The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 270 do flow hives kill bees?

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube Video:  https://youtu.be/6mtWK9v_QY4

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, August the 9th, and this is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and answers episode number 270. I'm Frederick Dunn and this, this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here with me today. And if you want to know what we're going to talk about, please link down in the video description and you'll see all the topics listed in order as well as very important links to further information. So if you also want to know how to submit your own question, go to the website. the way to be.org and click on the page mark the way to be and there's a form for you to fill out. I'm glad to see so many people are using these forms. We have a lot going on outside right now. So I'm sure you want to know right off the bat what's the temperature? 70 degrees Fahrenheit and that's 21 degrees Celsius and that's a three mile per hour wind pretty constant with gas. I have to control wind gusts up to 4.5 miles per hour. I know guess what the humidity level is it's raining 99. 5% relative humidity, which means what? So bees are trying to dehydrate their honey right now. It's not going to work very well because the sky, the air, it's saturated.

And we have rain, of course. Today is the worst day. Saturday, 20% chance here in the northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania, northwestern corner of Pennsylvania. So we have a picnic tomorrow. That's going to go off great because it's dropping to 10% there. And I want to give a shout out to the Beaver Valley Beekeepers Association, in western Pennsylvania, south of me here,

and I want to thank them for hosting me for their beak bash. So it was a lot of fun, a lot of good people that I met there. What else is going on? In the opening sequences, you might have seen honeybees, thousands of them. The largest self-hiving swarm of bees I've ever had. What is a self-hiving swarm of bees? That's when they fly up to a colony that's empty or dwindling, and then a swarm of bees just moves in

and you didn't have to do anything except watch them. I did assign the supervisor and his cousin, my other grandson, to find the queen. And if they could, before the bees moved in, I would give them a dollar. That's because I'm incredibly generous and they were out there for hours.

They did not find the queen. I was shocked. Thousands of bees, they couldn't find the queen. They did not get signed off. My grandson, Quinn, was ready with his green marking paint pen. He was going to get to my friend. mark his first queen because I also added that to the bonus round. You get it, you get a dollar,

and you get to mark the queen. Good news. It's raining. They all moved in. Everything is fantastic. The environment is really kicking in right now. So if you're in my neck of the woods, you might be seeing lots of bees bearding on the outside of their hives. I like to say that it's when hives wear the bees. And so there's lots of nectar coming in. My great indicators are always the ability to look inside the observation hives and see if the honey productivity is boosted in there and it is bad news part of that my middle observation hive there are three in that building swarmed so that's the other thing we have two swarm seasons here but the bonus round is that we get to good nectar flow so this is honey harvesting time that's coming up so the other thing is the ivory

beehive somebody recently asked me a question about that and how do you get bees to occupy it. If you don't know what that is, you can Google or YouTube search the ivory bee, IVR-Y space B-space hive. And I did a tutorial on that, how to put it together, extensive assembly, and then of course put bees in it and got the bees through winter on their own, so I take credit for getting them through winter, but it really was just the bees. But guess what they did? Wal-to-Wall bees, 15 frames. That's a maximum number of frames you can put. in this thing it shaped like a barrel a horizontal barrel and modeled after hives that were found of unfired clay more than 3,000 years ago in Macedonia of all places so anyway what did they do

swarmed they couldn't expand them anymore there were wall-to-wall bees they had a lot of honey and now with the new influx of a nectar flow we have swarm triggers high population great nutrition plenty of nectar and pollen in the environment coming in. These are all triggers for late season swarming. So I know I'm going to get a bunch of questions really soon. What can I do to avert swarming? Well, other than removing your queen, almost nothing. Because you've done everything else absolutely right.

You expanded ahead of time. You put in frames of pre-drawn empty comb, so they're supposed to use that. You added supers to your hive. You added ventilation. In some cases, people add that thinking that's. going to stop swarming. And it doesn't. They swarm anyway. Another friend recently asked me, he's hearing queens piping inside his hives. First time he's ever heard it. So I know what that

means. Either the bees have already left with the existing queen. You have new queens about to emerge from their queen cells or they already have emerged. And they're going around piping. And I never understood why queens do this. So be a queen in her cell for a moment. When they are creating swarm cells, which is the normal biological rhythm of the colony, producing another colony. The first queen to emerge comes out. She's piping away. She's all happy. And then, of course, there are other queens still in their cells, not yet emerged, piping also. Now we hear the piping. The bees inside the hive don't hear it. They feel the vibrations. They feel the vibrations through the honeycomb. And they scoot around. And also, of course, they're following pheromones, too.

and they find these queens that are not even yet out of their queen cells and they chew a hole in the side of it. That's why sometimes you'll see the side of a queen cell with a little hole chewed in it. And there she goes. The queen that's already emerged stings them, right where the wing connects to the thorax most often. So she kills them all. But if they're piping inside of their hives, inside of their queen cells, you would think they wouldn't want to pipe because then they get a queen to come and kill them before they can even get out. Anyway, that's what's happening. If you're hearing queens piping right now, it's time to inspect

and see what's going on, see if you can corral one of the queens and maybe even not the newly emerged queen, but you want to try to get your existing queen before she scoots off with a swarm because this time of year recovery is going to be difficult. That's all I'm going to say about that. So catching your swarms is going to be very important. What happens if you catch a swarm on a tree branch? It's not that big. Volleyball size, right? Which is what happened also this past weekend and during the week. What happens is if you can find the queen in that and cage her and get her out of circulation, where do the bees that are in that swarm go? They go back to the originating hive. So you can restore the workforce at a time of year when we really don't want to divide the workforce.

The colony that they left as described, the queen is already piping, the new queens are going to emerge, they're going to mature, and in a perfect world, they're going to fly out, and in less than two weeks, you're going to see eggs. Now, let's say we let all that happen, as if we can let it happen or stop it, because the bees really do just take over with the natural biology. So they've laid eggs. So we have a new queen got made it laid eggs. How far out are we? This is August. We're now going to be near the end of September when we have adult bees that are coming out from the new queen. So that gives them maybe here in the northeastern United States a couple of weeks.

So there are things to worry about. You may run out of forage because what else comes at the end of the year? Bad weather. A decline in resources in the environment. No pollen for new brood. No nectar coming in. So everything then becomes reliant upon. what they've already stored inside the hive.

A lot of moving parts. So can you stop swarms 100%? No, unless you take out the key player, which is the queen. So I hope I did not completely muddy the waters for brand new people, but I'm glad that you're out here. And I guess what else is blooming out in the environment right now? Napweed, it's all over the place. Now, I was told that that's an invasive and I believe it.

It is taking over a big section on one of the meadows, even though it gets mowed and everything, and the bees are on it, so it's hard to hate it, but it isn't invasive. Distles, burdock is also in bloom, so the bees are on that. The clover consistently is providing nectar and pollen. A lot of the grandkids' observations, they overlook the pollen from clover because it's a tan or brown color, and they're really looking for cheeto orange because in their minds, that's what pollen is going to look like coming in.

And remember, if you want to know, you've got a colony that, that has a lot of activity and you're trying to see is there pollen going in, just take a cotton cloth, lay it right in front of the entrance, let's say 11 o'clock in the morning, around noon even, and leave it on there for one minute. And then see if you've got bees trying to get in that have pollen on their legs, because now you'll know the count within a minute. What's significant about a minute?

I need 10 or more foragers coming back with pollen on their hind legs per minute to let me know I have a laying queen. Now, some people might think, wouldn't any pollen coming in indicate that they've, of course, got open brew that requires feeding? And that is true, however, the pollen rate that is coming in is much reduced when they're producing only drone. So let's say you lost your queen, and they never replaced her.

And then what happens is 21 days after that, like clockwork, you're going to likely see some eggs coming from laying workers who's over. ovaries have been activated by the lack of pheromone existing from a queen that's made it inside the hive. So when they do that, they've got brood. That brood requires to be fed by the remaining nurse bees. The colony is aging. The colony will be dwindling, and I recently opened a colony. I did not make a video about it.

All it did was add three frames of little clusters in the middle of each frame, and in the worker brood area. is interesting too. This is not drone brood and so drone brood areas have larger cells, drone cells. But what happened here is laying workers are up to deposit their eggs, sometimes multiple eggs, into any cell, including worker cells. This is where we get those little runty, tiny drones. And so all that was left in that colony were some capped pupa state drones and some that are halfway emerged. So they're like suspended animation. the caps are partially off and the drone is just there dead there are not enough workers there

not enough nurse bees to sustain them so this is a colony's ditch effort after the queen is gone if they fail to replace her it's their ditch effort to finally get out some genetics into the environment so laying workers produce only drones and then the drones are small and a lot of them just don't make it but that's their that's an indicator if you open a hive this time of year all you see are drones even though you might get you might get derailed a little bit in your assessment when you look at the brood area and you see those cinnamon caps that are consistent with developing brood in their pupus state right and you might think because these are worker cells those must be workers about to come out but you need to pay attention to the dwindling population

and check back until you see what is actually emerging from those drone cells now some of them call their worker cells but they have drones in them and some people call these bullet cells and the reason they do that is because there's a real strong convex cap on those so it's not there's a slight convex cap when it's a worker that's developing in there but when it's a drone that's usually too big for the cell it really protrudes so it's really convex and that's when you have some concerns that you've lost your queen and all that's going to come out remember dwindling combination drones only that you see, they're newly emerged, and you know, you've got a colony in trouble. We're going to talk more about that today.

But the clover is doing fantastic. Find out if you've got a bunch of pollen coming in, consistent with other colonies that you have. This is where having two or three colonies minimum is a really big advantage. If you've got one dwindling, you have fortifications that you can share, or you can combine the colonies. We'll talk about that later today too. And what else can we talk about? Sunflowers are blooming, finally everywhere. We have early Maximilian sunflowers also in bloom already.

We have Joe Pie Weed. We have iron weed, all used by the bees for nectar. And so what I'm getting at is the environment right now is providing an abundant provision of nectar and pollen, and so your bees are on the increase. your queens are laying full tilt, as well as having lots of honey coming in, so the risk of honey-bound situations come along.

What does it mean to be honey-bound? If you don't expand your hive in concert with a growing colony of bees, a population of bees inside your hive, then they will fill every single cell they can find with nectar until it gets down to the brood area. When it gets down to the brood area, it's extremely rare to see them completely,

back fill all of the cells with honey, but they seem to really put pressure on that area, and that's where the queen needs to consistently produce eggs and put them in those cells. If she can't do that, she can't find places to put her eggs, then what we're doing now is down the line we're going to have fewer bees getting us into winter. So this is where it's key for the beekeeper to be aware of all the real estate inside your hive that's going to be occupied by nectar and honey that may need to be used for. brood and bee bread so keep an eye on it and expand your colonies ahead of time it's important stuff we'll get right into question number one which comes from

Joe Powder Springs Georgia says sugar feed I know that most have started to feed thin syrup how thin do you think one part sugar and four parts water will provide enough to continue making comb question mark and I read hummingbird feed is one to four what do you think okay so there are some interesting things first of all where we are here where we're still getting honey that we're going to harvest before probably by the third week we're into august last week of august is the latest me personally that i would remove honey for processing from my hive so we're really coming down to it here so a lot of people are feeding you should not be feeding in all particularly open feeding if you have other people in your vicinity that keep bees that are also

planning to remove their supers process the honey for themselves or for sale or trade and things like that so open feeding that's a bad neighbor as a beekeeper if you're in an area where some people are still collecting honey so but this light syrup is really interesting and I want to tell you some things about that because I'm also going to talk about open feed too which is going to happen later I might as well tell you now so you can stock up on sugar honey bees go at the highest sugar content resources that there are. So for example, if you put out a whole bunch of open feed feeders just as a test after you've harvested your honey,

so you don't taint that, right? If you put them out and you have different sugar levels, the highest sugar level that is still a liquid is what your bees are going to go after first and then they follow on down to the lighter syrups. Now, here's another thing in years past, I've wanted to know, are those my bees? Because I have put out open feed.

it's also how I evaluate things like what I've just described, backyard science. So late in the year when people are trying to get weight on their hives, you will see lots of people using pro-sweed, two to one, because it gets stored like honey, inside the hives, little effort, lots of gain, and so on. And the most effective, efficient way to feed any colony is inside the colony. So, and for me personally, that means on top of the inner cover of your, your beehive, not an entrance feeder, you run the risk of robbing there, also not open feed, unless it's the end of the year and you're trying to deter robbers. So when I put that out for open

feed, I wanted to know, are those my bees? So I dumped powdered sugar on the bees that were at the robbing station. It's called the robbing station for a reason. So when I realized, and this changed how I feed my bees, because I want to feed only my. bees. A lot of moving parts here, so hang on for a second. The colonies that can send out the most foragers that can benefit from your open feeding or slant robbing station will be the strongest colonies that need those resources the least. Bees go for resources that are closer to them because energy expended compared to resources gained. So if you use a thin sugar syrup and you're an open feeder. You're also going to get pushback from other beekeepers. We'll say,

yeah, but now that's more moisture they have to take out of it. Listen to me on this one. If you put out a really light sugar syrup, eight pounds of water, which is a gallon of water, roughly, and six pounds of dry sugar mixed to that. That is lighter than a one-to-one. You can even go a little lighter than that, but this is key. What happens with a light sugar content syrup. The bees that are closest to it will use that resource. Bees that live a mile away will back off and stop using the resource. Why is that? They'll stop using that resource because the mile it takes those bees to fly from your robbing neighbor bees to get to your feeding station and get that resource and put it in their honey crop and then fly it back with this load

sugar content, they will have used the energy potential in that light sugar syrup just to make the trip so they'll stop foraging on your open feeder. So this is a trade-off, a lighter syrup, fewer robbers from colonies away from your own apiary, right? So it actually works that way. So what I recommend, and also, since we're also in a tiny swarm mode right now, we're going to feed our swarms. So that's something I'm feeding inside the hive. So I want to talk a little bit about that too and the sugar syrup ratio, right? One to one is eight pounds of sugar to eight pounds of water, and so it's by weight. That's actually a really pretty thick syrup. So can you imagine two to one, visualize 16 pounds of dry sugar and one gallon of water. You have to heat it really hot. You have to

mix it up and it becomes a very thick syrup, which by the way, if you're going to open feed that, even in a small open feeder, that is going to drown some bees and wasse. A lot of things are going to hit that, right? So you also have to be very selective about the kind of feeder that you would use when you're using really heavy syrup because it puts your bees in jeopardy. So let's go to the lighter side. Hypothetical. Just collected a swarm. Just put them in an APMA seven frame nucleus hive body. And the reason I mentioned that hive, it's expensive and cost prohibitive for a lot of people, but I like the way it's appointed for feeding and using it as a utility resource for the rest of your apiary. Here's why. First of all, I can divide it up and have two very small colonies of

bees in there. They will have to be fed. Why? Because they don't have enough bees in that tiny sworn that you collected, which most people this time of year would write off completely. I don't write off any bees because they're free. If I have space to put them into something, I'll put them in there. Now, guess what I'm going to use them for? Combe building. So I want this narrow vertical channel to have them combed build because bees when they swarm, they've loaded up their crops. The workers are ready. In fact, sometimes when you're looking at the swarm carefully, you'll see on their abdomens, you'll see little shingles of beeswax hanging off already. They have eight of those spots where they're producing beeswax and if they're already sticking out, they're dying to make beeswax comb somewhere.

This is why some of them produce their comb right on the tree branch that they're hanging on because they just have to make beeswax. So what I want you to do is harness that power that they already have and the resources they're already carrying and then don't let that resource run out. So the one-to-one syrup or less than that, a lighter syrup, six pounds of dry sugar to eight pounds of water. Mix that up, put that on top of the inner cover of your hive, right, that you're putting this new swarm in. And they'll start building comb right away. What we don't want them to do is pause that construction. We want to continue their supply chain until they've produced all the comb that we want them to produce,

or until it gets so cold that they just stop building comb. So right now, look at the temperatures. We're in the 70s. We have warmer days ahead. We have the potential to draw out a lot of comb. So if you've got heavy wax foundation, this doesn't work very well this time of year for foundationless frames. But if you've got foundation that's heavy wax that's yet to be drawn out,

you can utilize these late season swarms as comb builders. So keep that light sugar syrup going. keep it full and they'll even use it until it's drained every day you might be using up a half a gallon up to a gallon of light sugar syrup daily until they stop consuming it and so they use that to draw out comb keep it going now when they stop drawing comb then of course now you're just feeding your bees so just give them what they need to survive and they're going to have to go through winter so that's another part of it but comb builders from swarms it's really good stuff. So the hummingbird, four to one, no, that's way too light for your bees. The only

bees that are going to take that are the ones that are living right next to it. So there are honeybees, of course, that do encroach on your hummingbird feeders. So in the absence of a higher sugar resource, they'll take it, but they're not going to fly very far to use it. So it is too light. We don't want to just fill your hives with a bunch of high moisture syrup, right? So I like the one-to-one slightly lighter than one-to-one and keep them building comb. Combe is one of the biggest resources that you as a beekeeper are going to want to have on hand. It's also one of the worst things for a brand-new beekeeper to get done. Because let's talk about that a little more.

If you've got a colony of bees that's building up really fast, and last minute you go, oh, man, I've been ignoring them, and now I need to super that hive. If you super that hive with a bunch of foundationless frames because you're a totally natural beekeeper and you want everything to be completely natural, they will continue their swarm preparations and they're going to leave. If they've got queen cells already in production, it's too late, it's not going to matter what you do. However, if they're filling up and you lucked out, you still have your queen, the population is just really big. They're not building queen cells. You have an opportunity to expand the colony.

And Ron Come is going to be your absolute best bet. So now you're a brand new beekeeper. You don't have any friends. Nobody's going to give you drawn comb. One of the substitutes that you can use is better comb from better bee. It is a pre-drawn comb synthetic copy of actual beeswax. So that for people that don't have resources built up, don't have friends that can give them drawn comb. And by the way, I don't really recommend you getting old drawn comb from friends who have bees because the risk of contamination exists. So you're much better off getting them to draw their own or using something that's pretty darn sterile

like better comb from better bee. Don't forget to tell them that I sent you there if you go shopping so that you can be sure to pay the same as everyone else. So we're going to move on to question number two. And this is from Mark. He says this is about his queen introduction cage. says I bought a queen introduction cage from Better Bee.

I got a frame that had capped brood and stores on it, got all of the bees off of it. Then I placed the frame with brood stores into the introduction cage along with my new queen. And the cage and my queenless hive, and then I went back four days later to see how she was doing, and the frame was a wash with small hive beetle larvae, wriggling everywhere and the queen not to be seen okay it says i have not had a problem with small hive beetles

this year at all it's been quite warm recently but i was astounded i threw that frame out and the hive has not had any apparent issues of small high beetles since but apparently the same bars that were meant to keep the bees away from the queen kept them away from the small hive beetle larvae and then they just took off okay so I have question marks over my head about this. So this is great. If you have a comment about this or you've got some ideas about what you think might have happened, please feel free to comment down in the video comment area. But we're talking about the queen introduction cage,

which is different from a queen isolation cage. And one of the reasons that this puzzles me is because the queen introduction cage is pretty darn escape proof. When we look at the cover, because it's exactly what this is, when we take the cover off, the queen is not getting through these bars, by the way. Because in a queen introduction cage, the workers can't even get through this bar. So a queen, even a small, skinny, run-of-the-mill queen, can't get through these bars either. So that's the first thing I have a question about. The second part, if we're talking about queen, isolate,

Cages, which are different from introduction cages, that just keeps the queen on a frame and the rest of the bees of workers pass through the bars and so on That has open ends on it. So when you put the lid on it, the queen isolation cage has open ends and we're blocking that up because you're going to put it down to the rabbit joint in your hive and that provides the closure The unique thing about the queen introduction cage is the lid that they provide with it. It has closed ends. So when you put that together, because I looked this over when I got this question, and I'm trying to find an angle anywhere where a queen could escape, and she really can't. So I'm wondering what happened to the queen? Even if she died, you would find her in the bottom of this cage system. So this is a pretty solid system.

The other thing, the company that makes these, I wish that. would make this lid for the queen isolation as well as the queen introduction cage. I wish it had closed lids caps on it like that. So the other part of this is the way it was introduced. All the bees are taken out. Now I spoke with Dr. David Peck from Better Bee about that very thing because my initial thoughts were let's keep some nurse bees because they're pushovers. Let's keep some nurse bees on that frame.

and put that into the queen introduction cage and then put the queen in there and that way she's immediately got bees in the cage with her that are very passive it's very rare that I've ever seen nurse bees attack and tried to sting a foreign queen right we're talking about a colony that's already queenless so they're already prone to accept a new queen and then um you put this queen in there so the second tier of that let's say we follow that and we get rid of all the bees on the brood frame. I would want to make sure that the brood that we're about to put in has some emerging brood.

In other words, maybe they're just now getting their caps off, right? So they're just now coming out. I would put that one in there. That would be a high first choice for getting the queen cared for by bees right away. Because also in that frame, we have to keep this brood warm. If it gets chilled, if we get some cold nights or something like that, we're counting on the rest

of the bees in the colony, a dwindling queenless colony to perform and keep enough warmth going on that brood even though they can't get into direct contact with it so that it doesn't get chilled and you don't have chilled brood which then means they die right so there are a lot of moving parts to it um i like to have some nurse bees in there but there again we would go to better be where it comes from and uh i've never had this problem but of course i don't have small high beetle issues here here. So maybe some viewer or listener out there because this is also available as a podcast on Podbean. The podcast is called The Way to Be. So Google that if you want to listen instead of watch.

But I've never had a problem with it, but there again, I don't have small high beetles. So if you've had issues like that or a similar experience, please comment about that because I'm very curious. Because I don't see a way for that queen to have left that cage. at all. So my question would be whether or not we saw her really in there once she was installed and then going from there and from the company it would be fantastic if we had completely enclosed caps for all of the cage styles with no open ends. So that would also remove that concern. Question number three comes from Atlas 4-225. That's the YouTube channel name. So hello again. I was just hit with a scenario that may be worth sending

your direction. I was given mosquito bites, BTI, granular and told to put it in my small pond, which the bees use. It says it's been tested on bees, but the tests don't address larva damage, and that is how this product kills mosquitoes. What are your thoughts? First of all, if you have a small pond, you can put goldfish in that and they would eat the mosquito larvae. but let's move on let's answer the question so I had to do research on this of course I don't want to shoot from the hip on something like a mosquito treatment BTI it stands for bacillus thuringianesis is rail and relinsis anyway I did such a great job of pronouncing that you get it it's just an acronym so it's a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin

specifically targeting mosquito larvae. Here's how it works. So then big description. The short answer is it does not impact honey bees. And apparently when they got this approved, honeybees and pollinators were part of their testing process. So they had to prove to get it out there that it was going to be non-impact on pollinators like honeybees.

Because the way it gets eaten, the mode of action when a mosquito larvae ingests BTI. So the larvae are in the water, the BTI is in the water, and then they have to ingest it, and it disrupts their digestive system. So they have to eat it, right? And then it leads to paralysis and death, but it breaks down quickly in the environment, posing no long-term risk. But there are other ways to treat for mosquito larvae.

So if you're already going to put it in a pond, what's the matter with just dropping in a couple of surface, breathing, goldfish in there and then giving them away at the end of the year because they will eat mosquito larvae. We used to have rain barrels that we put goldfish in too because that kept mosquito larvae out of that. So that's just one very inexpensive solution and you might be concerned. Well, I don't want to kill those goldfish. Buy feeder goldfish. If you go to a pet shop anywhere, they've got these feeder goldfish that are sold to be preyed upon by

predatory fish like Oscars and things like that. So you would be saving that goldfish and giving it an entire summer and then give it away to some happy little camper at the end of the year when things get really cold and the mosquitoes are no longer an issue. But that's my answer to that. BTI, not a concern for your bees. Question number four. This is from Purple Cookie 687. That's YouTube channel name. It says this is regarding the flow hive, the flow super specifically and how it functions. So it says, how can we use? guarantee we don't smash bees when we turn the key as we can see inside and bees can

usually still be working in some or many cells and we will get pieces of bees in the honey. All right. And the reason I want to answer this is anyone who has owned or currently owns or talks about or looks favorably upon the flow hive and specifically the flow super and their frames, you can get some very interesting pushback. So even when I'm somewhere where we're giving a B presentation, we happen to be out engaging with the public, we did a presentation this year at the Erie Zoo. We did another presentation that lasted for several days at Presk Isle State Park at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center.

Someone always walks up. There's always just one or two people. It's not a lot. But they give you something, and they're also very accusatory in the way that they ask her questions specifically about flow hives, you know, that it doesn't work or that chops up bees. So one of the best arguments they have is that it chops up bees. But this always comes from someone who doesn't own a flow hive, never tested a flow super. So back in 2015, when they came out with it, I purchased one. I invested in their Indiegogo campaign. Why? Because people wanted me to say it

stinks. It's a lie. It can't work. I don't do that when it comes to a new product. I, don't talk about the product or I get a hold of it, test it for myself, and speak from my own personal experience. That's what I did with a flow super. I have never once had a bee toe or foot or a wing or any part of a honeybee come out of a flow frame through the tube into the jar when you're collecting honey from the flow super. The flow frames are designed in the flow frame. such a way hexagon when you cycle it it moves like this okay when it does that they took into account that a honey bee may actually be in one of the cells now in a perfect world all the cells are capped with wax and when they cycle like that the surface wax isn't even disturbed

which leads to a whole other group of people that say there you go you took their honey they have no idea that the honey was removed yes they do they immediately go to work removing the caps and restoring the honey after it is put back in its locked position. So there is enough space when it does this. You can have a bee that gets trapped in there. They just stay there because it was designed in such a way that it would not completely smash the bee and would not kill the bee even if it were in. Now the other thing is when you cycle it, it's not a snap, right?

It's not an instant movement. It's a gradual movement. You're cycling it, right? So most of the bees move out, but I have seen them stay in the frame. And I've also seen their tongues still working while it's in the open or drain position, right? I've never had dead bees in those cells after we've cycled for honey. I've also never seen bee parts come out. So I have to wonder if this request or this concern comes from somebody who actually has one

because it simply doesn't happen. The other thing about you're stealing their honey, they'll have no idea. They know immediately. In fact, they go to work on these frames. They're already, when you're cycling them out, the bees are already chewing through that cap wax because bees are vibration-oriented. When they feel that there is nothing else up against that cap anymore and the honey might be gone, they chew a little test hole, they stick their tongue in there.

When they realize there's a big airspace, they start cutting it away. And now they get in there and they're cleaning it up. had them completely recycle clean cells, refill, dehydrated down, cap the honey, start to finish in 11 days after we've cycled the frame once before. So the next thing that comes from people that don't have flow hives, they ask things like, how much honey will that hive produce? Well, how much honey would any hive produce? Because it's no different. It has to do with the productivity of the bees that you have it has to do with the environmental resources they can bring in and there are some people that have problems getting their bees to use those flow supers those flow frames because they're

really big the frame the super itself is large my grandson's bees are just now sealing up the joints so it's touch and go for him whether or not his first beehive that he's put together himself whether or not he's going to see any kind of honey yield from that even though they came through winter and it was a swarm that chose him by the way in his mind but um it's a lot of space to fill so it's not that they will produce more because there are people on the other side of that when you get a flow high they just produce so much honey it's just ridiculous well here's the thing the colony produces the amount of honey it's going to produce regardless of the space it's in however a space that's too large can slow honey production this is why nucleus colonies that are just stacked we get five over five

over five and there's some people by the way that dislike that completely but i am here to share with you that those narrow tall columns are very similar to a cavity that they would occupy in a tree it only makes sense that the worn layers the stratification of warmth inside the hive keeps them working up higher in the hive assuming that the tree doesn't have some magical vent in it up above they almost all have a single small entrance and the bees control air movement so when the bees want warmth and humidity they have it when they don't want it they vent it out on their own so there are a lot of things at play here i did want to and didn't get to it i want to modify a nucleus hive box five-frame deep to accommodate just the flow frame so this requires modification because they don't fit in a

standard Langstroth box with the standard rabbit joints. You have to make modifications. So the good news is all of those specs and dimensions and everything are available on the website that makes flow hives. And so I'm going on a, this is kind of a pushback rant that this is true of any new product and beekeeping. If you come, some things obviously look like they may not work and so you just may never buy one but if you haven't bought it haven't used it don't buy into the rhetoric from people that just hate something right away without any testing why not have the discussion open now if you test it and you find out these are my observations look it chopped up a whole bunch look at all the beat parts coming out of the tube going into a jar that would be terrible and there

would definitely be something wrong with that there was a earlier version that was abandoned by another company and I forgot the name of it but what they did was they had cells like that and what they did is they shifted and those definitely were like a guillotine so there were early competitors there were other companies that made different versions of that that create I think it was called tap comb if you could look that up that was terrible how do I know I got one and it would have chopped up bees I wouldn't even put bees in it it was so obviously bad so I think it was called tap comb and yeah sometimes it just obviously isn't going to work but the flow hive now has been out since 2015 and it is a success it does work the biggest pushback now and it's a legitimate one is that it's

very expensive so it's probably the most expensive hive that you can get right now that's a standard langstroth form so i i realized they gave a really large answer to a very simple question but this question comes so often and when I ask, well, what's your experience with the flow supers? Like, how did you, why is this a concern to you? Well, it's just what I heard. In fact, some bee clubs, this is amazing to me, won't allow membership of people who keep flow hives. I think that's really weird. I don't care what, I don't care what kind of hive you have. Why can't you be a member of a B club and have another configuration that's not part of the mainstream memberships designs that they use. That is weird stuff. Okay, so I get it. I'm going to

move on. I'm off my soapbox on that, but I always find it puzzling when you get these accusatory kind of issues that go on and then people just like to recycle it because it matches what they already believe to be true. And there was no shortage of people that came out that thought it was garbage when it first was put into the limelight there. Question number five comes from Ellen from south central Missouri. Should you store your frames full of honey, 75% capped with the rest uncapped, in a freezer? One site said,

freezers will increase moisture in honey frames. The refractometer of uncapped honey was at 17 or 18% or is it safe to store the frames in a basement around 70 degrees? 50% humidity safely. Worried it might ferment or crystallize, only have 12 frames, no extractor, small apiary, friend has an instructor but health is used and on it goes. So here's another thing. Somebody says if you put honey in a freezer, that it would take on moisture. So I do want to address several things about that. One, if you look up, by the way, what is the relative humidity of the air inside a freezer. Now this is not a refrigerator, this is in the freezer. You're going to find out

there's no relative humidity measurement at all in the freezer. Why? Because the dew point is already obtained well before freezing temperatures, right? So that's when on its way cooling down or when you put in some new stuff and it's cooling down, it can get some condensation on it, but it turns to frost right away, and there is no dew point in the free-flowing air in a freezer. Now, what I want you to know about honey when you put it in a freezer, the honey does not freeze. It gets to freezer temperatures, however. When it does that, all fermentation or potential for fermentation stops. It cannot ferment inside the freezer at normal freezer temperatures.

So there's no concern about that. Now, the question is, even capped honey, by the way, stored in a high humidity environment, can take on moisture and can ultimately ferment if stored badly. So what I want to say to you and all the viewers and listeners right now, especially small scale, when you collect or extract or remove honey supers from your hives,

please process that as quickly as you can. Part of this question, there's mentioned the refractometer. If you don't know what that is, please also look up refractometers it's a way to determine the moisture content specifically the water content of the honey that you're about to store now because i don't want you to deal with um for example ruined frames of honey because now in the freezer you're okay until you get to a processing opportunity keeping it in the freezer is perfect it's this transition coming out of the freezer when it's really cold and warm moisture comes in contact with that frozen surface and then it condenses on there and then it adds moisture that's the risk so you need to dehydrate while you're bringing it up to room temperature

and bring it up slowly and keep fans on it for example while you're bringing it up to room temperature or up to a processing temperature so um this is important to know i just i want you to uncap the honey or crush and strain if you don't have uncapping, you know, equipment, if you don't have a centrifugal extractor or something like that or a tangential extractor. And if you need to process it, please process it early and get it into small jars. And here's why. In my neck of the woods, end of the season, end of the year, we're dealing with astor honey and golden rod primarily. There's other stuff there. That's not as bad, but this stuff is really bad when it comes to how quickly and readily it will set and become crystallized honey. And if that happens in the frames, that's bad news. And there's still,

it's not the end of the world, but you're making your life so much easier if you go ahead and get the stuff process, get it through a 200 micron strainer if you can. Some of the uncapping tank strainers are 600 microns, so that's larger. 200 microns, you're still getting pollen through it and things like that and it cuts all the little bits and pieces and debris out so then you want to do this at a warmer temperature so high 90s you can need to do 100 degrees 105 degrees Fahrenheit is what your frames can be at it's going to make life so much easier particularly if you're crushing straining and if you can hold it at that warm temperature and then cut out the comb crush it and put it into your strainer and let

that drip through into a bucket and then get it out of the bucket into your jars now if the jars crystallize very easy to put those then in warm water or heat them up and get it reliquified later so if it's in a big vat or something like that not a fan of rewarming those because even those with the warm bands and things like that they create hot spots warm spots and you can damage the flavor and smell of your honey there are a lot of things that play there but your jobs your challenges are much reduced if you can go ahead and process that honey. But as far as honey in the freezer, at freezer temperatures, having the ability to take on moisture while at freezer temperatures, there's no scientific support for that. Okay, it says transition that when you finally take it out, and so we don't need to repeat ourselves.

But also get a refractometer so you know what's going on. But please process your honey as soon as possible. And freezer space is valuable too. we don't want a bunch of honey in there but that's what I have to say about that moving on to question number six this comes from James in Newburgh New York says love the switchgrass it does last into the next day I've heard you speak about it several times what I'm struggling with is how to get it started I'm really struggling to get it started can you please tell me the procedure that you use so James is that the reason

because this question was posted on the sixth. This is the reason that I put out a video on exactly not only the switchgrass pellets and how to light them, but features that you should look for in your smoker that keep you safe, that don't burn your hands, that won't burn or melt, plastic or polystyrene lids and surfaces when you're trying to use your smoker to work your peas. So that video came out this week, so I will put a link to that also down in the video, description or you can just go to the YouTube channel Frederick Dunn and in the right hand corner where you see the little search magnifying glass there type in smokers or

smoker fuel and you'll see my comparison because I give you smoker designs and options and traits to look for as well as non-smoker options which includes sugar syrup sugar syrup with honeybee healthy regular water and of course the Apis Solis electronic vape system. So lots of options are included in that video, but I also talk about how to light it, and I'll answer this right here. I use the automatic propane igniters that most plumbers use,

and they're expensive. Here's a tool that you're going to buy once and use probably for the rest of your life, and I light all kinds of fires with it. So if I need to light a bonfire out in my yard, I use that. if I need to just light a fireplace fire in my, you know, woodburning stove. I use that. So it has a lot of uses, but it's also burnzomatic or whatever you want to call them. They're available.

Walmart, all of your cooking stores, you know, like if you've got a barbecue grill store or something like that, they go right on the propane Coleman tanks are inexpensive. You can buy them in four packs and six packs, dirt cheap. That's what I use to light my smokers. and I've done that for years, even before the switchgrass pellets came out. And if you're wondering about what those are, there's going to be a link to those also down in the description. So the other thing is I just take that, light it, and I blast it with a real flame, just like I'm trying to solder a pipe, right? And I make sure that the flame comes through and that smoke is blowing out the lower entrance.

Because when you're using the bellows to start your fire, it blows through the bottom. so that the air comes in through the bottom out through the top passes through the fuel fire triangle oxygen fuel combustion temperature so when you get that in there you're providing the combustion temperature gets it ignited and then that airflow just passively happens on its own and it will keep it going but you do need to use a very good blast of fire you're not going to light it with a match you can of course use other fuels to start lighting those first the paper and everything but I have highly recommend these automatic igniting propane tank burners there's also a map gas and stuff like that that's overkill but a propine propane igniter is all you need to get those going and I demonstrate that in the video so thanks for that question question number seven this comes from michael armstrong 4060 that's the youtube channel my la rabbi or laurbee unit has has to be plugged in. This is for exhalic acid vaporization units, right?

It says, which means I have to use an extension cord. If I go to the farthest beehive, I have to use two extension cords. Do you see a problem with this? I think it takes longer for it to get up to 400 degrees. I'm not sure the power is enough to go higher. So I've had the pro vap or pro vape the in the lorabe. I've got this one too. and now the instant vape, which is the battery-powered version that uses your DeWalt or Makita or what other batteries that you already have for your other equipment, you have to know what batteries you want it for, but LauraBs even sells those two. So this is specifically about the Laura B unit, and I used to do that. I have a huge reel with a bunch of

extension cords on it, and they ran them out, and it was really annoying to me because it wasn't so much a problem when it came to the instant vape or the Laura Bee Vape or the ProVap. It was a problem when I was trying to use a Colorado BVAC and I wanted to vacuum bees off of trees. I had my extension cord out there and sometimes I would fall short by just 10 feet. Super frustrating. So I bought a power pack, a portable power station. And I know this is expensive. So what I'm telling you is it's super convenient and eliminates the need for extension cords. Extension cords are very expensive too, by the way, so I think this plays. In fact, because I bought the heavy extension cords, AWG,

which stands for, I believe, American Wire G, number 12, because then that doesn't restrict the electrical flow. You ever notice you put a really small extension cord or something on something that draws a lot of power. The cord gets really flexible, gets really warm, that's because you're overloading the cord. So if you get AWG12, you're going to be able to handle any current

that you want to pass that through that is just like your household current, your 110, 120 volt, going to an outlet on the wall in your kitchen or something like that. Those are expensive. You could spend 100 bucks on a really good extension cord. The other thing is,

we worry about water and wetness in the grass and electrical shock potential. So there are a lot of reasons why extension cords can be a pain other than the fact that you need a lot of them. and you need to get them all the way out to wherever you're going and now they're inverters and other things that people can put on their pickup trucks and all that other stuff run it off an inverter which converts direct current to alternating currents and i can plug it in and you have that or get a power station look up power stations i have the de walt power station all right same thing though this is not a single-purpose tool this now is a power station that brings AC power anywhere I need it and I can run things that draw quite a lot of power. So if I were still using and I'm not because now I have the instant vape so it has its own battery.

Nothing's more convenient than that. But now that I have the power station, I can run my Colorado BVAC anywhere. At any time I can carry it into a building upstairs, into an attic. You can be in an abandoned house that has no power. You can be in the middle of a field and anything that needs power can plug into it. So I've ran my Colorado BVAC on that for more than one swarm, all on a charge. And it's got all the batteries that go into your tools. So those are expensive.

But it's not a single purpose tool now. You have a power station that you can take camping and run a TV on it or something if you want to. I don't know. There's probably unlimited things to do. But I'm going to recommend, I don't believe, though, that the extension cord impeded the electrical flow when what you have is only pulling three or four hundred watts because you should be able to pull 1200 watts easy through an extension cord but if it's a very thin extension cord you might have challenges it might be overheating and there might be some impedance there

I don't know all the electrical terms because I'm not an electrician but I do know it's much safer to have your own portable power pack and then you could do that and a lot of different companies make them so just go with the reviews I'm not recommending a specific one but if you are, for those of you who care, using an extension cord, again, why get one that would have any limitations? Why not just get the nice heavy duty rated for outdoors AWG 12 extension cords? Three prongs. That's a hot lead and redundant grounds, right?

Three prongs. Okay. So that's it. That's what I have to say about that. But that is the problem, and it's a huge annoyance to find out you don't know power where you need it now I'm spoiled and have what I need question number eight comes from Rodney from Muskego Wisconsin looking for a recommendation on an electric extractor I plan on having up to 10 hives and currently use a manual extractor I'm

looking for some advice so rather than name a specific company although I do have a favorite this is an area I had a hand crank All stainless steel, well made, nylon gears, really good stuff, held up for years. And I used to exploit my nephew at the time years ago when he was little. I would set him up and just make him crank those things and they had baskets in it and it had a maximum of four frames that you can do at a time. And you're just cranking that forever. So here's the thing. What I'm going to suggest is that you get an electric extractor.

Hand cranks. You can think that's great. You're burning calories. you're going to, you know, burn off enough calories to justify the honey you're going to eat while you're extracting it and the comb you're going to chew on and so on. Not worth it because here's the thing. I was leaving a lot of honey in the frames. So an electric extractor is worth its weight in gold. So the question is, which one do you get? There's a lot of them out there. And I recently bought one, well, recently a few years ago. And I gave away my hand crank extractor. So pass it on, you know, to people that want to hand crank stuff or off-grid maybe they live in a cabin somewhere.

So here's the thing. Look at the reviews on these and if it matters to you, look at where they're made. So like many beekeepers, I've recently been to a lot of expos and a lot of bee gatherings and I go to the vendor area and I look at what's being offered and evaluate things. Now keep in mind, my background. I am by profession. I'm a person that finds fault with things. That's true. So my job is to find out what's made well and think about what the in-process controls would be to make sure it's going to be a quality item, specifically if it's made out of metal. So I also look at weldment and I look at the integrity, the thickness of the sheet metal that it's made out of,

the grades of stainless that it's made out of, and ultimate longevity of the product that's being presented. So sometimes I'm really impressed, but I can be impressed in a bad way too. Some things seem very lightweight. They don't seem like they would hold up. I think an extractor that's a really good quality is going to last you a very long time and probably should be a good one. So, all right, I'm going to name a company just off the top of my head. An American company where all the parts that are in their extractor are also American made. And the company is Maxent.

So if you look up Maxent beekeeping products, I think even came in a record. I think even Kamen Reynolds recently showed a Maxent product in one of his channels too. So we can do that. Oh yeah, Senior Chief, Mike Berry also uses Maxent equipment. So when I met those guys, that's what I like about going to conferences. You get to meet the people that make them. You get to find out about the product's history. Where's it made?

Who puts it together? What do your welders like? Where are you getting them from? Are you hiring any ex-Navy welders? I highly recommend that you do that. forget hire the vet and so on but I was impressed off the chart with max and quality and just everything was top tier now that probably comes at a premium price I spent a chunk of change for the one that I bought at the conference so if I had to

pick a single company that would be 100% confident telling you that that would be a great company to go with let's follow Kamen Reynolds and Mike Berry and others who have Mike Perry is also ex-Navy guy, senior chief. You know, he's reasonable in the way he manages his resources and probably buys quality. And so Maxent, I'm going to join the club. That's what I have. And I think it's a fantastic unit.

Now, if that's too expensive, see, if you had money and you weren't going to get in trouble with your spouse at home over how much you're spending, just go with it. Just get one. The other thing is also, by the way, I'm glad we're mentioning this, the North American Honeybee Expo coming up in January in Louisville, Kentucky.

Louisville, however they're supposed to say it. You can get great deals on big ticket items like extractors. You decide how big it's going to be. I don't need anything that holds more than eight frames. I have 40 colonies of bees, 43, give or take, and one eight frame extractor is more than I'm ever going to need. That's just my opinion. I don't mind spending a whole afternoon processing frames, right?

So, and it's going to last a long time. I also have the Maxent wax melter. So good stuff, good company, American company, longstanding company from the eastern United States, Northeast, and good people. I met them. They had great answers for all of my questions. I never got the impression that I'm just trying to be sold something, that they're really proud of.

their product and that it has a lot of longevity ahead. So pick something like that that's going to last a long time. If the difference is a couple hundred dollars, and that couple hundred dollars means, you know, maybe more jobs for people that are working here in this country. And that's it. Ask questions. Get to another people, find out what's great, ask for a demo,

and so on. I will say this about extractors though. I built a stand. Stand for mine is shaped like a big triangle because most extractors that are that size are vertical freestanding you have the option Tangential which means that the face of the the frame is out away from the central axis while it's spinning I like tangential Radial is the bottom of your frame goes towards the center and the top of your frame the thicker part Faces out so when it spins it slings it out of those cells because cells are angled remember so that's how it has to go and

tangential extractors get more honey out of your frames quicker. So I like that, but again, you need more space for that, or you can only do, in the case with the extractor that I have, you can only do four at a time, or if I set it up for radial, I can do eight at a time. So I have the option for both. And if you have the baskets in it with the screens on it, that means even foundationless frames,

foundationless comb can be extracted through that because it goes up against this grid that prevents it from bowing out and exploding right out of your frame. So there are a lot of things to think about there. And I'm going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo, 2025. I saw my name on the list of presenters. So I'm going to be there and I'm going to be looking at equipment like that again. And I like to see these things in person. So do that.

That's the end of it. That's the last question for today. number eight right there so now we're in the fluff one of the things i want to say and by the way thank you for those of you who watch my smoker pellet video and the smoker features video and so on all in one it's not a very long video but it has a lot of information in it those who are buying the switchgrass smoker pellets through the northwest pennsylvania beekeepers association which is the only way you can get them that are produced by Ernst Seeds. They're only available in the continental United States.

I don't know unless shipping is the same for Hawaii. The biggest factor in the cost of those things is the shipping because you're shipping something that weighs over seven pounds. So the purchase price shipping and everything, continental United States, there are bio reasons why we cannot ship to Canada and other countries, and that's because we're shipping, actual switchgrass, right? So it falls under a whole bunch of other controls that we can't do.

The purpose of the sales for the switchgrass pellets through the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association is for our nonprofit organization to gain resources that we then cycle back to teaching the public about bees as well as our own membership. We have outreach programs and educational programs that are free to the public and this funds it. So that's what that's for. I have been shamelessly promoting them, but I receive zero compensation for marketing and suggesting that you get which grass smoker pellets. I get absolutely zero, so I want that to be clear too. None of us are making money. In fact, the guy that packages and ships it, Bill, total volunteer.

He does all of it on his own and physically hauls it. the pellets from earned seeds, they bag it, he labels and ships and responds to the buyers. He's a total volunteer, zero compensation. So just so you understand, this isn't a for-profit activity at all, but we cannot ship outside of the United States. So the other thing, for those of you, prepare for durs in your area. If you want to know what the historical dearth periods have been for where you live, go to this website, B-scape.org.

org, B-E-E-E-S-A-P-E-D-O-G, and type in your address and see what the dearth periods are likely to be, so that you'll be facing those, and you'll be prepared for some of your bees. The colonies that are weaker, for example, are going to require care, or you're going to need to combine those colonies so that they can benefit from a larger colony that has the resources. So there are a lot of things going on. dirt and robbing and things like that. So the robbing part,

upper entrances are a prime port through which robbers enter your hives. Particularly as the nights get colder, the days get colder. Your bees start to cluster. Anytime it's below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, your bees are likely forming a loose cluster inside. The more insulated hives have looser clusters. They are less chilled. But the standard wooden Langstroth hives.

and so on they cluster up and when they do that guess what insects can now access your hives while it's still cold the yellow jacket wasps now sometimes a bumblebee will go in i've watched bumblebees go into hives huge mistake that bumblebee often never comes back out and then you'll be doing a hive inspection what's on the bottom of the hive a dead bumblebee so bees don't cotton the bumblebees but when it's really cold in their cluster yellow jackets for some reason have this cold weather advantage they can get in there and they can start robbing before your bees are even out and about and because it's cold there are no guard bees on the landing boards so what i'm trying to get out here is watch out for your those are you who

use upper entrances and even full-width landing board entrances which some people do they open up their landing boards during honey flows nectar flows and it's time to start thinking about narrowing those down because these wasps are increasing the numbers this time of year. You're finding that there are nests. There's one right behind my head right here. That is a bald face hornet wasp nest that we just picked up. Very anticlimactic because the people that were concerned about it want us to know what to do about it. They got this really high quote from a exterminator who was not even going to take it down, was just going to come and spray it with something and leave. and they were longtime friends. I've known them. I used to be her teacher when she studied graphic communications.

So I said, you know what? My grandson wants to go and deal with bald-faced hornets. We're just going to go and we'll come and get it. So he was ready to go to war. He had his B-suit on, his gloves, full coverage, boots, everything is ready to go. And super disappointed. They all stayed in their house. And I just went over there, climbed up a ladder, took an industrial trash bag. Put the trash bag around that hive, that nest. It's really not a hive. It's a paper nest. Put that around it, clipped it, dropped it inside, goose neck the top of the bag, zip tied that, put it in the car, and we were done 10 minutes.

So that saved them $300, which is very interesting. I don't want to necessarily get between somebody and their source of income. But when things are so easy, you know, really, that thing was not high up. It was right over a sidewalk where pedestrians go. Maybe there's big money in, you know, being a pest management person. But so the whole thing dropped it in the bag and then I kept it in the bag, sat the black plastic bag out in the direct sunlight, heated it up, they all died, take it out. The only thing I regret is I think on the next one, I'm going to find a way to suspend it

without having it crushed on one side. It's a little crushed, a little out of the shape. I'd like to get that thing in really good shape. So the next time somebody calls, they have a bald-faced hornet issue. I'll take my grandson again because these are teaching moments. This is a great opportunity. And it doesn't have to be dramatic. You don't have to use poisons and things like that.

Let's just use heat. So the next time I will carefully get it, put it into one of those hive butler totes, and then find a way to suspend it so there's no pressure points. That way we can preserve it. Why am I talking about that? I don't know because you're getting ready for durst and robbing and the robbing is going to happen. Bald-faced hornets I've not seen really full-on go after your beehives.

The number one culprit is actually other honeybees, but the cold weather culprits that are hard to watch are the yellow jackets. So, and as I already mentioned before, just to rename it, please bottle and get your honey that you're collecting out into the smaller jars just as soon as possible so that you don't have issue with it setting up in a big tank or a big vat. And even in stored honeycomb, it can set. You ever go to uncap a frame of honey only to find out that it's all crystallized in there? Now, I have taken that before out of desperation just to see what would happen,

put it on a rack inside my evaporation tent over there, and I have raised the temperature to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and got it to mostly reliquify inside the cell so you can reliquify that you have to be very careful here's why if those are foundationless frames you are also warming up and making soft the honeycomb that that is in so it's just much easier to go ahead and process the honey right away get those get those frames cleaned up get them in storage or back on the hive for a clean-up and then storage and running through a cycle in your freezer the reason that you do that is so that there are no wax moth eggs and things like that but here's the thing generally wax moths are not getting into any of the hives that i have not one that is fully occupied and fully functioning

with your bees so take advantage of comb producers just as i said be prepared with foundation extra frames things like that so you can cycle them out if you collect a late season swarm use them to produce comb, just a refresher on that. Old bee boxes, by the way. As you keep your bees for a long time, you'll find out that some of your hive boxes just are not usable anymore. And they've got a great layer of propolis all over the interior. So I give them to my wife.

It's a win-win. She puts them in her vegetable garden, and a nice deep box becomes a raised garden bed for one tomato plant or something like that. They work really, really well. Keep them off the ground. You can put a hardware cloth on the bottom of it so rodents don't dig under it and things like that. Just a great way. Why burn them?

Just recycle and put them out in your garden. What else? Prepare for off-season storage. This is a shocker for a lot of new beekeepers. They realize that you have to pack down your hives at the end of the year. And when you do that, I'm telling you now, because who wants to be doing this when it's 38, degrees outside or freezing outside these projects tend to come up on us when the weather's turning bad and it really stinks to be out in your barn or your shed or your garage or wherever you're

going to store your stuff so try to organize an area to store your frames your boxes and so here's the thing your B boxes can be stored with the frames right back in them highly recommend that you do that once they're cleaned up if you put them out at a robbing station after you've harvested all of your honey and everything this is personal call let them clean it up and then put them in storage in the same boxes so you can put identifying marks on your frames that also match the super that they were with and the hive that that super came off of so that we can later just cycle it all back together so but plan for the storage because people realize you almost need twice the storage that you have space for your hives themselves it can turn into quite a mess took me years just to organize my storage area and so that's really interesting. Upcoming, there's going to be a video this week where I'm going to talk to you about swarm go kits,

things that you can just have packed, ready to go, so that you're not running around, trying to put your stuff together just because somebody calls and has a swarm. The other thing is, this could be a response for even other stinging insects. Some beekeepers do not want to deal with hornets and wasse, and when their friends call and say,

we have a swarm of bees in our tree, and you jump in your car and you're all excited, you tell everybody on social media you're going to go get a swarm you show up in its bald-faced hornets and then you just run away right like monty python so uh i'm going to tell you what should be in your go kit to make it handy so you're not running around like that so you're ready to go and that you'll look professional and people have confidence when you show up and that you don't have to turn and run away when things go bad learn how to do that anyway i'm going to do a video about that encourage our youth that's my last thing for today Two of my grandsons were here yesterday, gave them jobs. They were really interested.

Kids need our time. That is the most valuable thing any of us can give to someone who's 8, 9, 5, 6, 4, and so on. They just want to know, talk to them like their little adults, like they have brains, because they're pretty darn smart, and they will smart off at you. Resist the temptation to sweep their feet and make them kiss grass. Don't do it. Just be nice. Just accept the fact that kids say,

off-color things sometimes. They're not always the nicest, but it's up to us to be nice to teach them about beekeeping because guess what's going to happen? One day, I'm going to be too old to keep bees. I want to do this. I want to drink coffee and say, hey, go and super that hive over there.

Hey, I think something's going with hive number 72. And then I will be able to just be the intellectual resource. They can be the beekeeping muscle. And they have a great business model plan too. invest in the kids if they show the slightest interest in beekeeping or something that's under your control and within your area of expertise, I think it's fantastic because I have never forgotten the people, the grown-ups that took the time to talk to me. I was one of those little kids that would never shut up. I asked questions constantly, and I wanted to know, and the worst thing adults could do is flat out ignore you.

because the ones that really stood out, sat down on the stoop in front of their house, explained everything that you wanted to know. This is an opportunity for us to produce the next gen of beekeepers. So I want to thank you for being with me today, and I hope that you're prepared for what the weather is about to throw at you as the year draws to a close for beekeeping here in the United States. So thanks a lot, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Thank you.