The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A Episode 331 November 7th 2025

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/xruzOAPhw2k

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today's Friday, November the 7th, and this is back here at beekeeping questions and answers episode number 331. I'm Frederick Dunn. 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 today, please go down in the video description and look at all the topics listed in order. And you'll also find below that you'll also find below that. links and resources that may help you better delve into some of the things that we talk about

today. If you've got something on your mind right now, you have to talk to somebody, you want to show a picture, you want to show a video clip, and get the opinions of your peers. Please go to the fellowship, the way to be fellowship on Facebook. And they're there, 24-7, ready to talk all the time. The other thing is you may wonder how we come up with our topics. Well, and by our topics, I mean, you know, for me personally, just one guy, you go to my website, which is the wayto be.org, click on the page identified as contact. There's a form. Fill it out. See what happens. You might end up on a future Q&A. So all things we're going to talk about today are from this week and some as recent as this morning. That's right. I check the messages before I even

start the talk. So I know what you want to know. We need to know what's going on outside. Well, let me just tell you it's miserable. And where are we? Northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. It's raining right now, cold and rainy. By the way, today, Friday, is the best weather day.

As far as temperature goes alone, of course, it's rainy and it's windy. So you want to know how windy is it? Well, the wind is flying out there at 8.1 miles per hour, pretty consistent with wind gusts listen to this 30 miles per hour what's that kilometers per hour 8.1 is 13 kilometers and 30 mile an hour gus or 48.2 kilometers per hour and it is only 50.9 degrees Fahrenheit which is 10.5 Celsius even though it's raining it's at 83 percent relative humidity you should not have any sugar syrup anymore on your hives this time of year in my neck of the woods now maybe if you're in the desert southwest or something

I don't know what goes on, but at least here, that's what my instructions are. What else can we say? Oh, I know what you want to know. What's going on outside? How about pollen and nectar sources? Zero. The only pollen sources that they would find outside this time of year where I am would be coming from the beekeeper in the form of a pollen substitute, specifically dry pollen substitute.

And often people ask, can I just put that inside the beehive? Please don't. I want the bees to be able to get it free choice. I don't want it forced upon them. If they don't like it, they have to run it out of the hive anyway. So offer it on a nice, clear day, usually after 10 or 11 in the morning when the temperatures rise and use a consistent location. And primarily it's a feel-good thing for you. I don't think the bees are going to do a lot with it right now.

So this is hunting season. By the way, we have visitors around here. So I have cameras out everywhere. I have cameras for home security that's one group and then I have cameras that are spread out just to see what kind of critters are moving through the woods in the clearing by the pond and in the apiary and there's a lot going on out there and the alarms keep going off too oh that reminds me someone was asking me what the alarm is I gave a presentation at a tri county beekeepers association in York Pennsylvania and one of the attendees asked what specific alarm

I use. That's what it is. Solar alarm lamp, remote control, blah, blah, blah. I believe this one is at 129 decibels. So it has a siren. They also ask what mode? In other words, daytime, nighttime, I have it set for nighttime only. This scares bears. I have sweet video of bears not walking away from them, but running when they went off. So these have been working for a long time. I was hesitant recommend them because I took down my own electric fence and I did have a bear raid my apiary. The electric fence presented problems for me because the grass would grow up. It would defeat the fence. We get rainy weather like right now, which defeats the fence. We get deep snow, which defeats the fence. And I understand, of course, bears hibernate. So, but it's these transitional

times. Like right now, there's stuff in their faces. They're trying to get everything they can while they can, they're out there eating baby deer, if you can believe that. And so these worked and have consistently worked. So I'm going to have to say, though, just so I don't get sued, I accept no liability if they don't work for the bears that you have. The key is make sure that it's unpleasant for the bears. The first time they come around, don't ever let them get a reward. And if they do, get into your hives, it's time for you to pull an all-nighter because

they're going to come back. They come back in a series of days in a row. So once you see one around, you need to stake them out. You need to be out there on the rooftops. I'm not saying I would do that, but I recommend being on the rooftop all night. And when the motion alarms go off, you need to be there to deliver some disturbances to the bear that's visiting your apiary. Demonstrate to the bear that you will go to any length to make sure that their visits to your apiary are incredibly unpleasant. It's your job.

You're the beekeeper. Don't forget it. So that's what it is. And this is, I got it on Amazon, you can just do a search for it, but it's pretty distinctive. It's the only one that looks this way. And they're solar powered, they charge themselves. I've got them that last years, so they are really good. I don't give a hoot about the remote control.

I just set it on the third setting. That's enough said. So deer mice are out there running around like, you know, fur-covered popcorn balls. They are going everywhere and they move lightning fast. Short-tailed shrew had one of those come through. What was it doing? Chasing down mice. I love that story.

It's in a big hurry. I was a little worried that it would get into one of my traps that are set for the mice. But it didn't. It bypassed the traps and kept chasing down mice. Short-tailed-tree. White-tail deer are everywhere and the bucks are chasing the doze through the night. If I remember and I hope I do at the end of the credits today, you can continue watching and you'll see the night camera action of bucks chasing doves

through the woods around here. And skunks come nightly and opossums. Also, they're around all the time. I've not seen raccoons for a while. So that's about it. We'll get started. And we're going to start right off with Paul from Seattle, Washington. Now, this is interesting too, because Paul says right here

might not be a great question for your weekly video series, but wondering, if you have thought about this, there was a paper that showed, and this paper was not a published study, It was a paper that was put together by somebody who did their own, kind of like we're doing backyard research and stuff like that. But the paper that showed temp queen, having virtually no impact on the prevention of queen cells.

It surprised me since I personally think it works well, and I know you have been an advocate for it, for keeping it on hand in the effects of a synthetic queen mandibular pherom on emergency queen rearing in the honeybee, apis malifera. So here's the thing. And I don't know where it was presented or who presented it, but I did. I followed up. I read the study and everything else because I want to make sure that what I'm telling you is true.

And if it isn't, I'm fully capable of backpedaling and saying, uh-oh, got the wrong idea. But here's the thing. You need to understand the way I use Tempe Queen, the way I've recommended that it be used. Because I did also check in with BetterB, because I wanted to see, you know, how much it costs even. Temp Queen right now, I wrote it down somewhere. It's like $7 and something for two of them at BetterBee.com, but Temp Queen, you may be able to get it somewhere else. I do want to explain and rehash exactly how I use it

and how I recommend it be used. Now, it is designed, and so what I've said held true, even in the paper that was presented, therefore I'm not conflicting with anything that the author of the paper had to say. So the challenge is that would it keep bees from producing a replacement queen in the absence of a queen? In other words, if something happened to the queen, let's say you're one of those people that not very dexterous, you're getting hold of your queen to marker or something like that, or you're closing up your hive and you smash her or you're pulling up a frame because you didn't pull frames to the side first.

You rolled the queen between the comb and stuff like that, and you suddenly killed the queen. you don't want them to make your own queen. This was the challenge. Then it was demonstrated based on this paper and the presenter that the queen mandibular pheromone, which is a synthetic pheromone, designed to make the bees think that they are queen right. In other words, the queens still, the bees still produced replacement queens with the presence of the queen mandibular pheromone. And that's okay with me because I've never presented it as having that ability. What I use it for is to fool the bees into thinking there's a queen around and they come and they hang out with the queen. Because when I put it on a tree branch or something

like that, random foragers come and join the tree branch thinking that there's a queen there when there is not. The other thing that I use it for and recommend its use, and that still holds true, is to put it in a hive that is queenless, as soon as you notice it's queenless, not to prevent them for making a new queen. I personally would love it if they made a new queen with the presence of the queen manipulative pheromone noodle or not. Makes no difference to me. What I'm trying to suppress is laying workers. I don't want them to activate their ovaries. It takes them about three weeks before a laying worker will start producing those drone eggs. So unfertilized drone eggs. Haploid. Anyway, so it still holds true. So the things that I've been recommending that people use

QMP4 and it's dirt cheap, $7.95, whatever, keep it in your freezer and you can use it. Now, if you're trying to keep them from producing another queen in the presence of this noodle, apparently they will still do that. And for me, that's totally okay, so that's not a hit. What would be upsetting to me is if, A, it doesn't attract B's the way I suggest and demonstrate that it does over and over again, and I back it up with video sequences and everything else, direct observation, or if, even with a QMP noodle present in a colony, that all of a sudden laying workers end up producing these drone eggs. And that's not happened. So it holds for me. Now, if anyone has claimed that they, you know, will stop them from producing replacement queens,

if they have the resources to do it. Keep in mind, they need eggs or day-old larvae to start producing a new queen. And so I don't go down that route at all. I'm happy to have my beats make a new queen. So it holds true, holds up. I appreciate Paul giving me that. I wasn't going to read it because it takes such a long time to read these studies. If it's more than, you know, half a page, and this was multiple pages, I did the whole thing because I was a little concerned. Maybe I have led you astray. I didn't. So I'm validated. Still good. So we'll go on to question number two.

Question number two comes from Mike, and where does Mike live? Waukishaw, Wisconsin. Is that where? Where did the grumpy old men live? You ever see the movie Grumpy Old Men? Okay, moving on. Mike says I have a slatted rack. Keepers hive question.

I've been using slatted racks for three years. I saw them in a beginner's book. And they made a lot of sense. I saw that you used them on some of your highs. I like the idea of the hole for the OAV applicators. What is an OAV? I know what you're wondering. What's an OAV applicator?

It's oxalic acid vaporization. And the applicators, meaning like the pro-vap, the instant vape, and the Lorabi vape system, they would fit into a hole that was a quarter inch of diameter. Maybe you would do better if you could see what that looks like. so I'm going to pull up this laddered rack here just happen to have it wait let's finish reading the question Saw that you have some in your hives like the hole for the OAV the hole by the way on this one see this little There's a little quarter 20 thumb screw there that is a placeholder for it and that way the OAB gets delivered right through the side wall in the back

and To do to do to do to do it says I notice that you don't use the rack on the key was that due to time constraints or did they recommend against it as a side note in three years and an average of eight hives only once did the bees make wonky comb under it I plan on getting a two queen unit this year and do you think the direction of the bottom boards matters that much so first let's look at this this is the slided rack this is for this looks narrow it's probably for an eight frame slatted rack this is the top of it This is a solid board. It's on the same end as the entrance. The wonky comb that we're talking about here with Mike is this stuff right here. It's drone comb. So the bees have made this down underneath and look. See they even control? See how it channels through the slats? And so underneath your bees have space. They put their drones in the periphery of the brood areas normally, just like they show here. And so the question is not about that. I just wanted to show you what wonky comb looks like. And the ability to deliver exhalic acid vaporization

is through the back. Means that it comes in underneath, wafts up through this. That means that, for example, I don't have to deliver exhalic acid vaporization at the entrance, which is what I initially did when it first became legal here in the United States. And they used pans to do it.

So now that they have instant vape, pro-vap, now there's a turbo-vap, and the Lorabi's vape system, all these vape systems are out there. They all will fit through a quarter inch hole, and that lets you deliver the exhalic acid vaporization. It's an organic treatment can be used with honey superson. And it goes everywhere in the hive. So when you feed it in from the back,

you'll know if your hive has any little crevices, leaks, and openings because the vapor will, it's kind of like doing a home inspection. When you run smoke through a ventilation system, you want to see if it's leaking anywhere. It still works. So the question is about the Keepers Hive 2 Queen system. I did do a video also showing how we pack that down for winter. So I highly recommend you go to my YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn.

Top right corner, you'll probably see it because it's not that old. It shows how we pack down the Keepers Hive. You'll also see how it's configured and then better understand what we're talking about here. Okay, so. Why didn't I use slatted racks on that? Well, I didn't have two identical slatted racks handy at the time, and I did have two identical, because keep in mind, when you get the two-queen system from the Keepers Hive,

it comes without a bottom board. So the bottom board matches perfectly with two solid 10-frame bottom boards, and they're reversible. They have a summer and a winter side. So I have the winter side up all the time, because that's a three-eighths-of-an-inch gap. unless you have an entrance reducer that you put in that fits in the three-quarter inch side, and then that reduces it to a three-eighths of an inch gap.

And just as it happened, the entrance reduces that I put in are even smaller than that three-eighths inch height. So that's what I did. If you're going to put slattered racks on top, they have to be identical because we don't want gaps when you set the box on top of these things. Plus, it's extra pieces of kit. There was no bearding, and these are loaded. loaded, loaded, rude boxes. No bearding on either of them. The other thing was, part of this question, is the direction, does it matter that much? I just want to say if I were

doing it again, I would run both of my entrances to the south. I would not do the 180 entrance, landing port on one side entrance on the other, because no matter what side of the hive you approach, unless it's on the ends, which the keeper's hive, you know, full credit to them, is designed for you to come in at the sides but this is the two queen system where we are going to pull off full-size boxes from the top so we have to come straight at it from one side of the other because you can't lean over from the sides where you attend to them and i wish i just run both of the landing boards and of course the argument against that is that there's drift so there's drift anyway and um i look at things like recently i've been looking like

looking at A-Z hives. So those are the hives that they jammed together and they're all in a building, a very small building in fact, and there'll be multiple colonies together and their entrances are right side by side with one another. The hives themselves are right side by side. I've seen them with as many as 40 hives in one small building, all facing the same way. So I should have just, I should have just done it. And if I were doing it again, and I might still, in other words, when springtime comes around. When they're light loaded, when that first nectar flow begins

before they gain a lot of weight, I will likely lift up each side or just one side. It's the only side I have to lift up. And then I'll reroute them. I'll send them right out the front entrance. So I do plan to swap it around. So I was just trying to stick with what,

you know, the innovators came up with, what they wanted me to do. I went against my own instinct. because the other part of this too is guess what's going on that in spring I'm going to put a flow super on there based on their performance this year they produced a lot of honey and we didn't put that thing together until the summer was well underway so the Keepers Hive 2 Queen system I'm going to make changes to it but yes now the slatted rags in other words will they make a huge difference on that hive system I personally don't think so so so you might be sitting there going well then what the heck is a slatter rack any what's a good for anyway Well, it's been demonstrated that if you look at your frames in the brood box when you have a solid bottom board

The queen rarely lays every cell all the way to the bottom and in fact with a lot of your hives Especially foundationless frames for example they don't build them all the way to the very bottom of the frame Where with a slatted rack there's more distance two inches to be exact from the bottom of the brood box to the top of the bottom board. And when you have that in place, now the queen lays all the way down. So you have to weigh the benefit. You might be thinking, well, that's true.

If that works, why isn't everybody using them? Well, because it's extra gear. I don't know if you looked at it, but there's a decent amount of carpentry involved in making those. The other thing is, it's another thing commercial beekeeper has to stack. People that become sidelineers in the state of Pennsylvania, a sidelineer is anyone with less than 500 beehives. I am never.

Let me say, they say never, say never. I'm saying it. I am never going to have 500 beehives. But I understand when you do that, you have to be very efficient. Will this gear provide a return on my investment? So if you added 5% of the cells to each frame on each side,

because you added a slatted rack, will that production pay for the hassle of having slatted rack? no probably not for the back air beekeeper sure every little bit helps it does reduce clustering and bearding it's good for your bees axelic acid vaporization delivery it has benefits it's gonna last a long time I've never worn one out because keep in mind it's not the bottom board it's next port up bees propolize it they do great things and so it's gonna be a toss-up whether you like it or not it definitely doesn't hurt

And the other thing was, for those that were using the pan system, as I was in the beginning, when I put the exhalic acid vaporization pan in through the entrance, and of course the frames were right there when you pull your pan out. After that a minute and 10 to 15 second delivery time, there would be three or four dead bees on the pan dead, because, of course, they went after the pan, and it's super hot, and it just fried them. So with the slatted rack, I put the pan under there. I didn't have that issue.

See how it goes? The other thing was, sometimes people would put their exhalic acid vaporization pans in there, make contact with bees wax. If you notice that one has comb coming down under the slider racks, you still run the risk.

But they could, in theory, potentially set their beeswax on fire with a hot pan. None of those issues exist with the new ProVap, Instant Vap, Larabi Vap, all the VAP systems. that have the little tubes on them, you don't have that problem at all anymore. But for those that are still delivering with pans, it would be another bonus for the slatted rag.

Question number three comes from Julie. Started watching your videos during the COVID era. I wonder how many of you took up beekeeping because of COVID when you're stuck in your yard. Anyway, because of you, Mr. Ed, Dirt Rooster, and all your buddies, I decided I want bees and specifically I want to flow high. I've been watching your playlist for the flow hives and have gained a wealth of knowledge from your videos. Granted, this playlist is over a span of nine years, but the repeated topic I kept hearing you speak of was beeweaver queens. I've been taking new beekeeper classes and apiary visits all year through my local bee club,

which is Trinity Valley Beekeepers Association, and plan on ordering my bees for two thousand. So my question is, are beeweaver queens and packages still your choice for BROA resistant bees? If not, who are your preferred go-to for replacement queen bees, packages, trying to start off on the right foot? Okay, this is an area where it is not black and white. That's part of the problem. So I haven't bought bees for a long time. And when it comes to, the new beekeepers. Let's say that Julie's in our club, in my bee club, which is the northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association. And what's talking about, hey, I want to start, I need to know some sources for packages in Queens and things like that. What I've been doing for years is cycling

back my own bee stock from survivor bees every spring, and the spring colonies are the best. And then why not get free bees? When I first started beekeeping in 2000, I bought bees. I bought packages and I bought some nukes. And you might be wondering what's a nuke? Well, that means nucleus. It means it's a complete hive. Queen, workers, drones, comb, everything is in there. It's complete. It's a nucleus. So I bought them from a beekeeper who didn't offer any information. In fact, he called them Nucks. He charged me for five frames. He gave me three. Like, I was not happy.

And that was my introduction to beekeeping. I had no mentor. The one guy in my town, which is a tiny town that I wanted to learn from, he was part of our church fellowship, by the way, and he walked away from me all the time, wouldn't talk to me about bees, he didn't want any competition. So I'm off the track here. Anyway, I spent a pile of money for the bees.

And it was always like some secret deal. They'll meet you in a McDonald's parking lot somewhere, and they got them in the back of their truck, and they load them to you, they take your money, and off they go. they go. So I'm going to recommend, depending on where you are and what spring is like, I'm going to recommend that you put yourself on a swarm collection list. And I'm going to get to Daniel Weaver and his excellent line of bees in a second. But because I want you to be a part of a website that alerts you to swarms is called B-S-W-A-R-M-E-D dot-O-R-G.

It's a national program free to sign on and register when you're a beekeeper. Some bee clubs are signing on to that website and I think they're paying extra to establish a club presence. And what that means is when there's an alert for a swarm in your area, club membership gets the alerts first. So if you just sign them on the website though and somebody who finds a swarm somewhere reports it to the website, That's the toughest part of it, is getting the general public to know that that exists and to not pay some exterminator $390 to come out and spray them with glue on a tree branch. True story. Register, get free bees, and start your year with colony bees that cost you nothing,

and you can learn their biology and play around with them. Now, what I have said and what I continue to say, if it comes a time when you need to buy a queen, Sometimes I get queens just for cakes and giggles to do tests and experiments that I want to do. I'm never in a position, luckily for me, where I need queens to survive as a beekeeper. With 43 colonies of bees out there and my desire to have only 10, I'm not worried. And the stress is gone because I'm not worried about waking up one spring day and finding that I have no bees left, which happened to a lot of beekeepers last year.

but let's say I'm getting a queen I order from bee weaver there are Purdue ankle biters there are all these different types of bees out there now people are raising and selling survivor stock and around every corner there's someone selling bees so you don't have to buy bees but my point is if you are going to spend money on a queen whose genetics by the way this is what can happen. I know this doesn't seem very coherent. So you decided you're going to buy a package,

you're going to buy a queen. And then the queen is of these great genetics. And by the way, if you go to my website or the YouTube channel and you look at the bee inspection, what to expect when you get inspected by a state beekeeper? They give you the option. Do you want me to do might roll tests on your bees? Absolutely.

He tested. every single colony I had. The biggest number of mites of any of them was one mite. And I was using nothing but beeweaver stock then. So it was doing fantastic, but let me explain what happened later. New beekeepers showed up in my area very close to me and altered my genetics. So in other words, if your genetics are going to be shifted the minute they supersede the queen or there's a swarm and she leaves, your genetics just drop instantly. So it takes a very long time.

That was my long game and still is. I'm not giving up, although the evidence is just too strong against me. But I just flood my area with my drones, with my bees, and I hope that all my nearby beekeeper friends get my stock and that way the following spring. See, this is the long game. Their drones will be what my new queens mate with,

and on it goes. But say you spent all the money for this nice queen and then they supersede. So you get a year out of the queen maybe, a full season. And then once she's superseded or replaced, you can hopefully collect her from her bivouac location and hive her up again and still preserve some of those genetics. But once they reproduce, once there's a replacement queen, these traits shift so rapidly that unless you're in an isolated area, it's almost not doable. You have to win over all the other beekeepers around you. So for new beekeepers who don't want a specific kind of bee, although I understand the desires to be treatment free, start with, and here's an advantage to you. So start with a swarm that you can collect. Once you've got the swarm, once they're

established, once they're brooded up, once they're doing fantastic, then don't buy a whole package, that's what costs the big money. Get a queen for $25. Whatever, you know, they charge based on, you know, what kind of year they had too. Queen breeders, they either have a lot of queens or a few, but it's always cheapest to just buy a queen and then remove the queen that's in your package that you may not like, but you may learn that the queen that you have, survivor stock from a winter, wherever you live, locally adapted, can do extremely well. And if she's doing well, then you don't need to buy one. So it's kind of, I think that's the best way to go.

I'm kind of deciding while I'm talking about this. I think for Julie, catch a swarm, see how they're doing. If you don't like them, buy a queen, $25 or $30, hive the queen. And after you've removed, the queen that's in the colony, put her in a nucleus hive as an insurance policy, just in case they reject the queen, and introduce her with the queen introduction cage and all that, and you'll be good to go.

Watch what happens. I want to hear from Julie in the spring of 2006. Question number four comes from Palooza Party. That's the YouTube channel name Palooza Party. Not sure why a mouse guard would be necessary on that structure, slant design. Question mark. And what are we talking about? This is a video that I just posted this past week.

The AZ-style beekeeping with Langstroth frame. insulated building by APAVARE. And APA-V-E-E-R-T-E. And AP-I-V-E-R-T-E. So, and that was at the North American Honeybee Expo. And I met with the owner of that company. We walked around and talked about the features. And people have a lot of ideas about how that system will and will not work.

The comment section on that video is pretty interesting to me. And there's a lot of pushback because, because some people think it, you know, they want the AZ hive purebred, not the AZ Langstroth hybrid, which this is. So part of it was we walked around to the front and there were mouse guards, flip up, flip down mouse guards. And because it's the front of a building, the flat front, but it is wood, by the way. So this comment from Palooza Party seems right. In other words, it's on the front of a building. How's a mouse getting up there?

let me tell you something about deer mice. I spent a lot of time staring at them. When I have been challenged by another animal, I make a study of it, an extensive study. I observe them for long periods of time. And I use camera surveillance and everything else, day and night, but they're nocturnal. Deer mice can go straight up a vertical surface. What kind of vertical surfaces? Well, they go straight up a tree, like it's horizontal. They pop corn around the yard so fast, they almost move too fast for the cameras to catch the action and they go straight up a brick wall straight up a concrete wall straight up rough cut lumber and straight up plywood which is very interesting to me now most buildings outbuildings sheds and things like that have lots of little rough surfaces

for them to get their little tiny feet their little claws into so they can climb straight up there's no hesitation they go straight up fast so that's why they're there now i think if you probably you wouldn't need it if but this almost counts as a mouse guard if you put some kind of sheet metal on the front or some super slick surface on the front of the building and then like it had a space that it had to cover to get on it would act as a predator guard and you wouldn't get mice in there the mouse has to get up there but they have these little extensions for the entrances of the mouse gets all of it they start chewing and they try to get in that's another reason for

paying attention to your beehives because someone else said because I've told everyone you know for years now a 3 eighths inch opening an insurance reducer at 3 eighths of an inch high is your mouse guard that you don't need a mouse guard after that and then someone else said yeah but mice can chew wood right but they don't do it all in a night you need to be negligent for an extended period of time for a mouse to chew all the the way into a beehive on your watch so you need to start roving around and making sure that if you see mouse damage because i also did that i have these little three eighth of an inch spacers and there that's b space by the way and i put little copper plates down onto the spacer and then i use fender

washers to secure them to the front of the hive if there's evidence that a mouse begins to work the entrance reducer and uh So let's copper, nothing gets through that. And then again, I don't need mouse cards. And now I can clean out the entrances. So I'm planning ahead. But I've never had a mouse chew in and get in on my watch. So you need to be diligent.

Get out there, middle of winter, and see what's going on with your hives. See what might be chewing into them. By the way, all my hives are on stands. All of my stands are well off the ground because I'm at skunk height. I don't want skunks to be able to eat my beef. this year was a total success keeping skunks from eating my bees. Then when the snowfall comes, for those who have hives sitting on the ground, that's a whole different story. Because you can't often see the entrances when the snow piles up and it also is already on the ground, which encourages

rodents to move in underneath of your hives and also gives them plenty of time and access to continually chew away at the entrance. I have never had Yeah, I've never even known a beehive that I sat on the ground. Because I knew early on that setting wood on the ground increases humidity, increases the rot of your bottom board, and provides easy access to everything from ants to mice, and voles and moles underneath, and then, of course, everything else. Just saying.

Now we'll go on to question number five. At S-R-A-E-15-03. That's the YouTube channel name. Hi, Fred. when you were talking about the slatter rack you commented you're still using those and some of your colonies just curious about that comment are you not using them as much so the slatter rack thing keeps coming up I have them on 10 colonies I haven't bought any new ones I always seen it in the back of my mind I think I'm going to make some because I like the space but I'm not I'm not phasing them out they're still here I still like them and And so I plan to use them. If you want to use this ladder rack, we've already explained it. But I have, you know, fallen back a little bit on using them.

It's still good. If you have them. Also, remember, last week I used this ladder rack as a spacer on top for a feeder shim. So they actually double as a feeder shim, and you can put a clear lusite piece over the top. If you're using fondant packs and things like that, that's the perfect spacer. You don't even have to build a feeder shim. pretty sweet question number six comes from Derek Campbell and it says I love the project we'll be doing it

inside the rapid round as that's what I have do you think the bees may favor the sugar brick alone because they have become used to the sugar syrup recipe for the last two months and this is Chambersburg Pennsylvania so for this question we're talking about the experiment and thank you by the way for those of you who wrote and said or onboard, you're going to do it. We're going to find out with sugar bricks with a sugar candy that we press together. We're going to find out what the bees prefer.

So now we're talking about with Derek a rapid round. This is a rapid round. Rapid rounds go on top of your hive, on top of your insulated inner cover. If you notice, there's a little piece that projects right down here. And if you're going to set that on an insulated inner cover from, let's say, B-smart designs, you're going to need a very elaborate piece of kit like this this is standard three quarter inch stocks got a two inch diamond hole in it This sits on it takes up the space and now sits right on the insulated cover or your double bubble Whatever you have that's how you do that so we get that out of the way

Now this this will be a fun test because I've also been watching the bees eat candy So what do I look if you've got this? Oh, it was interesting that when I looked at this up it's already marked inside somehow it's amazing sugar only sugar with the essential oils sugar with essential oils and protein in the form of pollen substitute now when it comes to this and then of course with this off these come up through the center and they go all over in here do they get out in the rest of the area they do not because there's a cover here so you get to check up on them see what they're eating but you mark it off in thirds and we just want to find out are you wasting

money getting additional products into it and what do the bees want what will the bees consume first so they go with just sugar now the other thing is with the sugar and the essential oils and the proteins i want you to not just come up with your own formula i think it would be best if you find a proven formula that's already being proposed. So at Betterbee, for example, they sell a megaby, pollen substitute. And they also have instructions on how to mix that up into a syrup and things like that to supplement sugar. So if you would make sure and find an established recipe to follow to make your candy blocks that you drop in here, because once you make them and press them and everything, I'm going to give you the very fundamental formula is 14 cups of granulated sugar or 14 parts,

however you want to say it, and then one cup of hot water. So 14 parts and then one part hot water. You mix that up and it's like damp sand. It's almost like kinetic sand. I don't know if you've got grandkids or if you've played with that. But then you smash that down, rolling pin, whatever you need to do to make that into a very firm, offering. And then you need to have a formula that has essential oils like honeybee healthy, pro-health, beekeeper's choice. There are all of these things too that need to be consistent

in whatever you're offering to your bees. And of course the protein mixes would have then the essential oil like beekeeper's choice. And then they would have the dry pollen sub in there in the quantity that's recommended in a set recipe from the cellar. And then we will find out what do the bees use? Because the problem is when we put just one thing in there, it's kind of like chickens, only not because chickens are birds. But anyway, we feed the chickens-free choice. So I do not always know which chicken needs more calcium in its diet.

So we have the full ration for chickens to produce their eggs. and in pellet form because then the chickens can't pick through it and decide what parts of the feed do they want, what parts don't they want, they have to eat the full pellet. But if they need calcium, then we have crushed oyster shells in a separate spot inside the coop so they can go to get that. Those that need it, go get it. It's not forced on them. Then we also have granite grit. So we have little chunks of granite, because of the ground. remember the chickens they have gizzards they don't have teeth they can't chew things so their gizzard does all the chewing for them and they need to eat pebbles to do that so we have granite grit not every chicken needs the same amount of granite grit they might have found pebbles outside somewhere

so offering everything free choice makes it better because now the bird understands what its own nutritional needs or what kind of calcium it might be lacking and they go like that so for the bees same thing what do they need what the bees need we can forecast it pretty solidly they need carbohydrates that's what gets them through winter what's the best carbohydrate for the bees going through winter honey that they've stored themselves and it is a little bit alarming to me i see some new beekeepers pulling all the honey off of their hives i blame peer pressure for the that. Because they pull it all away, because they need to be able to tell their friends, I have a nucleus hive and I got 600 pounds of honey off it this year because I'm such an amazing beekeeper.

Now that's an exaggeration, but that is the kind of peer pressure that we have. And then somebody else hits the corner and goes, my bees did not produce enough honey. I didn't take any off. I left it for the bees, which is actually probably a good move. Now, when they, end up without enough resources to get them through honey and this differs wherever you are. In fact, it can seem backwards. I am in the snow belt. There are places within my state that climate-wise are very different from where I live. They have a warmer climate. Some of them see almost no snow. You would think their bees would consume fewer winter resources and fewer. or carbohydrates going through winter than my bees do here in the frozen northwest it's not true when the

bees go into a state of torpor their metabolisms are running low therefore their calorie consumption is also low when they get clustered and they stay clustered they're not consuming as many resources as those bees in the southeast just for example that act like accordions The warm day comes along, they all expand out, they all start doing things. Where are the resources for those bees? There aren't any outside yet. So breaking cluster, going into action, is like you're a contractor and all your day workers show up and there's 50 people standing around and the supplies don't show up for them to do the work.

You're paying all those day workers with no gains. So the honeybees, when they expand, they burn energy. They're flying. Flying equals dying. In other words, they're wearing out their wings. The bees are wearing themselves out. Now they'll fly out and they get things like water. That's also when you see them at your bird feeder, getting dust from bird feeders because they're that desperate. Now that does indicate that they're missing some protein. So the thing of it is, in the wintertime, when you're in a warmer climate, you actually may need more carbohydrates for your bees. That's where emergency resources.

That's what's on top of the hive. Insurance policy. If you've ever opened one of these up and found it with nothing left in it, and these bees manage your burns through a lot of resources, and then it's on you, when you look down into the hive and they're all clustered into a corner in this neck of the woods, it would be kind of the eastern corner of the hive away from the entrance. So towards the back side and towards the east is where these,

death clusters can be found and cells are occupied with bees and their little abdomens are contracted and they have starved to death in those cells and here's the frustrating part at the other side of the hive will be frames full of capped honey now they've run out of food but if there were resources above them they would have moved up in here and gotten those resources when we get those weather break days I wanted to spend time explaining that because new beekeepers or old beekeepers when your bees end up at the very top of your hive and there's a lot of winter yet to go it's bad news now if you're out there checking on your bees and you find out that they are using up all those resources.

And for me now, I've shifted away from sugar and I've shifted into the high-of-life fondant because I can put a five-pound chunk of fondant on there and it's a place and forget kind of thing for me. I have a lot of time before the bees, even if that were their only resource and winter, it takes them a long time to consume that and get through it. So those are insurance policies against

finding a starved-out colony in spring that is 100% your fault. So we are doing this project. and we're going to get just a consensus. I highly anticipate they're going to be consuming the sugar by itself. And then the next question is whether essential oils or essential oils and protein become what they go after next to. Because don't forget that your nurse bees,

the winter fat-bodied worker bees, they already have protein in their system. So they've already got stored in their digestive system and their fat bodies and everything else. and that's so that they can continue to provide nutritional resources for a continuing tiny cluster of brood all through winter until spring. So that's what we're doing. Can't wait. See how it goes.

Although in my head, I think I already know how it's going to go. Question number seven comes from Wendy. I know how you have concerns about microplastics with plastic insulated hives. I actually don't remember ever saying that. says I like the Apamey, but I'm seeing such good results in mine, even compared to insulated long laying, that I may be switching to that hive body moving forward. That being said, I'm starting to worry about early spring swarming as temps are mild

throughout winter here in Seattle. The low is rarely lower than 20 and almost no snow to speak of. I don't want to start inspecting too late and miss a swarm. but temps often in the 40s and 50s even into May when would you start inspecting given all of that so inspecting and modifying your hive those are different things so when the weather breaks all beekeeping as people will say is local and it's very true so it's not just the temperature break that comes along that provides your bees an opportunity to start building brood and start massing the numbers to take advantage of the incoming and oncoming nectar flow where you live? Some people have a difficult time forecasting when the strongest nectar flow will be where they live.

I'm going to give you a website to look at to get that information. It is called B-S-C-A-P-E-E-S-C-A-P-O-R-G. When you look at that, it shows when your dearth period is likely to be, and also resources in your area, how abundant they are. So what happens is, and beekeepers, although this year I was really good at it. I don't want to brag, but I was ahead of that wave. Because by the time the dandelions are blooming, so much has been going on in those hives already that we didn't know about

because there's other resources that you often just don't see. This is where landing board observations on those warm days are critical and keeping really good notes also critical. When you see a whole bunch of pollen coming in, and their tree pollen leads the pack. They're also getting nectar from trees, too. So before things are going on on the ground, they're already working things up.

We want to see, for example, drones in spring. That's a key thing, too. When you start seeing drones flying around, then we have the potential for swarming because they can replace the queen, and the queen can then get made. with a mature drone that's out flying around, heading for a drone congregation area

and ready to mate with a virgin queen. There are so many different things going on other than length of daylight, temperatures, and things like that, because swarming is reproduction. Reproduction with bees occurs on that level when there is an abundance of resources and enough bees to continue that colony after the initial, or what we call a prime swarm, happens in spring.

And so trying to head that off means expanding your colony. This is where people start breaking up the brood area. This is where people like to practice the Demoree method of decongesting the brood area by pulling brood frames, putting them up above a queen excluder. this is where I like to get my bees to move down into that lower box because most of the hives going through winter here are in two boxes and we put a queen excluder in spring between the bottom box and the second box move the queen under that on a nice warm day and then we get nurse bees following her down while the rest of the nurse bees are up above finishing up the brood that's already in production in the box above I don't rotate my boxes this relieves congestion and also pushes the queen to remain in the bottom box and expand the brood down there. And those that are above the queen excluder that emerge from their cells, then go down through the queen excluder and into the bottom box. Now, in the past, I never used a queen excluder.

So for those who don't want to use a queen excluder, here's the thing. I keep the entrance small. I don't provide upper venting or an upper entrance. When that happens, the bees naturally move their brood as the temperature rises and the days get longer they move their brood down towards this small entrance and then they backfill behind them with honey production okay so if you have venting up above the incentive for them to move down because they don't need to move their brood towards ventilation anymore because now it exists up above so there this is the difficulty with new beekeepers and asking different people who have very firm methods that have worked year after year and that's just it the different methods work and you have to follow then

the configurations that support that way of managing your bees so that's how i do it and then you have to have honey supers added in time again to give them a place to store the honey during a heavy nectar flow and then you can do all of these things and the bees bees will reproduce anyway. So I'm not saying 100% they will, but here's what you can do. And I'll mention it again because we mention it all the time. If they start building queen cells. So how frequently should you be inspecting? In the early spring, when you get warm days and by warm, I mean 60 degrees Fahrenheit or better, nice sunny day. When you're not too disruptive to the bees and let's face it, every time you get in a hive, you're disrupting it.

So we want to find out if they're actually building queen cells. If they are, if they start building queen cells, you head off a swarm by removing the existing queen. And you can do that ahead of time, you know, before they're even finished building those queen cells. Once they're doing it, you take that queen away, their insurance policies are in those queen cells, you produce a nucleus hive with that queen. And then if things fall through with the parent colony, you decongested it. you did a brood break you move the queen to a safe space with a brood of with a frame of brood to keep her going and now you can later bring her back if you want to and if they fail but you could also be going around

squashing all of those queen cells removing their ability to replace the queen and then once you see that there's no more brood and no queen cells and you have to be very very very careful in your search for queen cells. They have a tendency to really mask them well at the edges of your brood frames. But when you're 100% positive and they don't have any more queen cells and there's no eggs or anything else in there, then you know there's no other queen, then you can bring your queen back.

So we did a brood break. We reduced production in that colony. And now you brought your queen back and you had it off a swarm. It doesn't mean that two weeks after that they won't start. start all over again, but you can continue to control them in this way and keep them from swarming until the risk of swarming has passed. So that always catches, even the old timers, people with 40, 50 years of beekeeping under their belt, swarms catch them off guard and off they go and listen to people's methods and find out which one you want to try the most.

And we were talking about horizontal hides. This kind of manipulation, with horizontal hives. I was talking with the owner of Beersville Bees. He makes a fantastic, insulated horizontal hive. So I was looking at his kit and all the gear that everybody's got a follower board. I want the follower board to have a queen excluder in it. So in other words, there'll be a follower board and another follower board, which is your queen excluder. And that gives us manipulation, right? So we can move the escapeboard, I'm sorry, the follower board that has an skateboard in it can move bees out of something so that we can pull them out right you can also have another one with a queen excluder that lets you then keep your queen

on one side and pull brood frames and put them on the other side of that and bring empty frames back and provide more laying space where that queen is and then that is kind of a loosely configured Demoree method for horizontal hives so we're pulling brood that's capped and things like that out of the brood area making sure the queen is over there and putting her on the opposite side of a queen excluder that is built into a follower board that's internal. So I need a regular follower board that's solid. I need a bee escape board that can be put in anywhere that I want to get the bees out of honey

soupers at any time. And I also want another one that has a queen excluder on it so I can move brood on the other side, decongest the brood area, and give the queen more laying space. and then once they emerge from their cells, they move through the queen excluder, and we're back in business. So it's the same kind of control that you have with vertical hives with a queen excluder,

moving the queen below, only now the queen excluder is in a follower board-sized frame. So, next one, number eight. This is more a statement than a question. This is from one shoe. I think that's the way you say it. W-O-N-E-S-H-O-O. That's the YouTube channel name.

So it says Pro Nuke will hold five frames. deep, medium, or small, not very expensive. And this came up because we were talking about the Hive Butler toat. Someone had said, wouldn't it be great if Hive Butler made a five-frame tote that would fit into smaller cars, be easier to carry around, and that's where this came from. So as soon as one shoe sent this to me, I bought one. So that's what today's, you know, thumbnail image was.

This is a pro nuke. Now what's it designed for? And remember I said what a nuke is. A nuke is a nucleus hive. This is pretty darn portable. And it's for nucleus bees. Now I didn't like them in the past. Let's be honest.

And I shouldn't make judgments like that. Because I just look at it, it's plastic. I'm not going to put bees in this. I'm not going to raise a colony of bees in one of these. But if we're just looking at it as a way to store frames or and I recommend it's for after you've extracted your honey and or if you want to transport some frames to go and collect a swarm or something like that and bring them back and you have very limited space this thing works so I toss some frames in here this

also has some interesting features so this side if you notice this is close the bees can't get out on the flip side when you push it up it's actually an opening and the bees can go in and out through here and it's all vented this is inexpensive these costs $19.49 a piece they have these frame rests that they put in here these little blue jobs very easy but it has a little raised section that keeps your frames from moving side to side holds deeps mediums and shallows these are comf that has a spider web in it that's pretty funny comb honey frames is going to get out the line here why not look at different frames foundation heavy waxed medium frame and this is a fun one to North American

Honeybee Expo this is the 21st B frame for comb honey and it has little passages in the corners this is the heaviest waxed plastic frame I've ever picked up is heavy duty if you had a whole palette of those you got some weight this is another 21st B frame this is a 4.9 millimeter cell so again they all go in here and they'll take a deep these are for making comb honey these are fun this one says it's from running wild apiaries.com So those are fun to have, but anyway, I just wanted to show that it holds all the different frame types. So here's the thing.

You can stack them three high if they're full, so that's not bad. They fit into your hive. I do want to talk about it a little bit if you're using it for frame storage. I also have these lids, and you should notice something about it. It has a vented and a non-vented side. So if you look right at the lip there, I believe that one says non-vented. and then this side over here if you look at that lip it right in the center says vented so this for me does not replace the hive butler but it is handy in a pinch it's lightweight

it has holes all over it including drainage holes and if you notice a vented and non-vented side when you look at the lid here there's an opening here you view that little label vented on this side if we wanted to close it and i recommend if you're going for drawn comb storage go to the nonvented side then you close it up now the other cool thing is because this is it with the lid pretty versatile pro nuke and it says made in usa by bee keep i'm sorry let me spell this for you b pros dot com b e e hyphen p ros dot c Now if you're going to put this in storage with all the vent holes in accesses this means that wax moths can lay their eggs they can get in here. So I want you to do some things. Desicant

packs. These are by wide dry rechargeable. These are the 50 gram. I would put two of those right on top. Close this up in the non-vented size. It closes up really nice. Then you have the whole pack like this but keep in mind you're still vented you've got drain holes in the bottom okay so we've got vents there too so I want you to if you are just looking for guidance on this and what my suggestion would be rechargeable desiccant packs in here and then I would bag these so you don't have to bag them individually you can stack three of them together put a big industrial trash bag over it close them all up and you've got a small tote for five frames of any size, shallow medium, up to deeps, and you can store them for $19.49 a piece. And I bought a whole box of them because I'm thinking of lots of different things

I can do with them. So they're not insulated at some thin plastic that is not something to put out in your bee yard to keep bees in all winter long. But once summer hits and things like that, you could use that as your utility, you know, for moving, things around when you're moving frames it's a few frames at a time stuff like that so I can see that it would actually be pretty good and so you know I shouldn't have been so judgmental the first time I saw it and I could also see where if you decide to be someone who's producing and selling nucleus colonies of bees and $19.49 cents a piece they are way under selling the wooden nukes that I like to have I like the wooded

ones personally just because if I keep a colony in it the colony succeeds it's not a temporary nucleus hive anymore it becomes a full-blown hive and I just start stacking them up so they work which is again something you can't do with that they're designed for a single level single new five frames max that's it beginning to end right there so if you had a small swarm to go collect or something like that I could see it working for that too because it is well ventilated and remember the top as a vented non-vented side if you're going to collect and transport a swarm shift it to the vented side put that right in your car you get a transport system so I want to thank

one shoe that's O N-E-S-H-O-O for bringing that to my attention because I bought them I bought them from Betterby you should go there too you should buy them and tell them you want the Frederick Dunn discount and end up paying exactly the same as everybody else because there is no Better Be discount for my viewers. Question number nine comes from Uncle Junior 52. Can I use OA dribble in New Jersey in November? I've not spent the money for a OA vapor machine yet.

Absolutely you can. Now, I already responded to Uncle Junior 52. You just want to get the warmest day. Always, when you're doing a might-aside, whatever the delivery method is. It has to be an approved delivery method, an approved formula that you use. I'm going to recommend Easy Ox

for your Exalic Acid. They have the tablets and they have the powder. Easy Ox. Check them out. Cheaper than ApiBi-Oxel, which is what people use to have to buy, which is still for sale. I'm sure it's good stuff.

Easy Ox, approvals. approved, ready to go, good stuff. And so, yeah, you can do the dribble. Now remember that when you do the dribble, you have to open the hive to get into it. So, but it's not as expensive as exhalic acid vaporization. The efficacy is really high. If you look at scientific beekeeping.com, is it calm? Anyway, that's Randy Oliver's website.

He's got the formulas for mixing it up. You always have to follow the label and dosing. But, yeah, it's very easy to do. a single treatment, you'll be done. And I think even on the label it says just must be above freezing or something like that. The temperatures are really low. Lower than I personally would be opening my hive. So in this neck of the woods, if we had a day, you know, coming up or it was going to hit 58 degrees or something like that, that would be the day I'd be doing the dribble. You have to do the seams of bees in the brood area. So you have to access that. So that's one thing that works.

So that was question number nine and that's the end of today's questions. We're in the fluff section or the plan of the week. So first of all, finish processing all of your honey. People are writing and asking me about they've got honey in buckets. It's separating and doing all these weird things. I don't store honey in buckets. I put the honey into small jars as soon as possible. Just because it's easier to manage, you can protect it, you put it in storage, you're good to go.

So my recommendation is finish processing all the honey that you've taken off now that we're all indoors and the weather's turning bad. Scrape down and store your frames and boxes because what happens is springtime comes and dressing off your frames is very important. They get propolis on the little shoulders on the frames and that makes them take up more space in the hive. And when you got to put them all together, you end up jamming them together just to fit them in a box. So scrape propolis and beeswax and stuff like. that off the top bottom and the sides of your frames just get everything ready for spring and put them in storage set aside boxes and equipment that need repair look at the gaps and how we regular some of them are depending on how your boxes are made you can actually just box playing

those things down a little bit so look at the things that need repair is all i'm saying this always catches this off guard well i'm speaking for myself in spring you're run around looking for stuff that you need because there's a swarm and you have to get your boxes together and everything. So if you've done the work in the wintertime, you can feel good about it. It's all set aside. It's ready to go and do those repairs. Also, don't forget, this is very important too. You might want to subscribe to this YouTube channel just so that you don't miss any upcoming videos. And where am I going to be tomorrow and the next day at the Empire State? Honey producers banquet. That's right. They made a huge mistake and they invited me to come and talk there.

I have three presentations to give. So if you're going to be there, I hope that you'll come up and say hello. Double check your emergency feed. So whatever you're putting on, I know some people are doing this experiment with sugar this year. That'll be fun to do. I recommend, of course, I have life fondant because it has performed so well. And the feedback I get from everyone, there's been no negative feedback. And that is something where you can get a discount at Fred 10 if you go to Hive Live to get it. I realize that a lot of other beekeepers and businesses have discount codes too, so you can use whoever you want to, but I highly recommend Fred 10. Always ask for the Frederick done discount wherever you shop, because this is funny. People have emailed me and said that they

mentioned a discount, there wasn't one, but then they gave them one, which is really funny. I don't have to mention the name of those companies because I don't want to hold them to it, but I do appreciate that. I was surprised to find that some people put in orders and they put the Fred Dunn discount in the comment section of placing their order and they got stuff like free shipping out of the blue, which I didn't even know they offered, which is really funny. Always ask, what's the worst? The worst thing that could happen is you pay exactly the same as everyone else.

And don't forget, for those of you who are doing exhalic acid vaporization, roughly two weeks from now is historically the smallest amount of brood in your hives. Therefore, a single treatment can knock down up to 96% of the pro-destructor mites that are in the dispersal phase inside that hive. So I hope that works. I want to thank you for being here today and thank you for watching and hope that you have a fantastic weekend ahead, you and your bees. Thanks for being here.

Thank you.