The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Q&A LIVE Chat Edition

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

This is the audio track from the LIVE Chat YouTube video from June 27th, 2025  https://youtube.com/live/ehAmMlEIPPQ?feature=share

So hello, welcome, happy Friday. Glad everyone is here. We'll get to some of your questions here in a second, but I have to do my normal blur to start off. So happy Friday. Today is Friday, June the 27th, and this is back here to be keeping questions and answers. Episode number 312.

I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be live edition because it's the last Friday of the month of June. Next Friday, of course, independent state for the United States. States. So I'm glad everyone's here. I have looked at some of your comments, and I do see that we have questions, and I'm going to start off with those, but first let me give a rundown of what's going on outside. Rainstorm right now. Thunder, lightning, wind. That's right, 82.9 degrees Fahrenheit, that's 28 Celsius, 8.7 mile per hour winds, constant. So this has actually been a swarm, for those of you, it's a swarm day, because, as Keith mentioned, and he's here today, he's the bouncers, so don't act

up. This morning we had Swarms Flying, and that's where I made the intro. If you weren't here in the waiting room before today's chat started, you missed it. You didn't get to see how creative I was with a super slow-mo. But I'm glad that Keith appreciated that. The UV index is zero. Of course, it's raining. It's overcast. So it can't get a sunburn today. 99% relative humidity, being that as pouring rain, it probably should be 100%. So anyway, that's pretty much it for that part and what's blooming in my neck of the woods. And what is my neck of the woods, the northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. So right now, Black-Eyed Sousins and other cone flowers are blooming already.

I don't think the bees pay much attention to those. They're really not all over them. It's no big deal. Milkweed. That is a heavy nectar flow here. So that has just started in the past few days. the bees are not missing that at all. They're all over it. Linden trees are partially blooming, so they're just kicking off. They're going to bloom for a couple of weeks. That's also known as

Basswood, by the way, so it's really going to kick off a big nectar flow there. White clover, sweet clover, that's all being visited by the bees. But guess what? They're not on it very much because they're cruising the raspberries. Raspberries grow wild out here, and they are all over those two, wild roses. I guess they get a little off of that. And, but the raspberries are really going well. We have buckwheat here. Buckwheat is not being visited by the bees very much. But guess what else was kind of cool in the water lily blossoms?

So the water lilies themselves are visited by bees. What are they getting from those? It looks like they're loading up on the pollen. So I want to thank all of you for joining me today. I do have questions that were submitted during the past week. We're going to get to. If you have a question for me, please write it in all caps. so that I'll notice it.

Otherwise, I'm just going to make the assumption that you're talking to one another. And a lot of people are here saying what their temperatures are and things like that. But I'm going to start right off with Black Farm Apiary, who posted the first question for today. And that's from the live stream. Can I take my queen cells from my queenless starter hive, put them in a better be isolation cage, and put them in a queen right hive to finish them? Personally, I'm going to say I wouldn't recommend that. But this is a live totally unplanned.

It just happened to have this sitting next to me here. This is a double frame version of the queen isolation cage that better be cells. You can put two frames in it. The reason I'm showing this, because I did look at this before I started today's live chat, the key there is it's a queen right colony. So you already have a queen and the bees are taken care of it. If you put this in there with queen cells, you're, hoping they accept the cells because they don't have to.

The bees can turn on cells when they don't need them and they already like their queen, or it can encourage them to turn against their queen, because remember that your bees can go through those queen isolation cages, the workers get right in there, and it wouldn't make a good finisher. So what does make a good finisher for your bees, for your queens? It would have to be a colony that is queenless. So you could remove your current queen in a frame with brood and everything else, put in a nucleus hive and then use the primary hive for a finisher or better yet,

put your queen cells in separate isolation cages like that in a nucleus hive and then transfer a bunch of nurse bees in there to attend to them. That's what I would do. That would be, in my opinion, a little bit better. If that's not a satisfactory answer, we are live so you can ask me for a follow-up. So, oh, well, here's one. By the way, rainy acres, I'm going to take this question, even though it was not in all caps. It says, how far apart do screens need to be separated on a double screen board?

Okay, so the double screen board, also known as a Snell Grove board. Just happened to have one here. And that was a live question, by the way, so you should be impressed. And I have this equipment laying around. This is on half-inch thick stock. It's got a screen on each side. That might sound like overkill. We don't want their tongues to touch.

So if one bee has a tongue that's almost a quarter inch, they're not a quarter inch long. And by the way, some of the bees have longer tongues than others. So it depends on the line of bees you're working with. We don't want two bees to get on either screen and be able to touch tongues because it's the physical contact that gets them to transfer the queen's mandibular pheromone. So half an inch, according to that, right there. So I think that's good enough. Let's move along down the line. Do to do to do to do.

Thanks everyone for being here. Please put in all caps. Keith, thank you for that. Wildwood's Honey Farm is here. Sirius, bees, flowers, clover. Okay, and you guys are encouraged to talk to each other. It's no big deal. Black Farm, Aviary.

Doesn't a cloak board make the finisher Queen Wright. Now, okay, a cloakboard does not make it Queen Wright because a cloakboard is a solid divider. You basically create a two colonies separate from one another. So a cloakboard completely separates the two colonies, which means you've got a queenless colony on one half and a Queen Wright colony on the other. Those two cannot. If you've got just screen, like you've got in the Queen isolation cage, they have physical contact with each other. That's the problem. So there you go. No more questions. We're going to keep running going here. Question number one comes from Chris O. 6884. Bees are always poking around my old barn, which has lots of holes,

nooks, and crannies. I built a swarm catching box about 40 liters in size with some glass windows. It says so I can observe the scout bees inside. The box is mounted inside my barn with a hole cut through the siding to the outside. Anyway, a few years ago, swarm moved into my box, late one day, probably around seven. It was after several days of intense scouting, went to bed, thrilled to have caught a swarm, and when I got up the next morning, they went out and checked the box. There were no bees inside what the heck, it says. Turns out, they had moved out of the box and into the wall right under where the entrance to the box is located through a crack. I hadn't noticed. Nice.

vertical cavity between the inner and outer boards i was pretty disappointed queen and cluter would have been nice to have i don't feel like tearing up the barn walls so i just left them there for the rest of the summer and they built up nicely but it didn't make it through winter probably not enough still wonder why they didn't just choose the space in the first place well i actually if i didn't have to deal with the inspector here in the state of pennsylvania and our regulations which restrict the kind of highs that we can have um I would have a wall beehive. I would have a colony that just moved right into the way to be Academy,

and I would glass that up on the interior and let them go wild, but we have to have removal frames for inspection and all that good stuff. So, but it's pretty darn good. Next question here, John McNeil, how did the huge swarm go? Did you change configurations and add a medium instead of a full-size super so you can add a flow hive for the supervisor. Okay, so John, let's talk about the supervisor for a minute.

For those of you who that is, that's my grandson. He's 9. He's turning 10. He knows everything. Just ask him. He has enough beehives. He does not need another flow hive out there. And for those of you who may not know what we're talking about, there was an enormous swarm that wouldn't even move into the hive.

And they are in there now. It's the first time I've ever had one where there wasn't enough space. lack of space, cause them to move in and right back out. So instead of losing them, we use a queen Includer and we kept them inside the hive.

This is what that looks like. Queen Includer. And we set this right on the landing board. Once we know for sure the queen's inside the hive, we put this on there and they cannot abscond. But I had to, I couldn't even put that on there because the bees were piled on the front of the hive.

We posted that video this past week. And I added two deeps. That's something I've never done for starting a brand new swarm. The other complication was that the swarm was constantly increasing in numbers because we have so many bees in the area that they just kept joining up. And I thought they just were collecting on the front, even though we could see them moving in through the entrance. But then I inspected that bottom box and it had bees on every single frame.

I've never seen anything like that. And I've been at this for a little while. So the next move was to add the second deep. And I swapped configurations a couple of times. I decided I only wanted them to brood in the bottom box. I wanted some control. So I did put a queen excluder in between the boxes, added the second box.

And once I added the second box, they did move in. And once I got the queen inside, because that was the other manipulation, I had to get a hold of the queen, had to get her inside the hive, because then the rest of them would follow suit and go in and follow her pheromone. I did not want them to abscond, which they would have. So when I put the queen Includer on the front of the hive, right on the landing board, covering the entrance,

by the way, there's a lot of movement area in here, so they come out of the normal entrance. They move all around. Two things can't get through this, the queen and drones. Once I put that on, guess what? My wife came and got me again and said that they were swarming. and the air was full of bees, and I went out there. So I was too late to catch them leaving the hive, but it worked perfectly because guess who could not leave the hive?

It was the queen. She was stuck in there. So they all turned around, they all went back. So I had to keep them in the hive until I saw them investing in the infrastructure there. So that is the biggest swarm I've ever successfully hived as a single swarm. I should probably address that a little bit. It's not the biggest swarm I've ever collected, but the biggest swarm I ever hive together is one unit.

Because sometimes I'll take several swarm collection buckets, if it happens to be the everything BVAC, I'll bring several full-size 10-frame lankstroth boxes if it's a California hive vac, right? And then we'll separate them out. And then that way, I've got a manageable colony in one of those, and the one that's the noisy one, is the one without the queen, the ones that are calm and settled, that's ones with the queen.

And then I'll take part of that huge swarm, and I'll take them to another apiary and fortify other colonies with it. Because in the absence of a queen, they will move into any hive that's queen right. So I used to divide them up. But in this case, I'm trying to do something different this year. I'm trying to keep fewer colonies. So now they're larger than normal, where before we just let them swarm all over the place. But now we're trying to keep them together, keep the colonies large, and fewer colonies, and it seems to be working.

I don't want to jinx myself, but it worked. So they're in there. The queen Includer worked, and we can talk about other things at the end, too. I'm doing a top bar hive, which is proving a little bit challenging and getting the bees interested to go in, but I won them over, too. I can't say I won them over. I got them in there. I forced them in there because I captured the queen.

I put her in the top our hive. And once she's in there and the others were drawn in, I made my own queen and clitor. So I took two of these, Queen and clitor, which, by the way, that's just a name that I came up with. It doesn't mean anything, and they're not sold that way. So if you Google it, you probably won't find anything.

I took two of these. I took the new Gorilla Ultra waterproof wood glue, and I glued two of them together, and this is what I came up with. Why would I do this? So when I made this for the top bar hive, which I got from Natalie B, from B mindful, I glued these up.

This isn't the one, of course. This is just showing you what I did. The one that I did is on the hive right now. Because there's just holes in the side of the top bar hive, and I caught the queen, and I put her inside the top bar hives. So now I could get the rest of the bees in there and to keep her from coming back out,

I put this on the front, and I put a bar clamp on it to hold it on there. Now they can't abscond because I've had two good-sized colonies abscond from at our hive, and now that's not going to happen. So, Queen and Cluder, welcome home. It's important for the bees to read that they're welcome to live in your hive, or they may depart. And that thing in the south where they use the pineapple.

Once they, I guess they put the pineapple out there, you're no longer welcome, or the pineapples there, and you're welcome, and then when they remove it, you're supposed to leave. Okay, let's get back, oh, my gosh. So here we go. To do, to do, John, what did the huge swarm do? So huge swarm is there.

They're strong, they're settled. And I actually, because I saw pollen coming in, took the queen excluder off, queen includer. Sorry, I'm going to train myself. Matthew Wood says, I recently asked Bob Benny about this, and he was not familiar with it. This is Matthew Wood. Okay, oh, the strong microbials.

Matthew Wood, I know you talked about strong microbials a while back. I saw their semi-new product, B-bytes. Have you used them or know anyone that has? Yes, I've used them. So B-bytes, what are they? If only I had a couple here. This will seem like a setup because these are B-bytes. What are they?

Spirilina patties. Who cares about spirulina? Strong microbials does. probiotics. Anyway, spirulina is great stuff for the bees. In fact, if you just go to Google Scholar, you look up studies on spirulina, honeybee health, microbiome of the gut and everything else, no great surprise. It's a fantastic thing. The issue is delivery to the bees. A few years back, I don't know if it was from microbials that came out with it, but they generated patties of spirulina. And it was a disaster. Let's be on.

honest. The patties came and they dried out so quick. They were like little rocks right away. And to be honest, I just didn't use them. So what they did is they've made these bee bites. So this is one per hive and they put them in. Now can I prove that they took off and did great things? No, I can't. Did they eat them? Yes, they did. Did they digest them or did they remove them outside the hive? They digested them. How do I know? Because it was in their abdomens. How do I know that? because the same way Randy Oliver knows things, he smashes their guts to see what's inside of them. So powered by algae, it says, they work.

What can I say? I put these in my observation hives, by the way, which don't need them because they're just worn machines. They do great on their own. So can I say that they would do markedly better with B-bytes than without them? I would say if I had a colony that was struggling that needed a resource boost or, If I was going to breed queens or something and I had a finishing hive that needed to make sure that they were maximizing their nutrition, just like chickens.

If you're going to feed chickens, boost them for, you know, egg production that's going to be hatching eggs. And we use kitten chow and stuff like that to boost her proteins. Kind of like that. I would say if you had a little anemia going or you had a dearth period and you needed to boost a colony for some specific reason, those would be good. So, change configuration to medium. Oh, by the way, it says here, instead of a full-size super, so you can add the float. Now, I did not put a medium. I'm going to leave it a double deep.

The colony is too big. The colony is filling 20 frames. It's covering 20 frames. Moving on. All right. So Bob Benny did not know about that. That's interesting. Bob Benny's a great guy.

I'm happy to be. familiar with something that he's not, but he is knee-deep in all the new tech all the time. Here's another cap from David Oligney. How many Formic Pro pads over the brood would you suggest in a long Langstroth hive with a large population one or two pads? Okay, now this is easy. So the long Langstroth hive. How many pads?

Formic Pro is the current form. for that, which we could not use right now, so I should mention that because it's frankly just too hot. So the long length troth, here's the way to look at it. Instead of, you know, per brood box, we've got horizontal frames. So if we've got eight or ten frames, that would match your eight or ten frame brood box. So every eight or ten frames would be considered a brood box. It's rare for mine to go more than, I don't know, 12 or 13 frames of brood that would be huge so usually like right now my long langstroth hive is only occupying about eight frames of brood therefore it would treat it like a single brood box right so that would be if you're doing the one after another treatment single pad treatment it would be just one of them

and then 10 days later another one follow the label of course and otherwise you just double up on that put to them together and open all vents by the way for follow all their guidelines. But the taps right now work against that, but just count frames. So it would be 10 to 10, 8 to 8 and so on. So with all the honey further down, that's not that big a deal, and it works really well. Moving on, what do we have here? This is from Julia. I collected a small swarm two days ago. I have the queen locked in with a queen excluder on the entrance. We should call it a queen include her because she's in we're keeping her in now and uh on the entrance in case she's a virgin how long can he keep her locked up safely so that's a good point if she's a virgin and she flew with

a swarm and this happens a lot so there's a couple things we want to turn loose so let's talk about again what we're somebody's just now joining us this is what we're talking about these are entrance deals this goes on a standard 10 frame i don't know if they make the eight frame solid bottom board entrance uh queen include her so Once it's on there, we need our Virgin Queen to be able to fly. So we want to make sure that they're not going to depart and abscond because they're a little sketchy. And so three days is pretty good.

When you see them investing in the hive, when they are bringing in pollen or whatever, and if you've got a Virgin Queen, they're not going to be doing that. But they do invest in infrastructure. So you see them cleaning up, hauling out dead bees, consuming resources, building comb. When they're doing any of those things, they're invested, you can pull this out.

So then you take that off and she can mate her mating flights. So within two weeks, if they're not gone, if they don't have gone in the first four or five days, you got them. They're staying. So that's it. They'll be fine. And also any drones that happen to zip in there on you can also get out.

Sometimes I look at this. If I see a bunch of drones in the morning piled up behind it, I'll just pick it up, let them fly away, close it back down. The queen's not going to rush the gates just because you open that for a second. So I hope that helps. This is Suzanne. It says, can you give a little update on the Camo Jojo bird feeder? The Camo Jojo bird feeder camera is, first of all,

I don't know how this is going to help people that are doing beekeeping. I am using it to observe. There's a new version of it. I like these cameras because they are super sensitive. The audio is fantastic. You can listen to your beehives and the current one looks like a bird's face. The battery goes for a long time. It hooks into your Wi-Fi network. You can check it from your phone. If you've got a bee calling it, you're trying to keep tracks of. You can clamp this onto a landing board or support stand and observe. entrance and your landing board with that check it with your phone you can download the data the video quality is really good they stink at nighttime video they're the worst still photos are terrible

so the still imagery not worth it audio is the best for it beats my arlo cameras by far with the audio collection so other than that the battery lasts a long time you have to get it collect it take it in recharge it. That's another drawback. So that's it. Camo Chojo. Hi, Birdie, I think is the company. So let's see. What else are we looking at? Don't want to miss anybody. What is the worst? What, Carmine, worst advice? Let's see. Carmine Fiola says, Hi, Fred, what is the worst advice you've heard a beekeeper give to another beekeeper? that's kind of negative. What's the worst advice?

I've heard some silly things being told by beekeepers to other beekeepers before. But nothing comes to mind right away. Worst advice? I don't know. Nothing comes to mind right now. Oh, yeah, I'll give you some worst advice. Do not wear bee protective equipment. That's the worst advice.

I've seen a beekeeper give another beekeeper. It was some bee equipment, personal protective clothing, shaming. In other words, if somebody is wearing a bunch of protective clothing, they must not know anything about honeybees. And so I thought, whoa, that's some bad advice. And at the very minimum, you should be wearing a veil. You need to protect your eyes and your face. And there are a lot of beekeepers I know who don't wear any protection.

and it's kind of a man-up thing. I don't know what it is, but I've also seen those same people run away and show up in a B-suit later on. So the worst advice was because there was a woman that was stung on the eye. I don't mean the eyelid. I don't mean around the eye, her eye, the eye itself. So for people to tell someone to go into bees,

no matter how calm they seem to be, without any protective clothing, worst advice possible. So there you go. That's one. Let's move on here. This is Suzanne. Can you give a little update? Okay, I already did that.

Let's see, can you please tell me if there are hexagon-shaped beehives and how are the frames in that hive shape? Thank you. This is from Nigel Moore. There is a hexagonal beehive that I know of, and it is a 3D printed beehive, the entire thing, all the components. As far as how the frames are shaped, it's anybody's guess. but it probably comes with its own specialized frames that fit into it a certain way. These themselves don't necessarily get attracted to a hexagonal shaped cavity. So I think it's kind of a marketing thing.

It must look good aesthetically. And I don't know how well they go. I think maybe it could be wrong. Castle Hives, Brian Cooper might have one. I think I saw one at a expo. And worth looking into, if you're looking into, like the novel look of one of those but that's about it oh and Patrick says yes they make an eight frame so that's for these things by the way if you're looking for these datant is one place

I'm sure they make these are so simple it looks like they just bought a big metal queen excluder see those little staples on the end they cut it they cut little grooves in it they put these together you could make these yourself but they are very inexpensive so have a whole box of them because they keep finding new ways to use them. They're fantastic. Moving on. Patrick Wood says, worst advice,

let them swarm. Hmm. Well, letting them swarm. If you're collecting them, it's not terrible advice, but let them swarm. Their chances are very poor of succeeding.

So it's part about the old barn poking around. Why did they do what they did? Why do they not go into the box that you wanted them to go into? Why didn't they stay in the glass walled? Cool observation hive idea. So for Chris, man, we have to clean up the other areas where they have an opportunity to move into. I do like the idea of a built-in kind of structurally attached observation high that becomes part of the building. I think that's cool.

Wish I could do it. I have plans, of course. All the observation hives are doing extremely well this year, by the way. and I just like to see, I like to have a whole, if I could, I'd have a whole wall where every other cavity, not the ones right next to each other, but every other one. Most structural walls are 16 centers. Some are 24 on center. But 16 on centers workable.

And you could have a built-in observation high that would look pretty sweet. This is a funny name. Why the platypus? It says, would it help the bees to keep cool in summer to leave, a honey super on until fall. So does it help them keep cool in summer? Here's the thing. A lot of people do stack up their honey supers all summer long. Does it help them keep cool to have stacks of honey inside the hive? It acts as a heat battery. It also acts as a cold battery, right? And by that I mean during a really hot day, it retains a lot of heat, builds up heat,

and it's something for the bees that have to cool and keep control of. So if it goes well beyond the population of the bees in there, it could actually work against them. Your honey could overheat, hold that heat deep into the night and cause your bees to work over time, cooling it down. In the wintertime, the honey that they're right next to collects and retains the heat from the bees that are warm in the cluster. And the honey that's right next to them, the capped honey, continues that warmth and carries a little farther out. but I think the bees have to work to keep it at its ambient temperature. So it doesn't necessarily contribute or take away from their ability to keep things warmer or cooler. It just enhances what they're already doing on their own.

X high frames would need to fit into a honey extractor basket. Okay, moving on. Would it help to keep cool to leave honey? Yeah, so leave them on beyond the same. size, I would pull them off. I don't, I'm not a person that stacks, you know, six or seven supers on a hive. I pull them off as they go and then replace them rather than stacking them all the way up. John McNeil says, thanks Fred. The Queen AI video was very informative. Oh, AI is artificial insemination that they did. It's actually instrumental insemination that was demonstrating. It seems the

queens do not live long, almost self-defeating. Do the B. Weavers do anything? different to their queens for the last years. So Daniel Weaver at Bee Weaver, anyone who's making a breeder queen, these are very expensive queens. So we had a field day with the Northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association, and it was hosted by Ernst Seeds, which thousands of acres of land there that they get their seeds and grow their crops on. And they hosted our field day. And we also had top-tier instrumental inseminators there are giving demonstrations. I made a video of it, and I showed that. Now, it is interesting that when they inseminate a queen, so this means that they've selected the genetics of the drone, they take the queens that also they have the traits that they want,

and they inseminate them. Now, what's the life expectancy of that queen posts insemination? About 30 days. So then some people, you know, get upset about that. So, well, she's only good for 30 days. What good is that? It's the queen going to be good for it. Well, the breeder queens are used to create queen's stock. So the breeder queen doesn't get put in a hive and put into production. She is used to produce other queens.

So then now you get, I don't know how many hundred, a thousand queens from her. I don't know what these queen breeders are doing because I'm not one. And then, of course, those that they develop from her genetics will be used. that can last up to many years, but most of these commercial keepers are re-queaning every year, which is why these queen production activities are so critical to an operation. If you're a big-time beekeeper, a big commercial operation, you would have to have your own queen breeding system. And in that case, it was made by APIS Engineering, who did the queen insemination,

instrumental insemination station. Those things are pretty darn expensive, very impressive. So the equipment, combined with a skill set, they produce their own breeder queens, and then from that they get their queen stock that then gets used out in their apiaries. And keep in mind, too, they're not just making one of them. That queen is inseminated and she's good for about 30 days, but they make multiple breeding stock queens. And if they're running four or five, six hundred bucks a piece, that turns into a really significant income. So, but I'm not one of those. I'm a backyard beekeeper.

All the self-de-de-do. So do, does Bee Weaver do anything different? Bee Weaver does survivor stock. So they work with bees. They are surviving treatment-free. They have done this for a long time. Took huge losses to do it. They're in the state of Texas, which has its own challenges,

but they migrate their queen breeding operation. I think, I'm just guessing, because I think he said it was North Dakota or something like that, but they have outyards for breeding, finishing, and where they have control of the genetics. So they have their own drone yards and things like that, too, away from Texas. So it's very interesting. And again, I don't know if they do insemination. I think they're doing selection. So that's pretty much it for that.

What else do we have here? This is from Top Gear 149. By the way, if your question is for me, please write it in all caps, so I'll know. Adding Caucasian bees into my apiary, do you know if they will be good for my climate? Eastern, is that Washington? USA-6B.

Yeah, they're good. Caucasians are fine for that. They're good for cold weather. And if it's good for cold weather, it works in warm weather. It doesn't go the other way very well. So if you have these warm weather genetics and you move them into the north, Italians come to mind, and you try to keep them in northern climates. The problem is they've brewed up so big and so heavy going into winter

that they're going to eat you out of house and home and require heavy feuding and care. So these others, carniolas, Caucasians, and so on, they do well in northern climates because they have smaller brood going into winter and so they don't consume as many resources Whenever there's a dearth period and a dearth period just means that the environment's not providing what they need They go into decline the queen responds to that right away and produces fewer eggs So it actually works really well Let's see do to do to do here we go So, here we go.

Okay. Moving on. Question number two comes from Keith. This is in Lincoln, Nebraska. QMP Noodle could be used with a Demery split method to prevent queen cells from being made in the brood box that goes up in the top of the hive. With this negatively impact, the real queen in the bottom box.

So the Demire, Damari, however, it gets pronounced. The split system, which is a very active way of controlling swarming and reducing swarming. Keep in mind that they're only divided by a queen excluder. So we do not want to put a QMP noodle up there. We don't need to suppress their instinct to produce a replacement queen. So I don't think that's necessary. The other thing is you wouldn't be doing it for very long.

So we're migrating frames up and above the queen excluder, keeping the queen down below. We're leaving congestion down below and letting those emerge from the brood cells up above and then return through the queen excluter. So I personally would not do that. I'm not saying you can't. Nothing stopping you from trying it. I just don't think it's necessary because you almost can't compete with a queen mandibular

pheromone noodle. That's a placeholder that's supposed to suppress the reproduction of worker bees. In other words, we don't want them to activate their ovaries, sensing that they have no queen. And then they would, of course, produce drone eggs later, right? So if we put the QMP noodle there in the absence of a queen, it is enough of a pheromone to get them not to activate their ovaries. It is not enough of a pheromone to override or cause them to prefer these noodles over an existing, fully productive laying queen. So I hope that makes sense. Okay.

down here we have Rianz, anyway. It says, hi, from Cape Town, South Africa. Wow, another part of the world. Empty hive in the backyard, one day decided to put a jar of sugar syrup in it within 10 minutes, thousands of bees. Should I continue to feed winter here? Okay, so here's the thing. I don't recommend putting sugar syrup. If you've got an empty hive, let me make sure I understand this.

Empty hive in the backyard. Yeah, if it's an empty hive, we don't want to put any food or resources in it. So by that I mean, we don't want there to be pollen inside of it, and we don't want there to be kept honey left in it, and we definitely don't want to put a full-blown frame feeder or sugar syrup and a rapid round on the inner cover, anything like that. We want to leave it empty, and we want that to look like and feel like a furnished apartment so that when other bees visit it, they think, or register that it might be a space that they would move into in the event that they swarm.

So the other thing is, over the past couple of years, we've stopped putting out any kind of swarm traps at all, period. And the reason is this just happened yesterday. you just clean out a hive, get it all set as if you're going to put your own bees in it. In other words, no food, just old brood comb, everything's cleaned up, everything's in order, no dead bees, cleaned up bottom boards, it's set and ready just in case you were going to install a swimmer that you went and collected somewhere. And then you know what happens, it gets auto-occupied. If you're in an area where there are already a lot of bees and there are other apiaries

and things like that, it's going to get occupied. We are out of hives. So they just move in. No reason to dose it up. So I would remove that sugar syrup. Says here from Tony, can you identify a swarm queen's genetics by sight? That is a great question. And I've seen these beekeepers that look at it and go, oh, that's a carnivalent.

Oh, that's a Russian. They can't. No, because anymore looking at bees. Now, I see trends, right? So we see these darker queens, which I really like, dark, amber banded black and amber abdomens. And the darker queens overall are doing really well. And I can't look at that and say that's a buckfast bee.

I can't look at that and say, you know, it's a carniolan. It's a Russian. They're all black. Look at them. Because now we have to have DNA testing for that positive ID. Even with the lighter bees, we look at these golden abdomens and light colored bees. and we think that they are Italians, or you just can't, just by the looks of them anymore.

Our genetics are really mixed up, I'd like to mention. So if you think you can just look at them and know, you almost can't anymore, at least where I am. Now, if you're in an area where they highly restrict genetics and you know exactly what's being passed around, I can't tell you that that's a Purdue ankle biter by looking at it. So we really don't.

Let's see. We'll see, somebody says, yes, we have native black bees in Scotland. Okay, so there, though, it's regional. But here in the United States, my neck of the woods, the bees are from all over the place. I know my bees that I keep cycling back year after year, winter after winter are mutts. So they are just top performers, by the way.

My mutts are going to outperform your fancy Afghans. I'm just letting you know. Okay, so question number three comes from Jason Magnolia, Illinois. Fred, I know you prefer no are preventing because they don't do that in the wild, but it's not just, by the way, it's not just because they don't do it in the wild. But do you think that they set that up for predation purposes, not management purposes? Reason being on warm days, when they would normally beard, they mostly stay inside the hive with offset boxes,

therefore performing other in hive tasks thoughts. Okay, so for Jason, offset boxes, I would personally never do that. Don't need to, for starters. Now, this is, of course, where I am. You're in Magnolia, Illinois. I'm sure your climate is somewhat similar to me. So offset boxes, I've seen a couple people do this.

They're shifting their boxes a little bit and leaving these little venting gaps, which means you get a driving rain like we're having right now. going down in there if you forgot. So if you're doing it during a high dry period, I'm not a fan of making modifications in the moment that are going to get bees through some sudden weather event or something like that. I constantly refer back to people in the deep south with much more challenging, high humidity, high temps, much worse than we have here, air you can wear climates. and if the bees on their own in structures.

So we're not just talking about trees. We're talking about structures with clapboards, plaster on the interior, no insulation at all. And the bees making it through tiny single entrances. So my plan is with my bees, as always, is I used to vent them. You know, I used to have, it used to be that we put nickels on top of your inner cover. And then your outer cover, which was just a thin piece of plywood with, It was clad with tin on top of that. So these were talking about my first beehives here.

That was it. We vented through the top and made perfect sense to me. But I did not understand a lot about what was going on inside the hive. I didn't understand that sometimes drying out your hive works against the bees because they're also trying to control humidity inside the hive. They're trying to keep their brood human. Human humid. So you can work against them when you overventilate a hive.

but shifting or offsetting boxes to provide venting between the boxes is a high risk thing. And I say that just because condensation can get in, it changes the circulatory system of the hive. Let's call it that because the bees have worked it out. When you look inside a beehive, they line themselves out up and they can ventilate the hive

really, really well. And so it's unnecessary. Now the other thing is often people say, well bees and trees don't do that yes they do I keep track of bees and trees around here so because I'm a photographer I'm meeting people all the time and those with bee trees on their property I stay in touch with them often the whole entrance around and bees in trees so the bee tree usually it's a hardwood and they have leaves everywhere so it's in the shade and on these hot muggy days in this past week when it's in the 90s, the bees collect all over the outside of that tree entrance.

So they're not just doing it in our hives. So the bearding is not a big problem for me. I also wonder if we talk to Randy McCaffrey or Mr. Ed down there, Jeff Horschoff in Louisiana, if we ask them about these buildings where they do these cutouts where the weather is stifling and they have just a tiny crack that the bees go into, do those ever be? beard so it's kind of interesting but for me I would not be doing that so Keith Spelman is that me Keith big your big hives might make big honey are you ready for that well the supervisor is because honey rhymes with something else that he seems to be totally after so I'm talking about

Quinn he has clients and I have all this honey already in the instruction extraction room and by extraction room. I know it sounds fancy. It's a corner of my garage. So it's ready to go. Question number four. This comes from B-H-O-L-T-0-8, saving a dwindling hive. Okay, so my son Anthony and I installed two packages. This may one package, the Italians seem to be doing great, but the other package, the carniolans, have had a problem almost from the start. When installing both, it says we noticed the Italian colony was very active at trying to release her queen before we even picked them up. The cork itself was being chewed before we were able to install the mini marshmallow to slow

release her. The carniolans were the complete opposite. Not only were they very mellow as a whole. When we received them, but once removing the queen cage from the bee bus, there was zero signs of them trying to release her. She was finally released after two days, but that was. was the last we saw of her. Since then, it says we've performed about a half dozen quick observations, never spotting her and eventually noticing the number of eggs and larvae of all stages

slowly dwindling as well. I guess maybe the worst part is that there were no signs of them working to replace her. Now that hive has a very, very small population, almost to the point where we believe this hive is doomed. And then I saw a video on YouTube. which I personally highly recommend to go to, which is my reasoning for reaching out to you. I'm no expert, so I'm simply looking for advice from your many years of managing bees. Can a frame of eggs, larvae of all ages, be put into a failing hive from the successful hive in the hopes the carniolans developing a new queen of their own? Is this even something that's known to be possible?

Okay. So let's simplify this. A failing hive, a dwindling population, small brood. Do we want to take a frame of eggs and resources, stick it in there, and let them produce a new queen in lieu of the one that they currently have? You could do that. How many bees does it take? About 5,000 bees to maintain a youth social organism, right? So what's dwindling mean?

So I don't even know how many bees are in that. But there are things that you should think about, first of all. We want to make sure they're in prime health, prime nutrition, prime condition before we let them make a queen for us. So we want to make sure you have a colony that's vibrant and kicking. So if we've got one that's in the decline, that kind of marginally gets along, I don't think that they're a great choice to produce a new queen unless. Ooh, we talked about bee bites earlier. maybe you're going to throw some B-bytes in there. Boost the colony.

Get them up to speed. Put them through some kind of training regimen. Boost their nutrition and get them ready to take care of a new queen. So getting rid of the current queen is your first move. And make sure that they're in optimum condition. So if this is a time of dearth, that might be challenging. So you should time this when you're going to have resources outside. They're going to benefit the colonies.

health and nutrition and ability to produce a prime queen for you. Now, where do you find out? Write this down. B-S-C-A-P-E-E-S-A-P-E-E-D-E-E-C-A-P-E. If you go there, you can put in your location, and you can find out if and when you have a dirt historically. Also, you can find out what kind of environment you have. In other words, are your bees being challenged?

Now we know we've got colonies that we're comparing here. So one's doing really well. Another isn't. So we have to think we have genetics or when they were shipped to you. Maybe something happened that reduced the queen's fertility. It didn't completely destroy her, but reduced her performance. So you could get rid of the queen. You could leave eggs in there, remove the queen, let them build one from their own eggs since they have some.

you could boost your numbers with a frame of cat brood from another colony that's really strong and stick them in with them because that becomes the workforce that's going to attend to those open larvae and that queen that you're going to reproduce. So you can do things to help them along and maintain the colony. But 5,000 bees would be if you have a full deep Langstroth frame, one side, all capped, That's roughly 3,000 workers that are going to emerge from that. So you've got over 6,000. If you're looking at both sides,

if you pull up one of those frames, it's maxed out on both sides. That is a fantastic booster for that colony. At the same time, you remove your existing queen, and her eggs are still there. So her genetics are still there, and you can use those.

Because maybe she was challenged in shipping. So how does that sound? Let's see here. Okay, so Rainy Acres says, how far long can a swarm cell get before it's too late where removing the cell won't stop them from swarming? Thanks. Okay, so this is pretty key.

Let's say we're doing a hive inspection and we're looking at your brood frames and the frames adjacent to your brood, and you've got queen cells in there. If they're in production, they're halfway through something like that, those are removable. Right. If they're capping them, if they're finished and they're putting caps on there, you're kind of done. They intend to swarm.

So your current queen is going to head out of there. Now, could we save that colony? Yes, we could. Can we prevent the current queen from swarming out? Yes, we could. How would we do it? We would take this queen isolation cage. Now this has two frames on it.

In it, it's a double frame version. They may even make bigger ones now. But let's say you're worried that they're producing queen cells. You might not have caught it, but you saw the queen, so it's not too late to take action. So long as that queen is in the hive, put her inside this with frames that she can continue to produce eggs and that the brood can continue.

If they try to run her out, they can't. She's in there. She's in her queen isolation cage. This gives you a time and an opportunity to go through and remove all of the existing queen cells at whatever level of production they are. She can't leave. This gives you a chance to get everything outside of that queen isolation cage. It gets you a chance to remove all of those frames and to make sure there are no eggs

anywhere outside. Then you know you beat their opportunity. to produce new queen cells now you took it away so it's kind of like um demari where you would be putting these frames up above and squishing all the queen cells like that which requires a lot of manipulation you can have that right in the brood box and just make sure everything outside of it is not capable of replacing that queen then when the coast is clear after a week or so pull the cage away put the frames back in we're back in business and maybe you kept them under control.

How do you like that idea? Now, the other thing is, go ahead. Those frames come from Queen Isolation and Queen Introduction cages come for Better Be. They also make them for medium supers. So make sure to tell them that I sent you so that you can pay the same as everyone else. I get nothing.

All right. So that's it. It's never too late if you have the right tools. Let's say now we have H.E. double hockey stick. Can I freeze pollen and give it packed to them in A.H.Y. As pollen frames or pollen mix with honey and fondant. Okay, the pollen mixed with honey and fondant, I personally would not do that. But you can take frames of pollen and put them in a, they have frame freezer bags.

Put it right in the freezer. Yes, you can do that. and they're in a period of dearth or when you're trying to boost their nutrition or you have a week of rain or two weeks of rain that's going to really set them back, you can put it back in there. You do need placeholders in your beehives so that you can put it back because you're going to have to bowl frames to put them in. But yeah, freezing is the best move on that. So that does work. You can do it. But as far as mixing it with a fondant and everything, personally, just me personally, I wouldn't do that because fondant has different purposes.

So I don't like making these. They remind me of the vitipacks, which by the way, people used to take a lot of people that were running, that were top performers, fitness people. They had all these fluorescent colors coming out of them. We don't need to do that to the bees. We can keep the food and resources separate.

And what would be better than the pollen that the bees collected and put it in the cells themselves and fermented themselves and made it ready to be consumed? by the bees as a protein necessary to get them through winter to nourish nurse bees, who in turn will nourish your brew development. So that's what I would do. I would not stick everything together. So what else?

This is Jose. It says, How do you fix a hive that draws wonky tongue? Okay, well, you can do everything you can do. By that I mean. First of all, what's wonky comb and when does that? that happen. It can happen in foundationless frames, which I happen to like, by the way, a lot for brood boxes. When you're setting up a brood box and you don't want your comb to go

wonky, what's wonky? Well, it means it went out of alignment with the rest of the frames and it might be cross-combing and stuff like that. The way you set up your beehive is critical, and by that I mean it should be absolutely level. I mean become very strict about, particularly side to side, not so much, not so much the entrance. towards the back, but side to side, absolutely level when they're drawing comb. Why? Because when the bees are festooning and they're holding on to one another and they're spacing it out, if it's cricket at all or it swings a certain way, they may connect that from one to another and cross comb it. So some of the things that you can also do is checkerboard.

So you can put solid frames right next to foundationless frames. foundationless frame, solid frame, foundationless frame, or a frame with a foundation in it. And that gets things going and maintains spacing. The other thing is, some people like to take frames, let's say it's a 10 frame box, they only put 9 frames in it because they want them to draw the comb deeper, deeper cells, more honey, things like that. So most of the people are doing this in the honey supers. I always recommend if it's a 10 frame box, start with 10 frames.

If it's a 8 frame box, start with 8 frames. But then as they build out the comb, they have to respect B space. So then you can remove one of the lowest production or the one that's being drawn out the least. You get that out of there and now we can increase the space later. And then they don't have all the space that they otherwise would have when they're just started building like crazy. So that's pretty much, I don't have a lot of problems with crosscombing. So level hives. I think I'm kind of in for it with this top bar hive.

We're going to see how that goes. And remember if the question is for me, all caps. If you're just talking to one another, it's a normal lowercase. So let's see, Ross Wagner just gave me that stacks. $10. Thanks, Ross. I really appreciate it. And we're moving on here. It says Patrick Wood says,

Mr. Dunn, can you contract someone to mass produce hive visors? I'm having downbursts from storms and my bees are bearding heavy. It's 90 degree heat. Found a pile of drowned bees. Drown bees after a storm. Oh, my gosh, that's terrible. The high visors, I make them. for myself because I don't have the time to mass produce,

but it's a very simple thing to make. This is not patented. It is not restricted in any way. I posted a video of how to make high visors. I would get someone local to do it because the shipping is just going to cost you a lot of money. So there is, if you have a lot of money and don't care, I can tell you who's making them also, but that is the flow. low hive people. They are making the hive awnings and I took part in helping design that with them.

I don't know what they cost. So you could buy those. But hive visors are simple to make. I would try to find someone that has basic woodworking skills that's willing to put some together. Maybe somebody in your bee club does carpentry. We have carpenters in our bee club that are open to things like that. and you can provide a workmanship sample. Or just send them to the YouTube video at my main YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn. Just type up in the search hive visor and it's step by step how to make it. Stock to buy and then gluing it up, putting the wood screws in it. And of course, those quarter 20 receivers that allow you to use thumb screws to press it onto the sides of your hive.

They work really well. I think some other companies are looking at making them, but right now you kind of have to. I'm not contracting anybody. Those who know me know I sell nothing. So I do not sell equipment, merchandise, food, resources, nothing. I don't even charge money for the instruction that are provided if I'm mentoring people. So it's all free here. And you should be able to, because you can get one by six stock or

one by 10 stock and planks, you can get cedar, which is going to last a long time, and you won't have to put any kind of finish on it. And then you get one by twos. Those become the side struts, and those are pre-cut. You can get them at the lumber store. And then all you have to do is cut those angles and screw and glue them together. It's pretty straightforward. And if you mess it up, it probably is still going to work.

It's just not going to look that awesome. So, So, do, do, do, do, do, do. So Ross Wagner says, sitting here having just finished

my first Demery swarm cells are present. Am I too late? This is a newly made queen. Appreciate your time. Okay, so am I too late?

I have newly mated queen and they have swarm cells are present. Now, swarm cells being present, does that mean they're capped?

If they are, you are too late. But if you sell the queen, go back to what I previously said to do, I would put that queen in that queen isolation cage and I would hold her prisoner while I deal with the competing swarm cells until the threat of swarm cell production

is taken away and you have your queen and that way she did not swarm. You did not lose up to 70% of your bees at the end of June and you're back in business. So top gear, 149, made a donation of 499. Thank you very much. It says, new queen installed three weeks ago. Super Sieger Cell found.

Should I replace the queen? She is not laying well. Minimal eggs, brood, spotty. Thank you. Well, it seems like your bees want to get rid of her. And so if the brood pattern that she's producing is spotty and not up to snuff, and they're already producing a replacement for her, I would say, go ahead, let them do it. In fact, I would remove the queen.

The reason I do that is because we don't want to lose a bunch of things. your bee stock this time of year. So by removing your queen and getting rid of her, you can drop her right into some alcohol, turn that into a queen, you can turn that into a swarm lure and use it to manipulate your bees. And that way you've not lost your bees in the process. So I would let them make a replacement's what they want to do. Tony Paliati says, do you think the latest colony die-off also affected the amount of swarms, usually get a percent or six and only got one here in southeastern Connecticut. So the die-off we're talking about is the commercial, largely commercial. There are some backyard beekeepers who lost everything. There are commercial beekeepers,

and I'm talking big beekeepers that are now out of business. So what I will say is, as I'll give a shout out to Blake Shook. The Bee Supply is the name of his store. I don't know if that's the name of his YouTube channel, but it is Blake Shook. He did publish a video where he described exactly what the cause and effect was of the bee die-off this year.

1.6 million colonies of bees, probably more. So for the commercial people. So in other words, what's the impact? Did that affect the amount of swarms? I don't even know. We had people here, commercial people that lost 90% of their bees. I don't know how you come back from that. But here where we are, they had those great losses.

And also bounce back. I think we have ridiculous numbers of swarms here. I would like to tell everyone here in the United States that if you want to collect bees for free, go to a website called B-Swarmed. Now, it's important that you get this right because there's a competing website that is just called B-S-W-S-W-M-E-D.

So go to B-E-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-D, and that's the site where you can register as a beekeeper willing to collect swarms when the general public reports them. Getting beekeepers to sign up for that, and then you get an alert on your phone that is within the distance that you agree to go and get them. So if you're willing to drive five miles to get a swarm,

you'll get an alert when somebody else posted there is a swarm. We see it on social media. We get these email, chains and threads of people, so-and-said has a swarm. Will somebody come and get them? If you register on beswarmed.org, then you can get this notification instantly, and the minute somebody claims it,

it shows that the swarm has been claimed. It also means that we don't publish someone's information, Like if there's somebody reporting a swarm, it's Alice down the lane. She lives here. This is her phone number. Give her a call. I don't like that personally because we're telling everyone where she lives, who she is, and giving out her phone number because there's bees in the yard.

The bee swarmed method, in my opinion, is much better. So please do that. But as far as what caused the die-off and that having a correlation with the lack of swarms, fewer bees, fewer swarms. but here where I am, it had no impact. So if anything, we have the same or more swarms than in the past here in northwestern Pennsylvania. But as far as details about the die-offs, I think they were saying it had to do with varro-destructor mite treatments being ineffective, not as effective as before. And of course, the diopts started well before they went to the Amin Groves in California.

So it started in 2004. And they were really jumping to get enough bees to provide those pollen contracts. So this one comes from H.E. Double Hockey sticks. These Q&As are available on Spotify. Yeah, they are. So all the Q&As, every single one of them is available. If you just go and Google the way to be, And if you just type in podcast, you'll find it because I Heart Radio, all of them.

It's on all of them. It's hosted by Podbeam, but it's picked up by a whole bunch of others. So, yeah, you can listen while you drive and things like that and not use up all your data. So, and I did surveys, by the way, regarding those with backyard beekeeping that had profound losses. The bulk of the people did not have profound losses for backyard beekeeping. at least those that listen to me, not trying to take credit for it, but they had better than average, and in some cases the best year ever.

And there were just a couple of people. There are some longtime viewers that reported they've lost everything. But we're talking four or five hives in some cases. It doesn't make the loss any less devastating. But overall, they were not seeing the problems that the commercial beekeeping operations were having. I was very comforted to know that. I want to steer people in the right direction.

Question number five comes from Chris O. 6884 its YouTube channel. Interesting comments on the temperature and humidity and hive relative to the openings. I decided to just use one lower opening, roughly the size you suggested, with no top ventilation. I added a remote reading thermometer that sits just below the inner cover and have been watching how it varies. It's not right in the brood area, but above it. It typically ranges between the mid-80s and the mid-90s during the day. Tomorrow is supposed to be mid-90s, so it'll be interesting to see how it gets. I'm in western New York, Rochester area, thinking about pushing the sensor further down into the actual brood area, but figure the bees might chew up the wire. Well, bees don't like

electronics in the hive, but they will propolize it. They generally don't chew up wire and stuff like that. But, um, so the thing is, by the way, these temps, I go roundy, roundy on this with my wife because, uh, it sounds hot, doesn't it? What if I told you inside the hive, it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit? That seems really hot. But your bees are keeping that temperature for their brood. 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit is what they're keeping it at. So when we think, wow, it's a balmy 70, 75 degrees outside how great is that day you know that your bees are actually warming their brood at that time so when your bees are at 95 degrees Fahrenheit or in the 90s at all inside the hive that's optimum that's where they want it so often what we think is stifling and too much

it's not it's exactly what they want so tony what does he say do you think the latest calling of a Okay, that swarms. We already did that. Moving along. And available on Spotify. Yes, they are. All right. Plenty of normal swarm seasons here in North Carolina.

Just a bit late. So, yeah, people are, I don't know anybody that's wiped out. You know, I think people are doing good. So temp and humidity, brood area. Putting in brood minders and things like that, I have a whole box of breed minors. I'm just too lazy to put them out in there. The information, let's think about what the information is going to do for us, right?

In the wintertime, it's dead or alive. If it's anything warmer than the environment at night, then the colony is alive in there. Yay. If it wasn't, what would we do? Run out in three feet of snow and dig into the hive and find out what the cause and effect was? No, we wouldn't. So I've abandoned putting high-tech stuff inside the hive that gives me temp and humidity because it doesn't benefit me to know. What I need to know, I can look at the landing board, look at the hive itself, and not have to get in there and pull things out.

So, reminders, for me, don't do a lot. And so, except give you a lot of data on your phone in charts and graphs so you can see the rise and fall of the temperatures and stuff. but what will you do with the information, I guess? Anyway, let's move on. It says beekeeping. That's a good screen name, by the way. Fred, do you wrap your QCs in kitchen foil? Do I wrap my QCs in kitchen foil with a tip still exposed to stop other VQs?

These from chewing QCs. out what I don't QCs are too big to fit cell protectors square foil cut center whole wrap what are QCs I don't know I don't know what QCs are so any ideas for a high visor I'm gonna need a better explanation I'm I'm drawing a blank I don't know what QCs are QCs Queen somethings I don't know So Timothy Mitchell says, what was the reason for the bee losses? They're saying it was that they used amatras or something else. That's why I don't want to own that.

So I want to, because there's criticism about the different treatments of varodistrictor mites. I'm going to send you to Blake Shook, who has the answers. I also think that B-fit beekeeping, Emily, posted and the thumbnail said, we have the answers. So you could go to B-fit, beatkeeping. She has the answers. I just gather information like everyone else because we didn't have the diops here,

and I think it was attributed to a lack of effective varroa-starcher mite control. So do you wrap your QCs in kitchen foil? What are QS? Any ideas for the Hive-Visor for a Lance? Okay, so the Lance hive, hive visor i don't have it i don't oh yeah i did i built one on one of my lanes has one one does not so the high visor just face mounts right over the entrance of the layens hive it has vertical sides

and it is a little more elaborate because we can't clamp onto the sides the way we do with the standard langstroth hives so um you have to face so i can upcoming i can do a video on on Lans High Visors. It'll be a quick tip, which just a few minute long video that will show exactly how they're made. They're very simple. And printable science says, hey Fred, preparing for Cornell written exam, wish me luck.

Good luck. Is that the Cornell master beekeeper written exam? Because let me tell you what. I type 70 words a minute. When I took that written exam, every question was an essay. And I type fast. And I knew the answers.

And I finished with like two minutes to spare. Talk about nerve wracking. So that's two years of study culminating in a final exam. You can fail. And they're very casual about it. If you fail, we'll just reschedule you next year. You can try again. So for printable science, good luck.

I hope it goes well. So that is a lot of studies. That's not what I wanted to hear. Sorry, that's just the way of it. man, because it doesn't feel like an accomplishment if it's easy. So it should be challenging. So practice typing and study up. It's going to be well worth it.

It is right up there as far as a great feeling of accomplishment. I hope you do well. So there's that. So temp and humidity, that's done. Let's go to Peggy here from Upper Sandusky, Ohio. says hey Fred I saw the other day and wondered what your thoughts are I built the wheeled triangle sled for my new Hilco extractor I got last year after your video about how you did it still waiting for some capped frames to finally use it and so the video here was

Hilco came out with springs that they put on the feet of your extractor so that when it extracts it can tilt a whirl around instead of taking the full load. We built our own A-frames out of wood, bolted them up, and put heavy-duty wheels under them and the big wheels, you know, with the locking toggles on the sides. And that's my preference, and here's why. The springs, I guess that's cool. I don't know, but it just keeps it in place and the springs, it'll tilt around, which to me is not as effective as taking the full load. and letting your entire extractor just ellipse around in these little circles, kind of like a spirograph does.

It absolutely takes the inertia out of it. So I talked to him at the Honeybee Expo about making some kind of carriage that your extractor could sit on and it could wheel around like that. And he said that the way they're made, they're perfectly balanced. So, yeah, but we put in uneven loads and. It works perfect. The other thing is when I'm not using my extractor, because I'm not a full-time commercial beekeeper,

I roll it out of the way. So having it up on wheels is far superior, and we can roll that down into a corner. The other thing is I like to wheel it outside of the building and host the whole thing out when we're done. So having those wheels again with locks on them, on that wooden carriage. And the a frame shape is so that we can put a bucket underneath

and have that height also. So I much prefer that it absolutely gets to roll around instead of I wouldn't want it stationary and the springs don't do anything for me as far as being able to move it around. So that works. Keith Spillman says casters work great. Yeah, that was something I wanted to do for a long time. Did it? It is fantastic. And so a great way to go.

And do, do, do. All right. So stop the movement. I don't want to stop the movement. I want to take that lateral load completely off of that central axle and Springs don't do it. So they just take some of the vibration down. They don't take the load away. So question number seven. This comes from Josh Curtis 6445. That's the YouTube channel name. If I catch a swarm in a trap, how long should I wait before I move them to their permanent location? And I want to thank Morrow for the $4.99. I really appreciate that donation. It's very helpful.

So anyway, how long should you leave it in your trap? So here's the thing. You want to move it out of that swarm trap as quickly as possible. We don't want them to start to build their own comb and stuff because this is a discussion that we have. And one of the disagreements if you can believe it among beekeepers. Should that swarm trap have any frames in it or not? Some people say no frames. Others say, yes, frames. I'm one of the people that says, yes, put frames in it. Here's why.

If you don't get to them right away, they're going to build comb all over that thing. When the bees move in and a swarm moves into a swarm trap and you're not there to collect them right away, they're going to set up house there. And they're going to start to build comb. So if you have not provided them with frames, they're just going to build it all over the place. The other thing is we don't want them to get settled there. We don't want them scouting the area and treating that like home. So we want to move them into your other hive right away, just as quick as possible.

The other thing is in the past, when it comes to the past, you can put those swarms traps right there. As soon as you pull one swarm trap down, you put another one up because often they're scouting the spot already. And as I mentioned earlier, I have stopped doing that because they'll move right into the hives that you have. your own apiary. So I didn't have to go. I used to put the swarm traps 12 feet high, Southern exposure at the interface where trees are meeting grasslands and fields and things like that. And then you had to go and get them. So it just wasn't necessary to do that. But if you're going to do it, please don't leave them there. The other thing is they'll defend their position once they take up house and really settle in. While they're in swar mode and they've just moved in, they're much

easier to manage and you're going to be transferring them. This is another reason why I recommend you put frames in them. You can transfer the frames into one of your setup hives in your apiary. So it's just very easy to do. Why the platypus says the spring feet are magic, no vibration or movement at all. Right. There's no movement. It stops. It sets in place. So it just tilts in different directions. So, which is why I don't mind the movement. The movement is perfect for me. We don't want to arrest movement. So that's something that it's going to be personal preference and people that want springs will put them on springs and people that don't will put wheels under them. So for me, it just works great. It's not, the thing doesn't walk away when it's full and running.

It stays put and just moves around. It's just not tipping. That's it. Okay. bait hive one old broom comb other says empty frame swarms build comb like crazy and quickly make them create new brood comb fresh wax yes swarms are ready to build comb they are ready to go they're wonderful and once it gets started don't stop them keep them going but i stopped using i just use my regular hives in my apiary try it sometime set them up bees will move in uh you can use and don't forget your swarm commander These can help. Swarm Commander, these little capsules are better than the squirt bottles for me. Squirt bottles are expensive. This stuff works. You can also use this to get bees to move into a hive if they're reluctant. If you're trying to hive a swarm and they won't go in right away,

you can do a little of that in the back. Works really well. Okay. You know what? That was my last one. So if anybody else has a question that you want to talk about, I'm happy to do it. Otherwise, I think we're going to wrap up today's Q&A. I'm going to thank everyone for being here.

And I hope that you're avoiding this heat wave and that your bees are doing what they should be doing this year. And if you have a question, I'll stick around. I'll give you 30 seconds to post a question. Otherwise, I think we're going to wrap it up. Patrick Woods. I caught four of my own swarms with cleaned out deadouts. Yes, that is it. The deadouts. Foil on queen cells. I don't put foil on queen cells.

Wing grooved. Wingroved. Fred, thank you for all your helpful tips and tricks. Have a several globs, several and a big gathering of bees on my long-lying hive landing board. Are these drone bees waiting for the right time to fly? Here's the other thing when drones come out, we get drone rushes, which I think is pretty funny. Drones are something we're paying a lot of attention to this year. When you have a virgin queen that flies out to get mated, and when she comes back after she's been mated, a comet of drones follows her back to your hive. So you get this drone rush on the landing board, and for me, it's a great time because I know I can inspect three days after that,

and I'll see eggs in that hive knowing that they replace her. their queen. The other thing is, keep in mind when they're producing drones. So once the queen gets over there, and I highly recommend that if you've got a full-sized colony, that she use drone foundation somewhere in there, usually in the 10th or the first position, so at the very end is where I put it. And that gives them a place to put their drones when your colony is big and strong. And remember that they're all emerging around the same time, and they're coming out at about two to three days of age. So they're all coming out on the landing board at the same time.

And so like after a storm, you might see a whole bunch of them. So they could also be young drones on their way out. And they make a lot of noise. So they're ready to go. So Timothy Mitchell says, I don't know if you answered earlier text because I lost your stream for a few seconds, my error. But what was the reason for the B loss? Okay.

they are saying the experts are saying and they sent their bees off for testing and everything else they're blaming it on i believe varroa destructor mites and a low efficacy of their mite treatments i believe but don't quote me i think it was amatras was the problem and commercial beekeepers were using a pile of them so that's it i'm going to send you to Blake Shook, the man that has tens of thousands of hives under his control. He's also on the national board. And so he's part of several regulatory bodies. He also has a huge operation.

And he posted what the findings were. So I'm going to defer to Blake. So T. Rojo, Rojo says, I use lands and have been asked to mentor someone using Langstroth. What say you? What's your opinion? Okay, so here's the thing. I don't care if you have a lay-ins, if you have

a ivory bee, if you have a top bar, if you have a Langstroth, whatever kind of hive you had, it's bee biology that makes you a good person to mentor someone in beekeeping. We don't

have to have the same bee equipment. We don't have to have the same hive configurations. the natural rhythm and reproduction of bees and their management will remain the same. Once you understand bees and their biology of what bees need to reproduce and successfully winter and survive the challenges in the environment where you live, the kind of hive that you're going to keep them in really is secondary. I can't think of as a beekeeper with observation hives and as many variations and different

types of hives. This is my first year with a top bar hive. But 15 years ago, I was helping someone else in my area with his top bar hive, even though all I had were Langstroth hives. Because bee biology remains the constant. He did not have good luck. He went to workshops in Vermont and came back and tried and tried, and we put swarms in time and time again. But once you understand bee biology, the way that or hows, you can look at configurations and understand how to get the most out of them. So, yes, you can help someone with lands if you have another type of hive and it won't hurt. So the Langstroth hives, it's the same. So anyway, people that say there's only one hive and one way to keep bees and there is no other way to keep bees.

I don't know. I think you're cutting yourself short. There are people that if you've ever been in photography, it gets right down to the manufacturer of the camera that you carry. And people get so ingrained in the specific manufacturer. The two top, right now it's the top three, Sony Canon, Nikon. And there are people. that judge other people just by the brand of camera equipment that they're using.

Okay, I say to that, good for them. There are beekeepers who are so ingrained in the specific type of beehive that they use, that they're almost insulted if somebody else would not use the same kind of beehive that they use. And to that I say that's unfortunate, because I would highly suggest that you learn to keep bees in a variety of different hive configurations and sometimes they will work better for you and not for others so for example um as a mentor i help people with a lot of different hive configurations and types some people have physical limitations some people cannot lift beehives and boxes others can and don't mind and want that most compatible equipment that's out there. So when it comes to layens hives, that's a very specific

type of hive with a very specific type of frame with very specific extraction processes. So you will be limited in the amount of equipment that you can have that's already designed and ready to go. So you need multiple layens hives to work with those. Langstroth hives have the most equipment that's available for taking care of your bees. from extraction to frame designs, to frame materials, to foundations, to everything, feeders, everything is right there for Langstroth. So you get the widest compatibility. It doesn't mean it's the only one to use.

So if you wanted to put that compatibility with a horizontal format, the long Langstroth hive becomes very versatile. So the other thing is it's not critical that you go with. It's my hive or no hive. kind of thing. And people can get insulted. They feel like they're being personally rejected if you are, if they're your mentor and they've told you that this is the best hive to use and then the mentee decides one day you show up and they've got a hive that's different, don't be offended because the bee biology stays the same. Continue to help them out. So there

are clubs that block certain types of beehives. So I think you're cutting yourself short when you don't do that. So yes, anybody who understands keeping bees will understand how to make the most out of any hive configuration. So Patty Lang, I have four colonies and have had a problem with them not building comb. I even bought new triple wax foundation. Triple wax foundation can help a lot. One of the reasons be is do not build comb. Let's talk about that. If they're not invested in the colony, if you're about to break up and you're going to leave the apartment that you're sharing with someone else, are you going to buy new furniture for it? No, you are not. So, see that analogy? If your queen is letting you down, you're not going to invest in infrastructure. They stop comb building.

If the refrigerator's not full, you don't have the resources necessary to build. So, All these things have to come together. It has to be queen right. The colony has to invest for its queen and for the brood that will be produced from the eggs that she lays. So that's when bees will start to build infrastructure. If they stop building infrastructure, which is the comb and they stop consuming resources in the hive, they will start backfilling everything with nectar, let's say. And they don't leave space anymore in the brood area for a queen to lay. They've given up. So they're just saving nectar and they're not building comb. Now, we mentioned swarm installs. If you can collect a swarm, a sizable one, and this year they seem to be huge.

When you put that swarm in, they are primed and ready to build comb. You can continue to keep them comb building, even though, as is happening today, it's raining, you can put a light sugar syrup in that hive, particularly if you know that this is not a hive that you're going to draw surplus honey from. So once they start comb building, and they're ready to do it. I showed my wife today that they built comb in the bucket that I was keeping them in. So they are ready to go. Once they stop, it's hard to start them again. So while they're building comb, keep them building comb. And you can do that with a light sugar syrup. The other thing is, if there's a big nectar flow kicking in, as there is right now,

we have the milkweed that's kicking in, which for me is number one. Bees are all over it. They will be able to build comb just continually. So when they stop building comb, something else is going on. So I hope that answers that question. Queen Wright is number one, and everything else follows suit with nutrition. That's it. I'm going to wrap up.

It's going to be the end of it. I want to thank you all for being here again, and you can watch it and listen and click a like. And if you're not a subscriber already, I highly encourage you to subscribe to this channel so you don't miss any of the cool stuff that's coming up. So thanks a lot. Have fantastic weekend.

I appreciate that you are all here today.