The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 253 with Special Guest Cory Stevens

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Today's Q&A focuses on installing Virgin Queens that are Varroa Resistant. Cory Stevens Genetics:  https://youtu.be/lAbs8Zv39G4    

Hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, April the 12th, and this is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and answers episode number 253. I am Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So welcome to my channel if you're brand new and if you're coming back and you know what's going to happen, thank you for the compliment even though you knew I was going to be here. It's really nice. But it isn't nice outside. That's because the wind is blowing and the rain is

has been falling for quite a while now, starting yesterday. And a lot more of that to come. And the winds are increasing here in the northeastern United States, the state of Pennsylvania, which is the Keystone State here in the northeast. And the good news is it's not freezing cold. It's 44 degrees Fahrenheit outside, which is 7 degrees Celsius. And the winds are pretty constant at 10 miles per hour, which is very annoying. The sump pump is running all the time because we've got some saturated soil,

but that's okay. Do you know why? We were running a water deficit here. We definitely had a snow deficit where I am, so that's perfectly fine and no great surprise with the drizzling rain. It's 98% relative humidity. So things are going to be different today. This is not going to be the usual Friday Q&A. So normally I would say if you want to know what we're going to talk about today, look down in the video description and you'll see all the topics in order. Well, the topic list is short. And I'll get to that in a minute. But I want to talk about the opening sequences, right? So if you saw the opening sequence and of course the thumbnail, this is interesting because I have a viewer, somebody that I've met at a couple of conferences,

11 years old, his name is Wyatt, and his last name starts with M. I don't give his full name because he's a minor. But Wyatt sent me these feeders. Now I'm a fan. of feeders you might think that if I had my own design for feeders or if I had a feeder that works why continue looking because I like to open feed and not for the reasons that you think we open feeder bees at different times of the year when they're struggling when there's a dearth when we need it to sustain them and some people don't feed at all and that's perfectly fine if you don't do that this year in my neck of the woods where the weather has gone up and down. We've had problems and that being that the bees were bringing in more pollen than nectar

and what's the problem that you might think would happen with that? Well, if they're bringing a lot of pollen, they can brood up with the absence of nectar, then they don't have replenishment for the honey stores and the hive and that means they can run out of it. Sometimes she'll go out early in the morning and see a bunch of brood being pulled out and dragged onto the landing board and discarded from the hive. If they can't feed the larvae, if they can't sustain them then they cut back on surplus resources and that includes brood. So feeding sugar syrup is very important. A lot of commercial keepers, you'll see huge trucks of sugar syrup.

Now I'm never going to be on that level. But what I like to do, and that's why I say it's different than most, I like to see the bees drinking. I like to know what's coming along. So this is actually a design that I'm a fan of the bee buffet. Beesmart Designs also has good feeders. There are a lot of different feeder types out there and they can deliver up a lot of syrup in a short amount of time But I was really interested by the way this wasn't just sent to me why it's mother Christine contacted me and said hey my son

has printed out these are with a 3D printer these jar feeders and then she also said that these are wide mouth mason jars So that's cool because that means it holds this is a half gallon mason jar. I like these for a lot of reasons for a lot of reasons for one it's threaded so when the jar goes into it it seats right on the bottom without a gasket now i should tell you ahead of time for those of you who are click happy and want to go shopping he's not selling them these are concepts these are ideas and it's 3d printed and i guess there's a community online that shares 3d designs and for those of you i don't have a 3d printer those of you have 3d printers can make anything you can think of so what i look at is the trough here this area If you're feeding sugar syrup and you feed the heavy syrup, so thicker than one-to-one,

one-to-one being four pounds of sugar to four pounds of water, which means half a gallon. And that's what would be in here, so think about it. Anyway, when you mix that up, if it's really thick syrup, two-to-one, let's say, bees were dying in this still. So even though there's lots of little stepping stones and places, and it is rough because it's really printed, so they could get their footing and everything, but once they were in the syrup, they were stuck. So here's the thing. When we're open feeding,

if we don't want to see a bunch of dead bees getting stuck in there, the light syrup gives them a chance to get back out. So one-to-one or less. So that would help a lot. But I want to thank Wyatt. I like to support our youth. Giving him a shout-out is the least I can do. And if you want to know where that was designed,

because it wasn't why it's. He just made it himself. I do appreciate that, but it's called Altie Maker and it is on Thingverse, T-H-I-N-G-I-V-E-R-S-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-D-C-O-C-L-E-R-S-E-E-R-E-R-E-S-E-E-E-R-E-S-E-E-E-R-1. So you can look at it yourself, and I guess it's been through a couple of iterations there. It still needs work, but I did find a work around, which I don't have me. You can go to a craft store and they sell those quarter inch mesh and that's so people can do needlepoint and fancy work, yarn, knot tying and stuff on it. So it's a plastic open fabric. It can be an eighth of an inch holes, quarter inch holes, three eights and so on.

And the eighth inch holes, so if you cut that mesh like a donut and you put it over the top of this, then the bees stop there, but guess what? Because it is an eighth of an inch in opening, their proboscis can get in there, and they can still reach the bottom of this. Now, that keeps the bees out of the open surface, so then you could feed the heavier syrup, and you would find no dead bees in the trough. And I also asked if these things can be made bigger, because bigger is better when it comes to a surface area for feeding. So I guess there are limitations when it comes to a 3D printer for this plastic stuff, but I like it. is not commercially available anywhere but if they even made this a little bigger like the size of a pie pan

All the better you should know that you do have to level these things up perfectly The other thing is that I liked is no bees here's an opening right here and no bees were able to get through that and up into the jar so I found no dead bees inside the jar even when it was completely empty They died out here in the trough So there's room for research and development when it comes to feeders. And the reason I say it's different, you know, I'm not, let's be honest. If I put out two half-calon feeders and I have 31 colonies of bees within 100 feet, that's doing nothing. So it's given the forager something to do, they're getting some nectar.

It's not going to fortify a colony of bees. So I would like to be clear that that's self-serving. I want to see them. I want to see the sequences the way I showed them at the opening of today's video. And so if we're trying to feed the bees, why feed colonies that are doing well? Don't. Don't waste the resources. Why feed your neighbor's bees? Don't do that either unless you want to just get a look at them and see in what direction they're headed off. That's another thing.

But your most efficient way to feed your bees is inside the hive on top of your inner cover. And right now, that's going to be very important because of the reasons that I described before, which means we've got a lot of pollen coming in and the nectar isn't. coming in yet to sustain the bees. So, and of course my observations in the observation hives gives me information about the rest of my bee yard, and they are light, which is kind of scary. How do we know without opening the hive

if they've got good resources and if they're doing okay? The colonies that are flying out and coming back, they have the extra energy, and they also have the extra bee power to fly out and forage for resources. So they're doing probably okay. They could probably be benefited by giving some sugar syrup in there, but it isn't mandatory for them to survive at that point, right? But if we have a couple of days of rain ahead and we do, I've been telling the people that I'm working with for backyard beekeeping,

to go ahead and put sugar syrup out inside the hive. That means on top of your inner cover, and the bee buffet is a very good way to do that. Rapid rounds are a very good way to do that also. And I've talked about those before, so we won't spend a lot of time on them today. For those of you who are wondering too, this is available as a podcast that is called The Way to Be. So you can listen instead of watching. And of course, if you find areas that you want to see what's going on, then come back to the YouTube video and you'll see that. Also, there's a new playlist that I started for pollinator plants.

And so you'll look at that over the previous week. And the last one was we've got selfie. coming up because these plants are ground cover that are often confused with one another. So there is self-hull and there's dead nettles and dead nettles are what we talked about and these are short to the point videos and the reason it's important to show them now is because it's what's happening today. So they are growing around the bases of our trees. Dandelions are coming up next. Salix discolar the the willows are something else I wanted to get a video of but they're getting rained out. and I feel that we're going to run out of the opportunity to shoot the bees on willow pollen,

although I have to think that's a lot of what they're bringing in right now as well. We have a lot of wetlands in the area. We also over the past week, sorry to bring it up again because I know everyone has heard about it, the eclipse, so I'm in the path of totality, did a video about it and of course didn't cloud cover show up right on time to block my view. So there's that. But that video is out there too and I did several tests of bee observations on landing boards and feeding during the eclipse. So if you want to see that, you can also go to my channel,

which is Frederick Dunn, and see what's going on there. So let's move right into today's content, which is really interesting to me, because I did a last-minute change, and my whole plan for the day, I did that this morning, because I got a question from Sonia, from Southampton, Massachusetts. Said right here, I'm located in Southampton, Mass.

It says I ordered a Virgin Queen that will ship within 24 to 48 hours. So I will likely get her tomorrow or Friday, so that's today or yesterday. Okay, I purchased her to get Varroa sensitive traits in my gene pool, and I know purchasing virgins isn't ideal, but I figured I would try it. I have a queen introduction caged, purchased from Betterby,

and the temps here this week are in the high 60s, low 40s. By the way, here in Pennsylvania, we're going to have great temperatures going forward in spite of the wind and the rain. So temperature is more important this time of year and we don't mind the rain anyway So my question is in regards to the queen introduction cage you've discussed its use on several episodes but my question is specifically for introducing virgin queens to a queenless colony Now Sonia did not mention where she purchased her you know unmated queen

and I figured wow this is a good area to have a conversation so who would I think of that sells virgin queens Corey Stevens in the state of misery. And so Corey is there and I reached out to him this morning and I said, Hey, Corey, would you jump on a Zoom with me and talk about queenless, I'm not queenless, but unmaided virgin queens that he breeds, cells, and then ships. And how would we handle them when we get them? So Corey agreed and I brought him on. So guess what the rest of today's video is going to be about?

It's going to be the discussion between me and Corey, So Corey, for those of you don't know, he has his master's green entomology, and he has quit his day job and become a full-time varroa resistant queen stock breeder. So we're going to talk with Corey. And then after that's over with, I'll recap with my fluff for the day. So here's the interview with Corey Stevens that we did today. So I want to thank him in advance. And let's watch and we'll talk after. The question I have comes from, and I hope you recognize this name, by the way. The name is Sonia from Southampton, Massachusetts. Sonia just purchased a Virgin Queen and is getting it. It sounds like she's receiving it today or? Yes, yeah.

I ship next day air only, and I grafted really late on a, I think it was a really late Friday that round. And so they were out a little bit later than normal. So I shipped him Thursday for Friday delivery. Hopefully EPS doesn't have any hiccups. So is that name familiar? Yes, absolutely. Oh, good. So she didn't even mention you.

So I just jumped on the top, you know, VSH queen breeder that I know of. So, okay, here's the question. What does she do once she gets it? Okay. And before we jump into that, people want an in-depth. We're going to give the link to what's just. on your website. And so just give us a really high speed rundown on what these queens are and why you're

even selling them as unmated virgins. Yes. It all started. I used to produce open-mated queens and I'm not in South Florida or South Texas. I'm in southern Missouri. So we have a window to where I could maybe get three rounds out of a nucleus colony if it works well. I was selling them for 30 bucks.

So basically I could get $90 for working three months, or I could just make a nuke up and sell it for $185 and be done with it. And it just stopped making sense for me to sell open-mated queens from a business perspective. I got into breeding. I learned how to do instrumental insemination from Sue Kobe back in 2014. And so I really wanted to produce breeder queens that I wanted to get away from open-mated. Then I found out I didn't think it was profitable to produce breeder queens either, but it was odd because I found out a method to get virgins introduced reliably, you know,

within expectation. They're still open mating involved. But that where my take was a lot higher. So I told people I could sell you queen cells or I could sell you virgins. Most people, most beekeepers, as you know, virgins is not something that we've messed with historically. people don't know how to care for them, don't know how to introduce them. Like it's just foreign territory here. But I kept having repeat business and it got crazy.

So the advantage of a Virgin Queen, if I ship you a cell, Fred, and UPS has a hiccup, which it's a modern marvel that they can deliver next day air anywhere in the country, but occasionally there are hiccups. It's logistics. If that doesn't deliver the next day, they're dead. because if they delay, there's no candy in there. It's just a cell ready to emerge. They come out within a few hours.

They curl up. They're dead. Open-mated queens. There's a lot of research or one in particular research out to where temperature extremes, and whenever you ship open-mated queens, the queen may be okay, but it can damage the sperm in her spermatheca. So sometimes it's a good queen. It gives breeders and producers a bad name.

A lot of times they ship a good queen. Queen, it's damaged. And whenever you get it, you think, why is this thing laying drones or what's going on? It's because that viability was compromised due to temperature extremes that they wouldn't see in a hive. With virgins, if they miss delivery for a day, I ship them just like a mated queen. They have attendance in there. They've got candy. If it's two days, they're fine whenever they show up.

And they have not yet mated. So as long as that queen's healthy and fine, there is no risk of damaging the sperm in her spermatica. So that's one advantage of virgins or a couple of them, physiologically and logistically. They're superior to ship, I feel. So that's how I got into that. And virgin queens actually is what got me out of my day job because I can produce thousands of them, high-quality virgins. I can't produce a big number of breeders, and I can't produce a big number of open-made queens. It's just me, me and Jamie.

You know, I can't run 2,000 mating nukes to where it would be worth it to me. So that's how I arrived at Virgin Queens. Okay, so the UPS truck, I just heard it rumble up outside. He's handed me a perforated envelope with my queen in a cage with her attendance. What do I do now? Well, you could give her a drink of water. usually they're thirsty so you can just stick your finger under the faucet and rub a little bit on those holes in the cage and you'll see them start drinking immediately.

If they don't, they're not thirsty. If they're thirsty, drink immediately. I would keep giving them some until I quit drinking and then dry the water off because if you leave it, that candy will get sticky and gross and it's not good. And then they could release really quick. So what you want to do is take her, put her in your pocket. pocket or whatever or leave her on your table, go make a split or make a colony that you want cleanless. I like to make split so all my eggs aren't in one basket because if you put it in a

big double deep and a bird picks are off, now you've got a double cleanless double deep. You got to mess with normally a nucleus colony is what you'd want to fix that with. So what I do, make the split. Take over that candy. Do not let them eat the candy from the outside where the they can turn her loose. Duct tape, electrical tape, either way. Go ahead and put her in there. Don't let her go. Just put her in there in the nucleus colony.

They'll feed her, which is weird, even though they actually want to kill her in a short amount of time. And the reason being is whenever you take that queen out, she has the pheromones that suppress queen cell production and laying workers. Whenever you take that mated queen out, what do they start doing immediately?

they start making a replacement yeah they start making emergency cells whenever they start going into emergency mode they'll reject virgins for some reason it's weird you would think they would but any they start what they want to keep and then anything else they just kind of get tunnel vision on but if you put her in there hold her for seven days this is where i lose a lot of people but it works reliably the reason why you would hold her for seven days whenever you take that queen out there's eggs in there she's just been laying eggs so those are eggs for three days

day four is the perfect age larvae to raise a queen out of but whenever they're in emergency mode they're not looking for quality they're worried about survival so even day five they'll start some older larvae just to make sure

that they don't try something at day six because they're desperate they're in emergency mode I wait till day seven I take, go through, you want to brush the bees off the frames because some of those emergency cells just almost look like a drone cell. They're so tiny. Take the bees off the frame so you don't miss anything and destroy those. Then take your tape off your candy. Now you've got to range. If it's raining on day seven, you can wait till day eight or nine or even day 10, but I like to aim for

day seven because they're not going to try to raise any more queens and we want to let her get out and do her thing. So after you remove all the emergency cells, take the candy off, put her back in there, close them up, and leave them alone for a few weeks, probably two, two and a half weeks. I wouldn't look in there or mess with her, unless you just want to make sure she ate through the candy,

which typically isn't an issue. So to be clear, no touch for two weeks. Yeah, don't dig through the frames. For some reason, whenever they're not established yet, things are, it's uncertain times in the hive for the B. and occasionally if you dig in there before she's really laying hard, they'll ball her. I've seen it happen.

It's not entirely common, but it's not worth the risk. If you paid that much for a virgin and you paid for next day air, just it's going to be difficult, but have patience and wait and don't look in there. I also recommend feeding thin syrup because here's why. If you made a split, you know, if it's two frames of brood and a frame of food, and you make a split, what is going to hold that colony back is the amount of foragers they have.

They're small and they're kind of vulnerable. So if you feed them thin syrup, which is approximately two parts, water to one part, sugar, it's most like natural nectar. They can feed so many more larvae than what they could. So that's like, just to be clear, that's like a 25%. I also, I want to back up a little bit too. You said, bawling the queen, so people are listening. Some people might not understand what it is.

So when they superheat and kill the queen by forming a ball around her, a lot of people, that could be a new term to them. And the thin syrup, great idea too. I like that. The next question that comes up, also from Sonia, how long are they good for? So once you have a virgin queen emerge from herself, how long is she good for before she has to actually get out there into a mating flight? Yep, that's a great question.

common, I say knowledge. We, as beekeepers, sometimes we'll repeat what we heard someone else say as common knowledge, even though it may not be completely accurate. I think this is one of those things. I've heard a lot of people repeat or say that virgins will lose the urge to mate after like 10 days or two weeks, something like that. I've accidentally banked virgins for three and a half weeks and put them in a hopelessly cleanless environment like what I was disgruntary. by cutting the cells and they made it just fine. So those were just almost a month old.

They don't get better with age. So don't hold them for three and a half weeks. You know, I'm just saying. Younger is better. Okay. Younger is better. But if they emerge, I add attendance. I ship them next day air to you.

They're two days old. If you hold them seven days, most of them don't start flying naturally until six days or even later. they can wait. The weather's bad. Yeah, that's a great point. So let's hit on that real quick. A queen just emerged from herself.

Even in a hive environment and not being shipped or anything else, she's not ready to mate. So what's that maturing and sexually maturing and becoming able to fly and mate? What's the normal time frame for that to happen? Typically around six days, they'll start to fly. So they have to harden and they change a lot. Whenever they first come out, they're kind of slow and, you know, they're not ready yet. And then over a couple days, they develop and they can fly.

And that's why I tell people, too, do not direct release these virgins. Because after a couple days, it's like they've had a six-pack of mountain dew. You know, they're ready to go. You open it up. A lot of times they'll fly. Well, they haven't oriented to that colony. So a lot of times they'll go in another colony and get bald or killed. So whenever you take that tape off, just stick it.

back in the colony and let them slow release. It's going to take them a little bit to realize that those cells are gone, and she is the only hope. So basically you're putting them in a scenario to where they can die or accept that queen, and so their attitude changes within 12 hours or so after cutting those cells. And also, one thing I wanted to point out is I thought I outsmarted the bees. That wasn't the case, Fred. but what I realized I had a light bulb moment later,

what I achieved whenever I held them that long and I cut the cells, the key point is there's no eggs, there's no young larvae that they'll try to make an emergency queen out of. Well, whenever bees naturally want to swarm, the queen stops laying, and oftentimes they'll hold those virgins in there. So in nature, whenever virgins are released,

typically there's no eggs and there's no young larvae. So when I thought I outsmarted them, that wasn't the case. All I did was recreate a natural scenario. And so, you know, it would make sense that you would have a lot better luck if you work with nature rather than against nature. Okay, you hit on something there that is really interesting, so I know we're going to get off track. But you said that they'll hold them in their cells. So this is really interesting because sometimes the nurse be is attending those queens that are still in their cells, actually reseal the capping while the queen is trying to cut herself out,

they're right there working against her. So it's like you're scraping water out and there's Mason's putting new mortar in right behind you. What can you tell us about that and how those bees are showing a preference for one, you know, queen in a cell? Because they've even, you see this in observation hives? But they'll keep one queen in her cell while they allow another one to emerge. Have you seen anything like that? Can you explain what your thoughts are on that behavior?

I've definitely seen that, and I've also seen them hold all of them. It's almost like until they're ready to swarm. That's when they want a lot, a lot of them out. Because sometimes I've broken a park colonies during an inspection. They were ready to go. Well, Virgin started running everywhere. They were holding them in those cells, and they'll cut the cap, and they'll feed her through it.

but they won't let her out. And to your point, as far as preference, they totally prefer certain ones. Why? I don't know exactly, but if you see a big virgin swarm, because another time I thought I would outsmart them, I would just take the old queen and they wouldn't swarm.

Well, they just swarm giant swarm with virgin queens. And if you look in there, they prefer one or two at most, probably one, and they start killing the other ones. In the swarm, they're bawling. They're bawling them. It's crazy. Okay, I'm glad you said that because we also videoed that queens were coming out that they were trying to stop.

They were showing favoritism for another one. And as you described, they attacked. So these are workers attacking the queens. This isn't queen to queen combat. Right. So the workers are attacking. There was a worker on every foot biting her as hard as it could, and she's dragging them until they killed her. And she's on the bottom.

Have you ever observed nurse bees actually stained? a virgin queen? No, not nurse bees. No, I'm not saying it can't happen. Well, I'm saying, or any of the bees that are inside the hive that I'm calling them nurse bees, but they're the ones that are all over the queen cell. Oh, yeah. And if they're biting her, they're doing their best, she ended up dead.

I didn't get to see how she ended up dead because they had her all over the frames and she was out of view. Would they ever sting a queen, a virgin queen? Yeah, absolutely. And it only takes one sting sometimes. it's a well-placed sting, it'll paralyze her. So she's still alive, but, you know, if they get it to where it actually penetrates, and I've seen that.

They're trying to get their stinger. It looks like they're trying to get their stinger in right under her wings on the thorax. So that must be an opening there. There is a spherical there, too. Right. So maybe they're getting their venom in. So one sting will do it. One sting will do it.

They don't even have to ball her. If one worker has their way. And it's usually those old crusty foragers, you know, that are kind of bitter. Maybe I don't know. Right. No, I mean, this is very, it's very interesting stuff. Another question that we can kind of put to rest here because you do deal with banking Virgin Queens. If you didn't have workers, is there a period of time that a queen can feed herself?

Yeah, but if you emerge them in an incubator, you want to put them on candy immediately. Like I mentioned was shipping queen cells, whenever they come. out if UPS misses delivery, they're dead by the next day. So you've got a six hour window, maybe less than that. As soon as she comes out in nature, she's being fed. So you need to get them on candy right away. And here's the other thing, even if you put them on candy immediately, if you don't add attendance or get them in a colony within 48 hours approximately, they just lose hope and die. They're social creatures. They're used to having workers feeding them and grooming him and they just fold up and die even with candy so yeah you need to get them in a

or add quality attendance what's the composition of the candy you're feeding um oh i hate that you ask that friend here's what i use is and and i'm going to say don't do as i do as i do as i say not as i do um i use honey and i make my own powdered sugar here's why you shouldn't use honey. You could have American foul brood spores in there. Don't use it. If you don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you do not have American foul brood, which I know I don't.

And I don't use antibiotics. If you use antibiotics, don't use it either because it'll clear it out of your bees to where they look good, but they can still be carriers. Yeah, really good. Just for those, yeah, it suppresses it. It doesn't eliminate it. Yeah, exactly. If you start with antibiotics, you'd have to continue with antibiotics.

Yeah, you should just play it safe, especially if you're sending Queens to somebody else. If you don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt, you should probably use invert sugar syrup and sugar. You could probably use powdered sugar, but I make my own just so there's no corn starch in it. It may not affect them. But basically, you would want to use invert sugar and my own kind of powdered sugar. I put it in one of those little bullet blenders, you know? And the trick is the consistency. It almost needs to seem like it's a little bit too dry

because that's going to pull moisture out of the air and it'll get gummy and they'll look gross. Whereas if you get it almost too dry where it'll still clump, it'll pull moisture out of the air and it'll be perfect consistency. So now people are going to, they probably stopped even midway watching this. the traits of your bees are so that you can the goal is treatment free is that right yeah i yes i mean that's the goal i mean as an entomologist the goal of ipm is to treat as little as possible

and so i haven't used miticides in over a decade i don't tell people they should go cold turkey i'm using it for a specific purpose before i could measure vs h which is what we breed for I couldn't, how could I tell? So the only thing I would do is I just wouldn't put treatments on them and I could tell who looked really good and who started to have damage and looked raggedy. So before I could measure it, that was the only way that I could select resistant stock.

Now we can measure it because John Harbo was gracious enough to give us the Harbo assay to where we could measure BSA. But here's the catch too. Is that what pause in a second? Is that what the, was presenting at the Honeybee Expo? That's UBO. We're starting to go down a rabbit hole, Fred,

because UBO there's an overlap with B.S.H, which is for Roa with sensitive hygiene, but it's not the same thing exactly. Okay. There's some kind of overlap in the traits, though. Okay. I don't know if you want to go down this rabbit hole or save that for another day.

No, go ahead. We'll stick with, let's go ahead with it. I'll keep it short. So if I'm doing a Harbo assay, which is not UBO, you're actually measuring the bees ability to suppress mite reproduction. They still get mites that just don't let them reproduce at the super high VSH. To be able to measure that, I need mites.

So if I'm going through seasonally knocking my mites off, I'm affecting my breeding scores. So that's why I tell people who manage bees, you need to manage mites too, or they're going to manage your operation for you at times, unless you're using something that's super resistant, which most stuff on the market is not super resistant. And so that's why I don't treat,

but I don't tell everyone else that's the way and that's what they should do. That's the goal. I think we can get there with breeding, but it's a multi-pronged approach. We need a good, better genetics. We also need better miticides that don't stick in the hive and that, which, you know, the organic acids are quite good.

Well, and the back-air beekeepers should know right off the bat that listen to Corey here, talk about treatment-free and everything, you are sending drones and your stock and your genetics are flooding your region. So you are actually echoing back your own genetics there. So that leads me into my next question, which is going to be a very common one. Someone just bought one of these unmated queens. They get her. We do everything that's described. And now she has to open mate. So now we're going to introduce regional genetics to that queen.

How much does it impact the traits that that queen comes with? About 50% in the broodness. 50% of the worker bees will be your local bees, which is kind of cool. And you get a little bit of hybrid vigor because they're mating with unrelated stock. And so you get a ton of diversity. And everybody knows bees love diversity. so they're super vigorous and healthy. But as far as the drones,

they are just a concentration of my stock. So if you use virgins, all the drones that they produce will be from my stock because drones have no father, only a grandfather. Right. So then we are genetically seeding our own area that way too. Absolutely.

And I'm also going to jump ahead because people are going to want to buy your queens. and I got on your website today and I looked not available. So don't be alarmed. I know there's some rapid clickers here. Grayson probably is already clicking and trying to buy everything.

So you are selling stock as available. So people will have to send you and there's a place where you can click and get notified to your email. Would you like to explain that process and why you're doing it that way now? Sure. Okay.

A last year was the worst year I've seen for queen production. Our nectar flow, instead of a nice bell curve, was like hitting a series of speed bumps at 55 miles an hour. It was terrible. We still shipped over 2,000 queens, but it took us longer to produce. I think I lost more hair, Fred, by the stress. And I do logistics for a living.

So I started thinking, we've got enough people watching the website instead of pre-ordering and then me trying to chase down beekeepers who could be here, there, anywhere, or not ready yet with variable weekly production, I thought, what if I just post what I have to sell that I know it's in my hand? It's ready to go.

Could I turn it quick enough? And I think, you know, we put 100 in the store, which was a small batch for us. We put 100 queens in there last Tuesday evening and within a few hours they sold out. So I think it'll work. You know, I'm not committing to anything, but at the same time I say, okay, here, we have 500 queens this week or we have 350 queens. So either it'll be Tuesday evening this coming week. I'll put what I have to ship either Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.

Try to get everything out the door on Wednesday. I'm back in my grafting schedule up to where I'll probably be. posting inventory on Wednesday night. But if you click on that, this will be all the way through the month of June. If you click on the store, there's a little back end, you click on Virgin Queen. And I think it says notify me when back in stock. Right. I clicked on that this morning.

I mean, I don't want it. I don't want any of them. Yeah. But I should be at the top of their list. So anyway, because some of this is also a podcast. So if you would go ahead and name your channel or name your website so people know where to go. My website is just my last name, Stevens, S-T-E-V-E-N-S. It's StevensB-C-C-O-com.

And, yep, a lot of people were disappointed because it shows out of stock, but every week it's not going to show out of stock. It's going to show clean inventory in there. So if you're interested, keep an eye on it or request it. Get to that and click the button at the top. that says shop now. Okay. Now, do you have a set price for your queens

or is that variable? What's the current going rate? I've sold them for years for 25 each out of my instrumentally inseminated breeders so you're going to get a high level of consistency. I sold them for years at 25. As we all know, after the virus that shall not be named,

everything went up, cages, sugar, everything. So I've got them at third. 30 and I've got to work on my store. I think there's an option to where I can add a volume discount. So keep an eye on that. It may be coming soon. You know, I was thinking anything over 20, I could knock another five bucks off just to encourage people to pool orders

or, you know, I've got some commercial guys that order large quantities too, just to kind of get on my price break. So, but yep, they're at 30 now. I ship next day air only. I can usually upgrade to AM delivery. the next day if you're not out in the woods like I am. If you're out in a sticks, it usually delivers by like 2 p.m. or noon. But, you know, it's really advisable too. If you've got a UPS store close to you, a lot of people will just put the UPS store address and then put their name on it

and they'll just hold it for pickup, you know, in case it gets hot, you know, towards. Name and phone number on the box, on the package. How do you shipping? Is it an envelope or what do you No, I use those, have you seen those JZBZ battery boxes? It's like a little orange crate. It's about this big. And you can fit 20 of them in there. And really, I can take two of those together. So I can pretty much ship 40 queens for about the same price.

Are you using those JZBZ little plastic white containers? Oh, you are? Okay. Yeah, the candy cages yet. Yeah. I didn't like him at first. I was using the old three-hole. Benton cages.

But man, those things, they'll fit in between your top bars. Whenever you go to introduce it or you tape over the candy, you can fit it right in between the top bars of your colony. They fit, I can fit 20 in this little battery box. They just fit like a glove in there.

Yeah. It's so functional. So yeah, I started using those. And we can ship, we have bigger shippers too that you can get close to 200 in. You know, if you're wanting a large order. Shipping's a little bit more, you know, with a bigger package, but we can, we'll still get it to you next day. All right.

So I have to ask, too, have you tried out that queen introduction cage that it covers a whole deep frame and it's instead of a queen isolation, it's introduction. No, I haven't. I don't know if it would work as well for virgins because they've got to get outside of there anyway, you know? Eventually, yeah. Yeah, if you use my method, it could give you a higher. success. I don't know. I haven't tried with it. But if I was doing mated queens or freshly

inseminated breeder queens, I would definitely like to try that. Because with those, oftentimes, I use a push-in cage, you know, which is like hardware cloth over emerging brood. And then they can go ahead and start laying. And those are phenomenal. I get the best results out of those. Yeah. I like the idea that introduction cage is because they have access to a full deep frame and they can go to work. As you said, the ones that are already made it. So I'm, I'm glad. I'm I asked that question because yours are unmade it, so it's different handling. So I want to thank you for talking with me today. This is the last minute thing.

And for those that are listening and watching, there'll be a link to Corey's page. And he has a tutorial right there also regarding how to introduce your queens. So thanks a lot, Corey. And I know you've got a big job ahead of you today. What are you doing? We're graphing more queens. We did about 360 graphs, I think, yesterday. and we'll probably do about the same number today.

And then going forward, I should have most of them on Thursdays to where I can ship earlier in the week. So, yep, keep an eye on inventory of Mondays and Tuesdays, and I'll be hard at it. We'll be splitting some colonies and grapting a whole bunch more queens to ship out in the next couple weeks.

What's your percentage of successful graphs? It depends. It's seasonally. If the nectar flow is really consistent, Um, you know, sometimes I'll hit 100%. Sometimes there's one or two blanks. Um, if it's a brand new cell builder and there's still young larvae in it, that's another topic we could talk about later.

I use a large, leanless starter finishers. And, uh, if there's eggs or young larvae in there, sometimes they want to try to make emergency cells. So my take maybe 50 or 60% if it's not real good. But whenever everything's hitting on all eight cylinders, Fred, um, 90 plus. And we get extremely large cells.

That's really good. Because a lot of people do grafting and don't talk about their success. Any opinion about the NICO system? It's great if you don't know how to graft. There's a lot more parts and pieces. I say if you don't know how to graft or if your eyesight will prevent you from grafting. Or some people, you know, if your muscles, there was one guy that had my queen rearing class, he had muscle tremors to where it would be just almost impossible for him to.

The graft, he was able to use a Nikot or Nico. I don't know how to pronounce it. So what is his Nico? Nico. Silent T. N-I-C-O-T for those that are looking at outfit. Yes. It's basically a graftless queen rearing setup.

So you would still use whatever cell builder you choose, but instead of having to grab those little penhead-sized larvae, she lays in the cup, and then you just pull the cup out and put it on there. So, yeah, one of my friends, he's passed away. since then, but he used it with great success because he did not want or like grafting. And so that worked exceptionally well. Yeah, it's just got a few more parts and pieces and maybe a little bit more labor involved. Okay, favorite grafting tool.

Oh my gosh, Lee, the cup you're holding there. That's freaking epic. I don't know where you got that. All right. What's your favorite? Favorite crafting tool. Favorite crafting tool. Hands down.

No. contest, most precise one on the market, the one that's in Fred's hand right now. Oh, you're kidding. Seriously? I love that one. I have a backup like a German tool. That's a Pierce master grafting tool, but you have to hold it a certain way or you won't like it. That paddle that sticks back towards Fred's palm, put it between your pointer finger and your middle finger and then wrap your otherwise it'll be at a weird angle. Yep. And I didn't know that.

Whenever I first grabbed it, I didn't like it. And then there was a little piece of paper that showed you how to hold it. And once you hold it the right way, they're awesome. Because like a Chinese grafter and everybody's got their flavor, this is just my personal opinion. The Chinese grafter is really straight like a pencil. And if you're getting those tiny, tiny, tiny larvae, it blocks your line of sight. And the master grafting tool comes in from the side and you can actually watch yourself, pick it up. So, you know, if my hand was a larvae, I slipped that tiny

tongue under half of it and I pick it up and whenever I set it down, I don't even have to let off the plunger and push on it. I just leave the tongue out the whole time. Have you ever had to replace the tongue on it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it comes with extras. It does. The thing is, is you won't have to replace them. If you keep propolis and wax out of the tip of that thing. The problem is is whenever it gets clogged, yep, Pierce, master grafting tool, and they redesigned them.

They've got a nicer plunger on them now as of, well, the North American Honeybee Expo, I bought one there, and they look a bit different. But yeah, they're phenomenal tool. There is nothing on the market that is more precise than that. Yep, the one on the left, probably you're right there, Fred.

I have a backup that's quite similar to that one. In case I kinked my, tongue but you won't you won't damage the tongue if the tips not clogged so whenever you get it if you've been grafting with it just barely touch on that plunger and if it's not going anywhere don't push it down because that's whenever you have to replace the tongue you've got an obstruction and the tip of the tool you need to clear the obstruction and then it'll work just fine now considering the volume of bees that you're grafting how long does does that tongue go before you've been replacing it.

Like, can you give a ballpark? I mean, if you don't push down on it when the tips clog the years. Oh, for years? Oh, yeah, it'll last for years. Until you make an oopsie and kink it, then you got to replace it. That's what caused it. I love that you did that because it looked planned because of all the grafting tools I could have asked about, that's the one.

It's made by Pierce Manufacturing. So it's funny that that's your favorite because I did try to show it to a young beekeeper that no one's ever heard of. Her name is Natalie. She has a YouTube channel beekeeping with Natalie. All I did was said, Natalie, have you seen this grafting tool? And she borderline disrespected me. She said, oh, so you need something that does everything for you. Okay. All right. Well, have a good day. I was only trying to show you a decent tool, which happens to be the one Corey Stevens says people that know what they're doing should do.

So that's good. Yeah, she was helping me. Oh yeah, this is by the way, that's all humor. If anybody thinks we're tearing up, Natalie, we're not. We back her up all the way. Okay. Closing thoughts. Anything else?

I know I'm holding you up. You had a lot of work ahead of you today. Yeah. I appreciate the invite. Always, I always enjoy talking with you, Fred. I'm going to get after it. I think we uncovered some topics here. that maybe we should pick apart later.

If you run out of stuff or need some material, we can talk about cell builders, or I like to try to stay in my land, my expertise. So maybe in the future. No, this is great. I mean, I'm glad you were available. This is going to be a surprise for the Friday viewers. They're used to seeing just me sitting here.

So this is going to expand on that and make me more appealing because you're here. And I just hope you have a great day grafting. And I want to thank you for sharing all this great information. because you've answered so quickly a lot of questions that people just have about Queens and what's going on. And we touch on a little more than I expected. So I want to thank you for giving me your time today. And yeah, we'll catch up and we'll definitely fill in the gaps a little bit on specific topics.

That sounds great. Happy Friday. Same to you, Corey. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We'll see you soon, Fred. So I hope you enjoyed that, that last minute interview with Corey Stevens. And I want to thank him for his time.

He's very busy. you might imagine, he has to go out and graft a bunch of queens. So I really appreciate that he took the time because he gave you a much better response over a much broader area dealing with queen honeybees than I would have been able to do. And how cool was that to have an expert chime right in on a specific topic? So now we're in the fluff zone. So what we're talking about, everybody is talking about this because, well, everybody that is concerned about what their bees might be doing.

There are a couple of things going on here. People either want to stop their bees from swarming altogether or the second level of that is you're going to lose control of them. When they swarm, you have to do something about it and get them back and prevent them from going out into the neighborhood. And other people just let them swarm and let them fly. And they are seeding their environment with their stock. And you may wonder, is there a place for those bees to live?

What's the potential for a spring swarm to survive in the environment? in the environment. So I would suggest you go to, in the United States, B-escape.org, B-E-E-E-A-P-E-A-P-E-E-O-R-G that's been taken over by Penn State University. And it talks about habitat. So you put in your location, your zip code, and it lets you know exactly what the quality and how much habitat is available for these feral colonies of bees. So it's a pretty good resource. And the other thing is, if you're living in a residential area, stopping your bees from swarming is going to become very, very important. You don't want to be a bad beekeeper in your neighborhood and let your

swarms just set up house and people's soffets and things like that. So be prepared, know what your bees are doing. Right here, our bees are behind. Yesterday, I spent probably an hour watching a queen laying eggs in one of the observation hives, which means that they're just getting started. They were very low on resources, so they did not have a lot of leftovers stored honey, and there's no evidence of nectar coming into the point where they're going beyond consuming it, which means they're running very lean. So the queen bee was laying a bunch of eggs, and I was surprised because that's my lowest performing colony of bees. So I did put sugar syrup on those. That's your judgment call. There are people that don't believe bees should be fed, and they want to just see if they can make it.

The Darwinian approach, they survive or they don't. And certainly there's, there's, there's examples of bees in my apiary and colonies that require no assistance from me that they're still going to make it no matter what they're even flying out in the rain so not all colonies shut down when it's raining and that demonstrates to me that they really need resources so i think they're going to find some but i'm going to make sure especially in observation hives i want to keep them at least at survival level right i don't want them to die out when it's within my control So check your hives for feed levels and a lot of people are supering this week. I don't think that's a bad idea.

Now if you get a break in the weather and the best time to be doing your supering is going to be in the middle of the afternoon, early afternoon whenever you get a break in the sun, cloudy days cause cranky bees. So if it's a cloudy overcast day, even though it's nice and warm, you may have to due to time constraints. So go out there and super your hives. so I highly recommend that you use smoke and your smoker this time of year when it's a little on the cooler side and your bees may get pretty darn defensive because they're building brood and they have a lot to protect and these are hard times for the bees. So once again I will mention the smoker fuel that we are selling as a fundraiser.

A lot of people are set and they have their own smoker fuel and everything and they're perfectly fine. I'm not trying to make you change. But switchgrass pellets that are being sold through the North and, West Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association, which is that's our website and there's a smoker fuel picture there. It is a non-profit organization and we use those proceeds to further our organization's ability to educate the public and beekeepers about honeybees and pollinator management. So it's just a fundraiser. There is a link I get zero for recommending that to you. But I will say that the switchgrass smoker pellets are performing better than any other

smoker fuel I've ever had once you get them lit. So I use a propane. Some people have a naphtha torch. Anyway, the propane torches like you would do soft solder with, that's the best way to light them. And once they're lit, they stay lit, they smold it for a long time, it's really good. There's something else that I recommend that you get for your smoker. Get a very small steel trash can that will seal shut so that you can put your smoker in it when you're done. working with that and then you close it up there's galvanized steel versions they sell them at Home Depot lows all these other places make sure the lid cinches down tight because you put your smoker in there you close it up smoker shuts

down and then that saves your smoker fuel and it won't set anything on fire when you're driving down the road to and from your apiary some people put their stuff in their pickup trucks and things like that and I've heard stories of people seeing a bunch of smoke billowing out of their pickup truck because they put their smoker in the back that they thought was was out and instead all the wind from driving down the road kicked it back off and it's burning their B boxes imagine that so that's the other thing check feed levels swarms after capture keep your swarms from getting away from you so there are entrance guards by the way

oh I guess I don't have one of them right here but it's a queen excluder size entrance guard just goes right over the front that means once you hive your swarm You can put that queen excluder over the entrance. That means your workers can come and go. What else can't get through there? Your drones. So you don't leave it on for the long term, but we want to keep your swarm in your box long enough

that they make a commitment to the comb in there and that the queen starts to lay and then that grounds them. You can also help keep them in that spot by pulling a frame up brood from one of your stronger colonies, just one frame and stick that in there and that will also help ground them with the new queen and everything. so they don't leave brood. That's a good way.

And then once, of course, you've demonstrated that, you can take your queen excluder off the front. Some people recommend lifting the whole box, putting a full-size queen-excruiter, excludeer between the bottom box and your brood box. That way that covers everything. The reason I don't personally like that very much is because now when they're settled,

I have to pull everything apart again, pull the whole box up, remove that queen-exclude from the bottom. If I were doing that method, I recommend the metal queen excluders that have the wooden trim around them. So that would be my first choice. And then, of course, if you just have it on the front and you've had them there for a few days and you know they're good to go, then you can just take it off. It doesn't have to be nailed down or anything.

I do use a bar clamp sometimes. If the weather's going to be rough, as it is right now, put a bar clamp, clamp that queen excluter to the front. and then just leave it there until you're satisfied take the bar clamp and the queen excluder off. You could even put a full-size queen-excluter on the front that way if you wanted to. So there are a lot of options, a lot of room for innovation there too, by the way. I believe I got the wooden framed one that sits on the front from Datant, D-A-D-N-T, and BetterB did not carry those, and they're not interested in carrying them because they recommend the full-size queen-excluders underneath the breed box to keep everything in.

So this is also your chance. Go and look at your beekeeping equipment. I was surprised at the condition of some of it coming out of winter. And look for robbers. Look for bees that are backdooring your hives and things like that. So you might go out and think about repairing those and start to make a list of equipment that you need to swap out. And you might need to glue and clamp it and restore some hardware.

Because some of the weak points really are where that rabbit joint is on the front and back at the top where your frames rest, that tends to just open up. So we need to glue those up better. We need brackets or something to repair those. But look at your equipment, 360 degrees, walk around, look at everything and see what might need to be fixed. You can make plans. This is your chance, by the way, to remove old comb.

So some of the questions that I get, brute comb in particular gets really dark and it looks kind of bad. But it's not necessarily bad. I keep it for five years. So at the fifth year, I remove 20% of the comb every year. So if I were brand new to be keeping this year and I put in all new frames and things like that, foundation foundationless, however it is you do your work, I leave those there until the fifth year. And at the fifth year, I'll take out the two, so 20% on a 10 frame hive.

I take out two of the oldest looking comb. And particularly this time of year, because what are they doing? They're moving back down. So that's not yet full of fresh breeze. so it's a chance to rotate it out. Now because of what we're doing the swarm collection and everything, that old comb that is no longer suitable for your colony. And you might be sitting there wondering, well, why isn't it suitable?

Is it too small to the bees? Will the queen not lay? And if that were true, wouldn't the queen just not lay in them anyway because they're getting a tinier cell as each bee emerges, leaving their cocoon and a little bit of remnant there that continues to reduce the size of it? No, I'm doing it because pesticides end up building up in the comb. And so, especially in the brood area, I just like to have them freshen that out. So if I'm pulling out the older comb, I push the existing comb together.

The new comb goes on the outside. So it would be the number one in the number 10 frame, or the number one in the number eight frame is where the new combs go and the old ones get pushed to the center. But if you're going to use that new swarm reacher to collect your swarms, that old comb, a deep frame of brood that's been used for for years would be a perfect, in my opinion, they can't wait to use it. It's going to be a perfect way to get swarms out of difficult areas or high to reach high up areas. So because sometimes you get a call, you're a beekeeper, somebody says they have a swarm of bees, you go to look at it and it's on the center part of a spruce tree or something and it's 25 feet in the air.

You're not going to climb a ladder. You're not going to climb the tree unless maybe, I don't know, maybe you're a monkey when it comes to get a, that stuff but it would be neat to just put the swarm reacher on the end of a pole and extend that pole all the way up with an old brood frame in here and then see if they'll climb out onto it and then start to bring them down and then put that frame into your box or into your hive butler whatever you've got I'll be using hive butlers for that and bring several combs with you because maybe get a bunch of them onto one comb bring it

down don't shake them off put that frame with all the bees on it into your hive butler tote put the lid on to get another frame out put that on your swarm reacher put that back up there lean it against it in my mind this is the perfect way that it's going to happen and then they'll crawl out onto it and then eventually one of the bees that climbs out onto that frame of old brood comb that you were going to pull out anyway instead of throwing it away use it for a lure and you'll get the queen on there and if you get the queen on there you'll get the rest of them so I'm looking forward to that remove old comb so for those you're who are local to me here we have the iHop breakfast coming up beekeeper breakfast 9 a.m.

And that's Wednesday this coming Wednesday morning. And so don't travel. Don't like come around to that just because it's going to be some big deal. It isn't. It's a bunch of beekeepers having a breakfast talking about stuff. So the other thing is update your safety gear. So people have holes in their B suits and their gloves or their gloves are torn up or worn out. This is a great time to refresh and replace.

or if you duct tape your stuff, that's up to you. I do highly recommend that people have more than one B-suit. Why? Because you can have one in the wash and you can have another that's ready to wear. I also recommend you have an emergency veil somewhere. It could be just a veil. And keep that in your car. And the reason you keep it in your car is part of your go kit

because if somebody calls you and you're on your cell phone, you think, oh, man, I'm not home right now. And I just got a call. And the swarm is only five miles from where I happen to be. if only I had that stuff in my car already. And that's why I'm going to suggest, have your go kit, have a veil, have the equipment, pruners, things like that that you need to go and collect a swarm.

So you can do it on the go. Be ready to go on the fly. So the other thing is I was contacted. This was a judgment call because I don't often promote sales and products and things like that unless it's something that I'm using and people are wondering where and how to get it. but the inventor of Swarm Commander. So you might have seen these capsules before and it's called Swarmcom.com,

but what's new to a lot of people is this is actually produced by the Blythwood, the owner of the Blythewood B Company. And I found out this week, the Blythewood B Company has a contest going on. And so I was up in the air whether or not to recommend it or not, but here's the thing.

There's real money involved. And by that I mean they're offering cash. So there's the cash award of $1,000, cash award of $500. And so there's going to be a link down to the video description, but I'm sure you can find it yourself if you go to Blythewood or you just Google, B-L-Y-T-H-E-W-O-O-D. And then you go and look at their contest rules. Now that's real money, $1,000.

Now I also understand that's a great way for them to promote their company because the request is, for those who have YouTube channels, and maybe you don't have one, Maybe this is your chance now to actually start a YouTube channel because I started this YouTube channel back because a friend was doing a contest at Home Depot that was on YouTube and I had to vote for it. In order to vote for it or give it a thumbs up, I had to create my own YouTube channel. So that's how I got started making the channel that you're watching or listening to right now. So the Blythe Wood B Company, you can read all those contest rules. if you go to their website.

And the thing is, they want you to make a testimony video. You know, how did you use Swarm Commander? How did you use it? How successful was it? And you have to make a video promoting it, and then you link it or tag them or hashtag them or however it works. All the rules are there at Blythewood.com. You can just Google Blythewood Bee Supply.

I get zero for mentioning that. I don't want anything for mentioning that because I have to keep myself well insulated from something like that if I'm promoting it. But because it gives you a chance to earn $1,000 first prize, $500 second prize, so somebody could use that money and apply it to your beekeeping equipment. So I'm sharing about that. That is a contest that's going on right now. Look at the rules.

Some of you probably have very good swarm stories. I don't think Mr. Ed, since they're doing cutouts and things like that and they just happen across swarms. I don't think obviously they need lures. and when you're luring bees, you're luring them into a bee box. So usually it's a swarm trap they're referred to as, and that's where a swarm commander comes into play. If by the way you have a small backyard operation, these are the things that I recommend.

Again, I get nothing for recommending them, but they're capsules. This is not just lemongrass oil. Inside here there is a glass vial. This is synthetic nascentic, Nazanov. So that is what the bees are using. I don't know if you've ever stood in front of a hive when a bunch of bees are on the landing board right after you've let's say hive to swarm since we're talking about that. You'll see their Nazanofs clan, their abdomens are in the air, they're fanning as hard as they can. It smells like lemon grass oil and that's why a lot of people say just get lemon grass oil and put that out there.

Well, I did see a couple of videos on YouTube where people made those comparisons. In other words, It's lemon grass oil against swarm commander, swarm commander outperform them. Because what's in here is far more complex than just lemon grass oil, even though to the layperson, that's what it smells like to me. And if you're going to do a lot of it, don't buy these little capsules, which have to be refreshed every one to two weeks. You would get the swarm commander bottle here and you keep that in your refrigerator. If you don't have a lot of swarm traps and you're not going to use a lot of this, don't buy this because this is expensive. Buy these because it's probably all you're going to need.

And of course if you catch them while they're on tree branches and things like that, that's a bitwack location. You don't need to lure them because you're going to install them into your beehive yourself. There's lots of data out there if you want to know. This book back here in the background is Tom Seeley's new book. Tom Seeley wrote a book called The Honeybee Democracy. So if you want to know what the optimum size cavity they move into is, great resource, great book.

You can even get a Kindle version of that. So I've changed on using swarm traps, and I just used the hives that might have had a dead out or old hives that I want to just reoccupy once they're repaired, restored, everything is in good shape. make sure that when you have an old hive that it's a dead out or whatever reason it's just in storage put all the frames in it this i highly recommend you do that push them all together in the middle act like it's a colony that you're going to put bees in because also when you go out to collect a swarm

you can have to have something to hive them up it's really worthwhile to have some hives that are already put together and ready to receive the swarm that you're going to bring home and the good news is you don't have to use that hive to transport them if you've got something like the hive butler i think that's that is just the most convenient way to transport the gear that you use to collect the swarm and to bring back the swarm with that screen top so they also offer a break to my viewers so i have to say that fred five at hive butler once again it's not a an affiliate i'm not an affiliate with hive butler i do not get kickbacks from them they were just nice enough of course it may sense for the company if they get business because I mention it but 5% off if you

use Fred 5 when you're shopping at Hive Butler every little bit helps so heavy gear ready to go the other thing is a lot of people only have one or two hives so they think why would I keep records I know what I did I know what happened when so one of the reasons that I'm doing YouTube's is when I show the pollinator plant so that's what inspired me to do the pollinator plant series this year is there are dates associated with that. So that playlist shows at least in the northeastern United States what I find my bees on at exactly what time of year. And then we'll get a consensus. And I love the feedback too, by the way.

Because I learned something new I hadn't thought about when it comes to the plants that I feature. I get feedback from viewers that might be botanists, people that might be really into plants and know a lot more about it. and so I had a question about the ground cover that I was promoting and someone said, does that grow underneath black walnut trees? And I thought right off, you know, my knee jerk reaction is, well, yeah, that would be under, you know, black walnut trees. But then keep in mind that black walnut trees also put something into the soil that limits competition from the tree.

So then I had to go out and look at it this morning before I answered the question. And guess what? They don't. They don't grow under black walnut. walnut trees that was very interesting so self-heel and all these other things that are ground cover that can keep us from mowing big fan of that but how do you keep records so here's the thing these are very simple books i have a big complicated record book but this one is cambridge 80 sheet action planner notebook and it has a good durable cover on it but what i like

about the inside is these are laid out for projects so you've got open notes sketches and things like that here if you have just one beehive I used to think day planners and day runners and things like that because they have the whole year but let's face it why have a bunch of pages that are dedicated to an entire month or even a whole week right pages week by week if you're only doing inspections or have things observations to write down every few days that a book like this makes more sense plus we get a whole pack of them together and I recommend that you write down you're not going to carry this around the

bee yard right because if you're out there unless you want to I mean while you're working your bees your hands are going to get sticky your tools get sticky you'll get sticky pages the wind will blow and everything else it'll just be a pain now you could go out after you've done your inspections and things like that every beekeeper should have comfortable chairs to sit in so that's another thing you want to again do portable chairs that allow you to lounge in your B-yard to make your observations. And then you go back and you document everything day by day. Even if you have one hive, you'll be amazed by how quickly you can forget exactly what happens when. If you're doing an

inspection and you find eggs on a frame in your hive, frame number five, let's say, and you saw eggs, you would write that down. I saw eggs. What do they need when those eggs hatch in the third day? well they're going to need plenty of bee bread so then you document how much bee bread so that's pollen in stored cells some of its work some of it is just deposited from the foraging bees and so you document that because it talks about for your history for your records you might even be as specific as the color of the pollen you saw so let's say you don't want to bring this out there another thing i brought up earlier in the year is this voice activated recorder this is tiny it looks like nothing It is by A-Worth, A-I-W-R-T-H, Digital Voice Recorder Model E-36. It has a built-in memory capacity of 8 gigabytes. The cool thing is, it has its own battery, proprietary battery. I don't know. This thing will last you for many days. But what I like about it is you put it in your front beekeeper pocket,

so you turn it on, you set it to voice activated, and it only records when you're talking. So you talk to yourself. You go on the B.R. and you talk to yourself. Also, number your hives. If you only have one hive, call it number 52. It doesn't matter. But when you're talking to yourself, you say hive number 52, pull the lid. How is the behavior of the bees? Passive. What was the amount, what's the time of day that you looked at? What are the weather conditions when you walk out there? What's the temperature? What's the wind? Is it overcast? And then so you start to develop a history on the hive so you know it's a package you bought somewhere or it's a swarm that you

collected and installed anyway then later you play that back to yourself when you're in the comfort of your home on a rainy day like today and you start documenting all of the things that you notice and then you'll begin to build trends and things like that so that's all good stuff keep records pollinator plant playlist that is a playlist I'll be adding to that throughout the coming weeks and in fact all through the growing year. So the other thing is the plants that we keep inside, we're not ready to move them out yet. So those are still going strong.

And what else can I say? I think that's just about it. I do want to encourage people to count varroa destructor mites at the time that you're doing your hive inspections. You need to be very careful that when you're shaking bees to do varroa mite counts, if you're using a mite wash. So in other words, if you're using alcohol,

if you're using Ultra B, not Ultra B, Don Ultra Free and Clear for that. Ultra B is a food supplement. Anyway, if you're doing that and you're going to shake them and count the mites in these, you'll find there's another version of this. It has a yellow top on it. It leaks.

So this is the best varroa mite counter. that does not leak it happens to be made by Ciracell one of the places so if you if you just Google Circell Varroa mite test bottle by Cirrusel bees for life that's what it is there's a measuring cup inside it has a lot of advantages and of course like many other things I collect gadgets that deal with beekeeping this has the scoop this represents 300 bees I marked it on there for myself and then of course you put your bees than this then this will be your soapy water which i recommend the soapy water over the alcohol wash and then you put your beads in here you put the lid on that and then you agitate your bees and

this one has a nice seal on it the other thing is i'll be demonstrating this year how to do this with co2 so we've been knocking out the bees and we'll be looking at them for mites instead of killing them and then we'll watch the bees wake up from their co2 and then go back to their business and then we'll find out but you need magnification for that so think jewelers loops and things like that so that you can look for mites if you don't want to kill the bees the other thing is this has a built-in hook on it what's that for well so that when you catch your peas in this you hook it and it sits just like that this gets the basket out of it after you've done your agitation and now you're clear to see the verro destructor mites are on the bottom and if we do see mites this year i hope we're seeing them

dead. So that's a good piece of gear to think about. Some people don't count mites, they never will count mites. And that's your choice. Some people just treat for mites without knowing. There are ways to collect mites over time to see if you have an insert in the bottom of your beehive or if you've got a removable tray or something like that. I highly recommend. There are two things I recommend. One of them is messy for some people and they don't like it. I like mineral oil in the bottom. and that's because the bees get into it because what do I like to do? Photograph, video and things like that and the mineral oil allows me to see through it pretty well so I can get a good look at things The other thing you can do is spray with Pam cooking spray so and I just say that because Pam cooking spray is what I've used in the past and they stick right to it

How do you clean that off when you're doing your inspections afterwards? Don't alter free and clear why it's biodegradable does not hurt the environment. So that's a feel good thing to use. because with a screen bottom board and an insert tray underneath, that's my favorite design. A screen bottom board so mites can pass through it and then a tray underneath, you can collect it, which still means it's enclosed. If it's an open screen bottom board with nothing underneath of it, we have skunks roaming around right now. They try to scratch at the bottom.

The other thing is other bees smell as they pass by the scents coming through the bottom of that screen, and they'll attach themselves to it. Sometimes you will get a cluster of bees underneath the hive that's green bottom that never leave. They just stay down there and then they'll start building comb even and things like that. So if we have a screen bottom board and we want that passive benefit that comes out of the University of Florida when they started to do that research down there and we learned that up to 15% of the mites in a colony of bees can passively be removed. In other words, what happens is your honeybees that are green. each other. Let's say you get your bees from Corey Stevens and the traits that they have are to groom

mites away and keep them off of their bees, including uncapping pupa and things like that and getting the mites out and then recapping the pupa stage in the brood frames, right? So once they scrape the mite out of there, unless they bite, damage, injure, or kill the mite, they're just grooming it off and then the mite falls through the screen in the bottom and goes onto that tray. If there is no tray or if there's nothing but a solid bottom, then that mite can cruise right by back up and get right back on the body of another B. If it goes through the screen and hits a surface of an insert or a removable tray, then the mic gets stuck there and it dies. And that's the way we like our mites. We like them dead. So that's just a little more information about that. There aren't a lot of screened bottom board trays and screened bottom boards with trays and enclosed systems. There are plenty of screened bottom boards that are open. And some people use those just that way. And the

argument could be made that if it is a wide open one other than the fact that pests can get to them that skunks can scratch it that other bees can start to attack at the bottom there it draws wasson hornets at the end of the year so this is these are multiple layered reasons why i don't like to use an open unenclosed screen bottom board i want it enclosed um but you could say that if they fall through and there was nothing else let's say we're we're hard and fast we want that opening we wanted to stay open and all of that. The mites would fall out onto the ground. Chances are then that ants would get them or something else and their chances of making it back into the hive are almost non-existent. So that would be the plus side of that.

So I want to thank you for watching and listening today and I hope that you learn something new. I also hope that you're prepared for the swarm season that's coming. Have a fantastic weekend. And once again, I want to thank Corey Stevens for popping in and giving us all of that great information about managing, shipping, handling, and receiving Virgin Queens.