The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers episode 271

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Welcome! This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/MfuLi7FZ-zU

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. This is Friday, August the 16th, and this is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and answers episode number 271. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here with me today. We're going to talk about topics that were submitted by viewers just like you over the past week. And you might want to know what's going on outside. You also might want to know what we're going to talk about. please look down in the video description below and you will see all the topics listed and any associated links that might be helpful so I hope that you do that if you have a question right now that you just can't wait to get it answered and you need it answered in real time please go to the fellowship the way to be fellowship on Facebook and there's someone there that will want to talk to you all over the world we have a really good membership super friendly people no advertisements no spamming nothing like that just good conversations about bees and beekeeping. So outside right now it's overcast in the opening sequences. Those were all

shot this morning and there's a lot going on out there with the flowers. Some of our golden rod is already starting to turn brown. Not a good feeling there and I did see some asters blooming. So this is a transitional period. There are other species of golden rod that are going to be opening up real soon and so the bees still have plenty of forage out there. And when the Aster's kick in. Some people don't like Aster honey. I do. It's really strong. So I think that's going to be good. So all the things that we're flowering out there, that's what's going on right now in the northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania. 72 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 22 Celsius 2.5 mile per hour winds. So the wind is mild.

And it's great for photography and getting close because if you do any kind of macro photography, you know the wind gusts and things like that. Move your stuff around and it makes it really hard to focus. on it and I do those photographs on location outside. I don't cut things, bring them in, stick them in the studio, and take pictures that way. I want stuff to really be going on in real time. Relative humidity is 82% no great surprise because this weekend, starting tonight, we have rain coming in. So once again, this is all for me. I'm sure in your neck of the woods, the weather's doing different things, but I planted some new plants over the past week and it's going to be good that the rains are going to come through tonight, Saturday, and Sunday, and soak those things in for me.

So the relative humidity is pretty high. That's no great surprise. And it's a great chance to walk around your bee yard and look at the landing boards and entrances of your beehives. And you should see lots of bearding going on right now. What is bearding? Well, that's when the bees move outside of the hive and they're on the landing board or they're up underneath your hive visor or they're up underneath your extended cover or something like that. And what they're doing is you're getting out of the way of the bees that are inside the hive that are trying to store all that nectar as they turn it into honey and put it in the cells. Remember, they spread it out over twice the space while they dehydrate it and then they recondense it back down to under roughly 18% moisture, right? And so those foragers that are just in the way move outside to collect on the front.

When you see a lot of that going on right now, it's because there is a good strong nectar flow. what goes hand in hand with that swarms. So I know that in the south, some people have swarm season in the spring, and that's the end of it. They also have a nectar flow in the spring, and that's the end of it. The rest of the year, they're kind of feeding their bees. I'm glad I don't have that situation here. If you're just starting out with bees and you want to know what kind of dearth period, the dearth just means that there's nothing in the environment that provides sufficiently for your bees,

which means you might have to supplemental feed. go to this website, B-Scape, B-E-E-S-C-A-P-E-D-E-D-E-D-RG, punch in your information, and you will find out what your environment is going to provide for your bees on when to expect at Earth. It's important. So what else can we talk about? That's it. Be ready for stuff. We'll talk about more on the fluff section at the end.

If you want to know how to submit your own topic, a question for consideration in a future episode, please go to my website, which is the way to be.org and there's a page also marked the way to be fell out a form there and i'll get the information it doesn't mean that we'll talk about it though i try to hit on the things that are either pertinent to what's going on right now there is some repetition i mean we've been doing this this is episode number 271 so sometimes we revisit topics that we've hit on before but usually it's because we have new information or expanded information to add that might help you out and i'm mindful that

A lot of you are new beekeepers, although I want to thank those who are seasoned beekeepers who still come back. And we do welcome your comments and guidance for one another down in the comment section. So that's all super helpful. So I think that covers it. This is also a podcast. So if you don't have the time to watch because you've got work to do, you can go to Pod Bean or any other podcast right now and just punch in the way to be podcast. And you'll find out that it's there. Apple, everything, you can listen to it.

And that way you can carry on with your tasks and you won't be held up while you watch this video. So the very first question, let's jump right into it, comes from James in Goshen, Ohio. Maybe it's Goshen, I think it's Goshen. Let's just go there. My question is, can I move a hive about 300 feet during winter months without moving them three miles away

and then back like required during the summer months while they are foraging? Thanks, Jim. Okay, so moving your beehives is really easy to do. And yes, wintertime is a perfect time to do it. Why? Well, the ground's frozen. You can load your stuff up. The bees are inside, so they're in the hive and they're not doing a lot of foraging,

so while it's cold, you can move them. Because the other thing is, there are not a lot of flight activity during the wintertime. So there's not a lot of foraging going on. So yes, it's a perfect time to move your hives around, change configurations, as far as which hive is next to which hive and how close you're going to move them to others. Terrible time to be pulling hives apart and putting them together in different ways. So, and what's you talking about moving them three miles and then coming back? Remember that your foragers come out of your hive, and they're going to be foragers forrangers for roughly two weeks.

Remember that a worker honeybee lives for about six weeks total. That's an average. They can live longer. They can live shorter. And so the foragers get out there, they're wearing the cells out. They're burning their motors out because they're foraging a lot. So they have about two weeks. So the reason I bring that up is if you moved them away somewhere else

and you wanted the hive to forget where they lived, it's two weeks. And then you would bring them back. Now, the other thing is I've recommended to people that you put them on a cart. So you just have one or two hives and you want to move them not right here, but you want to move them 10 feet over there. And it is true that the bees that are foraging, come out and they go right back to the spot even though there's no beehive left there. And they scoot around and they do figure eights and they look for the hive even though there it is over there. It has the pheromones that it should have, but they're locked into visual

cues at that point. So for two weeks it would be scooting around. One of the questions people have and this is why I don't think it's like a huge problem, particularly if it's going to be moved within your own apiary. Winter time is great, just like I'm but even now, if you wanted to move a colony around and you've got several beehives, have you ever come back and found a pile of dead bees where a hive used to be? I haven't. Never. And sometimes you might sell a hive. And as somebody comes over, they're looking at bees and they're looking at your beehives and it's middle of the day. Worse time, because you've got a bunch of foragers out there. So the other part of this is if you're going

to sell a hive or you're going to move it somewhere, wait until nightfall, then close it up. there are foragers that spend the night out and about in the environment and they'll come back the following day. But the most, most of your bees, and remember what I said to about bearding, so if you're thinking about moving your stuff or selling a hive, try to do it on a cooler day when the bees are likely to be all inside, because if you're going to button it up and you've got bees bearding on the outside, you add to the complicated process of moving your beehives around. But my point is that if you move your hive six feet, 10 feet right now, let's say, in August, you'll have a lot of bees that seem like they don't know where to go.

Now here's the thing, they don't die. In other words, they don't just die on the spot and end up with a pile of dead bees where the hive used to be. It just doesn't happen. What they do is they migrate to other beehives. Foragers are capable of getting resources and bringing them back to the hive, which means they're in demand. for every apiary, every colony of bees in your area. So those bees that come back and don't find a home can find a home with another colony.

So they're welcome. They show up with groceries year in. So, you know, I don't know that it's that big a deal is what I'm saying. I think we make a big deal out of it because you see a bunch of bees and we think, oh, they're so disorient and, oh, they just have no idea where to go. But they do ultimately go somewhere. They don't just sit out there and die. otherwise we would find piles of dead bees where hives once sat so they're going to find a place with

other bees i think i'm very confident about that but here's the thing during winter months very easy because fewer forages therefore fewer losses when you make that move and if you have multiple colonies they will find a home the other thing is you can load them on a wagon and pull that wagon a foot or two a day but now if you're going 20 feet that's 20 days or 15 days or 15 days for 10 days. That's a lengthy process. Just scoot them right over there. That's what I would say. Because I just have never seen them not find a home somewhere. That's it for Jim. What are your thoughts on that? I think that we're overstating it. Now, true, if we found piles of dead bees, we would have to do something else. But they have a two-week memory. Just

think of it that way to the outside. Question number two. This comes from George Garcia's CF-505-2. that's a YouTube channel name. And it says two weeks ago, I introduced the queen, using the queen introduction cage on a brood frame with emerging brood. Thus, at introduction, there was only the queen and bees starting to merge. Starting to emerge, sorry. Three days later, there were no eggs, no larvae, no queen, just exoskeletons of bees that had emerged,

must have died. Many of the exoskeletons were torn apart as the bees were trying to clean the area. Now, so we're talking about this. We brought this up last week. Of course, we talked about the two different cages, and there are different sizes of cages too, by the way. And this is for people trying to introduce a queen to a colony. And we wanted the point is to protect the queen, not to have them all die. I had this discussion at the North American Honeybee Expo with Dr. David peck and uh i was recommending that when we pull the brood frame that we're going to put the new queen in with right that it had some nurse bees on it because i felt like they need to attend to the new queen their pushovers if you're going to find gentle bees inside your hive nurse bees that have just

emerged from their cells um they can't really feed others yet they're needing to be fed so they're going to depend on other bees they can't stain anything yet they don't fly right away so they are still maturing a little bit after they've emerged as new worker bees so i thought leave some of those on there the queen will go in there they will help if nothing else spread the queen's pheromone and as their glands mature they'll start to feed the queen and those will also be helping to warm the existing brew that's still in pupa states underneath the cappings so we had a difference of opinion on that and David wanted all bees out, no bees in at all, which is what's described right here.

And then we have capped pupa. So in other words, we think that those would be emerging very quickly after the queen is in there and they would emerge and start to attend to the queen. But then, of course, they need outside resources. So we need bees going to those cage bars. These introduction cages have bars so close together that workers cannot pass. through them. So there's another part of this that I'm curious about. So I think we need to really look at it because how did those nurse bees die that emerged inside that we found nothing but exoskeletons in?

So as written here, and the queen's gone. So if the workers can't even get through the bars, how are they then killing the bees on the frame? And the reason I think this is worth talking about is because George isn't the only one that reported this. So at least three other viewers have reported that. They tried to use a queen introduction cage. As described, no bees in with the queen, just brood. And then just, of course, the cappings would be uncapped as the brood starts to emerge. And then they're supposed to make it.

Now, my experience has been that they make it and that it works really well. But there again, I'm leaving some nurse bees in there with them. them already on the frame. And that may make a difference. I don't know. The other thing is, it's possible that there is still a queen in the hive at the time and it was just missed. She just happened to be there and they were hostile to the new queen. But see, that's the point of the cage. What you should find, if they reject the queen in the queen introduction cage, you should find the queen and the nurse bees inside that cage on the deep. frame and then you should find the other bees outside and it also gives you an opportunity to see oh we still

have worker eggs there well we must still have a queen because there are still nurse bees in a hive that will feed unrelated bees so they should be feeding them through those bars now that apparently didn't happen either because they're dead on the bottom of the cage so there are more questions at this point than answers and we have two methods one is keeping some nurse bees in there, which I personally think is a good way to go, but I don't have the credentials that Dr. Peck has. And so when he said very clearly no bees inside the cage with the queen, I understand why, because then they potentially would reject the queen, and they could attack her. But then my thinking is, and this is why discussion among beekeepers is important,

my thinking is those nurse bees don't attack anything. They're just easygoing bees. So if you have thoughts on this, I'm interested in them. And of course, the instructions that come with that cage, if any, are to introduce a frame of brood with the queen. Because keep in mind, the queen needs resources. She needs to be taken care of. She is a maided, laying queen. And the reason you're trying to protect her is because you've spent your hard-earned money to install her. So my way, I've never found a dead queen on the bottom.

But on the flip side, I'm not buying in expensive queens. I just put queens in there to see what happens when I introduce them and combine colonies, right? So there are a lot of things to experiment. There's a lot of moving parts here. And I'm sorry that these bees are dying. George is a longtime viewer. And I think next time, try it with nurse bees and see what happens. See if we don't get that pheromone out there more.

and we might be pushing also against laying workers, which can be hostile, but they tend to kind of back off a little bit in the presence of a new queen. If she's there long enough for them to spread that new queen pheromone throughout the hive, and they can still do that through direct contact through the bars of the queen introduction cage. So I have question marks over my head over the whole thing. I don't understand what's going on. Question number three, this comes from. from Chris in Tasmania, Australia. Tasmania, you don't hear that every day.

Says I bought some five-frame nuke boxes, which I'm leaving in the trees to attract swarms. The problem is that the nuke boxes have migratory lids and water gets in between the lid and the box, even though there's no obvious gap. Should I just try to make telescoping lids, or is there some easier recommended way to reduce this issue? with the lids yes there is so and some people may be watching wondering what's a migratory lid well if you look at commercial beekeeper setups you'll see they don't use telescoping lids they just have a three-quarter inch pine top and then you'll see blocks little end pieces usually one-by-to-twos which is three-quarters of an inch thick and those hold it front to back so side to side

there's no overlap in other words they match the size of the nucleus hive or the standard hive exactly and that's because they have to be able to bundle those hives together and transport them around so what do you think i'm going to talk about double bubble so double bubble has a lot of uses i've been keeping bees for quite a while and only over the past few years started using double bubble on the hives and it works really good as gasket material. So that's what I'm going to talk about. If you have a migratory cover, you've just got that piece of wood on there. The other part of that is there's no insulation up there. That migratory cover is a three-quarter inch piece of pine usually. And so there's not a lot of

insulation up there. So I don't know where you're keeping bees or whatever. But well in Tasmania, of course, I don't know the weather in Tasmania, but I'm going to help with this. And this is for other beekeepers too. So if you've got a five frame nuke which I really like by the way because they're affordable five frame deep boxes and we have nucleus hives out there and we go five and then we add five more then we had five more that's 15 deep frames if we go three high but here's the thing there's gaps in wood this kind of looks like a migratory cover but it isn't this a feeder shimp because that's something else I want to talk to you about we're going into winter around here so I hate to say that I mean it's August for Pete's sake We have a couple of months. It's not winter yet, but I want you to be prepared. Because what I don't want you to do is find out that you need to build equipment and set things up, and now you have to put on your winter outfit just to go in your wood shop and build things. Let's build things this weekend while it's raining and you can't be outside anyway.

So anyway, this is a feeder shim. Now this particular one I bought. Why does it have this piece of wood amending the width of it? Because I bought this from Betterby. this is actually not designed to go for a full five-frame width is designed for four frames because it's designed for a system with twin nukes right so and also here's a little vent hole in the top which if you flip it over becomes an upper entrance slant vent hole and there's a feeder hole through the middle and of course I glued that up because I don't use any upper

entrances and no upper vent holes but what I do do what I do do is I put feed up here in the wintertime. So I use fondant. I can put a half a fondant pack in here and just cut the hole and set it right over this. Now this hole happens to match exactly a small mouth mason jar lid. So you can put an inverted jar on that too. If you don't have some kind of lid with another box around it, you've lost your opportunity to feed your bees. I want you to be able to do that. I know that there are some people that never want to feed under any circumstances. That's okay. I'm giving you options. All of my nucleus hives except two have the potential to feed. So I do have two hives that have nothing but the migratory covers just as described.

So top of the hive, let's pretend this is the top of your nuke box. You put your double bubble right on top of it and then you can put another top on that or this becomes the bottom and that goes like that. So in other words, this double bubble stuff, sometimes it's called reflect text. I don't know, it's a lumines and it's got bubbles in it, so it provides an insulation layer. This is like adding another layer of wood.

So it's very important because it's going to help insulate the top of the hive. If nothing else, please insulate the top of your hive. Put this right on the frames, right on the top of your five frame nuke. This then acts as gasket material. So then when the wooden part goes on top here, which in this case happens to be in my feet are shem, but visualize that this is your migratory cover.

Now we have gasket material. No rain is going to get in there, and no wind is going to blow in there, even if they're a little irregular, even if they're a little skewed. Now, for me, I just created an airspace up here. I'm going to put fondon up here in wintertime, so I'm also going to cut this little circle out

so the beads can come up underneath right in the center and go right into the fondant. What's on top of that? more double bubble right on top just like that then what goes on top of that another piece of wood because now look what we did we created an airspace between two double bubble layers which means now we have an airspace that's blocked which means more warmth more insulation just because it's trapped air without movement so another cover it can go like that you can't have too much double bubble in my opinion so i just wanted to talk about that's I personally would do it and I should have brought in one that's really used because

the bees do propylize this in other words the frame that you rested on the bees glue the back of that frame so you do lose the space over the top of your frames which is perfectly okay because to me that is just like giving your bees extra insulation and control think about inside a hive inside a feral tree or something like that, feral colony inside a tree cavity. They don't leave a space over the top of their comb. Now I'm not saying the space over the top of your comb's bad idea. I think it's fine that the bees walk over the top of it.

B space is three-eighths of an inch. But if you have double bubble right on top of that, of course they move under or around the ends of the frames to get to the different adjacent frames. So easy stuff works great. I like it. and that's it. I hope this helps Chris. Let us know what you do. Let us know how it works. I love follow-ups, by the way. Bullet point follow-ups, not a whole story because I just don't have

time to read everybody's full-length stories. So question number four. This comes from Emil Andrusco, 8597. That's the YouTube channel name. I'm in Yardley Pinsil I created a resource nuke in the spring and it has served me well. It grew nicely and I added a second five-frame deep on top. So here we are. Another nucleus hive, five over five. So that's the equivalent of a 10-frame standard Langstroth deep-brewed box. It's now five-over-five deep-frame nuke. I'm considering overwintering it this way. I say go for it because I've had them go just like that, just fine. I will provide supplemental feeding with hive alive fondin so you're gonna need a feeder sham on top of that like the one I just showed or another one that you may have and do you think this is a good idea or should I move it to a 10 frame deep for overwintering so this is my experience here with my own nucleus hives and some people don't like nucleus hives that's perfectly fine for

you but the 5 over 5 configuration compared to the wide 10 frame standard Langstroth deep box which one would winter better for me based on what I've observed is the five over five winters better we want to make sure though that of course that upper box of those five frames is full of capped honey and this of course depends on how many bees are occupying the space so we want to size them right and there's still time by the way in yardly PA there's still time to add a third box if they're a growing strong colony why not put the third box on so five over five over five and see if we can't get them to draw out some comb and maybe

store some honey in that top box before winter comes along and if they do they just build themselves a third level of resources and then we can use that so i say vertical over the big single deep now wouldn't both work yeah they would eight frames tend to be used more by the bees than the 10 frames do with the 10 frame deep boxes they tend to leave at least one side of the number one frame or the number 10 frame unfinished they tend to not draw out the comb I don't know why but when we put them in eight frame boxes they tend to fill it chaka block mall the wall and same thing going up dr. tom seeley same thing he's converted all of his hives to eight frames because they make better use of the space. So the five frame, more of a narrow column, vertical, and strap those down.

Make sure that they're really good and solid and ready for the winter to hit them hard. So strap them together. I say five over five is better than five beside five or a full 10. Just works better. I keep them both. I run both. I continue to run both. Why? because I want statistics and observations of these things year after year after year, winter after winter, and then I want to see consistent results, not just a one-off, one year, one winter that we had a great result with one particular hive configuration. So we carry this on year after year, season after season, and keep records to show what's working and what isn't. And even the things that don't work really well, I keep them running because I want to know.

longevity-wise how does it work question over five comes from leaf hands we have tried to set up a watering station a few times on top of the hive under the roof of the hive using the small hole in the lid for access a circular water feeder that has textured edges for the bees to hang on to as they sip water yet many bees keep drowning please help well this round Feeder sounds like the rapid round feeder. But I want to talk about, now this is just my opinion. So I hope but because you're not the only one to mention putting water inside a beehive, I personally would not put water inside my beehive. I want the bees to bring in water when they need it. And I want them to be able to dry out their hive when they don't need it. So I want my bees to be able to move the air around. They're perfectly capable of bringing in the moisture that they need when they need it. So I like water resources to be available outside the hive.

Now there are times when the bees themselves can put water in honey cells. If they really need to increase it or they need to store water somewhere. But putting water inside the hive, whatever the configuration, we just provided a surface area that the bee, that the bees have to deal with the humidity that we've now put on them. So they could actually be trying to dry down the water that you have up there. Bees falling in the water and drowning is a secondary thing. So let's say you're insistent.

You know, you want to put water in the hive, even though I have asked you please not to and have you put your water resources out in the area of your bee yard somewhere, a consistent, dependable water supply for your bees, outside the hive is what I'm recommending. Now let's say you really want to put it inside. I think if it's to wrap it around, you could put cotton inside. Now, it's just water.

So it's never going to plug up the way sugar syrup can plug up cotton fabric and things like that. I've recommended that you get those toddler socks that are by haines or whoever else makes them that are 100% cotton. And you cut off the little ankle part and you put that over that little column that is the riser in your round feeder. right and then your bees get their footing on the cotton now if it's cotton and if it's nothing but water that's going to act as a wick you don't need to even give them access down into the feeder you just push the sock all the way down and in some cases you don't even have to cut off the foot of it you can leave it together i've tried both ways and so the really thin sugar syrup and of course just water which i don't recommend you put in your hide but if you did if you wanted to if you have to then the cotton sock or

cotton fabric will act as a wick and then the bees can come up and drink through the fabric zero drowning bees none so that works for a thin sugar syrup too now what is sugar syrup and use the sock method if you use the enclosed sock method you have to when you clean out your drinker you have to use hot water and rinse out the sock again too because it actually builds up and becomes like crystallized sugar so you need to do that but I recommend water outside the hive. Question number six comes from Aaron. And it says I currently have the flow hives

and was wondering what your recommendation is for adding an additional brood box to each. I live in Ohio. What pros and cons have you seen with only having one versus two brood boxes? Now I already responded to Aaron right away because I figured when somebody's doing a configuration change like that, I answer right away.

and then add it to today's Q&A. So here's the thing, because this is a common problem with people that have flow hives in particular, and this happens particularly with new beekeepers. So we have the way the flow hive comes from the company. It is a deep brood box, and you're supposed to set that up by itself. It's a 10 frame or an 8 frame, right?

Standard Langstroth stuff. So what you're supposed to do is let the bees build all that out. In fact, a lot of the frames that come, in fact, all of the frames, that come directly from flow are foundationless so the brood box becomes a foundationless brood box right so there's a lot of work that has to go on they have to draw it all their comb and some people say well i can't lift deep brood boxes so i'd much rather use mediums all the time well you don't generally lift your brood box at all so there's not a weight issue there

but what i'm trying to explain or lay the groundwork for is that the bees need to draw that out and then to add another brood box is another deep box. So that's a deep 10 or a deep eight. That would just about be all they can manage. So then your plan would be ultimately, once those are full and involved and full of resources, then you would add your third, which is the flow super. And that thing is huge because it's another deep box.

So it's a deep honey super. Most people use either a shallow honey super or a medium honey super. And then as they fill those, they add another medium or another shallow, whatever they're using. But with this flow configuration, right, you have the deep box, you do a second deep box, now we want to put a third deep box. You have a huge challenge ahead of you for the bees, depending on where you live,

and what kind of resources they are, how strong the colony is, how productive the colony is, and so on. So, and I'm going to recommend for those of you who are dealing with flow configurations, please go to my website, which is the way to be.org. a page there with a title that says the flow experience or the flow hive experience all of my guidelines are there for how to modify your box for cold weather beekeeping because in new south wales australia they don't need to worry about these these huge beehives because they put a single box on they put a queen excluder on that they put the flow super on that and it continues to fill

throughout the year and they just draw it off whenever it happens to be full and capped So here I recommend, since we're on the topic, your deep brood box. Once it's 8 out of 10 frames full, put your medium super on there. But the Flohive company doesn't sell a medium super. So I recommend you buy the second deep brood box as described here, but now you're going to need a table saw. And you're going to cut it down so that the top of that brood box, which has the rabbit joints in it, becomes your medium super.

so you cut it to the appropriate height for a medium super to hold medium frames. That bottom surplus piece, which is just about two inches left over, that now becomes a feeder shim above your flow super, underneath the gabled roof that is kind of a visual trademark of the flow hives. And now we have additional feeder space up there if you need it. So you just got two things out of one box. now the other thing is standard lankstroth equipment is not compatible with flow hive boxes because flohive managed to make their boxes eight or ten frame about a quarter inch narrower in width they are the same front to back but width wise they're a quarter inch smaller which means if you take a standard medium box from any langstroth supplier and you put that on top of your flow brood box it's going to overhang it

an eighth of an inch on each side, right? You centered up and you think, oh good, I'm all set. Then you got to put your lid on, that gabled lid won't fit because now it's designed for something narrower and it won't sit on top of that. So you either have to cut down the top a little bit or get yourself real flow high stuff or make your own box to match that. But I highly recommend here in the United States, deep root box, medium super. Once that super is full or 80% full, that's when you put on your flow frames, right? So but three deep boxes, you're asking a lot of your bees, and you could end up with just partially filled frames

if they work in at all in the flow super, and then the season's over, and you're taking it off, and you're all disappointed because you just spent all that money for a very expensive hive configuration and have nothing to show for it. Deep box, medium, once those are involved, flow super. Much better chances. And you can spend your first year building up those resources, building the colony, getting them strong, getting them to draw that comb.

Because you can use standard heavy wax foundation inside that brood box, but I'm just describing the way the flow people send it to you. It's just the frames. There's no foundation. But you would speed things up by having foundation and there that's heavy waxed. Moving on to question number seven from Colette. Chico California could you go over the different techniques to join two colonies when the two colonies are weak one is weak or the other is strong two queens only one queen and please comment about foragers going back to the location of the colony that was moved what to expect common integration or fierce battle especially when there are two queens so this is a big

combination question here from Colette and we already covered some of it because we talked about moving your colonies and things like that so when you're combining colonies you're going to have the same thing as if you had just moved it somewhere and i changed gears on this this year because i do not want to expand my apiary i want to reduce and condense my apiary now i have too many hives of bees so this time of year we're going to get swarms so what am i doing with the swarms i'm combining them with weak colonies colonies. So this ability to combine your colonies and not worry about what's going on inside there. There are a lot of moving parts here too. So let's take them one at a time.

First of all, join two colonies when the two colonies. One is weak. One is strong. Okay, so you got a strong colony. They're booming, they're kicking. Everything is great. You have a weak colony. Now, you can do this and figure it out very easily. What kind of landing board activity is there? When you see that all your hides are just booming and it sounds like somebody left the dryer, vent on in your backyard and they're just blowing away and foragers are coming and going and we've looked at the pollen coming and going then you get to this one hive that's quiet and you don't see pollen coming you're going and every few seconds a bee comes and goes you know so the good news is

not being robbed which means you have a colony that's intact but we're going to run into a potential issue that I just described with the flow hive question double eaps chances are you've got a deep brood for both of these colonies and we're going to take the wheat colony that has this low activity we're going to inspect it and we're going to look for disease you might wonder well how do know if they're disease you know I'm a new beekeeper funny you should ask I'm going to recommend a field guide and I don't care what your level of experience is if you don't have this field guide you need one because it helps you identify diseases in your hype and you can get it at extension dot psu dot

EDU. So that's the Penn State extension. It's honeybees and their maladies. I've mentioned this before. I will mention it again because it's that good. It has pictures that help you understand what you're looking at. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about it. If you don't have it, you need it if you're a beekeeper. And I get nothing, of course. It's an education program there. They don't pay people for stuff. So anyway, make sure that you have no disease. these issues in the colonies you're about to combine because you may just have to euthanize it. You may just have to get rid of it. But let's say it's healthy.

They just appear queenless. Maybe there's a couple of laying workers going on. Maybe there's nothing but a dwindling colony that has a bunch of drone brood in it. So you can combine those. And so this whole thing about shaking out the laying workers and stuff and then going from there, that's a big mess. I've never done it. We've never had to do it.

So I take the weaker colony. I'm going to put them right on top of. the strong colony right but if they're in double deeps so now I've got a deep over deep another thing I want to put in there if I'm sure that they're queenless I'm gonna put a queen excluder on top of the existing strong colony then on top of the queen excluder I'm gonna put that deep brood box that's in decline because chances are they've just lost their queen so then they will and why did I do that because I want them to empty all brood out of that upper box because I want to get

rid of it. I don't feed this colony right now. We don't do anything to help them out. We just combine the colonies because they want them to consume any resources that are left in the declining colony box and I want to then remove it. So what happens is any brew that's up there will finish emerging. They'll come out. They'll all go down below and then we'll pull that box and we'll put mediums on and that's when we can remove the queen excluder then. And I used to combine colonies by putting newsprint on the bottom box, the existing colony, and the weaker colony goes on top of the newsprint. It gets little cuts in it, and then the bees go through it. Well, I noticed that those bees go through that newsprint almost in an hour, like they're right through it,

and they're right down with all the other bees. So how much fighting happens? I don't know how hostile your bees are. I don't know how resistant they are to other bees. Here's the thing. In your own apiary, your bees are already sharing foragers right and left. There is a lot of drift going on. I don't care where your apiary is. If it's yours and these are your bees and it sounds like they are, the combining of them is not that big of a deal. If there's any skirmish that happens, it's very few bees. You might see a couple of bees being dragged out, getting bitten them on their feet and things like that. They're considered interlopers. But you don't find a bunch of dead bees in front of the hive, and you don't find a bunch of dead bees being dragged out and flown away after this combination.

So I have to think that it happens pretty quick, that the pheromones just get accepted by the new colonies you're putting on. The other thing is, the space where you took that weaker colony from, you'll see bees hovering around there looking around, but they're going to find their way into other hives, assuming you have other hives, right? So it's actually very easy to do, and I don't use the paper method anymore.

I just combine them. if I have a queenless colony and I historically would at that point contact be Weaver and I would fly into laying queen before they're too far gone. I don't want them to be queenless for three weeks. This is why my inspection cycle for all of my hives is between two and three weeks. Because at three weeks without a queen without evidence of open brood and things like that, I realize that they are queenless and I can have laying workers at that point. So that's the cycle. And if you're fully aware, you can do a lot of assessment through landing boards as I described before, but we want to get them out of the deep box so now we can have a single deep and it's an easy combination. It's calm, no paper.

I just put them right on. If I collect a swarm and I have a colony over here that has no queen in it, I've been worried about them for a couple of weeks. I take the Colorado Beevac, by the way, it's very handy when it comes to combining a swarm with an existing. colony that just needs a boost. Your swarm has a queen in it. Your swarm is a completely intact, you social group of bees. They are ready to occupy a space. So I collect the swarm in the Colorado BVAC. You can use your own BVAC, whatever you collect them in. But the Colorado

BVac is already a 10-frame Langstroth box, right? It's a standard hive box. And you can't hang frames in it, which wouldn't be terrible if you could, but you can't. It's just an open space with a screen on one side and a cookie sheet that you pull out underneath. I always store them overnight. I don't go straight over and collect a swarm go straight over, put them in another hive. Keep them overnight. Sprits them a little bit with sugar syrup if you need to or water just in case they're thirsty.

And then that sits right on top. You pull your cookie sheet out and they combine with the bees down below. And then once they're out of that top box, you take that Colorado BVAC away or whatever used to introduce them. And then whatever is left in that box, you set that right in front, leaning right against the hive, and you'll see them going in. Now, if they don't go in right away, I'm going to mention another product to you. I don't get sponsorship. In other words, I'm just mentioning this because it works.

This is Swarm Commander. These are specifically little Swarm Commander break capsules, right? They're glass. You can keep these in your fridge. I'm told to keep them refrigerated. They last longer. I use these to get bees that won't go into a hive to go into the hive. So I'll take that capsule, break it.

It's got a little cotton tip on it that you see right there. Lift the inner cover, put it in the back of the hive, top of the frames, inner cover. And I put that in there. I can't tell you how many times I've had a stubborn colony of bees sitting in front and I needed to move into a hive and they wouldn't go. Maybe the queen's in there. She won't go. So she's potentially rejecting that space or because there's some bees in there that are dwindling. She doesn't want to join up.

But as soon as I put the swarm commander in there, it is within minutes that they smell that's enough. And it's actually a synthetic, yeah, synthetic Nasinov clan, which is different from the queen mandibular pheromone. Nassanoff is what your bees spread when they're trying to get the others in their own group to understand that this is where the queen is. So it's not QMP, but it's Nazanof that it smells like lemongrass in the air. You can really smell it when you get these bees upset that are unsworn that you just collected. you ever smell that lemony scent it just smells strongness because they're all trying to keep themselves together so when I put that inside the hive on the back where I can retrieve it later they all start going in and if we can get the queen to go in we're done that's it it changes their mood

fast if you've done it before and you've tried it and you've seen it work right down your experience down in the comment section so there are a lot of tricks to get your bees to go into a space The key is once there and to keep them there. So you can play mean tricks on them when you're combining a swarm with an existing colony because they can disagree later or decide that it's not where they want to be and then they scoot right out the front again and you can find that they're gone the next day. There is a queen excluder that will sit right on the front of the hive

that keeps that queen from leaving and all we need is to keep them there long enough to accept it as the space are going to occupy. and to start bringing their own resources in. And when they do that, you got them. So lots of things to go on there. Let's see what else. Common Integration, Fierce Battle. I've never seen like a huge, really battle.

Now, if they're both Queenwright colonies, and they're both fully dedicated and everything, because colonies without a queen are very accepting of a new queen, new pheromone, stuff like that, they're easy to combine. If you have two full-strength colonies, and you've got queens in both of them, Now you might have a challenge on your hands.

So I've never had this all-out melee between colonies that I'm trying to combine. So sit and watch them, see what happens. I hope that was helpful. Question number eight comes from Donna, from Herodsburg, Kentucky. And July 20th. This is an interesting one and this is helpful,

so I hope you'll find this useful. Hive inspection. So July 20th, there's a hive inspection and a mite test. Found the queen, healthy hive, zero mites. Green drone comb is empty and no comb at all. Now, August the 7th inspection. The hive is loaded with drones. Green drone comb is drawn out. This is key. One side, two-third full of eggs, larvae, and capped drone cells. One egg per cell. The hive has drone cells, bottom of three frames, two frames of nine.

normal, capped, brood, larvae, and eggs. Did not see the queen, but each cell had one egg, and the time frame between inspections does not seem enough for a laying worker. Question, why so many drones? Well, I'll answer that part right away. Why so many drones? Because the colony is doing well, and they're strong, and they're booming,

and it's a time when reproduction is necessary for bees, right? And also, when they're producing drones, if they've got a queen, and I think they do, and I'll explain why in a second. But if they're producing drones, it's because there's plenty of resources out in the environment and they're triggered to do that because you're trying to reproduce at the colony level. Okay. So why so many drones? Three hives, and this is the only one behaving like this. Also, the green drone comb had a lot of mites on the pupit.

The alcohol wash had zero when done. Big change in 19 days. Okay, so here's the thing. I want to call your attention to a couple of things that bees do when they have a queen. When they don't have a queen, you cannot get your bees to invest in infrastructure. They do not draw out comb. They don't start working the surfaces. They're just kind of occupying the space. They're a little bit unsettled. They have no queen. Therefore, now they're in transition. If they have a queen and the pheromone is right, queen medivular pheromone spreading through the colony, that's when they will continue to build comb, invest in the structure, and draw it out as described here on this drone comb,

which the green, by the way, if you're listening, you don't understand what that is. There are green plastic, one-piece frames that have larger cells so that when the bees draw out the bees wax on those cells, the queen recognizes these are large cells for drones, and she will lay only drone eggs in them. the queen is in control over what egg she places in what cells she inspects it she feels for the size of it and then she deposits eggs in it now if it's a drone cell it can be used for honey and other things too but the reason that it's green so that you know that it's a drone cell because they're originally built to be used for verroa destructor mite removal so you are supposed to let them draw the frames the queen to lay in them and of course the drones to pupate in them and then on the 24th day from the

being laid you would have adult drones coming out and so when the drones are coming out that's when you want to get them out of your hive altogether because they're likely to have the road instructor mites on them but i also want to call your attention to an interview i did so there is a page i'm going to mention my website again the way to be.org there's a page marked interviews you can watch and one of the interviews that i want to direct you to is with dr zachary Lamas. And this is a recent interview over the past year. Dr. Lamas did research on how you can get a, or why near the end of the year right now, you might be doing mite counts on your nurse bees with drones present in your hive and finding your varroa destructor mite counts to be very low.

And it can give you a false sense of confidence. Because if this colony has a lot of drones in it, the drones could be where your mites are actually located. And I'm not just talking about developing drones, which historically is where we thought about the mites being, because keep in mind, drones have a pupation period that's much longer than the workers. So drones have a chance to, not drones, Verro-destructor mites have a chance for more reproduction in those cells

and they feed upon the developing pupa. So the thing is that Dr. Llamas observed and has validated and has published his study now, when those drones emerge from their cells, that's when you would, of course, see any reproducing or the ferro-destructor mites that developed in that cell, they come out on the body, but then they become a dispersing mite. So it used to be called the ferretic phase. Now it's a dispersal phase. What it means is those mites are on the move.

here's the thing. Then in the absence of drones, these mites would move to your worker bees. So, however, if you've got a lot of drones in your hive and they're at the second and third day of life outside the cell, now your varodistructor mites are drawn to the bodies of the drones. So if you're doing your mite counts on the bodies of your worker bees, you will be missing the majority of the mites, which are now on the bodies of the drones. So you should be drone washing, drone washing, yeah, you should be drone washing. So watching for mites on your young drones. So there are a lot of ways to do that, but I think it's a Queen Wright colony.

I also think that the drones have drawn the mites over, which is why the mite wash was at zero. And I think we should be mite washing the drones. Now here's the problem with drones. They zip around and go to as young as three days old. So we know that the road instructor mites can leave. nurse bees and attach themselves to the bodies of young drones a couple of days old if they're flying out on the third day what are they carrying with them they could be spreading varroa destructor mites to the other colonies they go to and they go to a lot of different colonies

drones show up at colonies they're not even related to and they get fed and they get brought bite in and so what are they in contact with nurse bees are feeding these drones and if the drones show up with varro destructor mites on their body they can now migrate to to the nurse bees in another colony and they become part of the mite spread, right? This is why we need to be very careful about our own apiary. And if one of them has a really high mite count, we need to watch out. Because if they're as described here by Donna, if they are producing drones in that colony too,

then we're providing a vehicle for those road instructor mice to spread throughout your apiary. And even other apiaries. Because remember, they're flying out to drone congregation areas, trying to mate with queens, virgin queens. So anyway, I think it's queen right. I think that the drones are drawing your virul mites. I think that you have a colony based on your mite count numbers in the past here that you might need to treat.

If you've seen mites on the bodies of your drones, treat the colony. That's what I'm saying. Those are my instructions. Please watch the video, interview with Dr. Zachary Lomas. you'll learn a lot more about that process and what's really going on and why you better not get too warm and cozy about your mite counts this time of year when the drones are being reduced and your varro-destructor mites are running out of bodies to feed on and they're going to go back after your bees okay and the worst part of it is these are your fat-bodied winter nurse bees that are coming up here

in the next month so we don't want varro destructor mites on those nurse bees we want them to be helpful The other thing is they have to develop, right? So we have to get the mites off of the bees that are feeding the larvae that are going to produce these fat-bodied winter bees. So it's a long chain. The bottom line is kill the mites where you find them. Don't play games. Question number nine comes from Tyler from Burnham, Pennsylvania. This is just a follow-up question that I didn't want to keep adding to my YouTube question about the sugar water and honeybee healthy. Do you refrigerate your mix? So in other words, when I mix Honeybee Healthy with my sugar syrup, do I refrigerate it? Because I've mentioned in the past that I mix up my swarm collection kit and all that stuff. I have spray bottles of one-to-one sugar syrup or lighter with Honeybee Healthy in it,

three teaspoons per quart. And that keeps my sugar syrup from spoiling all summer long right up through now. and I don't see black mold in it, right? So do I refrigerate that mix? No, it's out with my kit, with all my swarm collection gear. It's hanging on hooks. I have the little spray bottles in a row,

and I use them all in season. I've never had it spoil once I need to be healthy's added. Sugar syrup by itself, you can start to see black mold in the bottle with your sugar syrup. And it also, sugar syrup gets a little cloudy at about the two to three week mark. So if you're going to use it up right away, fine. if you don't then add the honey-be-healthy to it and it extends it so that's really good stuff the other thing is when we're talking about combining colonies

let me flash back to that a little bit if you're combining colonies you can hit the resident colony that you're about to combine with sugar syrup with honey-be-healthy three teaspoons per quart of honey-be-healthy it's strong it smells strong so you can spritz the frames in there and give them a sweet treat so you you're giving them sugar syrup, which the bees like, no matter what time a year it is. And of course, not wintertime. And then that distracts them, and they've got a new scent in there. So Honeybee Healthy is a strong scent. Now, the other trick that I do, because that's combining them, and also, I don't spritz the weaker color of them combining.

Why don't I? Because I want them to move down and join in feeding on the sugar syrup than I'm spraying in there. Don't spray so much that you're putting bees in jeopardy in the brood frames. right you don't want it and sugar soak them but just enough to get things going now you might be thinking but what about robbing and things like that well if you have an apiary with several hives in it what i do to the other hives and i'm not opening up and spraying like this and combining i go and i spritz honeybee healthy and sugar syrup on every single landing board that occupies everyone they all smell the same and then they clean it up don't worry it's not going into your honey

because they're consuming it using that energy right there it's not enough for that to recognize it as a resource that gets stored. So HoneyBee Healthy extends the sugar syrup and helps with the introduction of queens. So mostly anecdotal information there, but as far as the preserving your sugar syrup, it does that. So it works really well. And so we're into the fluff section here. I'm also going to mention as the season draws to a close, if you have already taken out all the honey that you're going to and so your honey supers are done and for us that's still ahead of us here so we've got a couple of weeks ahead that we're still going to harvest honey and then

beyond that that's when we're going to start looking at settling the bees in and configuring them for winter time so after your honey supers are off we turn our attention to nozima serrani right there's nozima apis nozima serrani or serenei however you want to say it this is a disease of the mid-gut of your bees so there is a treatment for it that you don't use when you have honey supers on but we're going to talk about hive alive syrup and as we mentioned for with the honeybee healthy syrup it also does work to extend your sugar syrup and keep it from molding and being spoiled but i don't spray bees at different times of with the hive alive. It kind of smells licoricey. I don't know if you guys have sniffed it. But what I want you to pay attention to also is this stuff has an expiration date on the bottom of it.

So don't buy a whole bunch of this stuff that you will not use. They make a really small bottle of it, which may be enough for your backyard apiary. Don't buy more thinking that you're going to use it all because the dose for a hive is one gallon of sugar syrup with two teaspoons of this stuff. So this goes a long way and you're going to give a dose of one gallon per hive. That is the treatment and you're done. So that one gallon per hive, if you've got 10 hives, this is too much. This stuff is going to expire. So pay attention.

Mine's going to expire this year so I have to use this up. So the other thing is they have other things that we feed when we're setting up for wintertime, but we want to get the Nazima spores under control. And we want to do that at a time when your bees, again, are building up those fat-bodied winter bees at the end of the year after you've pulled all your honey supers. I don't know that there's anything in here that's dangerous to you if your honey supers were on, but I have to say if you're using sugar syrup and everything else,

You don't want to be feeding your bees when your honey supers are on, and of course this then would go with the feed. So don't do it. After they're off, then do it. Good stuff. Published studies. So if you want to go to my website again and look at there's a page called Hive Alive Works, is the only one that has a published study of exactly what happens to your bees when they feed on that. So in the fluff section, moving on.

Garden Center resources. I put out a video two days ago, whatever. My grandson and I went to the garden center. And we wanted to see what the bees are on. It's a great way to look at all the different plants in a very, you know, a couple acres. Most garden centers are really big. And you can go around and you can look at perennials and you can see in your own zone. So this applies to matter where you are. Go to your garden center and see what the pollinators are on and see specifically what honeybees are on. and there were a lot of honeybees on plants. So then you can see, you know, with all this competition, all these blooms condensed in one area, which blooms, which plants are out competing one another for the attention of these pollinators. So you can see the ones that

really draw your honeybees and then you go on beyond that and you look at those to see if they're good for your agricultural zone, if they're good for the environment that you want to put them in, maybe sun partial shade things like that go to your garden center and then of course as the year wraps up most of them run specials i did not get a special but i did buy some stuff and it worked out really well so that video is if you go to my channel it's the video right before this one so you can look at that um i'm seeing asters blooming just a couple right now now there are a lot of different varieties of asters out there just like there are a lot of different varieties of goldenrod So the early golden rod is actually called early golden rod.

It's interesting. There are about 20 different species of golden rod. This is why some people will say, eh, golden rod doesn't do anything for my bees. Well, which variety of golden rod? Because they're ignoring some and going for others. So right now, the early golden rod is already starting to turn brown. That's kind of sad.

But other golden rod has not even bloomed yet. Astor's starting really trigger a big nectar, That's why in my neck of the woods, I want the people that are around me to know that it's time to pay attention because this will be the big nectar flow. So, and asters are just starting to bloom. Late season swarms, as I just said, you might want to collect those and just boost an existing colony. You don't necessarily have to start another colony, which then of course has to be fed and cared for and really boosted if you want them to survive. so you can boost a weak colony by adding a late season swarm and keep in mind these are swarms that are in your own apiary area so in other words it's not time to go 10 miles away collect a swarm somewhere bring it back and combine them with your bees

we don't know those genetics we don't know if they absconded from a colony because of disease we don't know what's going on with them so if you do get a swarm that's not related to your bees I highly recommend that you keep them in a beehive somewhere away from your own apiary, three miles or more, and hopefully you have a friend that will let you keep bees on their property somewhere. And then you'll be able to assess what their temperament is and whether or not there's potential disease with those bees, things like that. Might count. Keep in mind that when you hive a swarm, you have an opportunity in that first seven days to wipe out

almost 100% of the rotostrctor mites with a single treatment of exhalic acid vaporization, which is an organic treatment, and you have a chance to really deal with them. Now, once they get set up, once they start pupating, right? Once they've done that, you've lost your window of opportunity, because any mites that they brought with them in a swarm would then be underneath the pupa caps, and you can't treat them with O-A. So, just food for thought. You can also use new swarms to build comb if you want to.

So the other thing is stock up on end of the season feed and resources last year. People wanted to buy supplements and things like that and they were left high and dry unable to get them. So think about your end of the season if you feed bees. You don't have to. But if you do and you're trying to build them up so that they winter well, if for some reason your bees are running behind, they didn't build up any stores, They don't have enough to get through winter. If you're going to feed them,

then stock up on any feed supplements that you might need because these companies can run out. They can underestimate the demand. And then you can find out you can't get fondant until January or December or something, and that does not help you. Now, I would like to say this about fondant. Some people make their own fondant.

We've, over the past couple of winters, used the hive-alive-live fondant packs. same company that makes this syrup. So what I want to say about that is don't put that on your hives until you get nighttime temperatures that drop below freezing. And the reason I say that is

as the nighttime temperatures start to drop below freezing, I'm telling you this well ahead of time, I know, but I want you to be able to plan for it. At night, when the temperatures drop, they're clustering together, right? The other thing is they're having a brood area that they're going to kind of lock onto. If you, before it gets cold, put on fondant packs on the top of your hive, top of an insulated inner cover, the bees tend to move to that fondant too early.

And you can end up with a cluster high up in your hive above stored honey and other resources. So they have, and this is feedback that I get over and over from other people as well, that if they put their fondant packs on early, they'll actually ignore the stored honey and move up to the faunate. What honeybees are very hesitant to do in the wintertime once it settles in, they don't go back down.

So they tend to have winter brood. And if they've moved up to that fondant pack and they've started to brood up right under it, guess where they are at the top of the hive before it even got cold. So please wait. If you're using faunate packs, whether it's high blithe or some other fondant or some other beef food that draws them to it,

wait until it starts to get cold before you put that on. And some of you people in warmer climates, it won't matter. But fondant kind of slows them down and gives them a high density nutrition in wintertime that they should be needing as an emergency resource only, not the main resource. So the other thing is they up the size of those packets. they were two pound packets now you can get five pound packets a single five pound fondant pack got my colonies through winter and they didn't even consume at all so that's the good news but please wait i'm saying get it have it be ready for it don't put it on until the nights get cold

and the bees are starting to cluster okay let's see after super is removed okay i've live syrup talked about it. And I want to encourage you to join a bee group, a bee club in your area. If there isn't one in your area, but there's other beekeepers that want to get together, I recommend starting to get together with other beekeepers, regardless of how they're keeping bees, so you can have this great exchange of ideas and experience and have people to bounce your own thinking off of. This is very important. There are people that make comments on some of my videos that lead me right down a path I haven't thought of, and it's beneficial to have input from lots of other beekeepers.

So if you haven't joined a bee club, think about it. Winter's coming. It's a great time to be social. Upcoming, we do, in my bee club, we do a monthly breakfast just at the local international house of pancakes. That's coming up this coming Wednesday for us. So if you can just get together with a group of beekeepers and start a fellowship, if one doesn't already exist,

reach out through social media. Who wants to talk about bees and say. stuff like that and then pretty soon you'll find that you get your own little network of people going together because sometimes you might need a piece of bee gear that you just don't have oh I have to expand I caught a swarm I don't have a hive to put them in does anybody have an extra hive they can give me in and I'll buy one in and I'll give you the new one when it shows up that kind of thing so being able to support one another join a club and get information from

other people and entertain what other people have to say observations they make is that they have, you might be surprised regardless of how long you've been a beekeeper, somebody can walk right in the door, make an observation, and shift something that you've been doing for a long time. So I hope you benefited from today's Q&A. And don't forget, if you want to submit your own topic for consideration for a future episode, please go to the wayto-be.org and fill out the form on the page, The Way to Be. Thanks for being here. I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and you have good things going on in your environment.