The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers episode 248, ready for spring?

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

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

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, March the 8th, and this is backyard beekeeping questions and answers episode number 248. I'm Frederick Dunn. This is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here today, hopefully trying to learn something about bees. And if you're keeping bees and have them already,

I hope that winter did not kill them off. We have weird weather ahead and weird weather today while we're talking about it. How hot is it outside? 61 degrees Fahrenheit, that's 16 degrees Celsius. Little windy, little gusty, five mile per hour wind, 61% relative humidity. So that's great. If you've got some damp hives that need to dry themselves out, that's not bad. But it's going to make a turn for the worst this weekend.

It's going to snow. That's what they say here in the northeastern United States, the state of Pennsylvania. so can't relax yet and you can't take off your fondet and things like that we'll talk about those things at the end if you want to know what we're going to discuss today look down in the video description below and see all the topics in order and you can submit your own question you can go to the way to be.org and click on the page also marked the way to be there's a form for you to fill out you can submit a topic it doesn't have to be a question just something

that maybe we should know about even. Who knows? So these questions were submitted over the past week and we're going to kick it right off. If you have a question right now and it's just burning up your brain, you have to get an answer. Go to the Facebook group. The Way to Be Fellowship. Join up and you can talk about bees, share about bees, ask questions. It's a friendly group of people. So I hope you go there. Starting off with question number one, comes from Brian from Wilbraham, Massachusetts. Wilbram, Wilbram, Wilbram. Anyway, it says, Good evening, Fred, thank you for all the information.

I'm a first year beekeeper and currently taking a very informative three day class on beekeeping. I'm being given a top bar hive that was built by my deceased brother and I'm trying to determine how to modify your information to a top bar. We actually have two hives and the bees will arrive mid-April. We're looking primarily to have bees as pollinators for our farm. There seems to be some negative thoughts on top bar hives and I'm just looking to get some good advice. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Well, not only will we consider it, let's talk about this. Now, I have to, big disclaimer here, I don't own a top bar hive. So we'll talk a little bit about it. I have friends that have tried them. So people that, you know, like to go into a holistic way of keeping bees seem to run into the top bar hive as one of the most commonly suggested hive designs. And if you start looking around, you'll find very few books written about top bar hives. But what I want to point out, and why I went ahead and I'm going to answer the question,

because I'm not a top bar expert after all. But I do understand bees and bee biology. And so I think once you understand how bees live, the spaces that they occupy and how they use the spaces they occupy, you can actually come up with your own hive designs. You can actually be pretty darn unique. I have some beehives here on my property that are not like any other hive. And when you get into these unique designs,

it can become an issue when it comes to using equipment. or getting stuff that's being advertised and sold for backyard beekeepers, it may not fit your hive. So some of these things are very specific in design parameters. So the reason I want to talk about it is, why does the horizontal hive group, by the way, is appealing. The design is great because kids can use them,

adults can use them, old people can use them, in fact, handicapped people can use the horizontal hive format. format. And there are groups doing research on beehives that can tilt so that you can even access the bees from your wheelchair. And the reason I bring this up is because this has appeal. You don't have to unstack boxes. It's not a Langstroth hives. There's no heavy lifting. So you're lifting frames. And I think that's why it's so popular. And if you start to do research on top bar hives, you're going to find out that there are two designs that come up over and over again. One is called the Kenyan top bar. hive and there's another design that I didn't really look into because Kenyon kind of

took it over. Now here's the funny part, Kenyon, it makes you think of Africa, right? But it was actually the Kenyan hive, top bar hive specifically was developed at the University of Guelph in Canada by Dr. Smith. Now not the Dr. Smith from Lost in Space. It's a Dr. Smith that was up there that's in entomology in the early 70s and they came up with very specific parameters. Now it should should be no surprise that the parameters are built around bee space. So and the things that I found out when I started to look into it because what is the top bar hive? It's a horizontal hive format.

Most of them are about three feet long. They have angled sides and then of course the space inside that is frameless. So in other words, the only place that the bees are going to attach their comb to will be the top bars. This makes this thing very inexpensive. But there are some parameters that work. There are several books out about it. I started to look into the books, and then I saw some of the conflicting comments, you know, in the books

and with the authors and things like that. So I decided, we'll stick to B biology, and I'll leave the prints and designs and plans up to you. But I did find some consistencies when it comes to top bar Kenyon Hive design, right? So the angles of the sidewalls average 30 degrees. This is 90 degrees come 30 degrees in, right? So that seemed pretty consistent. The other thing was the depth of the interior cavity was about 12 inches.

Now this is interesting too because I have to think about Randy McCaffrey who's known online as Dirt Rooster and Jeff Horchoff who's known on YouTube also as Mr. Ed. And this kind of demonstrates that bees are adaptable. They really can go into a lot of different cavity space. but when we're talking about horizontal hives think of floor choice now some floor joists are generally 2 by 10 but my house here that I built myself and designed it myself I built them out of 2x12s so the floor choice would actually be a good size for bees because look they're 16 on center and then you have a it's not a full 12 inch depth but it's a good size cavity for bees to go ahead and take up residence

now here's the other thing these are really long open runs that you see these guys doing when they're cutting bees out of structures so the bees are very versatile so what it really comes down to is how can you personally manage them in the space so that's really what it comes down to when we talk about backyard beekeeping it has to have some facility to it right so you have to be able to get into it so there's going to have to be a lid the top bars all come together so they perform they form the interior cover right so there's no inner for that but I would say that if I were building a top bar hive I would want to have an inner cover for installation purposes so University of Guelph obviously I'm sure they get a lot of heavy winters up there

but so I looked at the standard Langstroth frames right so we think about the the length of this so if it were a top bar only then I would look only at what else the top bar of this frame. So the side pieces would be gone and the bottom's gone. Now this presents benefits. It's very inexpensive and doesn't use much wood. It has drawbacks because it is not framed in and therefore you have free-hanging comb which attaches itself only to the underside of your top bar. But then when we get down to the size of it, so when I was looking at the top bar of this, right, it's built around B-space. We know that removable frames were developed by, Lorenzo Langstroth. But if you look at the shoulders of this, then I would think that if I were building my own top

R-high, this is just us, you know, sitting down talking and thinking about if we were doing this ourselves, what would it be like? Well, I would look at these extremities here, so these shoulders, right? So I measured those and they are roughly one inch and three-eights. You can also go down to one inch and a quarter. So the reason we want that is because when you start putting all these frames side by side. We don't want the bees to build a bunch of cross-comb. We don't want them bridging over. So the other side of that is there's a little V piece of wood

that is being mounted underneath. If it were me personally, I would glue it up with wood glue tight bond three specifically. So you've got a 90-degree angle pointing down. So if this is a 90-degree angle, it would go like this. So you come to a point underneath the top bar. And then what I would do is I'd coat that, with bees wax because that's what we're trying to do get the bees started and it's

only a top bar so there's some other things too like you said my methods right would they apply well I did some reading too and found out that one of the biggest problems people have with their top bar hives if they use a single entrance which by the way is reinforced in nature over and over and over again to the point where a multiple entrance or secondary vent in a hive would be the rarity, not the norm. So here's the thing. This is how I came down to only having single entrances in all of my hives. But here's the part that is an issue with the top bar hive.

If you're not venting it, if there isn't a way for these bees to really cool that down, what's happened is, and this is just based on multiple people reporting issues they've had with top bar hives, that the beeswax offens up. So this would be the newer wax. I'm thinking in the wax where your honey is stored. Honey gets heavy. That's also why you don't want it to be deeper than 12 inches, I'm guessing. It's because a deeper frame would be heavier when it's full of bees wax and because it's only attached at the top

it would overwhelm that attachment area and ultimately could come off. Because the top our hive, the bees wax does not attach itself to the interior sidewalls. That's why this angle, I think, comes into play. So we have a lot to think about here. 3 eighths of an inch is what they're going to come down to and they're going to not touch the sidewall. So I think those angles play on that. And it could fall off if it gets overheated. That's why they have vents. So we don't want that to happen.

I'm going to leave it to you to do your own research. But those are the main issues that I came across, getting them started, avoiding wonky comb. You want that hive to be absolutely level. Single entrance at one in. in my opinion, but then of course we have to vent it off because it's overheated. Speaking of overheating, I have to pause for a second. So I had the heat on in here and that was not working out for me because I'm wearing a sweatshirt,

of course, forgetting that it's 61 degrees Fahrenheit outside. So anyway, what am I going to do about it? I think I need to have a top bar hive here at my apiary because it's just one of the things that several people ask about. And I will say this, that my friends who are experienced, beekeepers who have tried them out gave up on them so I don't have a friend right now that I could zip over and visit say hey how's that top bar hive working out for you it just doesn't so that's not to say that I can't it just turned out to be

more of a challenge than they thought it was not practical in a lot of ways it's inexpensive it would be great if they worked out really nice keep in mind when the snow belt here so the weather extremes might have something to do with it and I'm going to ask you to think about about in the horizontal hive for those that are listening that are thinking about starting a horizontal hive for me personally there are lots of choices right and I'm going to suggest the long Langstroth hive it seems to be built of course around B space and around the Langstroth equipment so it's all about the Langstroth frame and then beyond that it's the length so mine are five feet long

they're going to continue to be five feet long because they can really fill that up and use the extra space for storage if I need it. I highly recommend so in other words if I were doing a top bar hive what would I have to include? Well I'm going to make the width the length of a standard Langstroth top bar so if I pull this thing apart in fact now that I'm thinking about it I have a bunch of these I can't do it so because remember the top bar the wooden bars of a standard Langstroth still has a spacer and has these shoulders here was thinking I could just take top bars and use them but I can't I'll have to cut pieces and of course I'm going to cut them out of red oak here and the other thing is the thickness of it

how would that even matter it doesn't so you just want something that's rigid enough that you can handle it you probably want to have a means of being able to pull each one up individually and that's pretty much it but I'm going to use this length so the standard length of a Langstroth, top bar, and then the width will be, let's just guess, it's going to be an inch and three-eighth. That's easy to remember because one inch plus three-eighths, which is bee space. That would be the width of it, and then they all butt right up against each other. I would make a follower board for it. And the reason for that is I want to keep the space small, and I want to get those bees started.

And they start out really well when they have a small cavity to work with. So I think I would start with four frames. And if you're putting a swarm or something in there, because of it, the cavity's too small, you won't get a swarm to stay. And because it's the top bar hive, we can't use those queen cages or anything like that to keep them in. So the other thing is, too, you know, people want it to be holistic. They want to keep their bees in a natural way. Most of the top bar hive resources I've looked at are also treatment-free. So, and there's a lot of pushback on that, too. People did not like the philosophies that were coming out of those groups.

So there again, when it comes to back-air beatkeeping, you're going to adopt your own philosophy and methodology, and you're going to find out what's going to work in the long run. But just the short list, for me personally, it would have a single entrance. It would be the top bars would be an inch and three-eighths wide. It would be the length of the standard Langstroth frames. I would do that 30-degree camphorne angle. I would keep it at 12 inches, interior space, from the top of the top bar, to the interior surface of the bottom of your hive and that's plenty of room.

And of course I would make mine that says here that they should be three feet long. I would make mine five feet long and that's just because I like to have the extra storage space at the end and make it out of nice thick material and I would have an insulated cover personally. So that settles that for the first one. I know there's going to be discussion about it. Some of these people are not open to discussion when it comes to modifying what they feel is the perfect hive. So that's just my two cents.

Question number two comes from Colleen. And it says that I'm so hoping I catch a swarm this year. I've had a deep frame 10 frame nuke and a long hive. From Dr. Leo. And it's waiting for swarms going on the fourth year. We retired on a fixed income so I'm not wanting to buy bees. I live on 37 acres in southwest. Missouri and there's got to be swarms around here a few days ago I painted a mixture of bees

wax on propolis around the entrances of each hive my long hive is painted yellow does color matter I just heard bees don't like yellow I'm doubtful that's true so it was just waiting patiently here in Missouri okay so here's the thing bees like yellow of course they do Bees are attracted to yellow. In fact, bees investigate yellow things first. So a lot of flowers are yellow. And remember that bees see differently than we do, but there's nothing wrong with having yellow hives.

Here's what I think about. I know a lot of people that are listening right now are probably thinking about setting up their very first hive and one of the things that comes to mind is they want to paint them different colors, right? Here's my take on that. I don't like to announce that my beehives are out in some field somewhere. So bright colors don't work for me. I want my hives to blend with the environment.

So the question is to whether or not bees like a color, dislike a color, see a color well or don't, they're going to find the location of their hive based on landmarks. So if you've got a special tree or a big rock or a special bush or something like that, and your hive goes next to that, that becomes a visual landmark for your bees when they're out foraging and returning back. After that, it's pheromones. So sometimes when people pack a bunch of hives in a very close proximity to one another, they make dramatic, high contrast, geometric designs on the front of their hives. For me, like in my way to be academy building, all the entrances are in a row. Each entrance has a physical difference as far as the shape of the roof over it,

or the pieces of wood that are next to it. So it's beyond color, it's geometry. But then of course when the bees get to the entrance, they're going to smell it and they're going to know do they belong there or don't they? Is that their hive or isn't it? So the color is nothing important unless, for example, you're in a hot area and you're going to paint your hive black. I've never seen, we did have one black beehive years ago. I don't recommend black. So just because it's going to absorb a lot of heat midday in the summertime. And it can seem okay, but I love it. but I like eco wood overall now that's what's behind me like that's the look of eco wood behind me here so it ends up being a dark brown almost a mahogany at some point depending on the

wood that you're treating with eco wood and then it just darkens it up and it looks natural so it blends with the landscape that's what I like overall I do have one hive that's painted white I wish it wasn't and so we can change the color so the colors are completely up to you your bees won't care and was that the whole thing the paint and make sure of bees are the other thing i would recommend is swarm commander while we're talking so these are inexpensive swarm commander capsules you take this out it is a swarm lure it's going to smell like lemongrass oil but it isn't you break this capsule you put it in the hive according to the designer the maker the seller which is the blithe wood bee coming

You can put this inside your hive anywhere. By the way, this was not given to me. I purchased it. So these last a while and you can put them in there and use them as lures. So the other part painting the front of the hive with wax and stuff like that. Propolis that you scrape out of your hives, old comb, instead of throwing it away, maybe chunk it up and throw some of that on the bottom. Anything that makes it smell like it's been lived in by bees before. Now if there's any kind of rude disease, do not keep you.

do not keep that comb get rid of it so you can use it to attract them so I hope that matters I hope it comes and when it says here for years I understand not wanting to buy bees because I'm leaning that way myself I haven't bought you know package bees or anything like that for a long time in Queens my bees are making their own so I don't need that stuff so you want to try as much as possible to be independent when it comes and stuff like that. But I am going to recommend swarm commander, people that have used it, think it's really good. I have not set out a lot of swarm traps myself because I'm getting all my swarms right here in their bivouac location before they move on into a trap, which they think

is their final residence, you know? So anyway, moving on. Question number three comes from Rachel from Madison, New York. Says here I live in up to state New York. It was about 60 degrees, happy to see the bees out and they congregated on our chicken feeder they have sugar but do i need to supplement them with pollen right now the date of this that was the 26th of february is that an old one 26th february anyway right now no you don't need to feed them pollen because that's in my neck of the woods too and uh what i observed over the past week on the worm days is that the bees are bringing in a variety of pollen from a variety of sources so they are setting really well now if you're in an area where you're in a pollen dearth you're looking at your landing boards and the entrances and you do not see

pollen coming in a couple of things first of all if no pollen is coming in if you've got more than one hive check to see if pollen is coming into any of them if it's not coming into any of them then you are in a pollen dirt so there's one pollen substitute now that I recommend and that's AP 23 it comes from dead ant or date it however you say it and i would put that out on warm days and i would not leave it out overnight so 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or prime pollen substitute collection now here's the thing put them in the same spot over and over so your bees can find them and you will find that the scouts check that out so but they've backed off a lot here so if you see pollen going in and the reason i said compare that with a bunch of other hives too because

Because if no pollen is going into just one hive in particular, you may have an issue. You may not have a queen. So you may have a colony that is not in production at all, and that colony is going to be worth inspecting on your next warm day. Not yet. It's going to snow this weekend, hold off on inspection, and take a look at it on your next really warm day. So anyway, yeah, we're past the pollen sub time frame for this year. So moving on. They have lots coming in from at least that's in my neck of the woods. Now where you are, check in with your other beekeepers, see what they think the pollen situation is.

We'll move on to question number four, which comes from Steve Davidsonville, Maryland. So my question, I have at least 10 deep frames of honey, nectar, and pollen in my freezer that I would like to give back to the bees. The challenge is that I feed them over the winter. and they still have frames of honey in brood boxes. I took all the remaining sugar blocks off this week. One of my hives is a single deep with about nine seams of bees. Do you think I could safely put out another deep box on top of the honey, nectar, and pollen frames? Do you think they will consume it before our nectar flow starts, typically the end of April?

Okay, so here's an area where I make suggestions based on what I personally would do. I don't like restoring old honey and things like that from last year, even though it's a good idea that it was in the freezer and everything because that's going to make sure that you did not have any wax moths or anything like that in your frames in your honey or in your comb. So it's good stuff. Here's what I personally would do. Right now, because what's short for the bees is nectar.

So the pollen, the proteins are coming in because they have a lot of pollen sources out there. For example, skunk cabbage in the wetlands, the bees are getting big pollen chunks out of that. But they're not getting nectar out of them. So the nectar production is what hasn't really kicked in very well for my bees yet. And so this is an area where they're going to need some of those resources, and you can find out. If you put out sugar syrup or any kind of open feed right now, it's going to be mobbed by your bees. And that shows how desperate they really are for sucrose. for sugar syrup. And so you could put these out. This is me personally. I have a standing feeding

station that sets the edge of the woods and it is easily 200 feet from the apiary. And that's where I would put out any frames, leftovers and things like that. It's also what I do with crystallized honey, for example. Now you can warm that up, reliquify it and try to extract it if you want to. We did that last year. I was not super excited about the results. I mean, it worked but it was a lot of extra effort here's the thing why not just feed it back to the bees they are desperate for those resources i highly predict that they are going to ignore the pollen that stored in their cells so the bee bread that's left over that they didn't use because you pulled it off probably while you were condensing your hives going into winter

i would put that out let them consume what they can off of that and then i would rinse it out with hot water and then do a final rinse with 10% bleach and water and And then I would dry them out, and then when the time comes, I would restore those frames. You have nice drawn comb now. And then the bees did have the opportunity to go out and get some sugar. So you need to have some resource for your bees. They're desperate for it right now. I'm not telling people that they have to go out and feed their bees.

I am saying, though, with all the pollen coming in, historically here where I live, the number one problem that my bees have had is they weren't finding enough nectar to balance out the proteins. sit through bringing in. So when they bring in a bunch of pollen and they're brooding up based on that and they're consuming the leftover resources, and I'm talking about honey inside the hive, once they consume that and they've got a bunch of brood that they're feeding, they have a couple of choices. One is to discard or kill off the brood because they can't feed them anymore. The other is to give them an energy supplement like sugar syrup so they can keep going. And you can do that by open feeding or you can do that by targeting a specific hive that you happen to know is light.

So for those of you who don't have frames coming out of the freezer and things like that that you're trying to figure out what to do with, you can mix up sugar syrup this time of year. They can do cleansing flight, so one-to-one sugar syrup is just fine. And put that on the hives that are showing that they've used up their resources during this kind of critical transition time of going from dormancy, from the state of torpor. They're brooding up and bringing in the protein that.

they need and then they could easily run out of those energy resources. So one of the things you want to watch for aside from the physical weight of the hive that might be running out of nectar or stored honey, you can see your bees coming out of the hive as if they're trying to fly and just not having the energy and falling right on the ground in front of it. And then when you see that happening it can be alarming because it looks like they've been poisoned. Something's happened to my bees. Their tongues are out. There's hundreds of them dead in front of the hive and they see them coming out they're trying to fly and they can't last year I made a video about

this so you would see what the symptoms are and it took one quart of sugar syrup to completely restore that colony of bees and get them back on their feet some people didn't like that because they want to do the Darwinian approach to be keeping they were very unhappy that I suggested that somebody would feed a quart of sugar syrup to salvage a colony because they want to do the live-and-let-die practice of whittling down just survivor stock. So for me personally giving them a quart of sugar syrup and bringing in the right back that easy the cost of a quart of sugar syrup and restore a colony just because they were out of nectar is fine for me.

You're going to make your own decisions about whether or not you let your bees perish or if they survive. And that particular one was an observation hive. So it is something to watch for this time of year because every flower that produces pollen for your bees does not necessarily produce nectar also. So that is still yet to come and that's just opportunity to put your old frames of honey and resources out and let your bees feed on them. I would not leave them out overnight. I would put them out again between 10 a.m. and 2 o'clock. Now if it gets to be 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the afternoon and the bees are still all over it. Of course, don't put it away yet. Wait until the bees all go home.

collect them and put them in your shed or somewhere else where they're protected from raccoons and other visitors that like to go and chew on your B frames so question number five comes from crea cryia oh man i'm messing that up so anyway from Waverly tennessee good morning fred i have some old comb that came with a nucleus last year that i want to place i want to phase out of a hive It has much brood in them. Suggestions on how to get them out of the hive. I have a hive butler, but unsure if this is the way to go. Thank you for your videos. Okay, so here's the thing. And this is great because I hadn't thought about this until I saw this question. You've got old frames in your hive that you want to phase out. But when you look at the frame, there's still some brood in it.

So you don't want to just pull it and kill the brood. If it's work or, it's worker brewed drones whatever it happens to be so what are you going to do so you've got a frame that's a third of worker brood but you want to get them out what would you do how would you get them out here's what you do i like this story so we have you're probably sick of me showing these but it comes around time and again i get excited because this is a way to use this queen isolation cage this holds a single frame so what am i going to suggest how do you think I think I would use this. I don't want to put a queen in it. But it occurred to me reading this question, I can just pull this frame of brew that I'm hoping to let them emerge,

because if you just leave it in the hive, what's it going to do? You run the risk of the queen, of course, scooting back over there and putting a new batch of eggs in it. So then you never get away from this really old frame, and you might be wondering, Fred, how long do you keep your frames anyway? Well, when it comes to brood, five years is the magic number, and I'm phasing them out two at a time. 20% of the frames, if it's in the brood box, leave every year and get refreshed. And I don't checkerboard, I push all the existing frames together so the new frames are on the outside. But I can take that frame and I can put it in this cage and I can let those bees emerge and the queen can't get in there so she can't lay eggs so she can't keep that old, yucky, dark comb going.

So you can rotate that out and use the queen cage to do it. then once they're all emerged out of that, there you go. Pull the frame and get rid of it and you didn't have to sacrifice any brood. I was excited about that question. So that was pretty good. Next question comes from Dan from Montague, Michigan. If I place a chunk of bees wax inside a hive, will the bees utilize it to make new wax? What if I graded it?

Trying to see if I can assist bees in producing, new wax without taxing them so much. Okay, that was a really interesting question. And for somebody like me who spent a lot of time watching to see what they do with wax, bees are very fickle about the wax that they reuse and sometimes they just cut it off and haul it right out of there. I did a bunch of micro macro videography over the past several days and you do see bees carrying bits of wax in their mandibles and flying it out of the hive. So what I was noticing is when it's cap wax, for example, the cap wax that they put on their honey stores,

that is generally the newest wax, so bees produce it fresh, right? But you also see that when they uncap honey and things like that, they'll glom it onto the adjacent beeswax, and sometimes they mix that with the new wax that they're producing from their own wax glands, so they're amending it. And they're not necessarily getting rid of all of it. The wax that I see them chew off and remove from the hive is that fibrous capping that usually goes over the brood. So when they cut that off and the worker cuts itself out, and you've got this wax cap kind of hang in there like a trap door, they'll grab that watered up and fly it out of the hive.

so that's interesting to me. So the idea of grading your wax and making small chunks or fine shavings and things like that and just hoping that your bees will pick that up and somehow use it to compose their wax, their comb and their cells, right? I don't think that's going to be very practical. I think you'll just end up with a bunch of beeswax on the bottom of your hive or wherever you were going to place it. However, if you're trying to find something to do with your bees wax,

I would heavily coat whatever is already in your hive. So if you've got wooden frames, I would coat those things with bees wax. Now here's the other thing. Bees wax can be heated too much. Bees wax can be made too hot and the bees don't like it. It'll also lose its great smell. So I'd like to recommend that you try to keep your bees wax melting down in the low 150s. And that's degrees Fahrenheit.

So you want to melt the wax, but you don't want it to lose it like overheated wax. wax becomes pretty brittle and there are differences and I think that your bees won't use that very well but here's the other thing I'd like to see it take that wax if it's nice and clean and good wax and just heat it to the 150s and coat your wooden frames coat your foundation with it that will get your bees off to a much better start right the other thing is if you're trying to get them not to use a lot of their resources the it's proven over and over again that one-to-one sugar syrup if it's a new colony that you're trying to help them kick off like we're going to have really bad weather here if it's going to freeze and rain and things like that, we can't put syrup on, right? So we have to wait until later.

And once we know that we're beyond the freeze zone at night, right, then you can start to put sugar syrup on for the colonies that are needing to build all new comb. And once they start building, you have to keep that sugar syrup available to them. And there's been some evidence, most of it anecdotal, because they can't find the research on it, that one-to-one, right now is if you had a four pound bag of sugar then you would use half a gallon of water you mix those together that's one-to-one sugar syrup but actually a thinner sugar syrup so less than one-to-one right has actually demonstrated that the bees

continue to use that and they build comb with it so here's the other thing if you don't provide that they're going to use their honey stores for what they need to manufacture the bees wax to make new comb So you have options, but if you're really trying to help them out, I don't know of any way to reintroduce the bees wax other than to coat surfaces with it. So that's about it for that question. If somebody else has, you know, found a way to grind or shave or shave or make little microchunks of bees wax and found that your bees actually do use it, there have been rare examples where people sent me information and said, hey, I saw these bees. picking up wax bits and flying it back to the hive.

I don't know what they're doing with it. Sometimes beeswax also has other things in it that the bees are interested in. We also don't know what happened in that forager when it got back and went to the dance floor where all of the pollen collectors and the nectar foragers come to brag about what they found out in the field. If you show up with some old beeswax that you found somewhere, they might be getting beeped and shoved off to a corner somewhere. We don't know if when they went into the hive,

it actually gets accepted and used somewhere. there's not much talk about that and in my observation hives I don't see it happening. I see the beeswax going out. I don't see beeswax from other places coming in as little bits and pieces of beeswax. And another area where if they did collect beeswax where we would be seeing it would be when the colonies are being robbed out. So a colony that's being robbed, they tear into the beeswax to get to the resources and these little bits and pieces of comb are all over the bottom of, of the hive they're all over the landing board and if ever there were tiny pieces that are easily grabbed and flown away with then it would be these little chunks of these robbing sites and we don't see those bees doing that either so they really don't seem to want to collect bees wax that's been

used and is available so that's it for that one moving on to question number seven this is James and it says 93 degrees earlier this week in north Texas by the way north Texas the Panheaval area they still have wildfires going there they're only 40% contained why that doesn't make national news I don't know they still have a problem that more than a million acres burned in Texas so anyway for James I hope he's well away from that and that it hasn't affected him so anyway it was 93 degrees earlier this this week in North Texas and yesterday it was sleeting my

Bs quit taking Ultra Bee this week. So for those you don't know, Ultra Bee is Ultra Bee dry pollen substitute. I'll see one or two going after it. I've got a job this weekend this afternoon. UPS just delivered 70 flowering seedling trees that I've got to plant. I just planted 12 red yucca this week and then I got for free from somebody who dug them up.

So that's way to go. I've got a house full of seedling trees. So anyway, the question is, How does the queen find the new location when the hive swarms? Do the workers waggle dance to show her, or do they somehow drive her to it? And this is a lot of fun. People are, you know, that's one of my most exciting things. I don't think I'm alone in that.

When your bees are swarming and they're communicating to one another, first of all, the queen's not in charge at all. They need her to go with them. They make her leave the hive. This isn't the queen deciding, I'm out of here, I've had it with you, I've made you some new queens over there that I see they're in production, and off I want to go to a new location, so take me to a new location. It doesn't happen like that.

The nurse bees turn on the queen, and they start to modify her diet, and they start to reduce what they're feeding her, and they start scooting her around and making the queen anxious. So they're not letting the queen rest, and they're causing the queen to lose weight. They're putting her in flying condition, right? So they're going to drive her out. She's going to have to fly.

Now, where's the queen going to go? She's going to go where the other bees take her. Because, for example, the queen doesn't go out and scout around looking for a new home. The scouts do. So the scouts are making preparations for swarming, zip out of the hive, and they check cavities everywhere they can find them. They look at old electric panels. They look at anything that's got contrasts, that cost.

them to investigate the entrance. They go into the entrance and they pace it all off in darkness, right? And the more time they spend doing that, the better it is. Because if they go in there and you see a bee go into a hole somewhere into a tree or something and they're back out in the next 30 seconds and they fly away, that was a fail. However, if you see that bee spend five minutes in there, 10 minutes in there, and then it comes out and flies away. And then it comes back later with 10 or more scouts and they're checking it out. they're spending time in there, they're walking off and they're measuring the interior surface. So these scouts are the ones that then they have to become influencers.

Now what I mean by that is the bees back in the hive, they don't know anything about the space. So they have to go back and they do do waggle dances, right? So they communicate with others and they bring a bunch of other bees with them to check out the cavity and find that it's suitable. Now you would think once they've done all of that, that they would just leave. leave the hive with the queen and fly directly to the cavity and occupy it. I mean, they know it's there, but they don't do that. What they do is they fly out of the hive. Sometimes they just collect on the front of the hive or the top of the hive or under the hive,

and they just don't seem to want to go back inside. That means they've actually sworn and there's a queen in there. And then they'll move on to an intermediate spot, hanging on a tree branch or hanging on your garden fence or something like that, and you'll see them clustered there. That's not where they're staying, but they're collecting all the other bees together and the queen has to hang out with them when they fly through the air and they're moving on the queen goes with them so she is just visually

following them and she is the one putting out her queen mandibula pheromone which is what binds them all together and even in flight even in transit to their new location other bees that just happen to be flying around that aren't even from this group may just join up and add to their numbers on their way to their new location. Others change their minds and fly back to the hides that they came back, they came out of. So it's very interesting the dynamic. And the bees, of course, that are on their way don't even know where that location is. There has been waggle dancing done at this Bivwack location, because you'll see little flash mob waggle dance going all over the surfaces of that. That's to let the rest of the bees know the queen is not paying attention to that

waggle dance. But when they all fly out, the queen goes with them, they are streakers. So there are bees that loop back, and then they streak through, and they fly through the swarm that's in the air that's traveling at about six miles an hour. So you could jog along and follow them if you wanted to. Pay attention to what's underfoot so you're not running into fences or falling into ditches and things like that the way my grandson has done. I didn't just call him out. He just does it because he stares at the bees and just goes along and runs into things. So here's the thing. The streakers be learned it through and come back. If they seem like they're not headed in the right direction, they'll streak through and you'll see the swarm change direction and go with the streaking, right?

So, and then they'll arrive at the final destination. So the bees, the workers, the nurse bees, the drones are with them. This whole group is getting their direction and information from the scouts that found the site that they're hoping to move into. And here's what can happen. And it's really interesting and I'm sure frustrating to those that have invested all this time and effort and energy into getting to the new location. If the queen shows up at that entrance and she does not walk in, there's nothing they can do about it. I've seen Queen Honeybees go right to the entrance, check it out, act like she's going in,

get them all excited about it and what does she do you turns and just hangs out outside now you know that she's done that when the entire swarm of bees fails to move into the hive because the queen has decided she doesn't like it for one reason or another now they have a couple of choices they can start building comb right there which sometimes happens you'll see comb on a tree branch you'll see comb on the underside of a structure like a swarm box. It's weird because all they have to do is move in. So sometimes we can't really figure out what it is about that box that made them not want to move in and yet would accept hanging out on a branch and being exposed. So now while they're in that position, the scouts have to go out again and find another location that they hope is suitable then that the queen ultimately will approve of and go into. Sometimes when you're looking at that swarm that's collected right there, you'll see the queen come up.

out and body surf over the top of all of them and then disappear back inside. I also notice that little vent holes open up and that usually is where the queen comes out, scoots around the surface, goes back in and then that vent hole kind of closes up around her again. So if you've got a queen cage handy or something like that, if you can get a hold of that queen when she comes out, if you can catch her, if you've got a queen clip or something, then you can collect that queen and now guess what you can do? You can force her to go inside. that swarm trap that's set up. So if she's indecisive and she's making everybody waste their time and resources and she's decided not to go in, you can make her go in.

What do you think I'm going to say next? What else could you do to get the queen to stay in a box with the other frames while they decide to stay there? That's right. You can put the queen, put a frame inside here. If you've caught the queen, you can open the top of this. Get the queen into this queen isolation cage. Put this in your swarm box. And then, but of course the swarm box is designed to function with you not being there.

So I realize this is not practical. But if you happen to be there and you're observing things and you're seeing this frustrating event where the queen is not going in, you can get the queen, put her in here on a frame and put this in your final box. And then now she can't leave. She can't change your mind because that happens too. The queen finally does go in. They all go in. They start fanning their Nazanov's glands at the landing board.

You're all excited. They moved in. They decided they're going to stay. And the next day you come out with your cup of coffee, you're just coming to check on my new swarm. You look at it and the box is completely empty and there's not a single bee in there. They shifted colors.

They took off on you while you were out there doing nothing. Had you had your queen in an isolation frame cage, she would not have left. You have them right there. And you need to have her there for three or four days on that frame. So now you can see if she starts laying. So seven days later, she hasn't laid yet. That means that was a virgin queen. And you got to get her out of that cage because she has to make a mating flight. At least one, maybe several. But so if you've put her in a cage, you're kind of controlling things against her will. So this is, again, your personal judgment call. If you want to let her go and just say, oh, well, she didn't want to be with me. so off they go. Their chances of survival, tiny.

So you're actually doing them a favor by finding that queen, and I can't wait to use the swarm reacher that I got from the conference this year, because apparently, so I'm told, I haven't tested it yet. But if you use a brood frame, old brood comb, and you put that up next to a swarm that's in a bivouac location, one of the members of the swarm that will migrate onto that old brood frame that's empty will be the queen that's what I'm told I don't know haven't tried it can't wait to try it I'm gonna try it and if I do and if it works or if it fails either way you're going to see a

video from me on the swarm reacher I know that there are people that are in parts of the country right now that are nice and warm and toasting you're probably dealing with swarms already we are well away from that here in the state of Pennsylvania So anyway, that's what happens with the queen. Now, for those of who want to read a book, maybe you're like, Fred, that didn't satisfy my appetite for knowledge on that. What could I read to get deeper?

You want to read a book by Dr. Thomas Seeley. It's called The Honeybee Democracy. It's all about influencers, the TikTokers of the bee world, and how they get others to do what they want them to do. That's the end of question number seven. Let's do question number eight, which comes from Frank, from Commerce, Michigan. Do you know of a laboratory that we could send samples of our comb or propolis to test for toxins?

See, that's the key. Test for toxins. Usually when people say toxins, they're talking about pesticides. They're talking about insecticides and things that they want to find out about. So when you do your research on that, now I did personally send off a bunch of pollen last year. It took months to get the results. So I sent off pollen and plant samples to see what pesticides and insecticides were present in my environment and in the pollen that the bees were bringing back. I got very good results back, but it is not normally available to backyard beekeepers.

So what you can do is you can be tested for diseases, for mites, for small high beetles, comb with or without brood may be submitted. and the main lab that I'm going to name is by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Research Service, and that is the BEE Research Lab at Belsville, Maryland, commonly known as the Belsfield Lab. People refer to that all the time. And this is where if you get an inspector to come and look at your hives and they think you've got foul brewed and it might be American foul brew, they sample it. They're going to send it off to the lab. When they say they're sending it off to the lab, it's the Belsville Lab.

So you can send stuff off to the Belsfield Lab and you can have it done free of charge depending on what you're trying to find out because it is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So here's the thing. You're going to have to go to their website and you're going to have to look at what is involved in preparing your materials for shipment. It's very detailed and you can go to their website and find that out. So if you just Google the BELtsville B Lab in Belsville, Maryland, you'll find out about all the services that they provide.

There are private companies that will provide other services. There's a new company that's come out that is providing services for pollen identification. So, but as far as when it gets down to pesticides, then that's where a lot of these companies draw the line. Now, I don't know if that's because there's so many different pesticides, because even an herbicide, a fungicide, things like that are considered pesticides, by the way.

Specific insecticides are under the pesticide umbrella, and those are the ones targeting specific insect species, right? So if you want to find those things out, that is not easy. As I found out, when I had bees that were poisoned at one time, you have to collect and control a minimum of 100 samples, so you need over 100 bees. And when you package them up and ship them off, and you try to get them tested for toxins,

then it's not that easy. and not only that, you should have that expense yourself. So if you're ready to drop $135, $250 in some cases per sample that you submit, maybe it's worth it to you. And I'm not going to name the lab or recommend a specific lab on that right now. But I just want to let you know that you may not get the answers that you want, and of course you're going to pay for that test. And they may have very limited parameters regarding what insecticides or pesticides,

they're going to test for, if any. So you really need to understand what it is you want to know and then what the information will do for you. So in my case, I found out what the source of that toxin was and was able to recover my colony. So they were okay. The other thing is that the pollen that I had tested, which was corn pollen,

and we had plant samples taken adjacent to a corn field, which included milkweed, and we had clover and we had golden rod all submitted for sampling and the test results were all very good, which was unique to my area. So if you want to know if pesticides or specifically insecticides and things like that are being used in your area, there is a registry because here's a thing. Under the Department of Agriculture, when someone is farming or crop farming or something like that, and they have to use a pesticide, whatever it is a fungicide you know they have to report it therefore there's a database that you can check on how could you find out it's called b-scape.org b-e-e-e-s-c-a-pe-org and this is only in the

united states so if you're outside of the united states we don't have that yet and that has been is being administrative by pennsylvania penn state so and the results are pretty interesting which you can find out it's the area where you live already has these things in the environment and at what levels and it's a grading scale. So I'm also lucking out because where I happen to live, very low pesticide residue, right? So when you get into, so these things impact your bees and everything else. It could impact your livestock for all I know. And bees are considered livestock for those who didn't know that. They're under the Department of Agriculture. But where our son, daughter-in-law live for example not even a half-hour drive away they have one of the highest

pesticide load areas that i've ever seen and so that's in the middle of great country so when depending on where you live you can have a lot of pesticides in the environment that your bees are exposed to but as far as paying for those testing uh that there's nothing that jumps out go to belts fill see what's going on and if they don't provide a test that you're looking for maybe you could request a I don't want to say honorable, you would request a dependable source, a trusted source or lab that would do that testing for you. I would let one lab reference the other, and then that way you'd know that they have some integrity because often people can pay for tests. You have no way of really knowing if the test was even really done. I don't know. So question number nine comes from Laurel.

In Denhurst, Illinois. I wonder if you could remind folks to check their orders promptly for hitchhikers. I just found two large cockroaches in the box of foundation I just received. Okay, so this is interesting to me because this is foundation. So cockroaches, cucarachas, right? Were they palmetto bugs? I want to know more about these cockroaches. I wish that I had seen the photo of these things. the good news is cockroaches don't do anything for your peace. However, it's a real thing because you don't want to be where cockroaches have set up house reproduced and establish themselves. Because for some people, that's a never-ending story. You just won't get that taken care of. So I do understand it's very important when you're getting shipments.

Now, Laurel did not say where these hitchhackers came from or what they bought, but that's actually something that should be reported because they are not following protocol when it comes to making sure that there are no hitchhikers and pest species moving around. We have the spotted lanternfly in my state that is actually spread around and is showing up that honeydew is in the honey. I don't think it's something that they're going to be able to control. I think the spotted lantern fly is going to go around. Don't even get me started about this spider that if you haven't heard about,

it there's a spider in the United States right now that's following the coast that is spreading itself across the country and apparently it's unstoppable and I'm not talking about a little tiny Mamby-pamby spider I'm talking about a big spider like the garden spiders and when they're little their little webs go up in the air and they ride the wind to new locations I'm not even going to talk about it I'm not even going to mention the fact that this spider is likely to show up in your backyard eventually and it's unstoppable. I'm not even going to say it because there are arachnophobes everywhere that this thing is going to be spreading a web across your back porch right where you walk out with your tea and you're going to feel it across your face when you get down those steps.

I'm not going to mention that. That spider is coming. It's not pretty. Apparently it's not dangerous. People don't care if a spider's dangerous. or not, they don't want it around. So you won't hear it here, but there's a spider coming. You can't stop it.

So I'm going to remind people about people buy package bees and stuff. When you buy packaged bees, any livestock that comes through the mail, things can come with it. So here's an opportunity that you have. Since a lot of people are starting out with bees this spring and they've ordered packages because I get that comment a lot. I've ordered my packages. They're coming.

I want to be ready. So here's another end of that that I want you to think about. Always, always ask the originator of your package, have you treated for Varroa destructor mites? What are the predicted mite loads in my package? So I've had good news from that, by the way. I've received packages years ago that arrived dead. Big surprise. They weren't packed well.

They had a weird gel in them instead of the sugar syrup. It was a disaster across the board. but then we did mite washes on all those bees since they're already dead and found no mites. So that was really good news. Now when you have a package, remember from the time you install them into a hive, they are all ferretic. They're in the dispersal phase. So you've got exposed for road to structure mites if they're present. So you're a brand new beekeeper, you bought this package and you're going to install it and what's going to be your apiary.

you have a great opportunity to start out with extremely lower no mites, right? So you can treat that package after you've had them for seven days. I don't recommend treating the minute you get them. They're already stressed. They've been in transit. Your queen is, the other thing is you can isolate your queen, keep her out of your treatment so you can treat just the worker bees. And then when you treat them, you kill the mites off.

And if you do that with acolyc acid vaporization, it's an organic treatment. You have up to 96% efficacy so you can knock those mites flat and put your queen back in, and then you're good to go. So you're going to start with a clean package. This is your opportunity. If you wait until they start brooding up, until they start capping their worker bees, once they start capping them, you have the potential for mites to hide out. So particularly for brand-new beekeepers who don't have any bees yet,

this is your chance to start with very low. low or no mite counts. So number one, ask the originator, did the treat for mites, what are the mite loads? Number two, if you don't know those things, and if they were sketchy about it, or you've got reports from other people, I stopped recommending some sellers because they were shipping packages with small hide beetles and varroa destructor mites. You just can't mention them again, and that's because these people are not getting their stuff under control before they ship them out to you. So you're a new beekeeper, bringing your

experienced beekeeper mentor, whoever it happens to be, assess that package and make sure they're not bringing anything with it. So anything that you're getting, make sure that they're clear. I'm not going to mention the spiders at all that are coming your way, flying with the strong winds. So you don't want to be downwind of that. Anyway, moving on. That was it for today. We're in the fluff section. So here's the thing. What are we talking about? The kind of of the plan of the week is what we used to call it. We talk about what's coming ahead. We know that we have heavy weather coming this weekend. We've got snow here in the state of Pennsylvania. It's going to hit us on Sunday. What else is going to happen Sunday? You're about to be robbed. That's right.

You're going to be robbed of an hour of sleep. Your clocks are going to have to be advanced one hour while you sleep. So they steal from you at night. If you've got leftover fond, A lot of people are asking me this. Leave it on your hives for now, by the way. If you're in the northeastern United States, you're in the south somewhere, you can pull it out. You have to be ready. Here's the thing.

Where is your fondant? Here's a pack of fondant. It just happens to be hive alive fondant, which you can buy at a discount from my website, along with everybody else who seems to be selling anything be related has discounts for hive alive fondant. Here's the thing. You've got this on your hive right now.

It's setting over your inner cover, and there's a hole there. So on the next warm day, so within the next couple of weeks, we need to get this stuff off of your hives because we're getting out of the woods here when it comes to freezing weather and things like that. And as we know, the environment is starting to provide

the resources that your bees need. That means they're going to back off on the consumption of your fondness. So you're going to have to have something to cover that hole. So when you take this off and the bees are in it, you cover the hole in your inner cover, and you set this where? over at your feeding station, not directly in front of the hive. You got some bees in there, they'll find their way.

If they don't find their way home, they'll join another hive. I've learned enough about bees over the past few years in particular to know that they're not faithful. That if these bees can fly, when they leave this little faunate, they will find their way to another hive somewhere and they'll be accepted. Bees are just mixing it up with one another all over your apiary. It is willy-nilly out there. So anyway, coming up, the reason I'm saying this is get this out of there and you need to plug that hole.

And the reason is, as it starts to warm up, if they have access to that feeder shim area, they're going to start building comb up there. So with the warming temperatures, get that off and get your inner cover back down onto that super where it belongs. Or you're also going to be super in your hives, hopefully coming up soon. So fun and out, plug in, cover the hole. do not set this in front of your hive because you might or on top of the hive because you think that you're letting your bees go back down into the hive but what you might be doing is kicking off a robbing frenzy right another option that you have is i have these handheld cordless shop vaks right you can suck up the bees and then go store your fondant in a toad or whatever you're going to do and then just open up your vac and let them out so that works really well but that's coming up So plant of the week, plan on getting your fondant out. You can also liquefy that 110 degrees water and mix that right up.

And then you can have that available for feed to help build a cone that somebody was asking about earlier. Cyclo back to the hive that it came from and use it as a sugar syrup if you want to. It won't take much to get rid of it. So pollen's coming in. We don't need pollen substitute anymore for those of you who are practicing it. I'm not saying everybody needs to. but dry pollen substitute can boost your colonies and for those you have that out you're going to find that the bees are backing off they're not that interested in it

so you can put that away and start thinking about next year the other thing is pollen sub you're not supposed to freeze it so cool space basement root cellar something like that in a tote where other things can't eat it my dog would eat dry pollen sub if you could the other thing is start clearing out your debt out so that's your plan now you need to have something to put them in because you have to think about you're going to be scraping off frames and things like that you're going to have a bunch of dead bees they can go to garden compost if you want to chickens don't eat dead bees it's a total waste so just think about cleaning up your dead outs and scraping everything out and if this is the first year that you're cleaning out

dead outs dead out hives bring a mentor in somebody with several years of experience that can look at it and brood issues, potential brood problems. So you want to know if there's evidence of disease in your hive or if it's just a normal dead out, which could be starvation, queen loss. Some of you will be opening up a hive in spring that you expect to find a bunch of dead bees in and you may find no bees at all. And one of the things that's happened is when you lose your queen. If you have a lost queen, you can end up seeing just a bunch of partially developed or even fully developed drone brood and nothing else. And that's a good example of, you know, you look at your frames and there was a laying worker, and several laying workers, by the way, because there's almost never just a laying worker. But your workers started laying and they're trying to survive and get their genetics out there while their numbers just dwindle. And then eventually they didn't have enough bees to even warm the brood. So now we have chilled brood that died. They're undernourished. They're small.

and that's very obvious. So you want people that can look at your frames with you, and then we need to clean that up. Now could you install a package or a swarm of bees, and would they clean out those salts for you? They would, but why make them do it? I recommend you uncap it all, wash it out with a power washer. Every beekeeper, I hope, would eventually have a power washer. They're very handy. You can wash out the old pollen and stuff like that that's in there. It's very rare that bees that move into it fresh would use old stored pollen. In fact, the resident bees might have even encapsulated it because we've learned that if the pollen that's in the cells has been turned into bee bread but has insecticides or herbicides present in it they may not feed that to their bees therefore the nurse bees we're not consuming it to convert it to

baby bee food and so there it just sits and sometimes they seal it up with wax so you need to soften that with water and wash that out too counting on your beads to clean that up is no guarantee so the other thing is give your new bees freshest start that you possibly can so we're coming up within the next couple of weeks you can go ahead and clean out your deadouts get them ready now last year I did learn that taking those dead outs down to a single deep box 10 frame or 8 made no difference swarms were apt to just voluntarily move into them so if you can clean it up leave some brute frames in

there in fact it should be loaded with all your frames because One of the things that happens if you are taking frames from some of these deadouts right and using them elsewhere, but then you don't replace the frames in that box and that box sits on a rack somewhere that's accessible to bees. When a swarm moves in and you don't know about it, they start building feral comb everywhere because all the frames are not filling all the spaces. So they start attaching the comb to your inner cover and then you've got a bunch of wild comb. So the boxes that you're setting out, that you're leaving out, that bees have access to should have have all the frames in them. And using the old brood comb as a swarm lure, we had 100% occupation of empty hives last year. So voluntary occupation. It's very interesting. And we didn't set it out,

you know, following all the guidelines, 12 feet eye, 200 yards away at the edge of the woods, facing a clearing to the south and all this other stuff. Didn't have to do it because it caught my bees ahead of time. But all these boxes got occupied. That's why we're in trouble. And we have too many bees. All right so clearing your dead outs. Good thing to do now. Number four is start indoor planting. So for those of you who are the growing things, I mentioned borage last time. I'm doing borage and hiss up and we're starting them indoors. I am doing two garden plot preps. One is we're burning off the old growth there. And the other is I'm just going to weed whack it to ground level. I'm going to try some no-till.

Because once you start them inside, you have the plugs. They're green. growing you take them out when the weather's clear and you just put them right in the ground and you're good to go you don't have to till for that so the other thing is get ready for your packages find out if you're if you've bought packages or if you've bought nooks find out when they're coming and make sure that you're ready for them this happens on you'll get days in the 70s and there'll be one day of the week where it's going to be 40 degrees and rainy that's the day your packages will arrive and be sitting outside by your garage. So just be ready let the post office know. You've got package of bees coming and things like that. They love that. There's nothing postman

and UPS drivers love more than to deliver live bees to you. They don't all love the bees as much as we do. So if you have the same UPS driver, FedEx driver that shows up at your property all the time, stop them and say, hey, I've got a package of bees that's going to be coming. Please keep them right side up because when you look in the back of that truck and yours isn't the only one there'll be a bunch of bees in there for other people that have ordered them for your area and they're all laying on their side even though there's big red and white stickers with big white arrows this end up the people that are managing your shipment do not care about your bees so we need to pass it on to them hey could you let you know the other driver who's going to be driving on Friday when viz come make sure they stand up right

do not put them on the dash. It was the other thing. It ordered queens in the past. And the queen is in an envelope that just has holes punched in it, sitting on the dash in the sunlight. And like, what's going on with that? Oh, I thought she'd need to be kept warm. No.

This is where we need to teach our delivery people when stuff is coming, how to manage it. And also encourage them to pass it on to the people that are at the depot area. You know, this is the best way to handle the bees that are coming. This is the best way if it says live bees and it's an envelope. Those are queens. Please keep them in the shade. And they think they're helping you out.

But they just don't know. So it's our job now to educate them so they can pass that on. So just be ready. Make sure they have the right phone number and everything else and that you're ready to receive your bees and get them hyped as soon as possible. Now, if your bees show up in the rain or if it's really cold, and really bad what should you do with them you should keep them dark and cool so in other words you've got a basement or something put those packages in your basement you can

sprit some of sugar water a little test spritz first to see you'll know by the weight of the package kind of if they've used up all the syrup that came with them but if you do some light sprits with sugar syrup on the side of it if their little tongues come out and they're trying to lick that up right away then they are thirsty and you should help them out the other thing is sometimes they only need a little water so you can even is sprits water it doesn't have to have sugar in it at all and if you see them going after the water they're thirsty so if they ignore it and you spritz it on there then stop don't they don't need anything else so dark cool keep them there until the weather changes and you can actually hive them up

uh what else pre-mix syrup for them play swarm traps yep it's time so if you've put swarm traps in for the winter they're in your garage, your shad, your barn, whatever. It's time to go ahead and start placing them, because remember that your scout bees that are going out from the hives that are going to swarm, regardless of what you do, you can open up the entrances. You can super your hives. You can do all these things, and you're going to get swarms still. So if you're going to do traps, get them out now.

What's next? And that's it. So I want to thank you for spending time with me here today. if you've got questions please put them down in the comment section i also would like to remind you please go to the website the way to be.org if you want to submit a comment or a question then go ahead and click on the page marked the way to be and you can fill out that form and i read them all it doesn't mean that they all show up here on a friday q and a but if i think it's going to be pertinent to a lot of people sometimes if it's an emergency i respond to that right away i'm not going to make you wait until a

friday to find out and don't forget to please also go to the way to be fellowship on Facebook and then you can discuss bees at any time day or night there are people there from all over the world there's over 6,000 members that's not a big group so it has a small group feel and we don't allow spamming advertising stuff like that it is just a place where you can discuss learn about bees and share your thoughts or get answers to your questions so that's really good the other thing is down in the video description you're going to see link to smoker pellets and that's a fundraiser for my Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association our mission is that we educate people about bees it is a nonprofit

organization and so we're selling switchgrass pellets which are for your smoker and this is I've tested smoker fuel of all kinds through the years and the smoker pellets that were getting the switch grass pellets are the best smoker pellets I have ever used. Once they're lit, they take a little energy to get started. So I use a propane burner to start them off. Once they're lit, half a canister, normal size canister, will burn the entire afternoon for me.

So a dense smoke, a cool smoke. Now some people will say, and the link to that is down in the video description. So I want to thank you in advance if you support us by buying the smoker pellets. But the other thing is some people will say, well, you can just get, you know, pellet stove pellets and use those in your smoker. And I'd like to caution you about that specifically. You have to think about, and pellet, you know, pellets for pellet stoves, which are, you know, a lot of people use this for whole house heating around here.

So the pellet stoves are, what's the design purpose of those pellets? The purpose of pellets stove pellets is to generate a lot of heat. Okay? We don't want that in our bee smoker. We want cool smoke. The other thing is they like to have a reduction in the amount of smoke they produce because that makes a cleaner pellet stove fuel, right? So again, these are opposite purposes.

So the switchgrass pellets that we're using generate a lot of smoke. We want that. A dense smoke. We want that. A cool smoke. We want that because that's best for the bees, and the bees respond to it. The other thing is, if there's such a thing as smoke that doesn't smell bad, the switchgrass pellets that are in the smokers that we use are the best smelling smoke. So if you're using smoke, that's it.

They don't compare to pellet stove smoke. And I did some research on smoker fuels because somebody was asking about burlap, for example, because we looked into another type of pellet smoke that was very expensive, and people wondered if it didn't have some medicinal qualities. But part of the study was they used burlap. Did you know when they put burlap in the smokers, and I linked that study in that video, the smoker in, when the smoker was loaded with burlap,

the bees were less calm than if you hadn't used smoke at all. Now, I realize that's one study, and I don't know if that's across the board, but if you're putting burlap in there, see if your bees are not actually becoming agitated from the smoke generated from burlap. And if they are, then you're better off just using a sprits of sugar syrup or something or no smoke, according to that study. And they evaluated the anger level or the defense response level of the bees by how much venom they would produce. It was a pretty interesting study. If you want to know more about it,

I will go ahead and put that link down in the video description too. So you can read about some of the smoker fuel. It was about hops, I believe. So hops was very expensive. And then in the study, they compared it with, you know, because they said 60% hops was 60% more calming to bees than burlap. But then in the burlap study, the burlap burning in that, that study cause your bees to be less calm than if you had not used a smoker at all. Really interesting stuff. Anyway, I want to thank you again for listening and being here, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend and week ahead and enjoy your loss of an hour of sleep.

Thanks for watching.