The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 258 swarms and more swarms...

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube video:  https://youtu.be/NmoW3g9ugnE

So hello and welcome happy Friday. Today is Friday May the 17th and this is Backout Bekeeping Questions and answers episode number 258. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here with me today. If you're like most of us this time of year, there are swarms every two minutes somewhere and by the way before we even get started I want to mention the website where you can register to collect a swarm or to report a swarm and it is be swarmed.org B-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-D dot org. That's it. I have no affiliation with them. I just know the system works because I get swarm alerts. If you're a beekeeper, you want free bees, regional bees, local bees. Make it happen.

If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please look down in the video description below and you're going to see all the topics listed there as well as some helpful links and resources also. want to know how to submit your own question or topic for review, please go to the way to be.org and go to the page marked the way to be and there's a form there. You fill it out. You don't even have to tell me who you are. You can make up a name or something, which based on some of today's names, I think they were made up. So what's going on outside? I know you want to know that. It's raining right now. We had a 60% chance of rain. They called it because it's raining right now. 64 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 18 degrees Celsius. 4.9 mile per hour winds,

and you might wonder, what's that in kilometers? 8 kilometers per hour. 97% relative humidity. I figured it would be 99% or 100, being that it's raining. So that's what's going on outside. Pollin is not a high risk right now because of the rain and everything else. We have some concerns about smoke again coming from Canada. Unbelievable. Do you want to know how those smoke fires, how the forest fires up in Canada started up again this year? They smoldered underground all through winter. And they're partially blaming for some areas, a mild winter for not putting out those forest fires. So the wind picked up and they started on their own.

Auto-starting forest fires, something we don't like. And so that impacts air quality here in the United States. What else can we talk about? I think that's just a... about it, register your swarms, what we're going to talk about, how to report your own. And we'll get right into it, the questions and subjects that we're discussing today. We're submitted during the past week. I'm also going to be at the Erie Zoo tomorrow.

If you happen to be in this area, not just me, it's a whole thing all over the zoo, but we're also having a small bee exhibit with live honeybees in the Children's Zoo. So stop by, say hi, bring me the cappuccino or something if you want, if you're there. Don't travel for it, not worth it, just if you're local. I hope to see you there. So question number one, we're going to get right into it. It starts with Merlin Twiggles. Hey Fred, I've been inspecting my hives and discovered I have zero eggs in most of my hives. And even my newly self-hiving swarm has no eggs or larvae kind of freaking out. And I live in the northwestern United States. Plenty of things are in bloom.

I'm feeding the swarm and the package. But I'm feeling full of despair. Any ideas? Okay, so this is a common thing that happens. A lot of beekeepers are anxious. We want to see things start right away. I try to give consistent answers so they can apply to a lot of different circumstances

when it comes to honeybee biology. Often the swarms that we're collecting right now and they're just because of the mild winter, I don't know what the reason is there are more swarms than I've ever seen or heard of. You can have a virgin queen with your swarm. And that means that when you collect that swarm and you see the queen and you get all excited,

you put her in your hive, and there's your on comb, all the resources that you could possibly give them, you're feeding them and everything else, and then look, no eggs. This can take a couple of weeks. If that's a virgin queen, it can take a couple of weeks. If it's a laying queen and they have the resources

and everything as described in the question is fantastic in the environment because those are the triggers. proteins coming in that will help them brood up. So that comes from flowering plants, the pollen. And of course the energy comes from nectar. So you need a nectar flow on. You can have all these things inside your hive, but it doesn't necessarily kick them off in a meaningful way. But you might have a queen that's capable of laying already. She just hasn't kicked in. A lot of the questions this week are about that very same thing. Please wait. Don't panic and buy a queen in. Give them two weeks.

number two weeks to three weeks now at the end of the third week why is that the cutoff I've said it over and over but it's worth repeating you can have laying workers by then but you've got a queen present I would wait and especially if you can see her and she's around I hope Merlin keeps us posted because I want to know what happens we have similar stuff stever Paskey I'd like to mention him he published a book called swarm essentials And you can get that on Amazon. I highly recommend you get the book. It looks like a thin, small, little book. It is information dense. And it is about swarms and swarming, swarm management,

and everything else. Fantastic resource. Check it out. I get nothing for mentioning that to you. Let's go on to question number two, which comes from Bill from Big Sandy, Tennessee. I'm listening to your latest podcast number 257, and you're mentioning the Queen Introduction Cage. I wanted to share a negative experience I had recently. I had a very hot hive and I wanted to re-queen it. I thoroughly inspected and removed eight frames of brood and honey from the hive and put it into a new box with a QMP noodle. For those of you don't know what that is,

queen mandibular pheromone. It's sold as temp queen and it makes your bees think they have a queen there, even if they don't. I then put a garbage bag over the hot hive and I killed it. I bought a beeweed. Queen three days before the new queen arrived I removed the QMP noodle the queen arrived Thursday morning around noon I had a friend helped me inspect the new eight-frame hive to ensure we didn't have a queen we found plenty of newly hatched bees and empty cells

no eggs no larvae of any kind we did not see the queen the bees seemed to be feeding the bee weaver queen in her cage I placed a frame of brood from another bee we Weaver Colony along with the new queen into the queen isolation cage. I placed them into the hive, close the hive, and left. The following Monday, I went back to check the hive. I removed the queen isolation cage and found a lot of dead beads in the bottom of the cage along with my new beeweaver queen. Many bees died with their head stuck in nectar cells, starved to death. I searched the remaining six frames. Lo and behold, I found a rather large queen. along with eggs and very young larvae.

So there was a queen in the hive. They bought a B. Weaver queen, which is survivor stock. They put her in a cage, but this is key here today. Queen isolation cage keeps your queen on the frame of your choice. Queen introduction cage protects the queen from being killed by the resident colony in the event that something like this happens where you somehow miss a queen being present and you get angry workers this is the very unit that was on display by better bee which sells a lot of bee equipment at the north american honeybee expo down in louisville kentucky this is called a queen

introduction cage these are different queen introduction cage not only can the queen not get through these bars even workers can't get through the bar bars. So what that means is when workers try to kill a queen if they reject them and often if you introduce a queen with new workers even if they've come in a queen cage or something like that, the smell of those bees can kick off a highly defensive response and then the bees can attack. Kill the queen, kill the workers. But they have to grab them, hold on to them and get their stingers into them. You can't do that through the queen introduction cage. Queen isolation cage, the nurse bees travel freely through the bars, Queen introduction cage. The only thing that's inside

these bars with the queen is whatever you put in, because look, even on the ends here, it's covered all the way. So I want to talk about that because based on the description, the queen was also put in with a bunch of bees with her. So we had this discussion with Dr. Peck from Better Bee, Dr. David Peck. and if you can get a frame of brood which you really want if you're going to isolate the queen she needs to be cared for and so those will be newly emerging brood on this brood frame that you put her in with you don't put even nurse bees we had this discussion i thought nurse bees will be okay they're already on the frame they're very gentle you're capable of feeding the queen and taking care of her and all that great stuff he recommends no bees at all go with that

brood frame. So for brood we're talking about capped brood. They don't require any resources, no feeding, and so putting them in with the queen and some are already emerging at the time that you do that, all the better. So no bees on the frame that you put into your queen introduction cage with the queen. Now here's the other thing. Some of the bees as described here were already trying to feed the queen. So they can do that through the queen introduction cage bars. They just can't get in and physically be with that queen. right? So she will be fed while she's waiting for the new bees to emerge.

And then as they emerge, she can go about her business and you can start to see if down the pike you've got eggs and she's a laying productive queen and so on all while being protected. Now the catch there is on the outside of this queen introduction cage, if by chance as described in this question you missed the queen. Because in a week or so, if you happen to see new eggs and larvae, outside, then you did miss a queen and now you see her and they haven't killed one another. So you still have your valuable queen that you purchased and you can put her in another hive now. Or if the hive was hot in this case or whatever the traits were of those bees that you did not like

and you wanted to remove that queen. It gives you a second opportunity to go ahead and remove the queen now that's outside. And the same thing. Wait a few more days and see if there's any eggs. All the while the queen is still laying eggs. you can get 6,000 workers out of a single deep frame of Langstroth brood, right? So she's there, she's doing okay, and then you find out that you are, in fact, queenless, then pull them out of the cage and introduce them to the rest of the colony of the bees. And they also have that time to get acquainted and spread her fair amount around without being able to kill the queen. It's a great system, and it works.

Okay, so insulation, isolation, different purposes altogether. Question number three comes from Rich Welch 1004. That is the YouTube channel name. It says, here's a two-parter. First off, is it possible? And secondly, is it ethical? I am new to this bee thing. I hear you talking about temp queen experiments.

He wrote temp B, but it's Tempe Queen. QMP noodles, right? My thought is homemade package. Can I collect a bunch of bees by using the temp B? order a queen and if I introduce the queen to my fake swarm will it work the bees in the fake swarm are they too old this is from rich Bedford New Hampshire okay so here's the thing it's an ethical it could be ethical you know we are lying to the bees but here's how I think about it this will ease your conscience when you're creating a package of bees

out of thin air right and by the way I fooled around you don't even need temp queen to do that by the way I happen to use temp queen and I've used an actual queen in a cage to attract bees that she has never met foragers that are on the wing just come to the tree branch that she's on and they form a cluster around her and then the cluster builds another thing that I did this year was I just spritz the little swarm commander these little vials here notice this package is empty because I've been fooling around with it whatever you put that on go to. So this, the purpose of that is to get the bees interested in an empty hive or in your swarm trap, right? So you put a little of that smells like lemongrass oil. If you've watched

my interview that I did with the inventor of Swarm Commander, you'll find that's much, much more than just lemon grass oil. So look into that. That interview is on the North American Honeybee Expo video review and they're marked by topic. So easy to find. But here's what I did. I just put it on a tree branch a little bit. Now that tree branch has a whole section of honeycomb on it. And I don't mean big full sheets of honeycomb. I just mean they're building beeswax all over the branch. So they turn that particular branch, happens to be at eye level, into a swarm magnet. Now then it's up to us to figure out now if you're using temp queen, the QMP noodle, is there a queen in there somewhere? Probably not. They're attracted to the pheromone thinking that's the queen.

And what happens then is you'll see them fly off their branch and act like they're headed somewhere, and then the branch can't go with them, the scent can't go with them. So they turn around and they come back. So if you want to take the risk, and I just want it to be firmed up, that it's a 100% risk. You buy a queen in in a cage and during high swarm season, like it is right now. And you have a lot of ease in your area that you want, by the way. When you put out a queen on a stick and a cage, on a branch, however you display her out there in your yard,

pass her by bees will just join, collect onto it. And then you decide if you have enough to get started. And then it can continue, and here's what I do. And here's why I think it's ethical, by the way. Those bees are traitors. They have left their hive. They're avoiding going home. And instead, they found the smell of something new.

and they went that direction and they clustered onto a tree branch. So don't feel bad. They quit their colony. They're just joining up with your scent, right? So you've got the queen, you installer. They will continue to collect on that branch, little tiny clusters. And you can go by every so often and collect a bunch of those, keep them overnight, and then introduce them into the colony that you've just installed.

Yes, they're all foragers. So they don't have a lot of time left. But they revert to the duties that they had before they were outside bees. which means they will turn into nurse bees, not as good as real nurse bees, but until that queen lays and starts to build up the new colony, then they will actually do the interior chores all over again. But you need to refresh those numbers, or keep it in a very small nucleus hive.

And here's the other part that I highly recommend, because what we've done is we've created a synthetic package. So instead of getting your package of bees through the mail from who knows where, you have got your own queen that you really like, you put her out there, you collected a bunch of bees around her. Now, if they don't congregate around her on the first day, you need to be able to put her away because they need to protect her from the weather. Pouring rain right now.

So before you do something like this, hopefully you're paying attention to the weather. But once those bees all collect and it's the size that you want, then you can put them in the hive that you want to put them in. Here's another thing. They are attracted to her scent. It would help you to once you hive them up, take them several miles away for a while and let them establish themselves with that queen.

Because sometimes if it doesn't go perfectly, they will just all leave the hive and go right back to the tree branch. And it's this dead loop. So you have to have a satellite area if you want it to be 100% effective on collecting them off the branch because that pheromone is there. And it tends to draw them back over and over again, even without a queen present. So, but you can. I've done it. It works. And it's fun to do. do and don't feel bad. It's not unethical. Those bees are quitters. They've left their hives. They're just joining up. It is amazing how big the cluster of volunteers can be. And so the other thing is we've created kind of an attractant on a branch that we choose. So wherever you're going to do this, make it a place that you're content frequently collecting

swarms from because it will also become a magnet for real swarms. So not just those that retracted that pheromone, but we get swarms that continue to attach themselves to the same tree, similar branches over and over and over again. So it should be a branch that strong enough to handle several pounds of bees and accessible enough that it's easy for you to go out there and collect a swarm, like I did this morning before the rains came. Did it today.

So that's it. What are your thoughts on that? Is that ethical? Put that down in the comment section. Let's see what you think. what goes on but it's part of pheromone but again i don't use the qm p noodle for that anymore i used to now i just spray or dab that swarm commander on a tree branch and i can get bees on it it's very interesting it works almost as well as the qmp noodle now i probably should explain that

the purpose of that qmp noodle is if you've got a colony where you've lost the queen or you don't have a queen yet and you've got a package and somehow something happened to the queen you don't to lose the package put the QMP noodle in there and makes them think there is a queen and it suppresses laying workers and things like that so much better question number four comes from rad 8292 w r a d that's a youtube channel says it caught us warm and it was so big i had to split it in two they would not come off their branch until i cut it one has a queen the other does not to keep them in place the hive with no queen I have a frame of brood and another hive to keep them in place my burning question is how small does the larvae have to be for them to make a

new queen tiny egg stage white sea shape larvae stage there may have been just laid eggs but I'm not sure storms high winds were coming and I had to house them quickly I did see open larvae and did make them stay I did get a queen if they need it or i can get a queen if they need it anyway b season is certainly hopping it sure is so here's the thing i don't like the open larvae as a queen production although this is interesting because listen to what's being asked here uh me personally because i do walk away splits so let's say and by the way this oversized swarm has happened to me this year and i learned something new that's right after all these years i learned something

brand new. I used the Colorado BVAC, which is the size of a 10-frame standard Langstroth deep box, right? And there was a huge swarm. I collected them, collected them all in one BVAC box. Overnight, almost half of the bees in there died. Here's what happened. I overloaded the box. I put too many bees in there, even though the whole top. of it is screened and they were fanning away the following morning in fact and they were wet too which was really interesting because they weren't sprayed I never spray sugar syrup on a swarm that I'm collecting with any kind of be vac and I have the everything be vac and I have the Colorado be vac the lesson learned is if this

worm is really immense as mentioned here it's not going to fit into one hive anyway you're going to have to create a couple of colonies from them I don't even know what kind of hive generate such a huge swarm. I know that there may be virgin queens. In other words, they may have done what we just discussed where they're following a pheromone and they're joining up with an unfamiliar what they think is a queen. And they're creating a, you know, just a swarm where there normally wouldn't be one, except that all these passers by joined up. I think they also do this on tree branches elsewhere and can create super swarms. So that's what I have.

And what have I done recently? In fact, I have two Colorado Beehive vacuum boxes now, and I've ordered a third because they're coming in rapid succession. I don't know who's got all these bees. I do know the Layans hive generated a gigantos swarm of bees. But the lesson learned is split them up, put them in, you know, once you've got your BVAC box half full or something like that, that close it up set it aside get out the new one plug that one in get it going and uh collect the

next batch the bees are much healthier that was 100% bee collection error i hadn't thought about that happening so now i'm aware and i'm going to fix it so i'll have three boxes um so anyway what you can do is once they're split and you've got a lane queen for sure so you've got one colony of the other, we have to do something to keep half of that colony from just leaving and going right in with the others, right? So here's an example of where temp queen would work. So you created a giant swarm. You may have, because this is the other thing that happened too, I found and got all excited about finding extra queens in the swarm. But you know what the reaction from the other bees were is if there were just another worker. And even holding the queen in your fingers and holding her up to the

cluster on the branch they just walked over her as if she wasn't anything special so that told me a couple of things one she's a virgin they don't care about her the other thing is there's another more dominant pheromone in this mix somewhere so that was the fertile laying queen so here's what i highly recommend you can when you split them up if you can get them to stay in their boxes great again the one without the queen that's a box that's a high that you've just set up if you want to have them separate and stay separate, it will help you to get them several miles away. What several miles? Five or more. Right. And then as this new queen starts to lay, and if she produces eggs on a couple of different frames, I would load up one of those frames with eggs in it

and put that into the other one, right? So I like that idea and then let them build out another queen if the virgin that they have with them somewhere in that mix, there may be a virgin that you don't even know about, they won't make a new queen cell from those eggs if they actually have a queen present. She just may be still maturing, or she may have to go out and complete some mating flights and come back, and then everything will be okay.

So that's actually a great test to see if they need a queen how they behave when they're given a frame of brood with eggs, right? So that's my suggestion for that. And you can try it right together in your own apiary if you don't have any other place to do it. But I highly suspect you run the risk of them swarming out. And it also depends on where you collected the swarm. If the swarm is collected in or near your apiary, they can head out without the queen and go right back to that spot when you've split them up and one does not have the queen. Or they can all try to jam into the one box and it's overloaded.

So there are too many variables there, but I always prefer to deliver eggs to them to make a new queen from. Not open larvae, even though it might have just hatched from an egg. Question number five. This comes from David Potts, 3844, which is the YouTube channel name. Hi Freda had an issue with a hive that swarmed. Leaving mother hive queenless with lots of queen cells. I left three. four queen cells from them to re-queen all cells and they've emerged. I've seen really large queen and easy to spot. I'm assuming this queen has made it because her abdomen looks very large.

The open brood cells had back filled with no place for her to lay if made it. So not sure if she was successfully made it. I just moved some drawn comb from a donor hive and placed in the center hoping this queen will find these empties before the other bees backfill with such a large looking queen. Do you think the queen is mated? Okay, so here's the thing about appearances. I can't tell by looking at a queen if she's mated. Some queens that are really well fed and developed well, even though they're young and new and virgin,

they actually can look very large. The other thing is they're feeding them really well. They're going to have to fly meat, come back and produce. So if they're not laying eggs, that's your only real indication. that she's been mated. Here's the other thing. When you see swarm cells, if they're new, that means the colony recently swarmed.

So I don't know how aware we are of which one of our colonies had swarm activity because they can look remarkably normal in a very short time after a swarm. So one of the things that I was talking with Steve Raspi about this because people that sell queens,

mated queens, a lot of people get impatient when they've hived a swarm and things like that and they feel like, ah, it's queenless, it's been over a week, no eggs, things like that. Buy a queen, they kill the queen. And that's because they don't wait long enough. So again, let's go back to the very beginning.

How long should you wait at least two weeks? Minimum two weeks, maximum three. So between in that third week, so after the 14 days that you've had your swarm hived up, you should start to see something. Because nine times out of ten, and this is coming from someone who makes money selling people queens, he has the ethics to say, listen, you might still have a queen. I can sell you one right now because I know you want one. And that could actually, you know, bring in a pheromone boost that causes them to destroy their own queen if she's not yet mated.

Right. But you could be wasting your money because by this time that queen would ultimately get mated. And there was another study done by Penn State. Dr. Robin Underwood did a presentation about it. They were getting 60% success, and that's from queens that were flying out successfully meeting and returning to the same hives. I have much higher success than that here, which is walkaway splits. But so you do have to be aware that when a swarms happen, when a split has occurred, and then when they've produced replacement queens, you have to be aware and do an inspection to verify that they don't become what's often called hopelessly queenless.

because that means you pass your third week. If you start to have laying workers and you see nothing but drones, now you have a challenge when it comes to trying to introduce another queen, right? So there's a lot to pay attention to, but also don't harass a newly installed swarm. That's why you want to wait a week or two before you look in on them. The other thing is you'll know if, for example, if you made the split and one side did not have a queen, and within a week or two, if they've got a lot of polo, coming in the entrance then that's too early for laying worker to have begun

working laying eggs right and it's never a laying worker it's multiple laying workers but we say laying workers are in the hive so if within the first couple of weeks of hiving them you see pollen coming in positive sign they're having to feed brood the brood would only likely be coming from a laying queen then so these are all indicators that they're making it hope that works Question number six. This comes from Michelle Troy, Michigan. Oh, this is another one. People have been talking about the swarm Reacher. By the way, we just had our beekeeping breakfast this past week, and somebody in there also tried the swarm reacher and collected a swarm with it. So those that are favoring the swarm reacher working, this is what it looks like. Little piece of plastic goes on the end of your painter's bowl, clips on a frame, and people are catching swarms with them.

This is what Michelle's story is here, so it's kind of a testimonial. Troy, Michigan. Just used a swarm mature yesterday and used a frame on the end of a 12-foot pole while standing on the ladder. They set the frame next to the bees, and they just walked onto it. Easy peasy. I repeated this with two more frames, and the bees started fanning for the rest to come into the hive box. I sent a note to the company, but wanted to thank you for bringing this helpful little

device to our attention. You're welcome. And by the way, and I wanted to be clear, I bought these at the expo. I paid cash, fat stacks for these things. They were not given to me. He didn't even offer to give it to me. And that's okay. And I received a note saying that for those people who have troubles getting this onto the wooden frame. So the back bar of the frame, this does not go all the way down to where it clips around it which would be a perfect world so the inventor recommends putting this on the end bar like this or the bottom bar and have it clamp all the way onto it now i don't know about you guys but my bottom bars that is not as strong i guess the end bar would be cool because look how that would hang down right so depending on how the

is situated this is a good fix I think the end bar is pretty strong so you wouldn't have that falling off if you put this on your pole so people that are trying to put them on the back bar here which seems natural to do it might not clamp completely on that just because the lip goes that way so the ends it works and that gets you into a tighter spot by the way these are swarms it's to play because those are out of reach. You can't get them. You're not going to be up on a ladder. Although today I was up on a ladder with my everything BVAC to get the swarm I collected this morning, that was convenient. But if it had been a lot higher now, I have a 30-foot pole. And you know what

the pole is designed for? Changing light bulbs inside cathedrals in places like that. And it has a suction cup attachment on the end. It's got a little release that you pull. But it's a heavy-duty pole, like it's two inches in diameter at the bottom section. And, uh, That gives me reach to get up a tree that's 25 feet up in my own yard and still have the pole sit on the ground and then I use an umbrella bracket. These are like for big beach umbrellas. And I clamp it to the ladder that I set up

and the ladder just supports the pole which allows me to leave it in place while the bees take their sweet time and walk onto it. The other thing is, and I talked about it before, but I'll mention it again, a tiny, tiny bit of swarm command gets them to go onto that frame. If you overdo it and you douse it all over the place, they actually go the other direction. They avoid it. So brood frames are best, drawn come that's been used. Still, it should be clean. And that does get them off. And the description here is a good one because this is starting to be a consensus about how it's working the best. Bring them frame after

frame down and install them into the high box that you're hoping they'll go into. Ultimately, the rest of them from the tree top because if you get the queen they'll start fanning their nace and off gland down at the hive that you put them in and then some you'll see bees go back and forth up to the top of the tree where the swarm is and they'll all eventually become active because they don't have the queen anymore they'll look all restless and scooting around looking for her and then they'll all fly down hive themselves and it's all because of a little piece of plastic that's used as a clamp on the end of your pole so i want to thank michel for that it is uh fun to get these feedback and the guy is very responsive the guy that owns the company the guy

that invented it so we're in the fluff section today uh rain is also coming through the rest of the weekend i think 40% chance where i am here in the northeastern united states northwestern corner of pennsylvania so um we do have rain so here's here's kind of a thing that i've been saying when it's warm after a storm expect a swarm so after all this weather passes through you get a nice hot day afterwards 70 degrees or whatever they're going to swarm again so just be ready for that and so um the thumbnail today in the pictures is my smoker so i didn't talk about the smoker pellets recently but uh we still have the fundraiser at the northwest pennsylvania beekeepers association and these are uh pellets made out of switchgrass and they last a really long time i never did this before but I have a cork and this cork do not fit so I just ground it down myself and when I'm done you ever light up a smoker and just go look at one hive like I did this morning and you've got all this fuel and then it just burns itself out or whatever if you put a cork in the end of your smoker

the way that is it puts a smoker out right away I don't have to put it in an ammo can or whatever else people use to transport stuff I don't need a metal bucket anymore that alone stops the smoke from coming out. So that's a good move. And the other thing is that I realize these are the smoker pellets. I don't know if they're showing in there very well. But this is three quarters full of switchgrass smoker pellets. This has lasted me more than a week.

And that's because now I light it, I go out, I do the inspections that I need, keep in mind, backyard beekeeping. I'm not going through 20 hives at a time. I'm doing three or four. And this past week we installed my grandson's new flow hive that he put together and we had to transfer the bees from his old hive into the new one. That video posted this week. So if you want to see that, it's interesting too. But now I don't fill the smoker very often because these things burn for a really long time.

Switchgrass, smoker pellets. It's a fundraiser. You can go down in the video description. or you can go to the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association, Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association website. And they have the smoker pellets for sale right there. It helps us with our education about honeybees, our outreach programs,

nonprofit organization. I personally receive zero or less for mentioning that. They are the best smoker pellets. It's the best smoker fuel. have ever used. So well worth it and it's a good cause. So one of the things somebody else asked me, you know, describe what our Go kit should be. We've talked about it before. We're in the fluff section. You know, we're just burning time at this point, but it's worth talking about have your stuff ready because if you're using that

website, be swarmed.org, B-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-D-O-R-G. I'll put a link down to in the video description too. If you Google that or you type that in and it doesn't take you to a site that says report a swarm, then you mess up the spelling or something. The link will be down below. But you get alerts on your phone that let you know that there's a swarm and then it connects you with the person that reported the swarm. It's easy to get beekeepers to sign up for it. The public doesn't know about it. So it's up to us through our social media pages, our community outreach and things like that to let people know. And maybe even if you have a beekeepers association website, you can get it put on there.

And it saves you having this phone tree where you have to contact everybody and say, there's a swarm, there's a cutout, where is it located, you know, who's going to respond? So it goes out, the first person says they'll take it, it's no longer available. So it saves us all this back and forth. Does somebody get it? Does somebody respond? Yeah, so-and-so did. No, so-and-so changed their mind.

Anyway, you get the picture. Register for that. Have your stuff in your car ready to go. So protective clothing goes without face. You know, you have to have a veil on, minimum. I would suggest, I'm not telling you you have to, but you're gonna look pretty bad if you show up to collect a swarm, you find out I spend there several days and it's hot and start stinging you,

and you have to get in your car and leave while all the neighborhood watches and sees what kind of beekeeper you are. So be prepared to protect yourselves, and if you don't need it, you have it, better to have it, not need it. You know, that's how it goes. Pruning shears, because so often the swarm is just at the end of a tree branch somewhere, hanging low to the ground, and the homeowner will often say, yeah, you can clip that branch. If you had that, it's the easiest swarm collection and takeaway ever. I sprit some a little bit with sugar syrup.

I clip the branch. I put that whole end of the branch with a swarm on it right in a hive butler tote. They make one that's got the screen top, clip, clip, clip, put that thing right into your car and you're transporting it home. There's none of this waiting for them to get into a box. You don't have to shake them off, shake them down, vacuum them off, none of that. It is the cleanest, easiest way to go. So I have pruning shears with you. Also, the hive butler toad, I'm going to say this. If you've never heard of them, they store your frames.

You can bring frames with you, by the way. And I recommend the hive butler tote holds 10 deep Langstroth frames. If you put three or four of them in there, it doesn't take up all the room of the tote. And then you can use the tote also to transport your gear. Your sugar syrup, your veil, whatever you want to bring with you, your clippers. everything is in there one tote quick and easy and your spray bottle of sugar syrup everything so anyway if you get the hive butler tote you can type in a code fred five and get five percent off somebody wrote me today and said they got six dollars off anything is something so i get nothing i'm not compensated for that they just put that together for my viewers i think is a great product anyway so i have drawing comb with you and the

I say don't put 10 of them in there is because you want to use it also for your tote for your stuff and what if you get there and there's a tree branch you want to just cut off and put in and go away then if you've got a bunch of frames in the way I guess you can take them out and just lay them in your car but a couple of frames is good because then while they're in that tote they tend to climb off of the smooth surfaces and they get onto the drawn comb itself and then it makes it easy for you you just take those frames out with bees on them and stick them in your hive when you get home the spray bottle which sugar syrup in it which I spray if I'm using a be vac I don't spray anything it'll just gum up your be vac so but sugar syrup one-to-one sugar syrup and I put honeybee healthy in it why do I do that

because it makes the sugar syrup stay ready for the entire year it won't spoil no black mold so the teaspoon of honey be healthy per quart that works fantastic bring queen clips with you if you happen to and this does happen you take a queen clip because you'll be looking at the swarm on a tree you can be talking to somebody and then the queen comes out and goes right across the surface you have an opportunity to nab the queen so a queen cage of some kind queen clip something like this that you can carry in your pocket have it ready to go i was really impressed by my grandson who when we were transferring his bees he carries all the gadgets with him he has his own tote he has all his tools he has queen clips on him and we knew the queen was in this hive and i was doing something else

He goes, grandfather's is the queen, and he shows me his queen clip, and sure enough, the queen was in it. So he saw the queen, collected the queen, and we were able to set her aside. Same thing happens with swarms. If you can find the queen and control her, you can get all those bees right in that box, touch-free, which is the best way to get them, because then they're not stressed at all. So, bee vags are a lot of really good bee vacuums out there. The problem is they have to be plugged in somewhere. I've never liked the ones that had batteries with them. There's a DeWalt battery powered vacuum that wasn't very strong, didn't last very long, wasn't impressed by it.

The best VVAC that's battery powered that I know of is the everything BVAC. So the motor's built right into the top of it and you have a little controller to turn it up and down with. Now, that was what gave it an edge over my Colorado BVAC because if I showed up somewhere with the Colorado BVAC, I had a problem because I had to have 100 feet of extension cords or whatever. I've changed that. So now my Colorado BVAC is very portable because I use a DeWalt power station. Now if you look that thing up, you're going to get sticker shock. However, for those of you who get in trouble with your significant other because I've mentioned something and you went and bought it and then you got in trouble because you spent all the money

that was going to be used for your dog's obedience school or whatever it was. Here's the thing. This power station, DeWalt is just the one I picked. There's a bunch of different ones, but it takes the DeWalt standard battery packs that you use on your DeWalt tools. So if you've already got tools for some other company, look for a power station that takes those batteries. Because what happens is this particular one, I believe, takes five batteries and charges them all on that thing. So it's not just for your BVAC. No, this is how you can sell it.

You can, you know, to the decision maker in your home, the one that controls the money. You can say, well, if the power goes out, what if we needed our refrigerator run for a while? Or if the power goes out, what if we needed to watch TV, even though Dr. Phil's not on anymore. So it has a bunch of other uses. You can go out and build a shed with your power tools from the power station, and you don't need to run a generator that makes all that noise. See, it's quiet. It's dead quiet. So if you're making video, it's good. So what I did is I strapped the whole thing, the power station and the Colorado BVag onto a gorilla cart, which is one of those carts with the big fat tires on it. You load that in the back of your vehicle. You go to wherever you are, and you will yourself right out to where it is. You plug your BVAC in, you turn it on. You've got power to run you for a good 40 to 45 minutes on a big shot back powerhead or the Colorado BVAC, for example. It runs great. And this is every day. it back it stays strapped on that gorilla cart and then i just plug it into 110 voltage and it charges

all the batteries together and i've never zeroed them out so convenient good for anything that requires a 110 power source so i want you to have that get somebody to buy it for you anyway uh too many swarms you know some people are already if you're like me you're just tired of them you have i'm not going to expand my apiary i need to go the other way Donate it to beginners. Beginning beekeepers need bees. The best kind of bees that you can give them are those that are locally adapted that are from our area. And you can be their hero.

You can get them a swarm of bees, call them up, bring them over, show them out of hive them. It's an opportunity to educate, help them pick a good site for their hive, set everything up, level it up, get their bees in there. New beekeepers never forget the person that helped them. get started with beekeeping so collect the swarms anyway put them in those by the way the colorado bvac not to make this sound like an endless commercial which is sold at better b by the way no discount than i know of so if you go there tell them i sent you to pay the same as everyone else it is a 10 frame langstroth box you set that right on a 10 frame langstroth hive and they all go in there's an adapter plate if you have an 8 frame langstroth box the adapter plate

the adapter plate goes on and then your colorado be vac goes on it it is the easiest install of any bvac of any swarm i do like collecting swarms in big butterfly nets so i have those because if it's on the end of a branch i'm not vacuuming it i'm going to spritz it with sugar syrup shake it into my butterfly net close that up which is like a muslin cloth by the way it's more pillowcase than butterfly net and then i just bring that back to the hive that I want them to go into. I tie them off in front of it, set them on a hive stand in front of it, whatever gets them in direct contact with the entrance, and then I just get my coffee and watch them go in. It's the easiest install ever. And now I'm trying out a new butterfly net that goes on the end of a long pole, just like the swarm reacher. Remember the swarm reacher is if they're against the tree somewhere where you can't shake the branch. If they're out on the end of a branch, you're out on the end of a branch, You can get a bucket up there or you can get a big butterfly net at the end of a pole and jam it into that tree branch and shake those bees right into your net and bring them down. And you're good to go. And let's see.

So yeah, register, give swarms away, help people get started. I hope you learned something today. If you have questions that you want to see or topics you want to see discussed, please please put them down in the video description below or go. to the way to be.org and click on the page the way to be fill out the form so i hope things are going well wherever you are and i want to thank you for spending your time listening to me today have a fantastic weekend