The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 250, Do honey bee stings hurt the same, or is it worse in spring?

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

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

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, March the 22nd. And this is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers. Episode number 250. I'm Frederick Donne, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. That's right. Episode number 250, who knew that I would be doing this for this long? Episode number one, because I looked it up this morning out of curiosity, because we're 250 in. the first episode was January 15th of 2019. Just wanted to test the waters, just wanted to find out if this would work and apparently it does. So I'm glad that you're here.

Maybe 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. Also, you might notice that it's snowy outside and it's unpleasant and that's right. The whole weekend is going to be bad just like that. It's 27 degrees Fahrenheit which is minus 3 degrees. and this is spring already. 3.8 mile per hour winds, 63% relative humidity,

and of course it is, we have snow flurries. They said it was going to shift to rain this afternoon. I don't know how that's going to happen, at least where I live, with these temperatures. It's going to have to warm up a little bit. So you might be wondering when will it warm up? I'm glad you ask, because if you're in the northeastern United States, and specifically the state of Pennsylvania,

Northeastern Ohio, or western New York, It's going to warm up into the 50s. So starting Monday, you're going to get some B work in, maybe. So that's the good of it. We're in spring. It doesn't feel like it and everything's terrible. The good news about that is it's a great time to be sitting in front of your computer or your laptop or your tablet or looking at your phone and listening to YouTube videos.

So if you want to know how to submit your own question, please go to the way to be.org and you'll find. a forum there on the page mark the way to be and you can fill that out and submit your topic for consideration for next Friday next Friday is going to be a live stream okay so the other thing is it's also a podcast so you can work while you listen so just google the way to be podcast and then you'll find it it's also on pod bean and it's on my main website there's a podcast listing so i hope that should cover it just about everything this is a transitional time A lot is happening, lots going on other than the bad weather,

but when we get these warm-ups and this dynamic is making people nuts right now. And that's because with the cold and the warmth, people feel like they don't know what to do with their bees. So I'm going to suggest that you not take the insulation off of your hive. Whatever insulation you put on for winter, leave it there for now. We don't know what the weather's going to do yet. And guess what? It doesn't hurt to have insulation on your hive, even if it warms up.

So please keep up with that. We're going to go right into the questions here, starting with Ron's question, which is an interesting one. And if you know in the past, if someone gives me a question that I think has been a dispute between people online, I don't settle people's hash. That's right, I don't.

My mom always said that, and she was going to settle my hash. I don't know what that meant, but I like corned beef hash. Anyway, here's the thing. Says another YouTuber mentioned this, and I tend to agree. already there's bias. See another YouTuber said it and the person posing the question which is Ron from Greenback Tennessee says and I agree so what kind of a spot does that put me in says it seems that when I get stung in the early spring it hurts worse and I swell up larger than normal do winter bees have more or stronger venom than the bees the rest of the year so

Remember, I don't dispute other YouTubers, right? Because there's no benefit to that. So I guess you can guess right off the bat and I'm probably going to agree with this. And you'd be right. And of course, I'm science-based. So what do I do? I look into the literature.

I look into the research. I found out what's going on. So when a honeybees stings you, is it all the same? Because you do get other questions too. Are the Africanized bees? Do their stings hurt more than the European honeybees? In other words, what's going on there? because people die from bee stings.

People die because normally they have an anaphylactic shock response, anaphylaxis. And the other part of that is the Africanized bees attack in full force. In other words, 90% of them empty the hive and come after you and they hunt you for a long distance and they sing you thousands of times. So it is interesting to learn right off the bat that the Africanized honeybee tends to overall have a smaller venom gland than the European honeybees do. Did you know that? So they deliver a smaller dose of venom. So sting for sting one to one, which never happens.

So let's just clear that up. You get mobbed by the Africanized bees because their responses are irrational. They're overwhelmingly angry. You're just going to get more venom by numbers, right? So the other part of it is, what makes you hurt? So of course we have to dig into the science. I'm not going to read all of this, okay, but I will link it. For those of you who want to get super nerdy and get right into the topic,

I will link the study that I'm quoting from right now so you can really get into finding out what brings the greatest harm to people, what time of year, and why. So here's the thing, histamine, right? So we have antihistamine. When somebody has swelling and things like that, they give them an antihistamine. Histamine is part of the complex protein makeup of the bee venom.

So honey bee venom, would that change throughout the year? and the answer on the short list is yes, it does, and here's why. Because when they are foraging and they have lots of resources out in the environment, apparently, their venom is less concentrated. Who knew? What part of the venom is more concentrated in winter? Glad you asked, histamine. And of course, they break down the histamins by type as well.

But you should know that bee venom, when a bee stings you, first of all, let's talk about the bee sting. Let's just get right down to it. When a queen stings you, by the way, she has less of this histamine. She has less of what makes you hurt. So when a queen honeybees stings, and yes, she can sting. She's got a stinger. It's a smooth stinger, which means she can withdraw her stinger and not lose her life if she happens to sting you.

Now, I personally have picked up lots of queen honeybees with my fingers. And I've never had the queen sting me. And now you can't get more harassed than to have a human, invade your space, and pick you up and hold you by the wings and the thorax, and yes, they're articulate enough, you know, that they can move around and insert their stinger if they wanted to. She just doesn't, but if you were stung by a queen, it would not hurt as much as being stung by the worker.

Let's get into that. So when a worker stings you, and a lot of people say, well, if bees are so smart and they're so advanced, how come they die when they sting? Well, for example, a hornet or a wasp, right, could sting you. They withdraw their stinger, and they can sting you over and over, just like a little tiny sewing machine, right? Well, the thing is, is it actually more advanced that when that B, which you swat,

let's say B sings you and you swat it and flick her off, you know, her stinger continues to work its way into your skin. It has its own little venom sac on it, and it continues to contract that venom sac, and it's in two parts. The stinger is. It's got these little serrated edges on each side, and it continues to pull itself into your skin. You're on the clock to get that out of your skin, right? So we all know, the sooner you get it out of your skin, the better.

But if you've been diddling around for a while and that stinger's been on your body for a minute, it's not going to help you. The full dose has been delivered and it's not going to deliver it anymore. So if you don't do it fast and get that out of there, it's not going to change anything other than the stinger is going to be a little deeper and you can pull it out. Okay, scrape it off with your fingernail. So that's number one. Get it out of there quick. If you can do it in just a few seconds, you're head of the game. So keep the stinger out.

So it is variable. Young worker bees, foragers, guards, and nurses have higher levels of appamen, lower levels of melaton. So that's interesting too. Compared to older workers, foragers, and guards in contrast, queen bees present lower levels of melaton and apomon. Melaton is what makes you hurt. Think about it. So the more melaton that gets into you, the more melaton that gets into you, the more swelling there's going to be, the more of a reaction from your body there's going to be. And it reaches its maximum concentration when the bee is four weeks old.

So a four week old bee can deliver more of it, more of the stuff that makes you hurt. And then the other thing is when they get really old, it actually goes the other way, so it starts tapering off. So there is a time when a bee is in its prime, when it can deliver the most pain to a mammal, and that's you.

and it goes into all the various details about all the compositions so for those of you who want to learn more about that it's the melaton production and the melaton concentration that actually causes the most pain of course there's damage happening to your tissues it is also affecting your capillaries so that it can continue to move the venom through your body the entire thing by design is supposed to make you hurt and get a reaction from you to get you away from the bee subsequently away from the hive because they sting at the hive more often than not, right? That's where they have things to defend. And I won't get into all the PLA 2s and everything else that goes on. Anyway, Melaton production changes during the summer.

While Melaton S production increases during winter. Now when I looked up Melaton and Melaton S in the subcategories of Meliton, they said it's all under the umbrella of Melitin, so don't get confused. While Melaton S production increases during winter, allowing militant as to reach an abundance of 10% of whole venom. So there is an increase of melaton, which causes the pain in spring because they haven't been out foraging. And so if you get stung by a bee that you open a hive on a cold day when you shouldn't have and you got stung, did it hurt more?

There's a very good chance that it did. And that's why it's a concentrated material. And so, melaton S. just call it melaton how do you spell it m e l-l-t-t-i-n so it's a key player in how bee venom affects mammals including humans here's a breakdown of its role because i know you wanted to know the major component melaton is the most abundant substance in bee venom making up around 50 percent of its dry weight because when they collect venom and they do they collect be venom for apotheapy and stuff like that they desiccated so it's all dried out so 50 percent of its dry weight would be

this substance. It disrupts membranes. So melaton structure allows it to interact with and break down cell membranes. Now that sounds terrible, doesn't it? But you know, that's the very reason that it works in apothea. I learned that too. So this is very interesting. This causes the stinging sensation and the inflammation associated with a bee sting. And then cellular effects. Melitin can induce various cellular responses, including cell death. That's right. it kills your cells, which is apoptosis. And in some cases, this property is being explored for potential cancer therapies. Overall, militants' membrane-disrupting abilities are what make Bivenom stings,

so irritating, and potentially harmful, however, research into its other effects suggest potential medical applications in the future. So more research needs to be done, but you know what? They're not completely off the mark when it comes to apathy. And I hope that you'll read the study. It's extensive, so that publication is very interesting. I learned a thing or two. Because if you had asked me without looking it up, does a sting in spring hurt more than sting in the fall?

Now the different bees within the hive sting and have different abilities and an inability to sting, for example, when they first come out of their cell. So when they first emerged, they're laid back. That's why you can, by the way, this, when someone's brand new to beekeeping and a beekeeper pulls up a frame of brood and all the nurse bees are all over the frame, you take your finger and you scoot them out of the way with your fingers,

those bees can't sting you anyway. They're too young. Remember that they increase their ability to sting as they get older. And, of course, guard bees on the landing board are ready to sting everything, as well as bite you, by the way. So even when they're stingers out, they continue to bite. All very interesting stuff. But we're going to move on to question number two.

Is it safe to assume? This is from Ross Miller, 9804. That's the YouTube name. Is it safe to assume you no longer use the two inch tall round feeders anymore? The ones you wrapped with a sock. And so here's the thing I wanted to bring it up, and it's the thumbnail for today. This, feeders.

Because feeders is something everybody's talking about today. Rapid round feeder. Would I still use it? Yes. Why didn't I use it over one? winter because I used to, that's because I put in the hive alive fondant packs now. And because I'm testing hive alive for the last two years and it kept my highs alive. I mean, maybe my bees are just healthy overall. Maybe it didn't boost them, but one thing's for sure I had no star about deadouts this spring.

So I used to fill these in the wintertime, rapid rounds are called. They have a clear cover. When the clear covers on, that means you're feeding syrup because it keeps the bees in here and they go over top of that center cone because they rise up through the bottom and they get down into the syrup and Ross mentioned the sock that I put on it and that's because bees were falling down in here and there were a bunch of dead ones stuck in the soup aka the one-to-one sugar syrup which is what I put in it and when I put a sock over it then the bees could climb on the sock they kept their footing they got the syrup even though there was a rush on the syrup that's when most bees drowned it's the first time you put a sugar syrup on a hive that's desperate for resources because they all rush at the

resource and they push each other in and they step on each other and they drown them right by putting a sock on they could hold their footing and you had far fewer dead bees than this the other advantage to this type of feeder is and it's two inches tall just as Raj mentioned so when you take this off you can pour dry sugar in here now this is a small version there's a larger version which I won't pull up right now but I've done lots of YouTube's about it so if you want to go to frederick done.com YouTube channel and there's a search bar up in the right hand side just type in rapid round or

high feeder and you'll see all the different feeder designs so the fact that you could have dry sugar in here what keeps the bees from going out everywhere else when there's dry sugar clear cover their cover sits on it and now this is the winter setting dry sugar in there this goes over the hole over the inner cover and the bees come up and it's also easy for you to just pop the lid on your hive and look at it without releasing all the warm air that's inside the top of your hive and you can see what's going on now I've put four pounds of sugar in these and never had one hive consume 100% of that so I haven't given it up I've just yeah have I replaced it yeah because the fondant works

this is the cheapest method by the way and it's dual purpose syrup or dry feed. So this works both ways. The other thing is we talk about and I showed him the thumbnail so I might as well explain it. Entrance feeders. These hold a quart. These go right into your hive entrance. It's only good for syrup. Okay. Now the other thing is I'm a big fan of light syrup and by that I mean one to one. Four pounds of dry sugar, half a gallon of water. One to one and that'll make two of these one-quart entrance feeders. Now in the past you might be thinking Fred you told us not to use entrance feeders and that's true I'm going to stick by that even now and that's because for one they're too

large because my entrances my entrance reducers are three-eighths of an inch because that's also a mouse guard and you'd have to have a half-inch opening for this. So if you slide that in now it seems convenient that they would be right at the entrance able to feed also your hive is tilted towards the landing board I hope. and that way when there's an air pocket up in here and we get a cold day for example it was 18 degrees Fahrenheit this morning and as you notice in the opening I said that it is 27 degrees Fahrenheit so if it had jumped all the way up to 40 or something like that and those days are coming if this were half full of syrup and the rest was air what do you think would happen as the hive

warms up and this being on the landing board exposed to the sun that air pocket is going to expand and it's going to push syrup out over the edges here it's going to run out over the landing board now what do you have a robbing situation so i don't use them don't recommend them and here's why i use these for my tests so if i want to know for example this one says pro suite on it i put these out at feeding stations when i want to find out what honeybee preferences are so these are the tankards that have used for water testing for salt levels for mineral testing and also for essential oil testing to see if they were really working to stimulate the appetite for your honeybees. So that's why I use those. Another feeder type while we're talking, and I talked about it last week,

so this is a retread. If you're going to put one inside your hive, that is also good for liquid, not good for solids, even though they do make a little pocket that goes in here. It just doesn't hold enough to be worthwhile, but for syrup. This is really good, but you're limited by the size. Remember I said that the large rapid round, the white one, will hold a gallon of syrup. These will hold, you know, you have a quart jar that sits on it because that has the mason jar lid on it. And these are good and they don't leak down into your hive because you have a trough here and then the top of the jar is sunk in the syrup. So when the air contracts, it draws syrup back up in, not a bunch of air that later gets expressed out into your hive. So that's an advantage.

And I talked about it last week. so we won't spend a lot of time on that. Hive entrance feeders, personally not a fan. If you're committed to that, you've done it for 100 years, and that's what you absolutely want to do, and you don't want to make any changes. I'm not here to change you. I'm just explaining for the new people

that there are other things to do. The other thing is not every hive needs to be fed. So by having your feed resource up inside the hive on top of the inner cover, any robber bees would have to go through the entrance, through the brood, up the sidewalls, up under the inner cover, up through that center hole so it makes it less accessible to a potential robbing scout.

That's what you want to avoid. So what else? So yeah, the fondant. I've live fondant is what I've used. All the fondant will be coming off this week. All of it by the end of the week will be gone. And that's because we're also going to talk about supering our hives. And we'll talk about this at the fluff at the end of the piece. This is question number three that comes from James Strout. which is the YouTube channel name. It says here my March nuke absconded and my July and Oklahoma City swarm made it through winter. I find myself in Texas now and I have set two swarm traps where I'm staying with an open feeder. Google's saying there's 18 apiaries around me. I try to catch the morning news when I can.

This morning they said beware. There are known Africanized bees in the area use caution. So my question is, at the feeder, are they like other bees only interested in feeding? I'll stop there. Yes. So here's the thing. Because I do open feeding stations in the past, and I do them occasionally now after the honey flow is over with. So before you put supers on, and after you've taken your supers off, that's when we do the open feeding test, because we don't want to take the risk of getting those sugar syrups in the hives and then ultimately consumed by people or sold as actual honey when it's not it's sugar reinforced so anyway even hornets so vespah crebrough which is our european hornets the biggest one you can go right up to them and poke them around with your finger

when they're at a sugar syrup feeder out at a feeding station you can do that to bumblebees you can do that to yellow jackets i've grabbed yellow jackets just to see if they would sting you they can i've also grabbed vesprabrough because they seem pretty passive maybe while they're fed and satisfied you You can pick them up by the thorax and not get stung. Not true. They will sting you. I was stung under the thumbnail of all great places to be stung. But here's the thing, unless you really interact with them.

All the honeybees. Now, they're not necessarily friendly to each other because they're in competition for food and resources. That's why it's your job to produce as much surface area as you can for the nectar, the sugar syrup, which is the artificial nectar. You want to create as much surface area as much as you can so they can spread out, first of all, me personally, so I can stare at them.

And you'll get to see all the different species in your area. Honeybees are like the lions of the watering hole. They will take over everything. But even if you had Africanized bees, that would not disclose itself at the feeding area, just as it wouldn't show up if they were on a flower and they're foraging for nectar and things like that. They would be much more tolerant.

The world changes when you get anywhere near the cavity that they're occupying, and in some cases when it comes to the Africanized bees, they are really prone to build open nests. So that means they'll start to build comb right on a tree branch exposed and then they defend that position, particularly in the southern areas where they don't necessarily need all that protection from the weather. So that's when they're going to be defensive.

But part of what was said here, I put sugar feed. So I've set two swarm traps where I'm staying with an open feeder. Okay, so here's the thing. When we set up traps, and if this is work for James in the past, and there's no reason to change and you just want that, my personal opinion is keep your feet away from your swarm traps. And that's also why I don't like to put old honeycomb inside a swarm trap that's capped that has honey resources. It seems to make sense, right? If you want to trap bees, but it's really not a trap, it's more of a lure,

because a trap means they go in and they can't get out. the lure means we want them to stay of their own, you know, we want them to pick it as a place to live. So if you put sugar syrup or honey or frames of honey and things like that inside a lure, then they're going in there to get that. You don't necessarily know whether or not they would move in and want to stay there. The other thing is we create a robbing situation where bees are trying to claim that. So then they're trying to defend that position while the rest of their colony can show up and exploit those resources.

So please don't put any food resources inside a cavity that you hope to attract bees to live in. They don't want competition at that either. So the other thing is, so once your trap is set up, so what is the lure? What would be a good one? So if you've got old comb, that is your best lure, particularly brood comb, where brood has been reproduced. And if there's some leftover pollinated or something like that, I don't care. You can put that in there. If it doesn't get any attention at all, there is a tiny chance that, so,

the wax moth can fly in there and lay a bunch of eggs and then wax moth larvae which are wax worms they can start to consume that old comb and Including the bee bread which is left over so that's your pollen stores. So there's a small risk of that I've never seen it happen actually in a swarm lure. Okay, so in a box that you hope to collect a swarm in But please don't provide feed in there if you don't have drawn comb you don't have a bunch of propolis and things like that the number one marketable thing available is this which is Swarm Commander. These are cheap. If you buy the bottle of Swarm Commander that spray bottle just haven't to have one here. That stuff is expensive. It does have a shelf life. So if you're not going to go through this whole bottle, I wouldn't buy the whole bottle. This is probably already expired because let's be honest, I don't use that much of it. So if you've only got, if you're a backyard beekeeper, you've only got a few hives,

you've only got a few swarm traps or lures that you're going to put out, these would be the best because each one of these little capsules would last you a couple of weeks. So don't put any of this on until you know that we're in swarm season, but have your boxes out. Conserve this, have your boxes out, and hope that they can start to get explored by scouts because they'll scout much ahead of that. So the Africanized Vs at the feeder, they are like any others. You really won't know the difference.

if I catch a swarm, is it only dangerous once they get brood and resources? Once you get the swarm, once you have the queen, I would suit up. So here's the thing. Fail safe. What is the problem with people? Now this is not a criticism for James. I'm just saying, this is funny and it's also not. Remember that when you get a swarm call or when there's a swarm on a tree branch or something like that.

So this is aside from your traps, those are in a temporary position, and they're intermediate, so they're headed to their other area. And that's why people think, ah, they're totally laid back because they're on this tree branch, and I'm just going to go up there. I'm going to jump out of my car, run over there, I'm a T-shirt, and show people how easy it is to manage a swarm. Okay?

Well, depending on how long they've been there, they might not be manageable anymore. Because in some cases, once they've been there for a couple of days, three days, heaven forbid, a week, guess what? That is their home. they will start to defend it. They are cranky, as the Australians like to say.

So you want to have a veil on, you want to have some protection until you determine the disposition of the swarm. Always be protected. Always. And then if they're calm and they're laid back and you start interacting with them and they're totally good

and you find out from people how long have they been here, how long have they been on the branch. Same thing happens with your swarm traps. And that's why I say, swarm lure, swarm trap. Once you've got the bees, in it and it's obvious that there's a queen in there, there's Nazanov being fanned at the entrance

and everything else. You need to check those frequently, right? So another thing I recommend you do, unless it's right on your property, right on your property is the best because every morning when you take your morning walk, you can check it out. And in the afternoons, before the sun sets, you can check them out again. It's fun to go out there and sit down and see if scouts are checking it out and see how much time they're spending inside. Multiple scouts going walking off the interior. It's starting to look good. They might actually claim it. But once they're actually occupied, that's when you really want to get them in a hive right away. One of the things that James said here that was interesting to me is one of the nukes of Skondid.

So the other thing is I do like to put small swarms in nucleus hives. We have to size the box to the swarm that's on the branch, because let's be honest, prime swarms in spring can be huge. You can't jam them into a five-frame nucleus hive. I mean, you could. They're not going to stay because they're going to overfill it right away, and then they're going to want out of there. So what could you do to get them to stay in the hive that you're going to put them in? What do you think I'm going to recommend? So we put frames in our lure box, in our swarm trap, whatever you want to call it. So there's frames in there, and the queen is likely on one of those frames, one of the brood frames that you've put in there,

and if we can find her on that frame, what do you think we could do to keep them from absconding, to keep them from getting away from us before they commit and she starts laying eggs? What tool exists now that we could use to keep on there? Mention it all the time, going to mention it again because it works and it's so handy. This is the queen isolation cage, holds a single frame. If you get that queen in that swarm and she's on a frame, get her into this on her frame right away get the lid on it put this into your nuke here's an example of where you get your bees to fill up a nuke even though there's too little space but

i don't recommend that we cramp them you could put it in an eight frame deep or a 10 frame deep have this right in the center with the queen on her frame there and guess what they can't leave they can't abscond there's nothing well there are a lot of things more frustrating but it is frustrating to be excited about a prime storm that you caught in spring you just think they're going to go gangbusters, that everything is going your way, and you come out there and there's not one bee on the entrance of that hive anymore. And that's because they took off. The queen changed her mind, so you can keep that queen from changing her mind by putting her in that cage.

So move on to question number four. This comes from Vladimir, Worcester, Massachusetts. I've seen some videos where beekeepers have weather stations. Do you have one? And if so, which one? Would a weather station be useful to a beekeeper? Okay. Is a weather station useful to a beekeeper? If you're keeping records, then I like to. And where I get my information, by the way, that I read at the beginning of every single Q&A comes from my weather station. I don't have one. I have three of them. And do I need them? You know, need and want. This is an example of probably me wanting it more than needing.

it although it is definitely helpful and here's why my local news does not give me the information that i need they are way off in fact if i checked in with the local news network they would tell me right now that it's 42 degrees outside and i know darn well it's in the 20s that's because i'm at 1,350 feet above sea level and they are at 500 feet above sea level where that news station is and they get their weather from the airport so the doppler radar and things like that those are all helpful but here's the thing I like having my own weather stations here because I like weather stations nerdy whatever and the thing is I want to know what are the actual conditions in my B yard in the apiary so I have three I have my different levels and in different locations and I have

two different companies okay so I will say there's a standout favorite and I apologize in advance if these things are expensive ambient weather network. So the ambient weather system, and if you want to look at these, I did detailed reviews where I showed you exactly how they put together, what I like about them, how to place them, and everything else. The ambient weather network one is, aside from buying a full-blown, you know, professional weather system, these things are the best. And it's because I was having problems with the Atlas and the other systems that were coming from them, Accurite, is the name of the company. In fact, I should probably write that in there. A-C-C-U-R-I-T-E. Accurate weather

systems are the ones that have had the longest and have been unhappy with their variables. And the fact that they miss things, one of the things that I wanted to know is it was clearly heavy wind conditions. We were clearly in a storm. And it was showing, you know, weather speeds of 20 miles an hour. like that and trees are bending over almost touching the ground huge trees so I knew that that was way off and that was annoying to me the other thing is they went through batteries really fast even though they have a solar panel on them that runs a little vent fan that keeps them cool so that for example your temperature is accurate and the rain gauges are okay but when it came to wind speed the anemometer

the ultrasonic anemometer on the ambient weather station is what sold me on that one and so I just I won't explain it all. Do you need one? Not really. It's something that you just want to have because we like to know the weather. My grandkids like to run over and look at the screens. They have really good LED screens on them and when the weather's shifting. I still remember being a little kid and looking at the barometer and things like that on the wall at my grandfather's house so that everything were, they were just dials. Today the kids can go and look and it shows storm clouds or it shows storms and the sun shining and it has a tiny animation that goes with it and then you'll see rain coming down and it's very accurate. So I do enjoy ambient weather. The other thing is,

like with the Accurite systems, maybe you don't need to know everything. Maybe you don't need to know. By the way, I don't even like connecting it to Wi-Fi and things like that. I don't care if it reads that on my phone. I don't need to be traveling somewhere and find out that I have, you know, an inch of rain an hour coming down at home. It won't change anything. So again, that would just be a want, a curiosity. The thing is, it does record your rain. So, for example, it's having a local weather station. If you're planting things, if you want to know whether you need to water, or if your soil is in a drought condition, the rainfall measurements are important and good to have, and so you can put those in your records, right? Because rainfall and, of course, spring forage and floral

resources and things like that are all tied to weather conditions. Anytime you're doing any kind of agricultural work. So the other thing is the ambient weather network has in-ground reporting sensors. So in other words, it doesn't just show I don't just get to know how much rain is coming down, but this green soil sensor tells me what the moisture content is in my soil, because also you might have sandy soil, you might have clay soil, you might have gravelly soil, you might have really nice top soil, you know, that's nice dirt. So these all will have different abilities to retain moisture and again that decides for you whether or not you're going to have to water your vegetable garden for example so it is good to know things like that and they are useful and that is applicable

but you can also go out there with the sensor yourself in a probe and stick it right in the ground and uh-huh moisture content and you walk out there again uh-huh moisture content so there are inexpensive ways to accomplish the same thing uh there are people like what did people do before the weather channel well bob hope said we called that the window you know you look outside and see what it's doing. You don't need to watch TV to find out if it's raining outside. So your weather network, it records information for you. So, you know, rainfall throughout the year, through the month, through the week. And so it helps you with record keeping. But I think it's a want for me, because I'm not a crop farmer, although I do like to know what's going on. It's going to be a decision that you make.

Now, the other thing is, if you want the basics, acu-write. I don't. Hate to slam them. Don't. Don't. like their stuff overall they go through batteries a lot you have to get up there to get to your batteries so if you've got this thing 12 feet in the air 20 feet in the air you've got a tower whatever it is that you have you have to get to it to change the batteries so one of the things i sprung for for both the previous two editions atlas is the newest one that i purchased from acu-right it's their biggest and supposed to be best unit um i have now the wires coming off of it and I stuck the batteries inside a mock birdhouse. So inside the birdhouse is where the double-a batteries are that they go out and you have to use lithiums. I can't use rechargeables

because they don't hold up to the weather and they don't last that long, which was annoying. So I added those. So now the batteries are just so I walk out there and change the batteries and I can see at the readout inside the house exactly if they need to be changed or not. So that's a good thing. but they also sell just remote temperature and humidity sensors. Those things are dirt cheap. It comes with a little readout from Accurite, inexpensive. So the home base itself reads its own temperature and humidity. So wherever that station is, indoors or outdoors,

but you do have to shelter them from the weather as far as the base goes. Now when it comes to the sensors, they can be out in the weather if you want. So then I have those on top of inner covers of beehives. What does it tell me? It doesn't give me detailed data. In other words, I don't know what the brood temperature is, but I know this. Right now, for example, it's only in the 20s out there, and when I look at one of those temperature sensors, and I see that at 65% relative humidity, that's healthy for a hive, and when I see that it is 45 or 47 degrees on top of the inner cover, then I know the colony's alive. What does that do for me? It lets me know that they're alive.

What if they were dead? I would know that it. that they are dead. What would I be doing different? Nothing. So it's a want. It's not a need. But because we're people, we have curiosity and we just like to know what's going on. And I can tell which ones are brooding up the largest because they have warmer temperatures than that. There are some with a consistent 20 degree higher temperature reading at that inner cover. Now what could that tell me? It could tell me, number one, that their clusters top closer to it or that it's a larger cluster farther away or that's a larger cluster middle of the hive that's generating so much warmth that it reads high there so

it's if there's high humidity then I have a condensation problem right so I don't know it's toss up this is for everybody I guess I'm just wandering all over on the topic I like them I have them all of my observation hives have those little acu-right sensors the cheap ones and the little readout on its own because that's the building information and records highs and lows i'm going to move on from that question number five dustin from bolverdi texas hey fred this isn't really questioned for the next episode but i'm really reaching out to offer a little collaboration so the thing is what i'm writing about today is the total eclipse i'm in the path of totality and i'm wondering what to expect from the bees

And I thought maybe you had some thought, and I will experience it a little before it hits PA. So I know I've talked about this before. I talked about the gear I'm going to use. I warned people about make sure you get certified glasses, solar filters for your cameras. I have a friend in the B Club who's a total shutter bug. So shout out to Sam, who's also talking about what we're going to use as far as the equipment goes. And what are we going to see? What's going to happen?

So I'm doing a shotgun approach. I'm using my most expensive camera body that I have and there was some discussion about how long of a zoom lens we should use. I've decided I'm going to use a 400 millimeter telephoto lens and that is going to be aimed. I have one of those geared heads and everything so I can aim it right at the sun at the right time because the period of totality is around three minutes. So that camera is going to photograph the sun. Now here's the thing. I just want to kind of get the word out. If I were teaching a class again in photography and everybody was ready to blow the big bucks for a single day for a single event, I have friends at work for NASA. They are going to get the best pictures of the eclipse that I could ever imagine. So am I going to improve on that? Everybody's going to go to social media. They're going to show the pictures that they have as soon as the eclipse has happened. Get ready. They're going to flood the internet with pictures of totality. So what's different about us as beekeepers we get to see what's going on with the bees and there was a paper that was written by someone who documented bee behavior

during an eclipse. Now it's not going to be shocking I don't think it's going to get dark so the bees can't navigate so they're going to ground themselves. Activity at the landing board is going to stop. Maybe as the eclipse begins this is what I anticipate just based on what we see bees do we talked about weather equipment before and when there's a storm coming in an impending storm you know the air changes you can smell it by the way my grandmother used to say we can see the bottoms of the leaves on the trees that means it's about to rain so because there's a wind that leads a storm that comes right so all these things tell the bees that something's about to change and they rush home to their hives so that's where you see it looks like swarm's returning and it's

happening on all the hives So this happens before a heavy rain comes in. The scent is on the air, right? So then the other thing is, when the eclipse starts, I think we're gonna see something similar. Bees that are in the air are going to try to make it home as quick as they can. If they're too far away for that to work,

because the eclipse is gonna go to totality in a matter of minutes, and we know that bees can fly miles away. So the bees that are farthest away are just gonna have to be grounded. They can't be on the wing. This is what they do when a heavy rainstorm suddenly washes in.

in anyway. They gather themselves on plants, they use their mandibles, they hold on to leaves, and they sit tight. So I'm going to shotgun it. I'm going to put out a bunch of different cameras with a bunch of different capability. And don't forget to set out some of your cameras as night mode cameras. So I have video cameras that have, and they're dedicated video cameras, they're not SLRs, they're not mirrorless cameras. So I will have cameras that are already set to night mode so they will be too bright that will be totally blown out until the eclipse happens and then those cameras will show me what's going on during total darkness so if you're making preparations some cameras don't have that capability at all so if you've got night mode cameras

most full-on video cinematic cameras have that capability and do some tests on it document your settings get all your night modes locked in put them on tripods get them ready to go and just let them all run. The total event. You let them run for half an hour. Who cares? 15 minutes beforehand, 15 minutes after. Let them just run and see what you're going to get.

The other thing is, shoot everything in 4K. I would. I don't care about 8K. I have an 8K capable camera. I don't want to deal with all the data. What would be the point? So that's what I'm going to do. Then we're going to have gopros out there.

They're the cheapest. They have the new GoPro 12. It's going to be out there. Don't time lapse it. Here's why. I wouldn't bother time lapsing something that's only going to happen for 30 minutes, right? Who wants to see that? Because you can take a full, you know, 60 frames per second or something like that video sequence, and you just speed it up if you need it to look like a time lapse, and then it's going to be silky smooth. So I wouldn't bother doing that. And if you're sending up your night cameras, the dark cameras, you're going to shoot those at maybe a 30th of a second. You might do, you might do. 25 frame per second sequences on that if you want really clear otherwise if you're shooting fast at night then now you're going to get some noise going to get some grain that's why I want

you to practice ahead of time so full moon nights and do some practice shots of the landscapes and things like that see what's going on how that looks and see how you can adjust your settings but lower frame rates will result in cleaner images but a little bit choppy okay so that's all I'm going to do. I think heaven forbid look at the money people have spent to travel to an area of totality and they're paying triple for motel rooms, bed and breakfast, people are renting their backyards at. I heard about that this morning. I thought, I don't even know it, that's legal. But like the parking lot at the, oh, at the racetrack and all these places. So they're holding these parties but they're charging for them. So to drive onto that parking lot because it just happened to be in the path of totality.

If it rains on that day or we get a big overcast situation, all of this is for nothing. So casinos cashing in on it, you know, with their wagons and chuck wagons and they're selling everything and making top bucks off of having people have a totality party. The other thing is they're anticipating our community is going to be boosted by 50,000 visitors, 50,000 visitors and then right after it's over with, they're all going to want to get out of here. So they're all going to hit the highways and be trying to go home. So they're worried about traffic jams and everything else. But if you've got cameras, don't buy new equipment.

This is what I'm saying, I guess. Don't buy new equipment. Invest in some expensive lens and some big, you know, megapixel body. I already have that stuff because I use it for my work. I'm a professional. It has a return on my investment. I know people get caught up in the moment. This is the only chance you're going to see any clips and they're so excited.

Another thing that worries me a little bit. If we talk about safety, I hear people saying, and during totality, tell everyone to take their glasses off and stare at it. It's going to be the most amazing thing ever. For me, I'm not telling you what to do, but I have grandkids. And if you think for a minute, I'm going to tell them to take their glasses off and hope that they just stop staring as the sun starts to peek out again. I'm not going to be telling them to stare at it without any eye protection.

And if that means that they miss it or it's a little dark with their glasses or something like that, then so be it better at that than have them burn their retinas or whatever's going to happen. So I've seen enough welders walking around with eye patches on their eyes because they have flash burns and everything else. And teaching kids to stare at the sun and take off all their eye protection for three minutes doesn't work for me. Maybe you think that's okay. I personally, I want everybody to be safe.

And if you're looking for something, there's solar film, there's solar filters for your cameras. Anything you put between your lens and the subject is going to degrade the image quality. So even before that, I highly recommend that you test it out and see what you're going to get

and you're not going to be competing with some of the top-level photographers that are out there who shoot the sky all the time. So get ready. Everybody's going to have pictures. I think the bees are going to be not very exciting. I think they're just going to park themselves. But I'm going to share it with you. I'll show you what I get. And as I mentioned, I'm covering all fronts, dark, daylight, you know, different frame rates, different resolutions. I'll be shooting 4K. And then I'll share it with you

afterwards. We'll see what's going to happen. I don't think I'll do a video just about that. It will probably be at the end of a Q&A. So good stuff. Unless I get something really amazing worth looking at, then I'll do a video just about bees during the eclipse. I don't think I'm going to be the only one that produces something like that. I think people are ahead of me thinking about it. So let's move on to number six. This comes from Jason. And what does it say here? I live in a very similar area to you. I was just wondering in your area what would be the earliest that you would consider doing a walk-away split. Okay, so these are the things that we're going to be talking about a lot because this is what's going to happen up here.

I am very annoyed by the YouTubers that already have warm weather and they're getting to work inside their hives and everything else while I am in the 20s here. And we cannot work in our hives. I'm just excited to see the bees flying at the entrances when we get warm-ups. But anyway, keys that let you know when you're going to do a walk-away split so somebody's listening right now. I'm going, what's a walkaway split? Do they just leave on you? What happens? Are they just quitting the B yard? And so here's the thing. We want to control swarming as much as possible. I'm going to recommend the book. Swarm. It's by Steve Rapaski, Swarm Essentials. Look up this book. Swarm Essentials. The author is Steve Rapaski. Here's the thing. It's a deceiving little book because it's thin, it's paperback, it's this big, it's this tall. It is information dense

and the information is timely for spring and spring management. Swarm Essentials. Get it on Amazon, wherever you can find it, get that book ahead of the swarm season and you will be smarter and more capable. It doesn't mean that you'll get things done on time as you should. So let's talk about that. Walk away splits are just that. It's when you make a split from your current hive. Colonies that you like, colonies that are doing well, colonies that come through winter strong, they need to be split or controlled or expanded in some way

to keep them from swarming away and disappearing. So the triggers, right? The triggers for swarming are also my moments when I decide I'm going to need to split a hive. So when the supervisor shows up and you can bet he's going to be out there every single day looking into hives with me, and that's Quinn, he's eight,

he's ready to go right now he would be out there if I told him it was okay we're going to look at the conditions of the hive how populated is the hive so if you've got an eight frame deep-rood box and six out of seven six out of eight are full of bees you've got a lot of bees all over and they're in a time of increase so that is a colony that needs to be split or supered or expanded right so when we look at it is it too late so there is a point when they've decided that they're going to split so in other words would you split it or expand the colonies. So if we do a brief inspection of the brood area, and we look and we find the queen is in production, the brood pattern looks fantastic, and there's no evidence of queen cells. And this is probably one of the most important

thing for early beekeepers to understand. If they have queen cells in production, they've made their decision they're going to go. Once they've decided that, I'm going to recommend that cage that I just showed you. I'm going to recommend that you pull the frame that has your queen on it. You're going to put her in that queen isolation cage and put her in a nuke. and you put her in that nucleus hive. So what happened then was you just created a swarm. You took away the queen that would otherwise leave

with up to 70% of the population of your hive. If she swarms on her own, up to 70% of those workers are going to go with her. So you lost this great resource, and now you've got replacement queens coming in, which is great. They have to be mated. And so one of them will prevail,

and you'll either have after swore, which means subsequent swarms will reduce the numbers in your hive. And then you can end up with a very tiny weak colony that came out of winter looking fantastic and you just lost control of them because you didn't get a look at it. So now that's because the queen cell is already there. So the walkaway split, you know, it doesn't matter anymore. We took the queen out, we put her in a frame, we put it in a hive. Okay.

Now the other thing is just in the event that they don't produce, if one of those queens doesn't emerge and get out, mature, get out, get mated, come back, and then get productive, you'll need to bring that old queen back. That's why she is an insurance policy. But you also reduce the population in the hive, so you helped remove one of the keys for swarming, right? I recommend putting frame feeders in that hive and push all your brood frames together. So when you pulled your queen out on a brood frame and you put her in your isolation cage and in her nucleus box. Push all the remaining frames together and put a feeder frame at the end. So number one position or the number eight position, if you've got a 10 frame box,

it would be number one or number 10 position. Push the other frames at the middle. And that's a space holder so that later if you need to put her back, we can open up the brood again and insert her right where she belongs. Once you've determined that, they ended up queenless. The same thing works for a walkaway split. So the same thing. We're looking at a hive.

It looks really strong. It has the genetics behavior, the attitude, they're easy to manage. All the traits that you want in a beehive, we want to make a split from those. Now, if we're counting on them to use eggs that are already in the brood frames, right, in the cells. If we want them to use those eggs to produce a replacement queen, there are other things I want you to look for first. One is, are there a lot of drones flying around? Now, you could kind of gamble and say that you hope that you don't see drones right now, but look, it's going to take all these days to make a replacement queen,

and between she emerges, she's going to need about nine days to mature before she flies out. Maybe there'll be drones by then, and you'll be ahead of the game. That's a gamble. And it takes longer to make a drone than any other bee in the hive. So those are the male bees. We need them to fly out because it's an individual. indicator that other colonies are also producing their drones. Those are the ones that are going to mate with your new queen. The drones from your hive will not be mating with the queen produced in the same hive.

She will fly out to a drone congregation area and she'll meet up with other drones in the area. So the reason that I'm saying look for drones in your hive because that's going to kind of serve as an indicator for whether or not there would be drones in the rest of the area. I recommend you wait unless you're in an emergency situation where you need to do it because you're finding queen cells. When you find queen cells, you have to split them. Or destroy all the queen cells, take a gamble. So that's the other thing. What if you don't want them to requeen? What if you don't want another colony?

And you found queen cells, I'm going to recommend the same thing. Take the frame that's got the queen on it with the brood. Put that brood in that frame in that cage. Put that cage in that nucleus hive off to the side. It can be right next to this hive, by the way. It doesn't matter. You don't have to create a lot of space. Now, now you go through and actively cut out all the queen's seeds.

because you don't want them to expand. So you're going to remove all the queen cells. Now in the absence of those queen cells, they're going to sense that the queen is not present. Her pheromone is going to be reduced and they're going to do what? They're going to produce another queen for the remaining eggs. What can you do to stop that? You can stop it. It's a game of pheromones. So here's what you do. You've got a colony where you think you carved out all of their queen cells. What can you do to shut them down so they don't produce a replacement queen from the eggs? that are still in that hive. You can put queen mandibular pheromone temp queen and

that's that little green noodle you get it from better bee you might get it from other places it's called temp queen it is a queen mandibular pheromone that's synthetic and it makes them believe there's still a queen in there so we're lying to our bees through pheromone you put the temp queen in there until the time has passed. They can no longer produce a new queen from the eggs because the eggs are gone they've developed into larvae, the larvae are too old, and they can't produce the queen. At that point, you can leave it there until you're about to reintroduce the queen. And I recommend you do wait a little while, right?

We want to take away the swarm instinct. So the area where you're located will have prime swarm seasons. And so once you realize that you're starting to pass that period, then you can bring your queen back. Now, you haven't really lost time because you've had your queen in another nucleus hive where she is continue to lay eggs and she's going to come back with over 6,000 workers. So when you put her back in here, you remove the temp queen and they'll accept their old queen. She's genetically related to them. We've cut down on some congestion and we did lose some brood production, but it doesn't compare to losing 70% of your colony in a swarm. So these are different methods. If you don't want to

expand, that is a way to bring it back, control the population of that colony, temporarily remove your queen, bring her back, remove temp queen, install it, they're right again, super the hive, and now you're good to go, and you're probably going to get a fantastic honey crop from that beehive. So that's also a good way to control and prevent swarming from a colony that maybe you weren't that excited about their performance last year. Maybe you don't want to make other colonies from them. It is just a method for controlling their swarm instinct, and you can remove that through the methods that I just described. On the flip side of that, Walkaway split, colony that you love, you want more of this colony.

Like last year when we pulled open the Long Langstroth hive and made three colonies from it because they had queen cells all over. And it's a strong colony. Came through winter, fantastic, you know, lots of frames of brood. So we made multiple hives from that. Top performing queen, top performing hive, got through winter strong, no assistance needed. And then we just build a bunch of colonies from that. And then those, if they already have the queen cells, we can call it a walkaway split.

It's really not. It's kind of guaranteed. And the other thing is they don't recommend making new nucleus hives with just one of those queen cells. I would put a couple of them because they make a pile of them. I would put a couple queen cells in each nuke to make sure that something happens. And then, of course, follow up in three weeks and see how they did.

Why three weeks? Because after three weeks, if things didn't happen, they could already start looking at becoming laying workers and things like that. So now it's time to combine them. So the ones that made it, you combine the ones that didn't to that one. So you just repopulate them. And will that confuse the bees? That's the other thing.

So we had them in another spot and now they're lost and we took their hive and we combine them to another one. Will those bees are all orphans now and they're going to where the entrance used to be. That's terrible. What's going to happen to them? Let me tell you something about bee drift. they will find a home and they will go to other hives eventually. They're not just going to park themselves there. You're not going to come back and find a pile of dead bees where the hive used to be.

They eventually give up and go to other hives. They just drift all over the place. So I hope I covered that. So the earliest I would do it is based on cues that I see. You don't have a choice queen cells. You have drones. Good to go. Lots of resources coming in. They don't build drones unless there's abundance in the environment.

There you go. Hope that helps. Question number seven. This is from Pete. It says one over high swarmed three days ago and they are 20 feet up a tangled mess of a tree. We have a swarm box set up and many scouts are checking it out and then it is raining now and cold and they aren't budging. Is this unusual? We have never had a swarm stick around longer than a day or two. Now here's the thing. One, is the swarm sticking around on a tree branch for more than a couple of days? Last year, our bees were spending the shortest amount of time on a tree branch that have ever seen. They would be there for an hour and be gone.

If they're there for a couple of days, what does it tell you? It tells you that your environment does not provide boxes necessary for them to move into. That they are also rejecting the swarm box that was put up there. But I also want to revisit something that I learned about at the North American Honeybee Expo. What do you think I'm going to talk about? because I like this description. 20 feet up, a tangled mess of a tree. This is what I'm going to try this year. I have nothing to do with this guy, by the way, other than I was interested,

and it's called the Swarm Reacher. It's this little piece of plastic that clamps on a frame and goes on your window washing line or whatever, and what kind of frame do we want to clamp it to? An old brood frame. Don't throw those out. Brood frames are really fibrous, they're tough, they're dark, they're smelly, They smell like brood and so I'm told now keep in mind I'm telling you about something I have not tried But it makes sense. So here it is with a frame on it. It clamps on just like that and this is my window washer pole And you can get these that go

20 feet 24 feet nice and thick whatever I cannot wait to try this because you've got this up on a tree branch and you see your swarm up there and they're stuck in an area that you you couldn't get in there with a vac. You're not going to climb a ladder 20 feet, but you can get this pole up there. And this is what I'm told. So you tell me if you have experience doing this, because one of our beekeepers can, who's been around forever and a day, he just will put a clamp on his. He doesn't want to buy one of these because he found out that if you ordered it, it's $14. Okay. Where my argument is, if somebody invented something that we find useful, let's reward the inventor. So free up the $14 that it takes to ship this to you.

But anyway, you get this up there and just put it next to them and the bees will clamber onto it because of the scent. And which of the bees wants to be on this more than any of the others, the queen? So I'm told. Now I'm going to find out. So what am I going to be doing when I do that? I'm of course going to get video of it because I want to see how it's going to work. And does that mean I'm going to wait until I have a swarm that's a good 20 feet up out of ladder range before I try this? No, if they're 10 feet off the ground, 8 feet, 6 feet, I level. I'm going to walk up there and I'm going to do it. I want to see how this works.

I want to get those bees onto this frame. And then if the queen is on the frame, what am I going to tell you? What are you going to put this frame in? You're going to put it in your nucleus hive? You're going to put it in your 8 frame? you put it in your 10 frame box seven frame apamane nuke where are you going to put it you're going to put it in your queen cage queen isolation cage so that the bees can just just set her right well take it off of this don't drop it straight from that so you'll be unscrewing it from this

and the queen's still on there and you verify that she's on there $14 can anyway queen's on here put her right in here Center it up. We don't want to rubber against anything. And then you put the lid over it and you put this in your eight-frame box or into your new kive and you've got the queen. And now you set the box there and the rest of the swarm are going to come down and join her, right? And now we've got her and they won't go away. It's going to work, I'm telling you. Now does that mean if you go to

you go to Swarm Reacher and you buy one of these and it doesn't work as I've described right now am I giving you a guarantee no I'm not if it totally bombs then I'll be happy to say I was wrong because they haven't tried it but I trust the man that made it he's just one of those honest people and I'm telling you it's so simple it's going to be fun I bought two of them so come on try it's going to work 20 feet up it would have totally worked because such a gamble and what a pain by the way if you have to out where i live a lot of people have deer stands in the woods and stuff like that deer season's over with put your swarm box your swarm lure on top of a deer stand that seems about right 12 feet whatever but now you got to go up there and lug a box this seems really

convenient just bring it down you know set it up where you can handle it nice and easy I've given up on, you're going to hate this, but I've given up on following all the rules about where to place your swarm trap. Because 12 feet was the optimum, 200 yards away, optimum. Transitional from the trees to a clearing, free fly zone, not direct sunlight. So in other words, if you've got some conifers or you've got some, you know, nice leaves that are coming out to shade the area, so it gets morning sun but afternoon cool things like that putting them all in the perfect spot I had more bees move into hives that were just sitting in my apiary than in any swarm trap I've ever put up I've even used the swarm trooper which was designed just for swarm trapping and

bees move into empty hive boxes if you've got a bunch of bees in your apiary I'm just I'm gonna let them move in that's what I'm gonna do so when I'm cleaning out my dead outs I'm going to clean them out and they're just going to sit right there with their tiny entrances and I'm just going to let them scout it out and I'm going to take a chance that they just magically get occupied because guess what happened last year? That's what happened. That's why I've ended up with too many bees. I just walk out there and hey, there's a new colony of bees. I didn't even know one of them swarmed and they've occupied this box that was empty and now I have another colony of bees to stare at while drinking my coffee. So that's the end of the questions for today.

We are in the fluff section. So question number seven, I want to thank Pete for that. 20 feet up, tangled mess. And why do they do that? Once they're stuck, there's no place to then move into, in the environment, and they'll set up house. And remember what I said earlier, that's when they're also defensive. So I'm going to try this.

And here's the other thing that's key to that. Once they've settled, it's going to be really hard because what's going to to happen if they start to build comb because we've all seen the branches that they've been on once they start building beeswax and stuff like that if that queen puts one egg in one cell and they start to feed it and treat it like a larvae right after the third day it's going to hatch from the cell and now it's a larvae being fed and it's probably not alone they're going to stick to that like glue the only way to get them off of that tree then is going to be to cut away those comb and so the thing is how are you going to do that when they're 20 feet up and you couldn't get there to collect them in the first place.

That's why the swarm reacher, thank you to the man that invented it, swarm reacher, is going to be the answer to that for me. I am 99.270% sure that that is going to work this year, and it's going to be the most fun tool that I've added to my beekeeping arsenal. So in the fluff section today, first of all, we're talking about swarms. Don't buy bees unless you have to. I realize a lot of my friends, sell bees. I'm not trying to put you out of business. I'm just trying to give good advice to the people that are listening to me here, that are backyard beekeepers. If you're in an area where swarms happen, get on a swarm list. If you've got a volunteer fire department, where I live, we have

these tiny towns everywhere, including my sprawling metropolis of a town that has over 400 people. We have a volunteer fire department. They're the ones to get calls when a bunch of bees show up where they shouldn't be. So get your name out to those people. Call the dispatcher. Get your name on the list as a swarm collector. If you are also fire departments, police departments, they'll get the calls. And you can also call garden centers. Believe it or not, some people call garden centers when they find a bunch of bees somewhere. Wanting to know how to kill them because they ask the garden center experts there,

what can I spray them with to kill them? We want to stop that, so we want to volunteer to inform people and also give them your number. If you belong to a bee club, bee clubs put out swarm lists too. there's social media groups on facebook and so on that'll also have swarm call groups and things like that get yourself on a list get a swarm get a swarm get free bees bring them back and find out how it's going that is totally satisfying and they're already regional bees for you and they're probably doing great because what time of year you get in the swarm call spring time so get on the swarm call list and also stage your swarm kit don't be running around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to

figure out what gear do you need you're going to need a bee suit because remember I said don't trust it they can be angsty and you don't want to look embarrassed. Jeff Orchoff ran away from a swarm once. That was pretty funny because they were just stinging them up and that's rare for somebody who hardly ever wears a veil, right? So always go in safe, then figure it out and if they're calm, then you can relax. So your swarm kit, you're going to have to have sugar water and a spray bottle. I recommend adding a teaspoon of honeybee healthy to your sugar water in your spray bottle because that's going to keep that sugar water good all summer long. It's going to extend it. It's never going to spoil. It's not going to have mold and everything. So you're good for six months with that. That spray bottle will be in your go kit. So now we've got spray bottle. We've got the protection. You're going to need some kind of fold-up

ladder maybe. You're going to need loppers, pruning shears and things like that. Because if they're on a tree branch, it's much easier to clip the branch and just take it with you and drop it right into what's the next piece of kit I'm going to describe a hive butler toad. If you get a hive butler tote, by the way, Fred 5 is a discount code, Fred 05. Use that discount code. When you order your hive butler, you get a discount that they've assigned to my name. I get nothing for recommending that to you. It's just out of the goodness of their hearts that they're giving that to my viewers.

So anyway, your hive butler toot, what am I going to say? That's your go kit. Once you get the tote, that's where you put your veil in there. You put your sugar syrup in it. You have your belt. You have your loppers in there. All of this stuff dedicated. And you know how good it feels to get a call and be on the road in 90 seconds from the time you get the call?

You are a rapid deployment swarm collector. Don't be running around looking for things to do. And plus, you can keep it in your hive butler tote. You can keep your bees in there because they have the screen top. Until you can then get together and put your stuff on a stand, take your time, put a hive together. It won't come apart on the road. you won't have a car full of bees when your hive shifts and it comes off the bottom board or the cover comes off or something like that you have a really good manageable tote now here's the thing in your tote you'll also have frames of drawn comb two or three of them you don't need a lot of them and for the reason that we described for the swarm reacher because the queen and others will gather on some of the frames and that helps you transition them from the hive butler toot into the hive that you want to put them in because then you just take the queen on her frame in her cage,

put that inside the hive that you want them all to go in, and then you just put the hive butler tote in contact with that and let the rest of them walk in once the frames are all in. And they'll do it. They'll all go in there. You'll see. Super easy.

No shaking. No agitating of the bees. And the reason you spray them with sugar syrup while they're in the cluster, first of all, it satisfies the thirst that they might already have. Make them a little heavier so you can shake them off the branch if you have to. Because you can clip a branch and put that in,

your hive butler toad or you can sprit some and soak them down and then shake them into a butterfly net which i use those canvas cotton canvas butterfly nets and guess what the end of it unscrews you put the whole net inside what your hive butler tote so there you go because you're only occupying the first three frames the rest is open space in there and of course you've taken your veil and other equipment out so that's it uh don't start borage yes i made a huge mistake This is Borage. I was saying started inside and I said start it last week. I hope you didn't. It's because I was talking to my friend Pat at an IHop breakfast bee meeting this past week. These grow so fast. Don't start them inside, start them outside. What should you be starting inside?

Your hyssop. Your blue giant hyssop and stuff like that because it takes longer. Borage, don't listen to me on borage. It goes outside. plants grows fast and does really well so I made a mistake on that one please do not remove the insulation from your beehive we can get excited because first day of spring was announced you get a warm day and everybody thinks well I'm going to take my my thermal caps off and some people have hive coesies on these are all things that I don't use hive cozies and things like that if you've got them on to get your bees through winter it does not hurt them one bit to still be on

when the weather warms up. So the risk is that you get excited that it's time to take the insulation off and then we get a real cold snap like it's happening right now, like happened yesterday or even Wednesday when it started snowing like crazy. If you've taken your stuff off, now they're at risk, especially when there's nothing but a telescoping cover, an inner cover, no insulation. Now we're going to have a condensation problem. So the thing is, leave your insulation on. It doesn't hurt. First of all, the other question I have is, why are people taking insulation off of their hives for summer? Insulation, if you have it, if you've put that on your hive, it benefits your bees throughout the year.

So I don't understand putting it on, taking it off, unless it's temporary anyway and you don't like the look of it. Now you've got to store it somewhere. So if you want an insulated hive to stay insulated, Like I don't pull my caps off. I don't pull the double bubble out of my inner covers. I don't pull the double. I don't pull the insulated intercovers off the hives that are from Beesmart

just because summer arrived. It benefits my bees all year round. So why take the insulation off? I don't recommend that you do that. So some people are in a pickle. And so bears, pests, raccoons are out of hibernation now. They were tooling around my backyard in groups. I think I'm going to show the video sequences at the end of today's video.

If you want to continue watching, you're just going to see what's running around my backyard. And the reason I bring it up, bears are coming out of hibernation. If you're in bear territory and this is your first year coming out with bees or whatever, they come out of spring, they come out of hibernation hungry, and they're going to be looking for stuff. We don't want them to have a good first experience at your apiary. Once bears, and they're so smart, once they find a resource and they get through whatever barriers exist there they're going to come back so this is your chance to keep them

away i use noise makers so i think i will show you some examples of the noise makers going off in my apiary for raccoons and stuff like that but i have no bears coming to my apiary anymore and i have in the past so i had something to overcome and i am in grand central station for bears black bears to walk through the woods just to the east of my house So, if you are thinking about a bare fence or something like that, this is a great time to start putting that up because they're coming. And I'm going to say something about bear fences. So the electric fencing, which bears are very sensitive to and it works really well. University of Michigan, state of Michigan, fishing game put out a very good guide on how to set up a bear fence.

It did lots of testing. Very good. But here's my thing about the bear fence. You'll see somebody with four beehives or five beehives and where's the bear fence? Two feet from the hives and they've really closed in this tiny area. And all the charges that I've used in the past, and I took mine down, by the way, but I'm telling you, you know, my thoughts on it. Because the bare fence that I had was good for 30 miles of fencing. So my question was always, why are we fencing these tiny areas?

So I have an electric top wire that covers more than three acres, and I don't use it. I could. I mean, I could turn it on tomorrow, and it would be charged, and then nothing would touch it because it would get its nose zapped. But why are you making a congested area around your hives? I would suggest putting your bare fence 30 feet, 40 feet from your hives and creating a bigger perimeter and here's why. The bears come in and they get really close to a hive, they get really charged up. No pun intended. They get excited because they smell it and they want the brood and they want

the protein and they might eat the honey too. But once they're right up next to it, they're more intense about going after that resource. If you can keep them farther away and zap their noses is a little earlier in the game while they're still 50 feet away or something like that. Why not zap them? There's no reason to have. your electric fence right next to your beehive. It's a pain. So, and I didn't like it. That's through the years. You know, I had a really good quality electric fence. You always have to mow under it. You always have to keep the grass really short because anything that's touching the electric wires will ground it and reduce the charge capability and stuff like that. So I have it in hot standby. I'm not using it.

I've gone several years now with nothing but my noise makers and my noise makers are keeping things away. So, but you need to be aware of whatever pests are in your area and that this is the time of year when they're coming out of hibernation and they're mischievous. They're checking stuff out. Young bears, they don't know stuff and they're very agile and fast moving and they're kind of nitwits and they go around and they need their mother to teach them that things that's making that ticking sound, which is the sound you hear when you have a, you know, a fence being charged. And the bears have actually learned in some cases that they can swat at that and claw at that until they stop hearing that ticking sound and then they can go through the fence. So that's why some people are also putting

their chargers inside the electric fence to make sure that the bears can't access them. I'm not saying you have those smart bears, but it's just failing safe once again. So I hope that you found something useful in today's Q&A session and I also hope that you have a better weekend ahead than we do. So thanks a lot for watching and keep watching if you want to see some of our night camera action of what's waking up in our woods out here. Have a great weekend. So thanks for sticking around for the night camera video captures here. This gang of raccoons showed up. It looked like they're about the same age.

They seem kind of young. They've come out of hibernation. And they're moving around in a group of three. They're full of mischief. trying to get the camera off here but it's connected with a quarter 20 threaded bolt so good luck on that and then went away for a while and they're coming back the one on the right's going to grab a worm right there looks like you got a night crawler tasty and this is the same group and the camera is up above attached to a dread dead tree branch so you can see the little rascal touching the

camera there i think it would have pulled it off if it could have there there's no nothing on it that should be inspiring it to check it out other than the fact that it's a camera. It probably makes a noise every time it comes on. It's a train in the distance. A good 15 miles away, so that's interesting that we can hear it. And at the bottom of the frame here, I think that's the one that grabs a worm. The other one's trying to use his little raccoon paws, get that camera off. It's still not working.

Good luck. They'll eat chickens. They will check out your beehives. I've never had one do damage to a beehive. So the chicken coops are all closed up tight. And then, of course, snowfall came and cleared up again. So we've had these up and down days. We have full snowfall now.

And look at this. That's a deer mouse. Skipping around there. What was amazing to me is watch him go up this tree. Straight up the tree. Now that's a maple tree. Pretty smooth bark. I don't know what it does in the tree.

He's there in the right-hand corner. scooting all over, checking every branch. I looked to see if there was a nest there, something like that, and there wasn't. So that's interesting. They're incredibly agile. Here's another sequence, probably the same mouse, and look at how fast he darts around on the ground at the base of this maple tree. I don't know what it's doing.

But they sure move fast. And if you are an owl trying to figure out where that deer mouse is going to be, I think he's afraid of being nabbed because he does not sit. tight for even a second. They climb trees. They can go straight up a concrete wall. They are incredibly agile. And the deer mice are everywhere. If you trapped a deer mouse in a live catch trap and turned it loose, they can find their way back from as far as a mile away. That's right. A mile. Now we have the fox visiting the bee yard. Does not like the alarm. I thought it was interesting that he ducked a little bit first, but I think you might have seen a flashing light. I don't know. They're very skittish.

He's probably hunting rabbits. This is a very young white-tailed deer, still has spots on it. Lots of deer come through and seem to mark this tree. I don't know why they do that. And now the raccoon visiting also doesn't like the alarms. And that's the end of it. Wish I had something more interesting to show. Thanks for sticking around.