The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 249, hive top feeding and much more...

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube video:  https://youtu.be/jiwtbKqZ_iI   Do you need some The Way To Bee merchandise?  Here you go!  https://www.fredsfinefowl.com/mystore.html   Time Stamps with topics are generously provided by Adam Holmes Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 04:20 Regarding pollen substitutes, what are your thoughts on Hive Alive Pollen Patties this time of year? 23:35 You said you are only going to use Apimaye Deeps in the future, can you elaborate? 30:51 With your QMP uses, would there be a queen present in the cluster of bees that gather on that? 34:45 In your pollen trap comparison you mentioned sending your pollen off for testing, did you receive the results? 41:35 I'm trying to figure out when to have splits done so they can build up and have a large honey crop. Any pointers? 49:20 You mentioned about no longer using Queen Excluders. I would like to explore not using a Queen Excluder.

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, March the 15th, and this is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and answers episode number 249. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. Thank you for joining me. If you're brand new, welcome. If you've been here before and came back, what a great compliment that is. So I hope you're having a great week.

Things are changing a lot around here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please look down in the video description below and you'll see all the topics listed in order and some links that might be able to help you out a little bit so what's going on outside as shown in the opening 39 degrees Fahrenheit that's 4 degrees Celsius 2.2 miles per hour wind speed on average 96 percent relative humidity so rain at any moment so it's been raining off and on guess what's coming up Monday and Tuesday here in the northeastern United States the state of Pennsylvania potential snow. That's right, snow again. And that's why we're having problems right now. The ups, the downs. And this week we had really high temps for our area in the 60s.

We had the bees flying and getting a lot of pollen resources in. And they're also bringing in quite a bit of nectar. They are storing the nectar, but here's the problem. They're probably going to use that up very fast, particularly with the weather that we have coming up, including today. It means they're stuck inside the hive and they've already brought in a bunch of pollen which means they're kicking off brood and that brood is going to require not just nutrition but the warmth necessary to keep them alive how warm does brood have to be well it's been measured between 94 and 97 degrees Fahrenheit so that causes your bees to use up calories we'll talk a little bit about that later but it's very important that your bees not starve

this time of year some of us have false confidence because we have such a great survival rate and you may find out that they can get into trouble in a very short amount of time. So we'll cover that in today's questions. So the first question today, if you want to know how to submit your own topic, by the way, please go to my website, the way to be.org, click on the page, mark the way to be. There's a form to fill out. Or you can even comment under the videos that you see on my channel. The YouTube channel, by the way, if you're listening, and this is a podcast on Podbean,

titled The Way to Be podcast. So if you want to hear it as podcast, just Google The Way to Be podcast, and you'll find it because there's a number of apps that carry this program. So again, what am I talking about? Where was it at here? Oh yes, submitting your own question. I covered that. These questions were submitted during the past week. And if you have a problem right now, an issue that you need to have an answer for, please go to the Way to Be Fellowship.

It's on Facebook. I know some people don't like Facebook, but I don't have any other way to host it other than to have a Facebook group. So if you want to go there and they talk at all levels, beginners to experts. So welcome there. So I'm going to get right into the very first question here, which comes from Richard in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. I watch your latest Q&A where you talked about feeding your bees pollen substitute. I was wondering about your thoughts on feeding pollen patties in the hive. With the swings in weather here in PA, yeah, no joke. Think of the swings that we're having right now. One day sunny and 60, the next day rainy and in the 40s,

and I thought it might be helpful to give the bees some hive alive pollen patties. To give them a source of pollen on those days when they cannot forage, interested in your thoughts. Okay, so I have a lot of thoughts on this. And of course, when you're beginning a lot of people, this is their first winter coming into spring with their bees for the first time and they want to take care of them. And I know that just like when we have pets, we want to take care of them and give them everything we possibly can. But I really like for my bees to pull their resources from the environment as much as possible. Now that's why in my program, in my YouTube channel, the content is related to backyard beekeeping.

and that's because we don't have the pressures of commercial beekeeping. Now you could be a sideliner and adopt some of these practices and do okay. But I'm really not trying to boost the numbers in my colonies a lot. If I were, I would feed them. Okay. So let me just say that part. The other thing when it comes to what it costs you, for example, to put in pollen patties. And you might be wondering, do I even own pollen patties?

Would I try them out? Yes, I would. I have a box of them right here and just so you can look at the label. Is that upside down? No. Hive Alive Polin Paddies. Now that's different from what I've been feeding at the open feeding station, which is pollen substitute.

Dry pollen sub. Actual pollen patties are expensive. So hive alive pollen patties, hive alive is a company that's got a really good track record for giving you everything that you need. but giving your bees everything that you need and everything that you need for your bees. So how's that? This discussion came up at a big meeting, and two very significant researchers had a conflict on this,

and that was Dr. Jamie Ellis from University of Florida, and of course Randy Oliver, who has scientific beekeeping. That's his website. Randy Oliver had evidence that the pollen patties definitely boosted his brood and improved his hive, numbers, and longevity. The research that was done, and this has been revisited several times as a topic for research and observation. So at the bee lab down in Florida, there was not a significant difference

in the number of bees or their longevity when it comes to feeding pollen patties over not feeding. So here's the thing, but we also are talking about environmental differences. So if you look at Florida, this time of year, I mean, there's a lot going on down there. There's a lot of resources in the environment. So, for example, you would see a lot of pollen coming into your hives anyway. So then we make that comparison to a place that has potentially a pollen dearth, like where Randy Oliver was doing his research. So if the environment is not providing what your bees need regarding plant protein,

which is the pollen, then pollen patties would definitely boost your bees. So this is what I'm saying to you. If you notice that box is unopened, and the reason is I can't imagine using them. And the reason for that is because my bees are bringing in pollen by just massive amounts of pollen. My rule of thumb is if I see 10 or more pollen loads coming into a hive per minute, 10 or more loads per minute,

then I know that they're bringing in what they need. I also suspect, and this is backed up through years of observation, I suspect that that also means I have a laying queen and not laying workers. Something happens to colonies that end up with no queen, and they do bring in some pollen for their laying workers because they are producing drones, of course, but it's half-hearted. So if you get real significant amounts of pollen coming in, they're motivated and the brood is building,

and I haven't been wrong so far by following. that indicator, so 10 or more per minute. Now I'm at a point where it's 30, 40 or more loads of pollen per minute somewhere around 1 o'clock in the afternoon, 2 o'clock in the afternoon, because the time of day also plays on how much pollen and when they're bringing it in. So I would be wasting it completely if I put pollen patties inside a hive. Now the other thing that I have a problem with personally for my backyard hive is if I put on any kind of feed,

if I have a colony that I think needs emergency resources, where do I put it? I put it on top of the inner cover. So when I do that for this past year, that was exclusively Hive Alive Alive. So same company, Hive Alive Paddies, right? The fondant patties. So this is a fondant patty,

which is different from a pollen patty, which is different from a winter patty. So you might hear reference to putting on winter patties on your hive. And the thing that I don't like about a lot of the winter patties that I see and fondant was great. It has to be closed up enough that it doesn't dry out because I have ongoing video studies. And by that I mean I'm making observations and making video recordings of exactly how the bees attempt to use the resources that are on the hive.

So that includes dry sugar. that includes fondant, and sugar syrup, we know. They can take that right down. So that will lead us to another thing because what I don't think here in the northeastern United States that they are missing, and since Richard is also from the state of Pennsylvania, I highly suspect we have a lot of pollen already coming in.

So pollen doesn't necessarily put your bees in jeopardy if there is some coming in from the environment. What I find, and I notice this by looking at the observation hives, so we did that this week. We went and looked at all the observation hives. I wanted to see if they're provisioning themselves well with pollen, and they are. What I didn't see a lot of is nectar. So if we look at the open cells on the upper frames,

it was a little shiny in there, so we had some, but here's the problem. When we get weather like today where it's 39 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and then we're phasing several days in a row, your bees are taxed with keeping the brood warm. And to do that, they're going to burn a lot of calories. So I have seen in observation hives, entire frames of honey completely disappear in just a couple of days at a time when they're also brooding up. So I know this can seem like muddy water to you, but I want to explain my thinking. I don't want them to build more brood right now than what they're already getting from the pollen that they source in the end.

environment which by the way it's going to be the best pollen even if you spend the big bugs and get pollen loaded patties I want them to have the energy resources they need because that will crash a colony quicker so if you're going to artificially build the colony by adding them more pollen than they otherwise find on their own then you also need to provide the carbohydrates so you need to provide the sugar resources that they're going to need and that needs to be a lot more than the pollen. So I prefer only to watch for a crashing colony and if they are at risk of dying out because they've run out of carbohydrates, they've run out of sugar, so that

means no honey, then we need to boost that colony with that resource and I don't boost them internally with pollen. Now on the flip side of that, some of you have already made up your mind and you're going to put pollen patties in, and now I'll talk about that. You put them ideally right over the brood. So when you do that, you need a feeder shim to make space for it. Otherwise, you're just smashing a pollen paddy on top of your brood frames. So for it to be the most effective, of course, it would be there.

Now, I would recommend, this is for me personally, if I were your mentor right now near where I live, I would recommend not pulling your hive apart. to get to the brood, to get to where you would put that pollen paddy in and have it in an effective spot, you would put it down in the brood, right, on top of those frames. So that means pulling off your outer cover, pulling off your inner cover, and of course having space. So if you don't have a shim there, and a shim is just a spacer that gives you room above your frames so that you can put something in like a patty, a resource.

Now you're going to encounter a lot of comb in there. So when we have the frames up above and the frames down below, that space in between is no longer wide open. So you might have had 3 eighths of an inch there and that might be enough for a pollen patty, but you've got honeycomb in there that now you have to scrape away. So that means we're also scraping away some of their infrastructure at a time a year when they're really not warm enough to repair it, right? So they're not going to use their resources to build comb yet this time of year because it's still cold up where we are. So you could find middle ground and put it right over the top of your inner cover and let the bees just find it when you get a warming period there.

Or if it's insulated above that, which all of my hives are right now, then they would be able to go up to whatever resources on top of that inner cover and they could start to consume that. One of the problems with pollen and pollen patties or high protein patties is that what else goes after them? for those of you have problems with small hive beetles small hive beetles like to get into your pollen paddies and reproduce in them in areas where your bees can't reach them so I'm going to talk about something else first let's talk about the inner cover so this is the inner cover and I like this one in particular look at all the propolis that's on it and all the bees wax propolis around the edges so this is one that's been in a hive for a long time. Here's another one. Lots of beeswax on it. Anyway, my middle ground is that this comes from Be Smart Designs. This is something that I personally don't use,

not interested in it, don't need it. Why? Because they don't have small hive beetles, but this is called a trivet. And it's really interesting, so you would take this trivet and set it right on top of that entrance. And see the gap that it leaves here? So when you put your pollen patty on top of that,

and this could equally be placed down below on top of the frames of your brood, and it creates a space underneath and a space all around it. And the reason that's effective is because the small hive beetles need to be accessing your pollen patties in an area where your bees cannot police it. So the trivet goes on top of the space,

on top of the frames, on top of the undercover, whatever it happens to be. Your pollen paddy goes on top of that and guess what has 360 degree access to your pollen patty? Your honeybees do. Now this time of year we have, in my case, this would be a feeder shim which would be a medium hive box. I want to set this on here if I wanted to do it and I put my pollen paddy on there, you might look at all this space and go, well now they're just going to be build a bunch of honeycomb up in there. And I'm going to tell you that they won't. And here's why. It's the time of year. So we're in March right now. And we're talking about providing an emergency

resource for your bees. So remember that above this, you would want to have some loose double bubble or some insulation, an insulated outer cover above that. And in my case, insulated sidewalls as well on that medium box that's on there. And I've also taken inner covers like this and actually glued them to the medium box and other cases I've got the insulated inner covers which come from the same company that makes this be smart designs and they use expansion foam to stick those together and then I have a foam cover so I have all the different configurations out there but the reason is right now this time of year they're not expanding as far as their honeycomb goes so you've got time for them to use this space for

resources even though they can freely move through here there's a much open space up here they're not going to build new comb yet but when the temperatures get warmer and those resources start to come in and by that i mean a nectar flow a really good nectar flow that's when you want to get this out of there don't need it anymore anyway because now the resources are available in the environment and you would cover up this inner cover hole and then that pushes the bees down below any bees that are already up here you just leave the lid off after you've covered it until they fly out and then you close it back up and we're back in business so the other thing I want to talk to you about is we're in a transitional time and I've said it to no liquid syrup on top of your hives

and the reason is it leaks down in so when you've got a jar with holes in it and you take that jar and you put it on here just like this which has been done for a hundred years who knows how long everyone thinks that you're feeding your bees so well from that and that's because the fluid continues to drain out of this now here's the thing as an air pocket develops up in this jar each time it goes from cold to hot the air expands in there and it expresses syrup down so even if i put this on a mock hive without any bees in it once that airspace is a third or more it speeds up and pushes out even more which every day that it goes from night and cold to daytime and warmth until it actually empties itself out it looks like something's consuming the sugar syrup out of the jar and it's not

the jar is liberating the syrup into the hive and where is it doing it dead center directly over where this spring's brood is located that's why i don't do that and i don't recommend that And you can do those tests yourself. If you're a backyard science type and you've got homeschool kids, that is a great test to do Put out jars of sugar syrup a third two-thirds full half full three-quarters full whatever you want and set them all out there and see and keep them covered so it's not the sun that's warming it up It's just a normal transition from a 39 degree day like we have right now to when it raises into the 50s or 60s and see how much syrup gets pushed out So we have another feeder which is today's thumbnail and I've mentioned it before but it's timely because this is something that we're thinking about this time of year. This is called, I hope you can read it, it's called the Bee Buffet. Okay, so the Bee Buffet, now this has a cover on it. Why is that? Because if you look at this opening at the bottom, isn't that interesting that it matches the size of the opening on the inner cover?

Not a coincidence that goes directly over the inner cover and that oval. And look what happened now. Now if you forget that you've got this open space up here and things do warm up and you've got this feeder on there, if you notice the bees can't get through to where the jar goes on. So the cover closes that up. Your jar goes on like this and the bees are kept inside. And what happens is there's a trough in there that they feed on. Now why is this any different than just putting a jar with holes on it inverted on your hive? Glad you asked great question. Because here's what happens.

At nighttime, when the air that's up in this jar starts to contract, the first thing it's going to do is pull the liquid back out of the trough that it's sitting in. So in other words, it's not just drawing air in right away as it contracts that later will expand when things warm up again. It's drawing the liquid out of the trough in the bottom here and then as it expands the next day, it's just refilling the trough and not flooding down inside the hive. These are experiments you can do yourself. So if you're going to offer sugar syrup inside your hive from an inverted jar, this is that you're going to offer sugar syrup, this is the only feeding system that I know of that will not express syrup into your hive. And what kind of syrup would I recommend this time of year?

One to one. So that's four pounds of sugar to half a gallon of water and that would mix up two quarts of this. So that's a feeding solution and by the way the number one concern for me personally for a colony that is using up too much of their honey and store nectar resources and as yet at the same time bringing in a lot of pollen their number one risk is that they're going to run out of honey and stored nectar so this way you can save that colony and again if you forget that that's in there this height is short enough that it fits inside a medium super so if that's your feeder shim and that's the feedersham I recommend that you have so I know this went beyond patties but that's because I want you to kind of know what the different options are

and what the risks are when you put those things together so the paddies depending on where you live if you're in a pollen dearth right now then you are artificially building brood and i'm thinking as a backyard beekeeper how critical is that going to be so for me personally i just wait for the pollen to show up big enough and in enough variety that the bees will build on their own. That is a great way to test kind of the natural environmental rhythm of where you're keeping your bees. I'm just mentioning all sides, so just in case your mind is set, how would I do it? And those, I hope, are the answers you were looking for. So question number two comes in from Jeff and Jenny, that's their YouTube name. And it says at 2042 into this video, so this is an

apiary survival walk. So if you want to see that video, it's, you know, I just walk from my hive to hive and we look at how the bees are doing. So you said you're only going to be using Appamay deeps in the future. Can you elaborate on why? So for those of you who may be unfamiliar apamah, those are beehives that are made out of recycled plastic and they're insulated. And the Apamee dealer is at every big expo and bee gathering and conference that you'll see every conference I've been to this year, they've been there. And I started using them, let's see, this is the second winter with Apamehives and the third year. So the thing is, I like their hives in general, and of course I have the big hive, which is a 10 frame center Langstroth design.

And they have their own different entrances. They have a built-in pollen trap. They have built-in feeders, which are really convenient. and once the bees have sealed up the venting through the top because they don't want it once they've sealed up that with propolis those caps and openings then it works really well so i was talking with the sun of the inventor and um we just told me that you know you can just put a thin piece of double bubble or something in there if it's brand new if you're putting a hive together and then it insulates. I'm only saying this because this is how I ultimately got convinced

that these are great hype designs. Originally, I did not like at all the lack of control over venting through the roof, the cover of the hive. So then the other thing is, after they came out with those, they have the standard 10-frame hive, but they have a nucleus hive, kind of a hybrid nuke, because it's really seven frames and they're deep. So when I say I'm only going with the deep super's on these hives. I'm referencing the Appamee 7 frame nucleus hive, which can even be turned into a mini-nuke because it has a divider board that goes right in there, and then any supers that go up, you can have divider boards on them. So you can have three frames on each side, and so you can use these as resource builders, you know, queen builders, whatever you want to do. They're very versatile,

or have the full seven frames and then the next super above that is going to be another deep box i didn't want mediums so i do have a couple of the full size 10 frame hives and i do recommend medium supers for their 10 frame size even though they will sell you can run a double deep on those but the medium super if you want to have it manageable and something that you can lift and carry around and the handles by the way are built extremely well. There is a knockoff out there of the Apameh, and I looked at that too, because guess what? One of those was at one of the Expos where the Apamee hive was, so it was really easy to then go and see that we can look at the knockoff and see why it's so much cheaper. And one of the conspicuous things right away is if you look inside the metal plate that goes

inside that supports the handle mechanism. So that's your latching mechanism. It's also the way that you lift the Appamehive. On the knockoff version, who knows the company that even makes it, because that was a little squirrely figuring out because someone had donated it, I think it was a fundraiser. The screws just go into the plastic, so they weren't bolted onto an inside plate that held it. So it was lacking some quality build components, right? So anyway, if you're going to pull the deeps on 10 frame sizes, you're going to have a lot of weight on your So yes, mediums for the 10 frame size, full deeps for all of the Appamee 7 frame nuke size, and that's because I intend to turn those into triples, just as I do with my 5-frame

nucleus wooden hives. And one of the things I really like about it, too, is that the latching system that they have, if a big storm came through and blew it over, they're all latched together. So if it fell over in the snow, for example, midwinter, I would lose nothing, including the integrity of the hive and the different boxes going together. The other thing is, it has holes in the feet that you can actually use U-Boltz and screw it down to whatever the hive stand is that you have. In my case, I do have wooden hive stands, so I've got the wooden cross members and a lot of different support structures, but that allows you to bolt them down if you wanted to.

And so it has some really practical things to it, but, reference to this question I'm talking about specifically the seven-frame nucleus hive which by the way I just bought two more of them and I used a discount that was because of a recent conference that I went to here in the state of Pennsylvania and they had them shipped there and I went and picked them up so I'm expanding the seven-frame nucleus collection for my Apamee hives and it's not that I have anything against them but I probably won't be buying the bigger 10-frame versions of the Apamase. I'm scaling down as far as the width of my hives,

and that's because they tend to do better in these reduced spaces, and instead I'll expand up. And that's why I mentioned how secure they are as far as connecting the boxes together. And another curious part of that is for those who just want to use wooden hives only, and that's no problem at all. they don't have the insulation of the Apameh highs, but my wooden nukes made it through winter, just fine, no insulation around them, no weather wrapping at all, just an insulated cap over the top, which is, of course, where they end up at the end of the winter.

So they make it just fine, but the thing is Apamea sells their brackets that you can screw onto wooden hives. So you can actually bolt all your boxes to take. together and then again just bolt down that bottom brood box and then the rest of the hive is completely stable. So it was interesting. In fact, I just looked at that today before I came on to talk. So that's why if you're getting the big ones, yes, go to the mediums or you're going to have very heavy supers on your hands. But when I'm talking about the nuke hives, I'm going with all deeps. And it also keeps me in the same size frames, by the way. Question number three, James Shrewp.

That's the YouTube channel name, James Stroop 4552. Mr. Dunn, with your QMP uses and observations, you get or gather a bunch of foragers basically where you want them. But would there be a queen present, or is it just foragers willing to jump ship? And I'm glad this came up because a lot of people will be trying to swarms and things like that this time of year. So if there is not an active swarm on the go. Now, so this gets complicated, so I hope this comes through clearly. When I see a swarm leaving a hive

and when I see them starting to gather on a tree nearby, that's when I can take a QMP, I run as fast as I can to the refrigerator, I take a QMP noodle out, I run back out there, and I zip tie it. this is usually the first swarm I see in the spring. I zip tie that to a branch and I can derail a bunch of those still in-flight bees that are traveling with the swarm. And if I can get them to go to the branch, I want the queen has to go with them. Now that I've said that,

and it doesn't work 100% of the time, but most of the time it does, and it's a huge amount of fun to manipulate bees and get them to go where you want them to go. So anyway, the queen is at the mercy of the bees that are on the wing that are taking her to a bivouac site. So the other end of that is, could you just take the QMP, put it on a branch, and get the swarm to go there, or would you then just get a bunch of random foragers that happen to fly through that scent? QMP is temp queen, it's a synthetic queen mandibular pheromone, it is not a real queen, and it only costs five dollars.

and so it's easy to just get it to play with. But what happens is you do collect a tiny cluster of peas, maybe a few hundred. And they collect onto that QMP noodle, and there's no queen in there. Now, if you go out there and look at it and see that it's actually good size, it's basketball size,

chances are there is a queen, and you got the magic combo, that means that they were swarming out and they did reroute to your tree branch. So these big numbers, there's a queen there. A little cluster that just happens to hang out day after day after day. They're just there because of the Q&P noodle, right? Because once you remove it, they have nowhere to go,

but then they also stay on their branch because what have they done? They've reinforced that pheromone onto all that organic material on that branch. And that's why I say you have to do it kind of the first couple of swarms of the year because you get their scent on the branch, and then other swarms naturally bivouacked on the same branch because they find that scent appealing to them. So let's recap. If they're actively flying and actively moving onto the tree, you can get them to come to your branch by putting a QMP noodle out.

If there's no swarm on the wing and you go out there and strap a QMP noodle to a branch, then that means you will get random foragers, but the cluster will be small. Okay. And so that's how that works. QMP. Now the other thing is, what happens if you can't get those bees to leave that branch and they're just there day after day until they're ultimately going to starve and die? You can actually take those bees and you can put them in front of any hive that's queen right, and after a couple of days, they'll walk right into it.

They'll go right into any hive you put them on the landing board. So it's a way to reinforce them. Question number four. This comes from Glee 059. That's the YouTube name and says, oh, it says, good morning. Did you get your pollen results? So this question was, I was reviewing pollen traps. And the reason I was reviewing pollen traps last year is because I had to trap a bunch of pollen.

No big surprise. But what was I collecting the pollen for? And the reason I was collecting the pollen was because there was a University of Vermont study going on and I was fortunate enough to get my pollen here in the state of Pennsylvania included in their submissions so that we can find out if neonicotinoids and other things like that different pesticides were making their way into our beehive and what the potential impact on your bees would be so and by the way I did all that at my own expense I didn't pay for the analysis but I did have to pay to

have a cold shipping container and I bought the freeze packs and all that stuff and overnighted it and the whole nine yards. So we didn't just collect pollen. So part of it was pollen from corn. So we needed to get the pollen from corn stocks, and we know the corn does not need bees to produce corn, right? They can wind pollinate,

but your honeybees go all over the corn pollen. In fact, because of that study, I was out in the cornfield and looking for bees on the pollen, and I was amazed at how much. many bees were collecting pollen from the corn stalks from the tassels so I thought wow there's a lot of that coming in so anyway we collected that we collected plant samples as well so my property is directly adjacent to a crop farmer's property so it's very easy for me then to also collect plant samples So I also submitted milkweed and I submitted clover and we submitted golden rod.

And so we took parts of those plants, packaged those up, documented the exact location, proximity to it, in some cases within two feet of the cornfield. And then it took, I wanted it to be ready by January when I was giving my presentation at the North American Honeybee Expo because I wanted to make that part of my presentation, which was challenging. your honeybees face and I wanted to show all the video sequences of the bees on the corn and everything else. Very anticlimactic. So it was good news for me. First of all, zero neonicotinoids. Zero in my collected pollen. Now the thing of it is, it was all the pollen together, by the way. So there were other varieties of pollen being brought in.

It wasn't exclusively corn pollen, but the corn pollen looked like a lot of it. The other thing is, The other thing is in the adjacent plants. So in other words, were the pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides getting into the soil and then subsequently getting into the wild plants that our bees are also foraging on? So clover's a big one.

Goldenrod's a big one. I did not submit any asters because I didn't want to wait that long. And the study had an end date. We had to submit all our samples and I had milkweed. So milkweed, huge for your bees as far as nectar goes. and that all came back negative. Now, the spectrum of pesticides, and when we say pesticides, some people in their heads automatically think insecticide, but those are different. Insecticide falls under the pesticide umbrella, but a pesticide includes all your antifungal agents and all of your

treatments, right? So it's not just an insecticide. These are designed to protect the seeds, while they, to keep them from rotting and to keep fungus from growing on them. And there are systemic pesticides that grow throughout the plant that protect it throughout its life. And keep in mind, by the way, you're eating that. And when people say, see, if you say, we're eating the pesticides that go into protecting the corn, and then they'll say, no, you're not, that's feed corn. And then my question to that is, well, it's feed corn. where are you feeding it to?

And then they say livestock. And then what livestock? And then if they say beef cattle, you return to your original claim, we're eating the pesticide. Because if it's being fed to livestock, we're ultimately someday eating the livestock, which was fed pesticides.

You see the loop. See what I'm talking about. Anyway, great news. There were a couple that showed up as they showed up on the register, but were well below limits. Now, the study included other areas. So if you want to see what happened to Michael Palmer

and the guys that are up there that participated in the study, they were not happy because their numbers were not good at all. In fact, because I sampled other plants adjacent to mine, the plants they sampled up in Vermont had pesticide loads in them. So if I can find that link to their discussion, I'll put it down, associated with this question, and then you can see them discussing it because there are a bunch of big-name beekeepers up in Vermont

that participated in that study, and they're not happy with the way the environment is being treated up there. And that's my family's home state. That's where my mom was born, my dad was born, my grandparents, they're from Vermont. So I was not happy to know that that's what they were dealing with, but I was very happy to know that my pesticide loads here are extremely low, which may have a lot to do, by the way, with the passive success of my honeybees.

So if you want to know, for example, if pesticide loads are high, wherever it is you live if you're in the United States, go to beescape.org, B-E-E-S-A-P-E-O-G, and put in your address and see, because all the farming, all the ads, agricultural practices in your area require registration of pesticides use they can't just go out there and use anything they want and when they use it is registered to the Department of Agriculture Bescape.org is run by Penn State. So it's a great resource and by the way no big surprise I have very low pesticide loads where I live. So those are the results. It's several pages. So they tested everything. It was pretty amazing and mine was page after page of zeros.

Question number five comes from Keith. And I'm in Southern PA trying to figure out when to have splits done in a hive so they can build up and still have a large honey crop. Any pointers. So for those who are backyard beekeepers, new beekeepers, now here's the thing too, by the way, a lot of people will say,

and this is weird to me because, in the south you just think they're feeding all the time like they never run out of nectar but i find out that down in the south spring might be their only nectar flow their only real honey harvest where here in the state of pennsylvania we get two so we have two opportunities two big ones by the way so in southern pa the chances are very high that you can do a split get them built up and still get a big honey harvest so here's the thing maybe control the size of the split but the question is when should you be ready so when you go outside and this is one of the best things about this time of year when the weather is warm you can get your cup of coffee or whatever it is your tea hot water whatever you drink go outside and look at the

landing boards what would we be looking for so we're watching the landing words look at all the pollen going and look at all those foragers coming and going now my grandson's favorite B is a drone so he goes out there looking for drones so that's what we want to see. Before you're thinking about doing a split, first of all, we want to see a highly productive colony. Not one of those little ones that just looks like nothing's going on. We want high production. We want good numbers. We want great foragers and we want lots of drones. Good, healthy drones that are zipping out and coming back because that's your indicator that you've got reproductive stock

on the wing, and that should indicate to you that other colonies elsewhere also have good drones flying, and that's what we're going to need when we produce that queen. Because keep in mind, once you start and make a split, you're going to have to produce a queen with the eggs that are left behind. And if you've already seen queen cells are in production that are half done or something like that, that is a time to go ahead and pull a frame that's got your queen's. on it with her brood and start a resource nuke there because here's what can happen and this is why it's going to help you get more honey if that's your goal what you just did is you produced a micro nuke let me do a tie-in let's say you had one of the appa may seven-frame nuke hives right seven frames is pretty big

but if you put the divider board in it right and it's a single deep so it's got the insolidic cover it's got a feeder on top it's got two feet They're separate. So we just created a micro nuke. So you pulled a frame with the queen on it. You put her in that Apamehive, right? So then you've got three deep frames in there. So you're going to pull another frame with honey on it,

or you're going to pull another frame that just had strong cone. So you just created a micro nuke with the queen. She was on her way out anyway. If you're seeing queen cells and they're nice and drawn out, I'm not talking about a queen cup that has nothing in it, that means absolutely nothing. A queen cup looks just like the little cap on an acorn shell, and that's it. There's nothing in it. There's no egg.

That is just an insurance policy that the bees. They make them, whether they're going to reproduce as a colony or not. So don't be alarmed by that. But if you see a queen cell and that points down, you see that being drawn on it, it's halfway done. Go ahead, pull the queen, pull the frame that she's on, and that will be her reinforcement stock. those are her workers, those will become her retinue of nurse bees and everything else,

and you put them right into that small nuke box. And then what you've done is you started them out. Now that's an example of a hive that would get sugar syrup on right now. So that's to make sure that they're going to be okay. And that's your insurance policy just in case when they start building these up. Now in a perfect world, and this rarely happens in beekeeping. in a perfect world the queen cells that they have produced as they mature as they get capped as one of them emerges from that queen's cell she in a perfect world would go over and sting and kill her competitor queens and what that means is then that hive will not swarm and that's why i'm telling you to please take that queen out as soon as you see queen cells in meaningful production that's because you just you just removed a swarm trigger. You also took away the queen which means she is not laying

eggs and replacing losses in that hive right now which is going to cause a tiny brood break. And when that happens you reduce some congestion which means you reduce the urge to swarm which means when the new queen comes out when she becomes sexually mature and then she does her mating flight and meets with all those drones that are out in the environment we want the most drones we can possibly have in spring because we want the highest competition for reproduction, and we want those drones to mate with our queens. So then when she comes back and she's been mated and she starts laying and she's in production,

look, that whole period of time while she's maturing, no new eggs are being laid in that hive. From the time you took the queen out in her frame, into the new hive, the Appamee 7 frame, or any small nuke, right? Anyway, that whole time there's no new eggs, which means you're losing potentially a thousand eggs to 1,500 to 1,600 to 1600. I don't know what the magic number is per day, which 21 days down the road

would have resulted in emerging new workers at that same number. So for the entire time that your queen is absent, to the time that the new queen becomes mature, gets mated, comes back, begins to lay, you have lost egg production for the entire period, which results in what? A loss of new brood, which means you have a brood break, which means what else? That you've reduced congestion in the hive, which results in what? A reduced urge to swarm, which results in what? The retention of all of the bees you would have lost if they did swarm. And so now we've got a healthy, sizable hive that's going past that swarming margin, the risk of swarming that goes right into June,

and then we've got a good colony of bees that's going to give you your target, which is your large honey production. And now what do we have over here? A little nuke that's in production from the queen that you took away. They're all healthy, they're growing, and they're building up. And then you just pull that little divider board out. once they fill their three frames in that hive pull that out and now they have seven frames and they continue to build out when they have six of the seven frames full about mid-july beginning of august you put the super on which is a deep in this case they fill all that up and now you've got a colony that will go through next winter and then your process starts over next spring sound good i think it sounds good those are my pointers for that so this one comes from james from Florence, South Carolina. Mr. Fred, you mentioned sometime recently about no longer using Queen

excluders for Honey Soupers and or Flowframes. Perhaps I misheard. I understand Queen excluders not only prevent both the Queen and drones, but otherwise may exclude well-nourished members in the colony. I would like to explore not using a Queen Excluder. Does Honey and and comb production improve without the queen excluder, or are they healthier? Would rather not see brood in my newest adventures in hog half comb, planned two hives or cut cone production two hives, really trying to avoid the extra protein.

And by extra protein with a little smiley face in the message, they mean no eggs and brood up in the super. Okay, this is where I hope you will listen, to what I'm about to explain. I do not use queen excluders. Out in my apiary there are 34 colonies of bees. Not one of them has a queen excluder on it. Now I need to explain carefully why that works and why I've not had brood for years up in my honey supers. The reason is, and once a Again, I mention their names all the time.

I just saw a picture of Jeff Horschoff and Randy McCaffrey on the same flight, on the same jet side by side. Can you imagine that poor airline steward or steward what they had to deal with there? But anyway, they reinforced my own thoughts with their cutouts and with their observations about what bees do in cavities left to themselves. This goes way back because years ago I did the test and I highly recommend you try to this too if you're a doubter and I like that by the way I want people to be doubters I want them to question everything and test the logic behind the things

that I tell you to do and so here's the thing if you put out trays like this let's say and you put you know sugar syrup in there and then you cover this up this whole thing so once the bees are acclimated and they're coming and going and they're mobbing it overnight when they're no longer at the feeder refill this tray with sugar syrup, cover it with the queen excluder of your choice. The following day when the weather warms up, the bees will come back and you will see them,

and we all know they all have no bedside manner. When it comes to feeding at sugar syrup sites, they're in a frenzy. They grapple each other, they roll around. They're all intense, especially this time of year. That's how I know the nectar flow has not started. They're so intense about sugar syrup that they just go nuts. Also, there are no bumblebees yet and there are no wasps yet.

So the bumblebees, we know they can't make it in there. So the honey bees, you will see, first of all, they don't just passively want to get in there. They really want to get in there. And what you will learn quickly is how much they struggle to get through. And also, how some of them never seem to get through the queen excluder at all. Now, that wasn't just one kind of queen excluder. So I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again.

There are plastic queen excluders. There are metal queen excluders, and I recommend set one of these out for each of those. Do triple tests and see how it goes and see which ones the bees get through the easiest. Some of the plastic queen excluders I don't like, and that's because the way they were molded when they were made, there are little flat edges. So there's a really sharp corner, sharp edge to it. and the bees have to scrape and rub against that edge every time they pass through the queen excluder. Now understand this is also why we also have another division so stay with me

in how they get managed so in how the hive is configured. This is where you've got a brood box then people put a queen excluder on it then they put a medium super on it or they start to stack up multiple medium supers but what else do they add nine times out of ten you'll see an upper entrance you'll also see upper venting so the bees that are coming and going that are foraging are now utilizing the upper entrance they're not squeezing through the queen excluder anymore so that eliminates that so what did i used to do 15 years ago i had upper vents I had upper entrances. I had the queen excluder in. And I thought the queen excluder was just perfect because they were using my upper entrance like crazy, right?

So if you have an upper entrance, listen carefully. If you have an upper entrance or upper venting, you have to have your queen excluder because your queen will lay eggs in an area near where the air exchange occurs, where the venting happens. and learning that is when I decided not to use upper venting and not to use an upper entrance and instead remove the queen excluder and had a single landing board entrance. And I'll say the size of the landing board entrance right now

while we're talking, three-eighths of an inch high is the reduction three inches wide year-round. You can also take if you've got a solid bottom board with a winter and summer side. The winter side is a 3 eighths of an inch reversible bottom board. That's the side that I would leave up all year round.

Why? No mice can get in there. None. So then all you have to do is put little wooden inserts to the sides to reduce that to three or four inches. Whatever you decide is correct for your colony of bees. So with that single entrance, with no upper venting,

with no upper entrance, and no queen excluder. There is a predictable transition from brood to brood in honey and pollen to nothing but honey to nothing but honey above that. Once you hit what I call the honey bridge, and I've been saying this for years and people still ask me and don't seem to understand what I'm doing, that honey bridge today follows what's called a condensing hive. but all it is is what bees do in every cavity they occupy. And this is why Randy and Jeff come in. I was so excited to see their cutouts, to see those colonies that are in floorboards,

that are between the joists, that are in the studs, in walls, in old uninsulated buildings. Some of these buildings are really dilapidated. Sometimes they're in the overhead when it's a multiple-story building and they're between the floor choice up there. But here's the thing.

They all have almost 100% have a single entrance. The single entrance is very small, by the way, in a hot, humid part of the United States. And that is very different from where I live. So this also eliminates the thinking that I need a big entrance, I need venting in order for my bees to dehydrate their honey down. The bees are doing that in confined spaces with single entrances that are remarkably small. So the bees have the ability to circulate air as much as they need to to dry out their honey.

And then in these, so watch any of their videos. That's Dirt Rister is the YouTube channel and Jeff Hortchoff is Mr. Ed. So I'm not sure what the channel is called, but we all know who Mr. Ed is. I hope if you're watching me. and if you watch his ripouts, sometimes he skips right over the entrance size and specific location, but sometimes they don't. I'm always excited when they show it.

It's a very predictable distribution of resources. Now, what we just did is we eliminated the need for the queen excluder, which means they move freely up and down. Okay. We have a single entrance, which means that hive is maximizing its ability to protect itself, particularly later in the year when we start to get yellow jackets sometimes you'll sit outside and you're watching a beehive and this is the other thing this is why i want to reinforce the three eighths of an inch opening

when you have larger openings larger entrance reducers like half inch for example you'll see larger bumblebees getting in the bumblebee will show up and scoot right in as if all the other bees didn't even see it there now then the question is that's alarming right It's a bumblebee. They don't belong in there. What's going on? A bumblebee looks like it's going to eat a lot, right? But then I had to put that in perspective. So I'm watching the bumblebee going, I waited and waited because I wanted to see them come out probably with a bee on each foot, getting stung or whatever, being harassed, really heavy.

And it didn't come out at all. So they're taking their sweet time. This is my mindset. They're taking their sweet time eating all the resources in there, and then they're just getting away Scott-free. Well, anyway, the 3-87 entrance reduces. the ability for the big bumblebees to get in, so only the little ones can get in. So it's part of hive defense. So you would think, wow, wouldn't they just pick this on their own? Yeah, they would. That's why when they pick a space that they occupy on their own,

sometimes it has the tiniest entrance, almost an unbelievably small entrance. They can very easily defend it. And that's why their resources are way up inside, way away from the entrance. That almost seems like they had a natural order in mind, the beekeeper comes along and says well your honey stores are way up here let me give it an entrance right next to the honey stores just in case some wasps want to come along and try to rob you that is not what the bees would do you have to get past the brood and everything else to get to their honey stores in a organized space that the bees have occupied without the assistance of a beekeeper this is how and why I don't use a queen excluter. Now here's the other thing. Combe honey is really great and I've been doing a lot of it. I'll be doing hog halves. He mentions hog halves. I'll be doing those this year. I also, maybe some of you who, if you went to the North American Honeybee Expo, there was someone there with these frames that had wooden like frames for comb honey. I got those too. So we'll be trying those out this year also. So I'm not the least,

bit worried based on years of observation with a single entrance and no venting, I am not the least bit worried that I'm going to find brood up there. Now, let's move on from that. You are a backyard beekeeper. One of the reasons, when you buy beehive equipment, you're brand new and you're shopping for beehives and you look at kits because that's where the savings is. You know, if you're buying a kit, you get everything. We get double deep, solid bottom board, couple of mediums and we've got the inner cover got the outer cover the inner cover comes by the way with a notch already look at this this inner cover has no notch front or back none that's the way i like it let's go to this one this inner cover has a notch and that notch when this faces down

it's right here so it vents through the top whether you wanted it or not but guess what It's almost completely closed up with propolis. What does that tell you? It tells you that the bees didn't want it, but they come pre-notched. I really dislike that the intercovers come pre-notched. Anyway, you get all this equipment, and the way to set up,

it's because these standards are kind of set by commercial beekeeping, where you need to put hives side to side and strap them onto pallets, four together at a time. And so they're maximizing, minimal wood in the woodenware and of course that they can go right next to each other so they can be strapped and in some cases it's a migratory cover not even a full telescoping cover but they're set up

that way and so you can change that for yourself so the upper entrance the stuff the venting we just get it in your heads when you're new beekeeper that if it's there then it must mean for us to use it And so depending on what they're doing, plus it will come with a queen excluder automatically. So my configuration is, just to be clear, single entrance, no upper entrance, no vent. Deep brood box that gets full, right? So if it's a 10 frame, 7 out of 10 frames are full, you go to a super.

If it's a 8 frame deep, we until 7 out of the 8 frames are involved, in full and they need expansion, then you put your medium super on. These bottom two boxes are always just for the bees. I don't care what they put in those frames. I don't need anything that's in there. And so once that medium super is, you know, three quarters full or whatever, the super above that, that's for me. That's for you. That's your flow hive super. That was. mentioned here that's your cutcomb that's your whatever you want to build beyond that right because I found out that that honey bridge occurs in that second box somewhere in there because you'll see the big cluster the big the brood is established and once the brood is

established it cycles over and over so you'll see the center of the brood pattern and if it's, you know, eight or ten frames, they rarely run brood wall to wall in ten frames. Usually it occupies, you know, the end frames on either end don't quite get filled out all the way. And so what they do is they stop that brood pattern. So they've kind of maximized their production. So by out here, the 21st day, when they're emerging out here, there are already ex-lated and already in production, so it just keeps cycling through eggs, pupa larvae or eggs larvae pupa and then emergence eggs larvae pup and emergence and it just keeps

going over and over so the cycle doesn't change and therefore they don't expand they don't need more room to do that right so that's why they can be confined and that's why some people practice single brood box beekeeping and it's a 10 frame brood box so once they've once that cycle starts repeating then you're so sometimes that arc goes up into the second box and that's why I made the decision to keep my boxes just to two All for the bees and that's why some people get confused, you know, they go to a If they're looking at flow hives They go to the flow hive website and they see that it's a deep brood box and a deep super queen Excluter in the middle

Based on what they're doing there, that's what they do because they don't have a second box But if you look at my flow hives they have the deep than a medium, then the flow super, no queen excluder. So the ones that have no upper entrance, like I see, you know, the Anderson family, what they do in New South Wales, Australia, it's their invention. They have the deep root box, they have the queen excluder, and then they have the honey super. There are a lot of bees in there that never make it through the queen excluder. They can't. They don't. Physically, they can't get through it.

So they count on the ones that do, and of course, plenty do. So it can't be 50% or something like that, but any reduction in your workforce is a reduction in honey production, right? So that's where I came up with that, and I do have videos demonstrating how to, you buy an extra, if you're one of the flow people and you want it all to look the same,

then you buy an extra brood box, you measure the depth of it so that you turn it into a medium, super so you cut the brood box off at the bottom and now you've got a two inch feeder shim that now goes up on top of what your inner cover you glue it right to the inner cover now you created a feeder shim on top of your flow hive with a gabled roof and you can put a wrap it around in there you can put a quart jar in there you can feed your bees now on top of that inner cover and you've got a medium super that gets filled before you put on your flow super which is where the

flow frames are the mechanized frames so I wanted to take my time and really explain that because I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying so that's my logic that's my reasoning and there you go and that was it for questions for today so now we are in the fluff section I was really happy not to have mentioned the spider last last week because it's important that we don't about things like that people have an aversion to arachnids by the way which amazes me I would think that people that like honeybees would also just naturally be kind of enthusiastic about nature complete like all the crawly things all the things

that fly all the things that live and reproduce I just feel like because I'm interested in those things if it's alive I want to know about it sometimes the more you learn you might wish you didn't know about some things which has happened to me in the past. But let's first get through the fluff, the plan of the week, so to speak, for those of you who are just talking about bees. So first of all, it's cold, it's rainy,

and we have these shifting things going on. I alluded to this today already. Please don't pull apart your beehives yet. However, if you have a dead out, because by now you know if you have a dead out, please go ahead, open that up, pull the frames, start to clean that up. Because you don't want to, once the weather starts to warm,

don't leave a dead out closed up. Now, we did close them up, and I recommended that people close them up when you find you have a dead out. That's because we don't want your bees willy-nilly robbing out the resources that are still in there, so you need to pull them. So here's the thing.

We want to get all the frames out, to get the things cleaned. And then if you have some honey that you want to get rid of and stuff, once you've determined the cause of death, you know, it's not brood disease or something like that, you could put it out to feed your bees at a feeding station. I don't want you to just open your hive that was a dead out, sweep out the dead bees from the bottom border, whatever you do, and then allow it to be robbed where it sits.

There are a lot of reasons for not doing that. But the main one that I want to talk to you about is you are ultimately going to occupy that hive again with a split or something else this year. So if it's a dead out, don't let it become a robbing position. And here's why, because the bees that come to rob the honey that's left in that hive will continue to go back to that for as long as they live. The other foragers and the colony that they've come from will also be coming to that at first light. As soon as it's warm enough to fly, they will go to that hive to see if they're resources to rob. So if you do that and then you install bees into that hive, they're going to have

to defend themselves more than any other hive because they've been the free lunch restaurant for the longest time. They've just everything is coming there and they're going to have an overwhelming challenge. So always pull your frames, always find out if you've got honey stores in there. And if you want to get rid of it, then put your honey stores out at a robbing station well away from your apiary. So get your super's ready because as we described earlier things are about to change. If you find you don't want to be scrambling around to expand a hive when you find out, whoa, you pull that inner cover and it is connected with beeswax everywhere and when you pull the inner cover out all this honey is dripping. You are late. You need to get your super on now.

So on a nice warm day, what's a nice warm day and what time of day should you do it? So here's the other thing You might find out your bees are cranky. Well, here's the thing When did you check out your bees? What was the weather doing? Well, it was 65 degrees What did the sky look like? Well, it was really overcast, but that was okay because it wasn't very windy and it wasn't any rain bees don't like it when it's overcast if you have heavy clouds overhead even though it's not actively raining on you right now because some beekeepers do this it's going to rain in two hours it's 65 degrees

Fahrenheit as we had in the previous week and now I need to get into my hives and then the bees were trying to sting you well yeah because it's cloud covered if you want to reduce your chances of being stung by your bees when you open your hive number one what is the weather clear skies sunny we're not commercial beekeepers racing the clock in the calendar. We're backyard beekeepers. We can take our sweet time. We can sit out there and stare at bees for half an hour if we want to. We can set up a special chair and be out there all afternoon and never open a single hive. We can just shoot the breeze and look at the landing boards. That's one of the best

and the healthiest things you can do as a beekeeper is just being the company of your bees. But here's the thing. Unless there's nice sunny conditions and it's warm, you can expect some resistance from your bees. They get cranky with bad, weather. So don't open your hives unless you have a reason to do it. But on a nice warm day and you're going to do an inspection of your hive just to see what's going on in there. Have your super ready and with you. I don't care if you use a wagon. I don't care if you pull them around in a garden cart. I don't care if you've got a golf cart or whatever. Then have your equipment on that ready to go. The other thing is bring a nice stainless steel bucket or a food grade bucket with you

because we're at the time now when you need to pull off your fondant packs. So those insulated intercovers insulated intercovers that I have, they've got these little black caps in them, which for some reason I lose, even though there's a little placeholder for it right there. You've got your fondant pack on here. we're at the time. They've got lots of pollen coming in. They're starting to bring in nectar. So within the next week or two, you're going to take away your fondant pack.

You're going to drop it in your food grade bucket. I'll explain why in a minute. You're going to take this cap and you're going to close that hole up right away. Even though you'll have a bunch of bees probably in your fondant pack, you need to take that away and let those bees get off of that fondant pack. Okay. This is also where I recommend you get one of those cheetahs. garbagey shark vaks they're called they really suck as vacuum cleaners but they're

really good for sucking up bees because they suck as vacuum cleaners if you know what I mean they don't have enough suction to do a really good job cleaning but they'll suck up the random bees so that you can close up this hive so then this becomes now your spring configuration it's closed and the fondent packs for those you who use them not everybody use them but it's the same for the sugar you got leftover and everything else you throw it right in your food grade bucket because what you're gonna do is you're gonna liquefy that and turn it into a syrup anyway and that'll be good to go so it's time to get that off and put your

super's on if they're ready and watch for drones mark your calendar when you start seeing good drone numbers on the landing boards that means more than one hive by the way the colony that you see the big drones on with a lot of activity that's probably a really good breeder because we've just come out of winter even though this was a mild winter. Let's not pat ourselves on the back too much about bees surviving this past winter because it was not a devastating winter, at least not where I am. I would like to hear from some people in Colorado that got 10 feet of snow and stuff like that if they even keep hives up there. So anyway, watch for drones. Document everything you find and when you find it because what happens is year after year after year you're going to see trends and you're going to have the same time of year when you have to do the same things and

each time that you wind up too late you go out there thinking you're going to super a colony and then you see us warm hanging in a tree next to it that is the beekeeper that means you were not up to speed on what's going on in your beehives and take a hike in the environment look for dandelions will be the next thing that come up the maple trees are busy but they're getting neglected right now so that doesn't mean the bees aren't hungry it means they found something else so they were on the maple trees they were bringing in nectar by the way and as I mentioned before there was some nectar in the observation hives not abundant so I have concerns for the coming up weather issue so look to see what what plants are in the environment stuff I went down into the wetlands I went to look at the skunk

cabbage at the beginning of last week trying to get more video sequences of the bees on the skunk cabbage and what was going on nothing so I was really annoyed I wanted really good pictures and the bees are not on the skunk cabbage anymore which means what they're finding something else somewhere else all of your seeds for those of you are starting seeds indoors this is your week this is your last chance get them started this coming week after that you know you just need to get them started now so they can start growing. And again, I'm talking about my area.

You might be in another part of the country where you can start them indoors at any time. Or you can go straight to starting outdoors if you've got a greenhouse or something. That's my dream. I want to own a really good greenhouse with a whole southern wall of beehives in it. So don't have it, but it's a dream.

Anyway, all seeds started. Start prepping your planting beds. So if you're going to have pollinator gardens this year, you can start prepping now I see blades of new grass coming I'm dreading the idea of having to mow any grass or weed whack any grass But so this year some of the plots I'm burning off the other thing is some of you get cardboard boxes in the mail Save them all and when you get these cardboard boxes you can define your garden plot wherever you're going to have your Perennial garden or if you're going to plant asters you're going to have something for honeybees then lay down all of those cardboard boxes in layers and let them cover because no light gets through cardboard and then when that happens all the greenery underneath dies out and you get a bunch of little tunnels from voles and moles and all that stuff and let them do their thing and then what you've got is a really cool working soil that you did not have to till that would be a perfect world for me no till i put indoor outer carpet out there that i was getting rid of didn't work

so but the cardboard boxes think about it biodegradable worms eat it it's just good all the way around and it helps you prep your bed so the other thing is I'm also experimenting with burning off last year's growth so I don't know I'm not a gardening expert so I would love to hear more about you know do you burn off the detritus from last fall now I leave a lot of stems and things like that all winter long because I understand that some insects overwinter in them. I don't know at what point they depart those stocks because now it would be just burning them. But if it's grass, I want to burn the grass off,

and then every time it starts up a little bit, burn the grass off again. So I don't know if you're familiar with propane weed burners, but the reason that they work is every time new greenery comes up, you just scorch them, right? So as you scorch it, what it does is consumes the root resources while it tries to produce new greenery, and then you come by a week later and you scorch it again.

So then this saves you from having to till it because now you can come out and what did you do? You started your hyssup or your boorage, if I had a packet of those seeds handy. And then you could direct seed them if you were behind. But if you started them inside, it's a great place to transplant them without having competition of seed. So here's the other thing of plants that are already there. Sometimes even when I till, because I till, you know, a thousand foot stretches. And when you do that, even though you plant new plants,

I didn't do anything to kill off the plants that were already in the soil. So what happens is a bunch of other weeds because there are weed seeds laying on the surface and when you till it, you're just seeding the soil that you're trying to plant cosmos and hiss up and you know, sunflowers and all the things I'm going to plant this year, they compete with these at the same time. So I'm thinking if we have no till, but we burn off or we use cardboard or something like that

to make sure that everything is cleaned down to bear dirt, then I would be way ahead. So that's more labor-intensive though. I obviously can't cover a field in cardboard, but I can till it, which has worked, by the way, year after year. for cosmos, sunflowers, hyssop is something I have to plant ahead of time. I've had no luck direct seeding hyssop because those tiny seeds sit on the surface and they need to be damp long enough to germinate to get going and I've never hit that magic for hyssop seed. So prep your planting beds. If you've got a really good way that matches my zone and stuff on how to prep an area like that.

I mean, is weed burning a good way to go? I don't know. So let me know what your methods are, and maybe we can share about that too. If you've got a really good gardening YouTube channel that you like people to see, that has really good, like how to start a pollinator field or something like that, which is just something

that was at one time a hay field, and now we're just trying to prep the soil to reduce competing weeds for that. I would really like to not use any kind of kind of pesticide that would be used to suppress all growth. I know that that is a method. I know that Roundup has a thing where it kills all greenery and then after three weeks or something like that you can plant and there's no competition. I'd rather not do that. I'd rather have some competition. I don't want to wipe out clover, for example. I like that. So anyway, that's it

for today. I hope you learned something and I want to thank you for spending your time with me. and I hope you have a fantastic weekend ahead. Thanks for listening and watching.