hives, B-E-E-E-A. M-A-Z-Z-Z-I-N-G-H-I-V-E-S. That's the YouTube channel name. So I have read I understand in the two-Queen Hive that the Queen Excluder keeps the Queen separate and the bees combine in the Supers.

I see that you have a divider board in the upper box. My question is, I know how the Apamee feeder is designed. Two separate sides, but the center feeder is over both sides of the upper box. Are the holes in the center feeder small enough to keep queens separate or do you block off that section? Okay, and this is cool too because

George and the whole gang I'm going to run into them pretty soon. And I'm going to take your questions to George, the man that designed it, that implemented it in his team. We're going to see what's going on. Because I've asked that question before, so for those who don't know what we're talking about,

We have a two queen Keepers Hive system. If you don't know what a Keepers Hive is, go to YouTube and just do a search, Keepers Hive. They have a Keepers Hive website. There's a Keepers Hive channel. And so it's two standard Langstroth brood boxes. And they're offset. So then there's a center riser.

And the first box has the divider as described here. And that divider, by the way, that box comes that way from them. So I invested my hard-earned greenbacks on their fundraising campaign. So it was like Indiegogo. I forget what it's called. So I bought it. And it arrived here halfway through the year, whatever.

Put it together. I painted it, put it together, followed all the instructions. And now we're at the time of year where we had to remove the queen excluder. So it's the two brood boxes. There's a dividing box in the middle, which serves as a pedestal to support the, boxes that rise up from that. There's a queen excluder that overlaps a portion of both of the bottom boxes.

So the queens can't get up in there, but the workers can. And in that first box above the brood box is divided. So we have five frames on one side, five frames on the other, and a quarter inch plywood section that divides the center. And that keeps them apart. But then on top of that, we had a regular super. So, and my question to George was, what happens when they get up there so they're all inside the hive but they're storing a community

honey reserve between two colonies they said they all just get along so i mean i don't know what kind of an explanation that is other than all i can tell you is they all seem to just get along now so the next question is so i went up so there's that first box with the divider in it that becomes winter storage and by the way that was wall to wall honey and what else could it be because there was a queen exclusion underneath of it so they have five deep frames of honey below that we have the brood honey and of course the pollen stores bee bread and everything else combined in those two boxes so one per colony surplus of five frames each and so

i packed it down and i did a pack down video showing how to do that now what be amazing hives is referencing here is for my top box i put on the Appame 10 frame feeder. And I like that feeder a lot. They did a fantastic job designing it. Early on, it used to be two feeders, which would have solved this problem, because if they had the two feeders,

and those are still available. So if you went to Amazon, for example, and bought the Appame 10 frame feeder with the lid, it has two separate feeders. So then that's not a problem. They can't cross over while they're up in the feeders, one side or the other. but with this feeder the single piece 10 frame appamate feeder it's got a central area

that's for fondant sugar breaks anything that you want to put up there those B bites these are B bites by strong microbials I hope I got that right but anyway it's microbiologist master BK bears bacillus count all that good stuff anyway you can put that up there any fondant or semi-solid goes in the center. So of course that divider allows access on both sides. The question is can the queens get up in there? They could if they wanted to. But I think, I'm speculating, because this is my first winter with the two queen, two colony, Cupers Hive system. I have a high confidence level, though. Because the workers are going to go up in there, they're going to get those

resources, they're going to go back down. What incentive would there be for one queen to cross over into the other side. I think they're just going to respect each other. Yeah, I think they will. So we're going to talk about it. And if I run into people like Dr. David Peck, he's going to be, I might see him this weekend, depending on who's representing Better Bee at the Ohio State Beekeepers Conference.

And I'll talk to him just about the biology of bees. What happens when colonies can mix it up and have access to each other and things like that? Because this is my first year with the two queen system. But I think they're going to be okay. And so there's another thing that I could do, but it's kind of complicated. I'm just going to put a fondant pack in there. I'm going to cut open the center just the way I do for any other hive and let the bees have at it.

See what happens. So it's a good observation, by the way, and I like questions like that. And I've heard and received that question enough that I'm going to take it to the people. The designers. What else am I for? If I can't bridge the people asking the questions with the people that designed, innovated, or those entomologists who have a deeper understanding of bee biology and why they put up with each other.

Question number five comes from Linda. Falston, Maryland. It says, I see you plan to leave your robbing screen on all winter. Do you use a wooden entrance reducer also? Let's talk about the robbing screen. This is the old one by B Smart Designs, but this is a relevant. This is a robbing screen also by Cirrus. What's the purpose of that to prevent robbing?

So the new one, see I wouldn't leave it on all year round. The old one is designed and you can boost it up and they move under it. But the new one is here, has a center opening. If you didn't see that already. And it's kind of channeled through here. So this could actually be left on all winter long. And so behind it, is there an end? it is there an entrance reducer or is it wide open on the ones i'm going to leave this on all year long

well the ones that i'm leaving it on all year long are um they do not have entrance reducers behind them so once we get out of the risk of robbing which is coming to an end really quick because the wass are dying right and left the queens are getting fat and they're going off to hide on their own and detritus in the woods and humus piles and under old logs and piles of leaves and things like that and they won't be pinging on your bee colonies anymore because when freezing temps hit they settle right in for winter so you could pull these off the ones that have entrance reducers on the hive i'm going to take these off those that do not have entrance reducers so this takes the place of an entrance reducer it's going to stay on because part of my reviewing process is to see how these things handle winter conditions uh all the seasons, sun, everything else. This is UV-resistant stuff. And we're going to see how that works out. And a pile of people got these from Betterby. You can probably get them from a lot of other places by now.

And they are reporting very good stuff. Now they come with their own pushpins on the top. I might as well mention this while I'm here. I rather put screws in to the front. These push pins, I don't know, that doesn't It doesn't hold as strong as I think I want it to. So it adds an extra step. I have to carry a battery-powered screwdriver with me to take this off. But if I'm leaving it on for the winter, it won't matter. The thing of it is, I am, I will confess, I'm going to clip these little arches off. So that I can get my...

It's funny, too, that this is made by B-Smart design. This is made by B-Smart designs. This will not go through this. Not good. Not good, be smart designs. We want that to work. And I know what the answer is going to be, but there's tabs on the sides that flip it down like this.

And then you just raise it up. And then so there's this gap. Does that gap match? Okay, you could get a pass if that would pass underneath of that. Just barely. Okay, so if you lose those legs, which raise it up 3 eighths of an inch, mice can't get in it but it's now open across the whole width for wintertime if

you want that this would fit what do you thoughts what do you work arounds anybody have that if you have it tell me how it worked to stop robbing and things like that next question number six Kimberly 45 45 could you possibly show or explain in a video more detail on the B escape process I can't picture the process of it in use. I realize it's simple to you but to bees for non-experts here a flow chart is kind of needed. Well instead of a flow chart I'm just going to explain some things. What is the purpose of a bee escape? And I'm going to start with probably the oldest design. This style be escape has been around for a very long time.

And the reason it's been around is because if you want to harvest honey from a hive, you've got to get the bees out of the honey super leaf blowers and banging things around and all that stuff Hard no. So what happens is if you notice see these corners here This is the bottom side and there's all this bees wax on it So this part faces down The bees that we want to get out of a box are up above it. There's a central hole right there now when we put a hive box on top of this a honey super and we have no vents and no entrances up above that's very important the bees have one way out that's through here

and when the bees go out through here they go out these corners and then when they decide oh i made a mistake i want to go back up in the honey super they come over here and they cross this because they can smell it through the screen and they want to get back up in there and they want to get back up in there and they can't so they end up clustering all in this area and they don't seem to figure out very quickly that they could go around to these corners find their way back in so the bee escape is just that and it's also important that you don't leave this on for more than 24 hours because bees are smart figure things out bees can figure out a labyrinth so we have to be careful so once they're out you need to take off your top box top super and then you'll

of course remove this. Now this has other uses by the way you can use it when you're trying to get bees into a hive from up above or you're combining colonies for example. Here's another version of a bee escape. Serosl better features. Now here's why if you look at the underside so this side always faces down these are the escape cones by the way you can build your own versions of these You can buy bags of escape cones on Amazon or anywhere else. They're usually red. But what happens here? Then again, see from the top.

The bees that are in the super, the honey super up above or anything else that you're trying to get bees out of. They go down through and look, they have a lot more options here. And then it's the same principle. Once they're down underneath, if they decide to go back up, they follow the scent of the honey stores up above. So they go to these grids and they collect. all in here and they collect all in here and they can't get back up so before they get wise and start walking through these cones backwards that's when you pull off your honey

supers you only have like one or two bees up there maybe if at all my honey supers were empty these are my favorite bee escapes I don't know why this one works better than the other one and there are some other be escapes out there and of course as I mentioned before if If you're handy with woodwork, you can build your own. Figure in the time it's going to take you, the skills that you have, the cones that you have to buy, and whether or not it's going to be really good. I use these also when I'm installing swarms and things like that. I'm giving a lecture, a presentation this weekend about how I use them too.

Now the other thing is there's these little spikes that stick up, and that's to align it with the box. If you have any problems with alignment, they have them underneath. too sometimes you can end up with a configuration that they don't fit they make these for eight or ten frame i clip off these alignment tabs if there's any problem with that at all because all i wanted to do is set flush we don't want big gaps around these edges so if it's out on this you got an error gap and that the bees go to the error gap and don't evacuate the way we want them to that's about it the bee escape just moves them out now

Last week someone asked about horizontal hives, long Langstroth hives. So the same thing, we have these which are new to me, but apparently a bunch of people are like, yeah, we have that, we know all about it, I've had those for years kind of thing. But these were new to me, and these are bee escapes. And you might look at this and think, what? Anyway, if you have a follower board, this faces the side you want the bees going into. So same thing. There's a hole in the middle of your follower board. This goes over the top of it. Bs go through. They follow these channels out and see even if they start to figure out and go back in The configuration of this frustrates the B and the kind of get stuck here and they end up going back out

It would be fun to do this. See I just thought of this while I'm doing this today Wouldn't it be great if we made a Follower board out of Plexiglass and then we could see them actually go out that would be a lot of fun there are inner covers that are made with plexiglass instead of the standard thin luon if you took that plexiglass with the plexi inner cover drill the hole through the center of it and then glued this to the plexiglass now we have a view from up above of the bees going down and coming out that would be pure fun so i hope that has

I realize it's not as cool as a schematic. I probably should have drawn one. But I did my best for Kimberly on that. Bee escapes. Try them. You'll like them. Question number seven comes from Hillary, Brunswick, Ohio. Do bees bury their dead? That's a great Halloween question. I have found some bees in the mulch and they seem like they've been covered. I look at a video of an Undertaker bee and it looked like she was

trying to get the dead bee deeper into the grass rather than just leave her on the top. I'm sure I'll have more opportunities to watch them as it is the fall and more summer bees are dying. So it's a lot of fun to watch bees, but this is interesting to me because I watch the undertaker bees a lot. I spent considerable amounts of time staring at landing boards and watching them leave with the things they're carrying away. The worst things they have to lug away are dead drones, of course. But here's what happens. Okay, so they don't just, you or I, you know, we take them to the landing board, we probably just push them off and let the bees, dead bees, and sometimes they're dying. They're not actually dead. They're still like their little feet

are barely moving and stuff. It's like they don't want to go, and then the Undertaker Bee decides, yes, you're going anyway, and kind of life of Brian, not dead yet, you know, just kidding, whatever. Anyway, moving on. They grab them and they fly away with them and it takes a huge amount of energy for them to do it. And you would also think the second part of that, so if they're not kicking them off a cliff, the landing board of your beehive, if they're flying them away, then wouldn't they just bombardere them? In other words, they fly over an area and just let it go. Okay, they can't. They physically can't. This is interesting. Interesting to me. Look at a bee's feet. So if you look at their feet, they're like little spot. They have claws on their feet. Your wrist, you've got forearm muscles that pull your wrist backwards and pull your wrist forward.

All muscles pull. So we can do that. We could release something. We could go like this. But they don't have a lot of strength in their feet. So when these hooks hook onto something, it's hooked and gravity is holding it, which is also why, I don't know if you've noticed when the bees are collected on a tree in a bivouac.

There'll be a bunch of bees clinging to the bark. All the other bees cling to them. It's not muscle it holds them there. It's the mechanism of the way their hooks are in there. The only way to get their hook off is to push it back and release it. So the load of bees has to leave the bee that's bearing the weight before they can release themselves. So when they're flying away with something that's dead,

they have to land and release their feet and then fly off. So this is why when we see the bees and they're down in the grass and stuff, it looks like they're still kind of tussling around. But if you look really close or if you have the opportunity to shoot it with really slow motion video, which I wish I could share one with you right now, you'll see that the bee ultimately has to release the bee that they're holding on to. Now, if they're holding on or biting something with their mandibles, which sometimes they also use to assist in how they carry something, they can release her mandibles at any time, but it's their feet that just won't let go. They have to push them off and then release. And that's why we see them on the ground.

So the question of whether do they bury their dead? They don't. And this kind of reminded me of there was a viral video and social media. And they were showing that bees were burying their dead. And like it was to show how they care about the bees that are dying and passing away. But the bees that they were showing were actually just collecting a whole bunch of detritus and piling it up because that's what they do. It had nothing to do with a bee that dies.

But, you know, often people use the illusion or the suggestion that they might actually be lamenting the passing of a bee and piling little flower petals and things like that together to show the world that bees suffer loss when they lose a fellow bee. Which you and I know as beekeepers, not true. because a bee will go up to another bee that's drowning and they'll get a hold of it with their feet and you think, oh, they're going to help the bee that's drowning. And then they lick a bunch of water off of it. They get their drink and then they push that bee back out in the water and then they fly away.

So we know that kind of empathy doesn't exist for honeybees anyway. But yeah, they're not trying to bury anything. That's just it's the appearance. When we look at the mechanism of how they're functioning, they just can't let go. They wish they could just drop them and be done with it. So that's pretty much it. Now we're on to the fluff already.

That's right. And by the way, Hillary from Brunswick, Ohio, if you're going to be at the Ohio State Beekeepers Conference this weekend, I'm there too. Say hello. So anybody else that's at the conference and you happen to watch this, why you would watch this when you're at a B conference?

I don't know. But I'm also there. Just say hello. be great and whatever free that they're giving out there free coffee or free water something like that i will buy you one of those free things just to show you that i appreciate you so in the fluff section cold getting colder we have it's just miserable here i don't know what's going on where you are but no more liquid feeds so even the two to one it's time to back off on that if you're going to feed anything back to them if it has to be in liquid state

it would be honey that you're cycling back that you just don't like some people don't like astor honey for example i heard someone complain extensively about the smell and the taste of astor honey well you could put that in a ziplock baggie freezer bags recommended get the gallon size freezer bag fill it with no more than a half gallon of honey poke little holes in it put that in the top of your hive and let your bees reclaim it let them have it I think that's good be great so as far as liquids go because remember honey is finished it doesn't have to be dried out anymore remember what I said about the percent of humidity right now it's really high it's ridiculous so bees can't dry out nectar anymore time for fondant end of next week so by

next Friday the next time you I hope you come back and listen to me next Friday it's time for fondant because things are going to get cold stay cold and you might forget also keep a log please keep a log document every colony what their condition is right now which ones are light which ones are heavy which ones you have questions about you know maybe they're not bringing in any more pollen maybe there's not any landing board activity whatever document when you put fondant on and what size you put on unless you're making your own of course then you know sugar or sugar bricks they can be on any time so those you're doing that you put that on right now because we don't have the same problem where the bees migrate up into the sugar bricks or

sugar dried sugar in rapid rounds or any way mountain camp method if you don't know what that is people put a sheet of newsprint on top of the frames and you just pour dry sugar on there and then it just gets damp from again condensation that forms inside the hive uh do to do extra bottom board trays as i mentioned if you've got trays and bottom boards that are removable, get extra so that when you go out there, you don't have spent any time because what are the options? If it has a tray that you have to pull and clean and then bring back the entire time that you're gone cleaning your tray, that's exposed through to the screen.

I don't have any open screen bottom boards on any hives. So when I say that I have a screen bottom board, it's always enclosed and it always has some kind of tray underneath. celebrate i'm going to tell you this ahead of time because the holidays are coming if you belong to a beekeeping association or a bee club um celebrate the leadership these people are putting in a lot of hours they're doing a lot of work it's all volunteer they're not paid and a little bit of recognition would go a very long way now i'm not a leader in a bee association so i'm not trying to get a bunch of people to get me a gift or something like that. But I'm just saying it's coming up.

A lot of people have end of year conferences and things like that, gatherings, you know, dinners, I don't know what you do. But it would be great to recognize your leadership, your president, your VP, your secretaries, your treasurers, the people that put in all these long hours, web people, website maintenance people. So think about getting them a gift.

Anyway, and also please write down in the video description, not in the video description, but in the comments section. Right down there what you think would be a really good gift for the president of a club or the VP or something like that. Damprid buckets. Okay, these things are sold at Lowe's Home Depot, Menards, all that stuff. They're buckets of desiccant. You can put these because I moved a bunch of beehives and frames and everything into a storage shed. And I was thinking I could just also, you know, There are a lot of ways to store them. We don't want small hive beetles in there. We don't want larder beetles. If you've never heard of that, look those things up. And we definitely don't want wax worms in there. So if you can put, because I was thinking, what's cheap? Let's be tightwads. You could actually put a drop cloth like painters use. A drop cloth over the top of all your stored boxes. Still have them, you know, 90 degrees to one another. So they're exposed and open. And these drop claws are. are clear so light gets in there so that's a deterrent but if you put these damp red buckets in there

with them and because it's under the drop cloth as well you're not trying to dehydrate the whole space you're just dehydrating and making it unsuitable for reproduction because it would desiccate even these little worms and stuff that are trying to grow so i think it's another layer of protection i think that would work great damp rid buckets works great submit your questions and topics don't forget you can go to the way to be.org click on the page marked contact and do that also i want to give a shout out today if i didn't do it already i think i forgot to do my shout out the cover picture which is the hive gate for those of you don't know what this is this is a type of entrance that benefits your bees in a lot of different ways and more ways than i've been able to test or prove so

we have a Hivegate page on my website, and it used to be called Hifegate, H-Y-F-E, but now it's H-I-V-E-G-A-T-E. My shout-out today is to ask you to please go to the YouTube channel, inside the Hive TV, and see Dr. Ombarto, von Christiani, with Kyle, the developer and inventor of the HiveGate, and he's got a lot to say. you go there check it out revisit reconsider and rethink the potential applications of that entrance the I've gate entrance is something that's been used by a lot of my viewers through the years this is it it seems like a very simple thing with very sophisticated benefits so dr. von Christiani I'm really glad he's taking this on and they run into each other and he interviews

with Kyle so check that out rethink it see if the hive gate is something you might want to try out I want to thank you for watching me and I hope that you have a fantastic weekend ahead you and your bees I'm Frederick Dunn this has been the way to be thanks for watching