The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 330 Halloween Edition, what are you feeding and how?

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/5tGFTD7g_vk

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, October the 31st, and this is back-haired beekeeping questions and answers episode number 330. I'm Frederick Dunn. So I'm really glad that you're here today on Halloween here in the United States. And all the kids, including the supervisor, are out there trick-or-treating, and he got in trouble. He's not allowed to be a beekeeper again. He's been a beekeeper for three years in a row, but his mother said, that today is something else I don't even know what it is okay so if you want to

know what we're gonna talk about please look down to the video description and all the topics will be listed in order and below those will be links to some of the things that we're not going about today if you want to know how to submit your own topic for future consideration please go to the way to be.org and click on the page marked contact there's a form you can fill out there submit your topic or your question and off you go the The other thing is, if you want to talk about something right now, show a video, show a picture. You've got a question about something going on with your bees.

Please join the Fellowship, the Way to Be Fellowship, on Facebook. And so all the topics we're talking about today were submitted during the past week, some as recent as today. So, and I know what you want to know. You want to know what's going on outside. What are the trick-or-treaters dealing with right now? Are they going to get blown off the sidewalk? Well, there's a good chance of it because it's 46-degree. Fahrenheit out there that's 8 degrees Celsius 10.3 mile per hour winds which is 17

kilometers per hour but 26.6 mile per hour gusts which is 43 kilometers per hour and this is right here in the northeastern part of the United States the northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania 84% relative humidity no great surprise because it's kind of drizzly wet and damp out there the best day ahead for the back backyard beekeeper here in my neck of the woods is going to be Sunday. It's going to skyrocket to 57 degrees Fahrenheit which is 14 degrees Celsius and that means if the sun shines your bees are going to be flying and very low pollen no great surprise there I think ragweed is the very last holdout for the pollen and if you're putting out pollen substitute here in my neck of the woods

the bees are interested in it right now what's the top pollen substitute? based on scientific review, it would be AP 23, which comes from Dayton. What's number two if you couldn't get that one? How about Megaby from BetterB? What's number three if you couldn't get one of those two? How about UltraB from Man Lake? So there you go. Ultra B dry pollen sub.

So what else is going on? Nothing blooming, pollen sub in demand, pollen patties. If you're, I'm getting this question a lot right now. people want to know because you know what you want to take care of your bees so they're trying to think of all the things you can do with them and it's much simpler than you're thinking but if you have purchased pollen patties like the hive alive pollen patties they're expensive they have a short shelf life so if they're going to expire between now and spring you can still put them on and i don't think they're going to do a lot for your beats this time of year but they don't hurt them so better now you're not going to put them on midwinter i highly advise you do not do that and if they expire in June or something like that you're good to go because you can put them on new colonies or splits and things like that in spring so if they're expiring

i recommend using them up no more seraps it's time no more syrup on your hives because it's freezing at night and fondant that's what should be on fondant or sugar or something dry or semi-solid that's where we're at right now so if you're late if you're behind the eight ball It's time to get rolling. And because it's Halloween, I have to answer one question, which is, what's the scariest movie that people report across the United States ever made? Scariest movie ever made. I'll pause while you say what it is.

It's The Exorcist, by the way. And that came out in 1973. I wasn't old enough to watch it, so I didn't get to see it until 1978. But yeah, it's pretty scary. And then guess what they did? They applied science to it. In other words, what scary movie caused the highest height rate? Heart rate.

Well, people were watching it. What caused their hearts to get pounding? Well, there were other movies that caused that, and it was not The Exorcist. So, I could turn this into a competition. But it's not fair to those who wouldn't watch this until much later, because that's why we're not live today. By the way, I did a survey.

I wanted to find out from the viewers, just like you, should we do a live today or should we do it pre-recorded? And more than 67% said, let's do the pre-recorded and let's let's let everybody just go trick-or-treating. So that's what we're doing. That's why we're not live right now. And I do want to give a shout-out. I want to thank the Ohio State Beekeepers Association for hosting me

and letting me come and talk to their people and also for the people that actually came in knowing that when they got in the room, I might be there. And then after that, there was the York County Tri-County Beekeepers Association. I was just there. And those people also came knowing that I was going to be there and talk about bees. So I want to thank them, York County, Pennsylvania. Thank them for having me.

And there's another talk coming up in New York State, which I'll talk about at the very end of today's presentation. So thanks again for being here. Let's get right into it with the question number one from Julie from Nacomis, Florida. Dear Fred, could you please ask your contacts at Hive Butler to consider making a five-frame tote? I think you would agree that there are many, many times when we just need the totes to hold a few frames for various purposes. And on the few occasions, I need to contain ten frames. can barely lift the tote. Also, a five-frame tote would be so much more portable

in average vehicles. I can't find an email address on their site. So I will try to find the email contact information for Hive Butler. There should be a contact form right on their site. And for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, Hive Butler makes totes 10 frame capacity toats. They handle deep frames.

they have space even below the deep frame so that if you, for example, pulled a frame of brood and there were queen cells hanging down, there's additional space to accommodate that without smashing the valuable queen cells. And of course, the initial thought is, well, just fill it halfway or put two or three in it. I use those totes a lot for a lot of different things, including I collected water snakes with them this year. I know you wanted to know that because it's super interesting. And so, yeah, the space thing, they take up a lot of space. And I use, and I use, them for winter frame storage as well and they also now make my favorite uncapping tank and i've tested uncapping tanks from a lot of different companies super versatile um just what i want people to know

is because i do talk to a lot of people that are in plastics manufacturing and another one is be smart designs for example app am a all these companies that make these products in some cases very large products so think about the size of a hive butler tote and then the mold that's necessary for them to manufacture that so it's not easy to suddenly come out with a shift or a change be smart designs for example went through a few different iterations of their drinker their feeder their one gallon feeder and every time you make a change it's a huge expense for the mold and then you have to justify it by how many people would actually buy that excuse me so um

I will share that with them and I'm sure they pay attention. They're very responsive and I did just see them at the Ohio State Conference. And so they did make some improvements to their high Butler toat, but I saw no plan in the works for making a smaller version of the tote because I think just the overall thinking is we'll just use half of it or a third of it. You know, if you have more space but don't use it. Plus it's my, I like the size of it right now because it's also my, go kit so in other words spring comes along and you want to be set up for

swarms I put a B-suit jacket gloves tools everything all in one high Butler tone it's ready to go so I go collect swarms so we can suggest it but I think it's highly unlikely just knowing what I know after talking with so many people in the industry about what it takes to make a change in a mold so it's a big deal question number two this comes from the hive and the honeybee long-term frequent commenter uncle fred if I put sugar bricks on hides in winter do I need essential oils and can I put a pollen or mix in pollen patties with the sugar? What about apple cider vinegar?

Okay, so I wasn't going to respond to this one but I decided it comes up enough that I should talk a little bit about it and we're going to do a shout-out today also by the way because in the past if you've been watching my channel for any amount of time I started off with rapid rounds on top of my hives and I still have that capability on a couple of hives. This is what a rapid round looks like sits right on the top. There's a hole in the middle so it works with a B-smart insulated intercover for example liquid or solid so liquids go in. This center cap stays in so that your bees don't swim out into the liquid and drowned and we pull that now we're capable of dry feed so I used to take a full four pound bag of sugar and some people buy the 10 pound bag so that would be five or whatever to fill it up I put a sock

on this one so the bees don't drown the bees come up through the center they go to the top here and they go all the way out into the dry sugar area in wintertime and that's why this cap stays on and I really like it because it's clear on top so we can see how much sugar is left without the bees flying out and trust me if you're a new beekeeper You are about to learn quickly that opening a hive in the wintertime just because it's cold doesn't mean they won't fly out and let you have it. They will. Because inside, they're probably warm enough to fly. And when they're mad, they buzz a little bit and you hear them high frequency vibrating going on in there.

They're warming up their flight muscles to come after you. So dry sugar, you can put in those. And so the other thing is because hive life hadn't come out with their fondant yet, I was not putting fondant on my hives. and then when they did, that shifted the way I fed my bees because they incrementally shifted from dry sugar as an emergency winter feed to the fondant packs and then that kind of took over. But now we're back in this discussion

and I'm getting this question so often I want you to do a test with me because also a couple months back somebody wrote and said, hey Fred, why don't you include us in some of your backyard testing? How about you outline a test and then we'll do it and give you feedback. And you know what?

That is the ultimate in community science, right? So let's do some backyard science. If you're interested, I would like you to participate in this. I was looking at things. I've never made a sugar brick before. The dry sugar sits inside the hive and then condensation forms. And then some people will say it works as a fantastic desiccant and it's going to suck all the moisture out of the air.

It's not a very good desiccant. but moisture does condense on it. It is amazing how little water it takes to create a sugar brick. And just for those who are dying to know right off the bat, with one cup of hot water and 14 cups of dry granulated sugar, you can make a sugar brick. And think of how little amount of water that is to make a sugar brick. So it kind of lends itself to letting us know it doesn't actually hold a lot of water.

And then that feels like beach sand. That's what the people say. They do it all the time. So here's the experiment. Let's outline it. At today's thumbnail, you probably looked at this and thought, what is he doing and what is that? Okay, it's not as fancy as it looks.

This is a clear inner cover. This was like a big deal. It was supposed to be a big deal because when you put this inner cover on, you can see where your bees are in wintertime or in the rain or anything else. And guess what? They can't fly up and let you have. but you can see exactly how many bees there are and if they're already in the top and things like that this is fantastic for just as is by the way because it's got some thickness to it on the wooden frame

where if you put patties like winter patties on and then just put this down it acts as a spacer and then you can see how well they're consuming the winter pattern the winter patty but here's the exciting part this is a slatted rack I don't know some people don't like xylated racks. They don't even want to use them. What's it for anyway? It's two inches thick. It's a spacer that we used to put on the bottom board. I still have them out on a few of my highs. And when I was doing exhalic acid vaporization, they provided a standoff so that when I went to feed oxalic acid, the bees would not come down, get on the pan, and die, which they most often did. The other part of it was because, and I'm just explaining this because there might be

somebody new that doesn't know, and I want you to have the answers. So this is the way it goes right side up. See narrow space up here, big space underneath. This part faces the entrance so that winter winds come in, they don't blast right up into the hive. Also, when yellow jackets and things like that are getting in your hive and they're thinking about robbing your bees, they come in and they like to go up the front of the hive right away so they avoid getting jumped by those bees that are mad inside because they're defending the colony and they can't go through this so they have to move in, come out under the cluster, and then get mopped by angry bees. So, but if you're not using it, let's say you have some of these laying around,

flip it over, leave it in the same configuration, so this still faces the front. But guess what we have now, a place to put candy on. So you can make your sugar candy bricks, and I recommend that you do if you want to participate in this study. This is super easy. Backyard Sciences will not hurt your brain. So what I want you to do, and I'm going to document the parameters of this test, right? So we're going to look up recipes for what people say is the best for feeding your bees in winter in an emergency sugar brick. So we're turning this into a feeder sham. And then this becomes a space because we can set the sugar bricks on here and they don't break apart and fall down in between the frames. If you bring this to your bee club and show them this as your feeder for wintertime,

they're going to think you're very sophisticated because this is a very sophisticated setup. You don't have to make one like this. This is just a way to repurpose them if you have them sitting around. So, number one, well made, we'll follow this recipe, which I got from Better Bee.

How do we know how to mix it up? Good question. Go to the Better Bee YouTube channel. Here's the title of the YouTube. This will shock you. It's called Making Sugar Bricks for Feeding Bees. That's the title of it. And so go watch that because all they're doing is putting water and sugar together and they're making sugar bricks.

That is our control if we're doing scientific experiment because that is nothing with sugar and water, nothing added. Okay, put that in here, one third of the space. The next one over. We're going to find the next best recipe. And this one we're going to do something like, I don't know, mix it with apple cider vinegar because that keeps coming up. And excuse my tone. but I think that is unnecessary. But we're going to do it because guess what?

We're going to let the bees show us because what's the purpose? The purpose of putting that stuff in here, this feeder sham, is to keep your bees fed with carbohydrates and resources that they need to continue inside the hive. What's very important about that is that they consume it. If they don't consume it, it's no good. And then the third block over will include some kind of protein additive. because even places like Better Bee and others have included recipes that include

Mega Bee dry pollen sub and things like that. So for those that think that you need a protein supplement as well as some kind of essential oil, we'll have that as number three. Okay. So number three with protein. Number two with the apple cider vinegar. Number one, water and sugar. This is the easiest way to set.

a dispute in your B club because once they do it and don't do this on just one hive do two or three your back air beekeeper I don't know what your resources are this is a perfect time of year to be putting this on and then you'll notice that with this clear panel there's a air gap like a little breather an upper entrance flip it so that that's close I don't want there to be any entrance so this will be it and you'll be able to look inside and if there's any condensation up in here usually it'll happen around the corners dead center over the cluster it won't and guess what goes on top of this insulation what kind of insulation double bubble or rigid phone

board insulation with double bubble as a gasket you always have to get double bubble in there and then over top of that your hive cover okay and also um i don't have this because this is just a display model that it keep for training but i take uh woodstock and i go glue it in here and then I cut it off flush because I just block these entrances because I know I will never use them and then it won't matter which side I flip it to. So this is very basic. Now you don't have a slatted rag. How do you participate? You just make a two inch shim. Oh, you probably wonder what that looks like. Some people need to see things. Oh look, here's another flexly glass with the blocks on the end. And look at this.

This is just a regular feeder shim. Now the casual observer might notice that that doesn't look like two inches. I don't think it is. I think it's an inch and a half. You know why I think it's an inch and a half? Because that's three quarters and that's three quarters right there, inch and a half. So we put this together. Now where do the sugar bricks go? If you do this, they sit right on top of your top frames. So in other words, your high top box right here,

you're looking at the backs of the frames. And even there's burr comb and stuff like that, up there so you're thinking do I have to scrape all that off no you don't because look you have a space maker right there and then you set your little bricks of sugar on there now you might forget I mean I'm not forgettable but you might be so then what you'll do is you'll mark this off in thirds and you'll say sugar sugar apple cider vinegar sugar apple cider vinegar and proteins whatever the formula use and make sure and document where you got your recipe that's

very important. And I'm just going to speculate ahead of time. They're going to go after the sugar and water. Watch. And so that's the experiment. There's going to be a page. It's going to be called winter feeding experiment on my website. What website? Thewayto-be.org. And we're going to get right down to this citizen science project. If you have homeschool kids, this is fantastic. Let's do it. Okay, so see which the bees take first. The monkey wrench. You can also, if you want to try this out,

toss hive-alive fondant in there. I recommend you don't do that. It is totally different because we've completely changed all the composition, right? But I will say ahead of time, hive-alive fondant will be consumed first. If you put a sugar brick of any kind, you split it, do another experiment. experiment split half sugar break fondant hive alive fondant on the other side they go to the

hive alive fondant and they use it much more efficiently than the sugar break so that's another that'll be a separate that's a different one and it doesn't even need to be an experiment because I've done done enough video and direct observation of that that I know that the fondant gets taken first and the bees access it easily keep in mind with a sugar break they have to have water just to process it a lot more water than they have to have if they're going to process fond it. So, what do you think? A lot of holes in that experiment. What should we be doing?

Insulation is still critical in wintertime. Insulate your inner cover over the feeder ship. Question number three comes from Linda. A Soyuz, British Columbia, Canada. This is a loaded question. What is your question about, or what is your opinion about varoxan. Okay. And you might be sitting there going, what's ferroxan? It is an extended release exhalic acid method. It's like a really dense cardboard saturated with glycerin and exhalic acid and who knows

whatever else is in it. And then you might be wondering, well, what's oxalic acid for? Well, that's for the treatment of the varroa destructor might. The varroa destructor might attach your bees, feeds on your bees, feeds on bees in the cradle, if you will. They're developed. larvae in the cell as soon as that cell is about to be capped the Veroa instructor foundress mite the female zips right in there and then after about 72 hours she starts laying eggs once she's safe under the capping so we want to kill them right so one of the organic methods of killing them is xalic acid and it's delivered in three ways that I know of the dribble and it's delivered in the

vapor system so sublimation and then we have this extended release method with varoxan now it's convenient that I don't really have to give an answer to this here's why there's a man that you might have heard of his name is Bob Binney and another shout out today so we already did a shout-out for Betterby to look at their recipe for mixing sugar bricks now we have Bob Benny who did this fantastic evaluation of a variety of different extended release again xalic acid. So in the title it's OAE, exhalic acid extended release. So now this just came out three weeks ago. So I'm going to invite you to go and look at his YouTube channel. So Bob Binney

and go to the YouTube channel and look at the title, OAE, treatment for varroaimites. And so if you watch that, you're probably going to get out of it, what I I got out of it, and that is that Verroxan was not a top performer in those tests, but I'm going to leave it to you because they partnered up with the University of Georgia. Huge advantage there, because Bob Benny has hundreds of beehives. They collected all this data, and then, of course, they got the people together from the Department of Entomology at the University of Georgia to help compile the data and make sense of it and see what's working, and that's what's in the video.

They're going to explain those results and show you what's going on. The interesting part too is understand that they're doing studies with exhalic acid at higher levels of exhalic acid, which you and I are not supposed to use. So when you're tied in with a research group like that, you can do things with dosing and so on. But I want you to watch the video. I'll name it again, Bob Benny, OAE, treatment for varroaimites. The video came out three weeks ago. I made a comment on it because I did ask about these exhalic. acid dosing levels because those are doses you and I can't get unless we made our own. So this has been around for a long time. Randy Oliver keeps working on it and but I will just say that based on the data that they show there, I would not personally run out and buy a big

pack of Veroxan right now. I'd wait and see. Canada has a new extended release treatment that is outperforming Voxan according to the studies that were done in Bob's video and with his APE. and so things are I would just hold off just wait and see at this time of year. Question number three comes from Jamie Pasadena, Maryland. I wanted to share with you how I put my feeder shim together. I trim off all the fins around the outside of the insulated inner cover. Then the standard medium box will fit snug down over the insulated inner cover. That way you don't see any of the side of the inside of the inner cover.

inner cover at all and you may be sitting there going what inner cover is he even talking about that has fins I'm glad you asked we're talking about the B smart designs insulated inner cover see these fins right here which are essential if you think from a structural sense of things right that these have to hold this sidewall because when you take this thing apart let's pull the plug out let's pull the insert out put that down there this is what it looks like I use my HVAC tape to keep things from getting in here but see this is pretty thin so these are here as structural support so when it's designed you talk about plastic molds right another big mold expensive to make so what he's saying is Jamie cut these off and then when

you put your medium super over it or even a shallow by the way the come in Chalice too it'll go right down and rest on this bottom piece and cover all of this right now when we put that feeder shim on this box it stops right here so it's easy to see even from a distance which hives have this kind of feeder on it and then what I do I'll go the extra yard and just explain it even though I have a video that shows I put a feeder shim around this usually a semi worn out medium box it's good way to repurpose boxes that aren't doing very well as a super anymore and you just put them on here but it sits up top and I use expansion foam and a word of the wise there if you're putting great stuff expansion foam for example in here you spray it around to make this one unit with the box that goes on it

which I've already done spritz it lightly with water first and it binds really well to the plastic the insulin and of course the expansion foam cures a little faster. Now I don't understand all the engineering and science behind that, but it works really well. And then what goes in the middle here? You're wrapping around feeder or your fondant pack goes right over the top of it. So if you're going to go somewhere and you're going to get the hive alive fondant packs, two pounds or five pounds,

I'm going to ask you to use a discount code, Fred, 10. And get 10% off. See? Oh, and for the High Butler Toot people, Fred 5. 5% off. Guess what I get from that 5%? Nothing. It's just to help you guys out, of course. So we put that on there, and I think that's probably a good idea, because maybe check this out. I just thought of this while we're talking.

Because remember, this is a reinforcement for these side walls. This is why I like to get comments like this, because guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to take these fins off. I'm going to cut them off and this is going to be flimsy. But since we're putting wood around it, why not just come in here and run screws through this right into the wood and make it a rigid attachment? I just, see, I hadn't thought of that even before now,

but look, now we can screw it to that and now we've got a one-piece unit. This is built in, and then you put your insulation back in, and you're good to go. You were there for it. I had that thought. The thought has a practical application. and it's a win for anybody watching or listening and I want to thank Jamie for that because we're on to something new let's do that let's modify be smart designs insulated inner cover

cut those fins off stick it inside a medium super and run screws from the inside into the wood how long would the screws have to be less than three quarters of an inch because that's the thickness of the wood and we have a single unit I like it I think that's great Thanks to Jamie from Pasadena, Maryland. Way to go. Question number four. Okay, I don't know if I can even say this name. Darwin-Yagari 1778.

That's the YouTube channeling. Okay. What is your opinion about brood-minder sensors? You're probably sitting there wondering, what's a brood-minder sensor? Well, there are sensors that actually say a brood-minder right on them. See that? What does it sense?

Well, it depends on the sensor you get, but there'll be marked T and H sensors. That's temperature and humidity. There's a little serial number on the end. So I'm giving you my opinion. And remember, it's just my opinion. So if this appears negative, don't get upset. They have a battery in them. And what it's supposed to do is this goes inside your beehive.

This sensor goes close to your brood area if not directly over it. So for those of you who don't like electronics, inside your hive. This is not for you. The little sensor number sticks out beyond the face of your hive between the boxes. So brood down here, sensor above the brood. And now you can go around and you register. How do you register? You have to install an app on your phone. Where do you get the app? Brewdminder.com. So and then once you receive this, there's a little button to turn it on. Some of the new ones have different activations. You know where you pull the thing that insulates your battery from the unit itself. and it starts working. And then of course there's a code that it blinks so that you can then add the sensor to your app on your phone. And I wanted to make sure, so I gave you a complete deal because I've got a couple of them.

We've got these things. We've got these sensors. And I want you to notice where they are. They're on my desk. They're not in the hives. So part of that is pure laziness. the other part of it is and maybe have these people in your B club they have them they have 300 of them or whatever all over their hives and they show you all their

schematics and all of the the rise and fall of temperature and humidity and how important that is and so they do give you really good information so I might as well explain that you can go to the Braidminder channel anyway their their website and you can find out all kinds of things because they have other hive weight sensors and things like that you have to decide how valuable the information is to you and having that in your hive because I'm going to also give you an alternative temperature and humidity what will it tell you well for example do you know what bees do right before they swarm so they're inside the

hive they're all loafing around they're doing what bees do some are working some aren't they're not all ready to fly so because they're not already to fly some of them are quite cool so guess what they do before they fly they heat the thoraxes what's that do heats the cluster what's that do reads into the brewed minder sensor and then you get an alert on your phone because you downloaded the app and now you know look at that temperature spike wow my bees are about to swarm so then you run out there so here's the thing and you might be wondering do you have to pay for some kind of subscription so I look that up just for you I did it so free

membership it says my free broodminder membership allows you to use your brood minder TH2 which is temp and humidity and create up to five hives in the system so that means you get five of those on the free system and you get basic hive monitoring data so you're not going to be one of the hot shots that gets to go and give a presentation to your and show really detailed analysis of every day in your hives for the last 365 days. You have to go to a premium subscription for that. So that gives you real-time data, real-time alerts through your cellular or Wi-fly hub. So you have to have a hub nearby.

You have to have some kind of SIM card so that it can send out this information to you. And advanced analytics like Brute Status, Nectarflow Index, etc. And that's for those with more than five hives. Oh yeah, you probably want to know what it costs. One of these, T&H sensors, temp and humidity, 69999 per sensor. That's a lot of money. So here's the thing.

What alternatives do you have? So here's what I like to do. I like to play a game in the wintertime called Alive or Dead. That's right. So this is an Accurite station. And look what it reads, because all the sensors are sitting right here next to me. this is what one of their sensors are like.

Are you going to put this on top of your brood? No. But let me tell you where you can put it right on top of that candy board underneath the insulation because you're going to know if that hive at midnight is the exact same temperature as a surrounding environment. What's going on? Nothing. They're dead.

Check it out. If they're like 5 degrees or 6 degrees even based on where you put the sensor, warmer than the background temperature, they're alive. And I've found that what most beekeepers want to know in the wintertime, two things. Where's the cluster in the hive? Are they up at the feed? And are they alive? Are they dead? These will tell you alive or dead. So when you get one of these stations, and I did a review of three different companies that make them, and they all performed very closely to one another. So I'm going to give you a link to my video testing temp and humidity sensors. So you get three of them with this and the base station for 4999.

So you get this base station, these things. What's the range of that? Over 300 feet because I included that in my evaluation. How far away can you put them? So I put them in the way to be academy building, for example, and I have one on top of every single observation hive. So I know what the humidity is in there. Under the hot pocket I call it, which is made by what?

Made out of what? Double double. Put that over the hive, put that underneath of it, and now I know. And the average on the outside of the hive under the cover was 15 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. So that's pretty darn good. And so it also records the highest temp and the lowest temp within the last 24 hours, that kind of thing. So for 4999, and by the way, this one's been in service since February 22nd of 2021. And it still works great.

So they last. Of course, that display has to go inside. go outside. You could leave this in your car, for example, anywhere where you want to know exactly what the temperature parameters are. The broodminder, you have to go up to it, or you have to have a hub and a SIM card so that you can then have it send the data to their app, to their website, so then you get your data from that. So those are just some options. And so my opinion is, for me personally I don't need it if I had a hundred hives and I were doing some kind of study and I needed real good data and I was going to monitor those hives all the time and the graphs and charts are

going to be helpful to me I would get the brood binders but because I'm a backyard beekeeper and I only want to know about a few choice colonies so we can put these in the horizontal hives in an empty space you can drop these right into a frame feeder right in the middle there and it's not going to get a really tight reading like it would right up against the brood, but a frame feeder would give you internal temperatures and humidity, which hovers right around 65% relative humidity in a healthy colony. So cheap and fun. Now the drawback, I should probably say that too.

You can't keep adding sensors. So you can only do three sensors with this. That's why I bought two other companies because I just can't, you only have three switch positions. So that's a max. And then we get the next one, and they have their own, their own display. And so then I could have three more, and then three more. So there is a drawback.

If you want to do a whole bunch of them, broodminder is going to be your choice, but it's going to hit your wallet pretty good. So that does that. That's my opinion. And so you should probably check in with people, different universities that are using them, and see how accurate the readings are and how helpful those units are. Question number five comes from James. Beren 1202, that's a YouTube channel name, are bees able to carry out their dead with the old style B-smart robbing screens?

Because I had to put one-eighths inch hardware cloth to reduce my entrances and install those robber screens on all my hives. I had them robbing one hive so bad that were falling off the robbing screen in wads about the size of a tennis ball every 20 seconds. okay so here's the thing i'm going to show you what we're talking about this again is a robbing screen this happens to be the b smart designs robbing screen that's been out for a long time these are the pins that come with it you can pull a pin off of either end and stick them in to the bottom here let me show you that real close see that this creates a gap right here when this goes back down and they use these pins to hold it up against the front that is open all the way across So your Undertaker bees can do things, but it won't stop robbing, of course.

Mice can't get in, though. This is the robbing setting right there on the top. So then the question concerns, if I have an Undertaker B inside the hive, she's going to come out, she has to go up the inside of the robbing screen, out this entrance to dispense with whatever carcass it happens to be. The heaviest and most difficult carcass for her to get rid of is the drone. And they're tossing drones right and left right now. You need to go out there at sunrise and see exactly how many drones are

being rejected by their sisters in the colony. So can they haul it up and toss them out? Yes, they can. How do I know that? Because I've seen them go up straight glass. If they can go up glass, plexiglass, or regular glass, hauling a dead bee, they can do it on this because it's textured to make sure that they can climb up on that. So yes, it works. It's fine. And for those of you who need a mouse card, those work as mouse cards. these are the originals these are the new ones they both work extremely well and

this one has the entrance right here that they can go straight out plus that is has a mouse guard built into it but 3 87 inch has stopped all mice so that's it yes they can do it question number six this is the youtube channel name but it's like mj i s 7 q r i think they just let you to pick a name i don't know says thank you for another great very very The older type of white robber screen. Oh, see, I tied it in. I thought the questions should be more comprehensive. Thank you for a great video.

The older type of white robber screen with only entrances at the top worked beautifully for robbing in yellow jackets. I was concerned about dead bees on the solid bottom board. When I moved the screen, they had probolized almost the entire space across the hive entrance. I also removed it, but thankfully didn't. I assume the bees knew much more than I'm an Oregon farmland so I'm wondering if I should pull that screen and insert the mouse card. Okay so that's a vote so what MJ is saying is pull this off and there was propolis all along the bottom

which your bees do they seal joints that they find especially where there's different materials coming together so if even you've got aluminum or metal pieces that come together on an entrance or on a cover they propolize that right up so the think of it is should you take this off because now this is in the robbing position so this is the option that i already showed you lift it up with the pins and now it's an opening freebies in winter time now that we're out of the robbing phase or with the new one they have the entrance right through the middle these are the two side by side so six seven My grandson told me to say that. Grandfather, if you have two things, it almost makes the difference, go 6, 7,

and then your video will go viral. So I guess we're going to try that out and see what happens. See, the numbers just go crazy. So anyway, yeah, there's not a huge difference in the two. If you've already got one, there's no reason to get rid of it when this wears out. You know, get the new one. But I think you're okay. Just raise it up.

Propolis is just something to naturally do. I would definitely lift it a little bit and have that 3 eighth inch opening going through winter so they can get rid of their dead. And mice cannot get into that. So number seven comes from, I recognize this name, hated critic 8066. This is a frequent viewer and commenter. I convinced a friend to get into beekeeping and he decided to invest in the flow hive. We live in California. So the winters are very mild, but I still like to put a box with pine shavings in it on top during winter to absorb the bees respiration and then dry out to prevent mold growth.

With a flow hive, you have the plastic comb at the top. And I don't think there's any place to put a box like that on top. Do you have a solution? Yes. And so this is for anyone in any climate. because my solution is the same. So I'm going to ask you, and anyone listening or watching, to go to the website,

the way to be.org, click on the page marked, the flow hive experience, and then watch the video that's about winterization. Because, and these conversations go on all the time, some people use quilt boards and things like that, pine shavings and fillers and, you know, absorbent material.

and everything else up there. I have stopped doing that in my beekeeping here in the northeastern part of the United States where the winters are severe. And I no longer have venting. I have no entrances up high at any time through the year. And so even if the flow hive, now here in the cold weather,

which is why I really want people to go to that, is because I want them to understand the flow supers come off during winter where we are, but this is California. So the insulation that we put on stays on summer or winter, it doesn't change for me. Also, the entrance size no longer changes for me. So whatever the entrance size is in spring, that's what it stays like. And we've not noticed a big difference in honey production even.

And again, we didn't do these changes to every hive all at once. We left some hives wide open. Others had reduced entrances. 3 eighths of an inch by three inches wide is the entrance. that the sweet spot that we arrived at so what we're doing now is referred to as the condensing hive these days now we were doing this before they called it that and that I think came out with an article through the American Bee Journal right around 2019 I believe and so there again because we've learned a lot about ventilation

and condensation CO2 build up and of course the relative humidity inside the hive and its impact not just on your bees but on the reproduction of the varroa destructor mites so I highly recommend that people go to Google Scholar and look up published studies on CO2 levels in a beehive and the impact on varroa destructor mite reproduction and you'll find out that this air movement through the top of your hive is benefiting the varroa destructor reproduction among other things. It's venting off passively heated air. We know that the bees, because the next statement that I kind of get from people is, but bees don't heat the space.

That is true. Just as if I invite 50 people over to my house, which will never happen, but let's say 50 people walked into my house. They're not trying to heat the space. they're just keeping their bodies at the correct temperature so that all their organs can function correctly. But passively, they heat the space. Bs are like that too. So even when they're clustered, they are respirating and they are putting off moisture and warmth

that can be encapsulated directly over the cluster, which prevents condensation from forming on top of your bees, which removes the need for these quilt boards and things like that. And so what I often tell people is much like with the sugar use, right? Do some with, do some without, tell me how it goes. Because I've often found also that when people are learning about beekeeping, what the person teaching their beginner beekeeping class tells them to do, they start to do.

And if it works, they stay with it. There's no reason to change. So I like to do experimentation, but we can't understand. what's really going on if we do everything at once to every hive so when we get a new idea let's test it out let's run some patterns let's see what's going on but then we also have these fantastic educational institutions that do these very detailed studies and then they document their studies and then we get to read them because we don't honestly have the resources to do the kinds of studies that they do and that's where we learn about what's going on with CO2 what's going on with humidity what is the impact on not just the

colony, but other things that challenge your colony of bees, including the CO2. So let's get those mites. Now we're in a different climate. So that's the other thing which confuses people because all beekeeping is local, they will say. But there are some principles that hold true no matter what climate you're going to keep it in. So that's all I will say. And if you get huge amounts of mold and you have to insulate more. do something else but I've shifted away from because I used to do that I

vented my hides they did all that for years and I have come around to what's known as the condensing hive ever since I started building my own feeder shims that were completely closed off they originally were vented they had screen in them and what did the bees do they propylized the screen they let me know they don't want venting if you want to know what the bees like put out a swarm trap that has all the venting that a lot of people like to install in their hives later. Put these big entrances in that a lot of people swear by

and have venting through the top and have upper entrances in your swarm trap. And then next to that swarm trap, have another one that has a tiny entrance, no venting, no screening, and a completely enclosed secure box. See which one they occupy first. That lets you know the selection process of the bees based on the conditions they find in the hive. And then often people will collect that colony of bees from that swarm trap, take it back, and now swap out the whole configuration on them

and adventing and upper entrances and everything else that the bees would not have chosen. So food for thought is all I'm saying. Question number eight comes from George Garcia, 505-2, and it says when you talk to the Keepers Hive folks, and I will because the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association meeting is coming up. If you remember, please ask them how they re-queen the two hive systems.

How can you re-queen one side if they think they're a queen right because of the other side? So I think a lot of this, and I haven't talked to George about it, but I'm going to, because I have lots of questions for the keepers hive people because we have the two-queen system. If you're wondering what this is and you're just listening for the first time, it's a way of keeping two colonies of bees side by side. They are standard 10 frame boxes that have been reduced to 8 frames because it's a central column that supports a common super structure going through the middle. And they have a queen excluder that keeps the queens down below on either side.

And then winter comes and you remove the queen excluder, but they're divided also. So the question is, because they merge up above and they interact up above and then direct contact with one another, what happens if you lose a B, a queen over here, and you still have a queen over here, is there enough distance through the top of that? Because it can't just go straight over. There's a divider.

The divider extends up through the first box above the bottom brood box, and then above that, it's common ground where they store their resources, and that's what the queen excluder is for. So, I think that you can still install a queen on the other side, but let's fail safe. So if we want to keep them from just migrating over, because we do know that bees drift.

I also know that a queenless colony can lose foragers to queen-right colonies. So they just throw on their way home. They don't have a queen at home, and they fly through the pheromone stream, but we know that has a queen, and they go over there and they join it. I've seen it over and over again. So, but I think because there's enough separation, first of all, you've got that column through the middle that divides the two colonies. And if one has lost its queen and they didn't replace the queen, usually they go right to work and start making a queen cell, multiple queen cells if they can plant it. And then, so they're already planning to re-queen just because of the amount of space between the two colonies.

And the reason I say that is because there are two queen systems in the past, that are just stacked directly over one another, and they have a snail grove board, which has a double screen, which keeps them from being in direct physical contact with one another, but the entrances are not far apart. And they requeen. So I think unless your nurse bees are interacting with each other,

and there's a complete pheromone conflict going on with them, they have the strongest queen mandibular pheromone. Because remember that if something happened to the queen on the other side, that she still has brood there, that they still have nurse bees there that can carry on her pheromone, and they need direct contact with all these other bees on the other side in order to suppress the old queen's pheromone and refresh or extend the queen on the other side's pheromone. So the colonies are huge though because there's so much brood, so many workers, so many nurse bees, that if you're keen on your colonies, if you understand that you're

what's going on and you've been observant, I think you can catch that pretty quick. If they're not making a replacement queen, I think you can get one in there. Now, I would highly recommend that if you did lose your queen, you don't see evidence of them being able to replace her, and you don't want to battle royal because we've got a queen on the other side. Now we take emergency steps, which means we're going to divide the colony. We're going to prevent them from going. This is not what George says. This is just me thinking about what I would personally do if I didn't have a speed dial connection to the inventor of the keeper's hive. I would divide the colonies and eliminate any common ground between the two inside those boxes. So I would extend the divider up. Appave hives already have this. They have

dividers that you can continue all the way up through the hive and maintain two separate colonies inside the same hive. So then once we do that and they're all divided up, if I'm concerned, that now they've got some of the other queen's pheromone and they would be hostile toward a queen that we might install then i'm going to put my new queen in a frame of brood so we have brood that's capped there's probably still going to be some cap brood around unless you've been completely negligent as a beekeeper and all the time has passed then you are in trouble but if there's still a cap brood some open brood and things like that you can put one of those frames in something called a queen introduction cage. I have one of two right back here. That's a queen

introduction cage. And what that is is you put the frame of brood in that cage with the queen that you're hoping to introduce as those brood that are remaining there, the cat brood as they emerge. They're going to attend to that queen. Others cannot kill her because these bars in a queen introduction cage that's sold by better. B by the way no affiliate link but anyway they can't even workers can't get through it that's why these bees that are emerging are going to be important for attending to the queen while she's caged there now what happens is other bees will feed them through the bars and so we're going to refresh a queen pheromone there and I don't think that's going to cause a

conflict to the other side because remember now we've isolated both colonies once she's in full production over here and we have full brood she's laying everything's great and we remove that queen introduction cage now we have two fully productive colonies of bees and we can reopen the common storage areas up above that's my take on it and we're going to see this is my first winter with the keeper's hive it is a highly productive hive and i'm queen right on both sides so i think you might just want to pay really close attention and make sure look at pollen counts and things like that for those that are keeping sensors and temperatures when you have lower brood you don't have the 94 to 95 degree Fahrenheit brood cluster center it drops into the 80s often

so that's how we know also if you've got these sensors that's how we know that they've gone broodless at a time which is coming up in a November first couple of weeks of December here in my neck of the woods and that's when we can treat with oxalic acid vaporization. It's another follow-up treatment that allows us to knock out dispersal phase varroa destructor mites and then we'll find them on our trays on the bottom boards. And so that has worked for me. In fact, that treatment has been the most important treatment in controlling varroa destructor mites in my apiary for as long as I've been keeping. keeping bees. That is the follow-up, the cleanup, it's the final comb through the hair,

you know, whatever, to get rid of those mites. Please consider doing that. So that's it. Question number nine comes from Michelle from Troy, Michigan. Which to think provides better information for where the bees are in the hive, an endoscope camera or a fleer heat camera. I do not want to take my hive apart, but I want to see if they're in the bottom box still. Okay. And I have both of those tools for different reasons. The endoscope, endoscope, is not my favorite for that.

And here's why. Because I have to feed it through the entrance. The endoscope lens, there are two cameras on the end of it, two lenses. And they each have their own lighting as well. And the thing of it is, it is a 200,000th of an inch in diameter, which means a quarter inch hole, 250,000th of an inch in diameter. It can go right through an oxalic acid vaporization hole in the back of the hive. Now, is that going to be really good for finding out exactly where the cluster is, how big the cluster is, if they're spread out, if they're tight? No.

So the endoscope is not my favorite for that. This is. So this little thing right here is the new flee. This goes onto your phone, Android or Apple. You have to pick out the one that's right for your phone. And this is called the Fleer, what did I write it down? Fleer 1 Pro. So it connects, it's battery powered, you plug it in, USBC, charges up, you can update it, everything else.

There's an app. Let me tell you why I like this one the best. It gives me temp, and I also control the color schemes and things like that. And I'm using these cameras, but they're showing up on my phone screen. So this has a really good screen. When I find something interesting, or let's say I'm keeping data, let's say I'm keeping a record of what my bee colonies are doing at this time of year. It shows exactly where that cluster is located.

It works really well for what we talked about earlier, alive or dead. You can walk around. You don't need sensors in there unless you really want to know the humidity. You can get thermals, but remember that it reads. the outside surface temperature. So standard wooden boxes, we see exactly where the clusters are. This time of year, they're all down at the bottom, right where they belong. And we can see the clusters on warmer days break apart, spread apart, and take up more space.

I also like that the best time of day to do this is long after sunset or before sunrise. And that way we know that we're not reading any surfaces that are warmed by the sun. So for the alive or dead, I go out there 18, 20 degrees Fahrenheit on these midwinter nights, I go out, I can scan the whole APRA and see exactly who's alive, who's dead. And even the insulated hives then, keep in mind if we have Layans hives, which I do, they're insulated with sheep's wool. We have the Apame hives, they're insulated.

We had lice in hives out there, they're insulated. we just added the Beersville B's horizontal Langstroth Hyde, it's insulated. In fact, that's got the best insulation of the long lang that I've found anywhere. And so that we can do scans, but now we would scan near the entrances and stuff. But when it's really cold at night, any increase in temperature is going to show you that there's proof of life in your colony. But for knowing exactly where they are, this is only going to work. if it is only the standard three quarter inch pine boxes it's really going to demonstrate exactly where they're located i even have problems with my long langstroth hive that is just two by four dimensional lumber it's two by twelves

so it's a little thicker which means i do get a heat signature but it's really small when the cluster is actually much larger than when it's showing up and then i can hit record on my phone and record pictures or video sequences which is super valuable to me. So the Fleer is the one. And if you want to know about the endoscope that I like, I will hopefully remember to put a link to it down below. It has a lot of uses. You can look into drains that they can go underwater.

So it doesn't matter. That's the endoscope that I used to show through, for example, these Hivegate systems. I was able to feed the endoscope right through here. and see what's going on in this channel if there were was some things or for example I could use it to see if there were a bunch of dead bees blocking it because if you had a bunch of bees piled back here that were dead you could feed an endoscope through and see exactly if it's blocked or open and when you come out here you shift

from the straight on camera with your endoscope to the 90 degree camera and now we can look straight up into that winter cluster and see what the bees are doing So different kinds of information, and they both have their uses. But that's it for that. That was the last question for the day. So now we have the fluff section. Plan of the week. If you haven't finished packing on your hives for winter

and you're in the northeast for a cold climate, you're overdue. You're late. You are officially on report for not getting your stuff done. Finish packing on your hives. Best day here is going to be Sunday. We have the warmest day, as I mentioned before. Whatever emergency feed you decide to use, if it's a sugar break, if it's candy board, if it's

hive-alive-life funnet, all the solids are what go on now, and every colony should have some kind of emergency feed. You don't know when the weather's going to get bad. You don't know when they're going to need it or when we're going to get things like we just had here, extended rain. And so having that stuff on is really important. Process, this is my recommendation, that you process all. the honey that you've taken i get some emails from people that still have honey in buckets please put

it in jars and the reason i say that is because if it sets if it becomes crystallized and it's in your jars then you can just liquefy it uh within you know a couple of days of selling it or giving it away or using it or whatever you're doing when you have these big buckets it's a lot to deal with so i always recommend getting it into your jars as quick as possible so you don't have big containers also on these nice warm days you can feed that back to your beats uh what else feeder shims make sure your insulation is on insulation should be on all year round and this is why it won't be an emergency for you when a storm comes but for those who wait until winter and try to change your configurations for winter please make sure that that's all done you're running out of time and all entrances should be reduced

where mice are starting to try to move into hives i found a short tailed true i have a sweet video of it but it's hunting mice which is fine for me and then um on november the 8th i will be at the empire state honey producers conference in syracuse new york so i want to thank them for inviting me to come and give a presentation there and i'm going to give three presentations at that so that's it for this friday halloween 2005 and i want to thank you for watching and i hope you have a fantastic weekend ahead, you and your honeybees. I'm Frederick Don, and this has been The Way to Be.