The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 276, 50% reduction in varroa mites without chemicals?

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/nuZ7vlF8C_E

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, September the 20th, and this is back here at beekeeping questions and answers episode number 276. I'm Frederick Dunn. And this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. We're coming up. Wow. September is just going away. Plenty of four is still out there. As you saw in the opening sequences, there's a lot going on. And you might wonder what the temperatures are outside before we get started with today's topics. And I'll tell you, it's 790. degrees Fahrenheit, which is 26 Celsius. Three mile per hour winds. So it's nice and mild out there, which is 4.8 kilometers per hour. And the best part, 49% relative humidity. Who cares about that? Well, we do because we're beekeepers. And that low humidity right now is helping our bees dry out their hives. I don't know about you guys, but here in the northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania, we have lots of bearding going on. because we're in the middle of a big nectar flow.

The, let's see, Cosmos, still going strong, of course, but those are only the ones that I plant. So what really matters are the natives that are out in the wider environment. So the golden rod, still strong. The asters, so many different varieties of asters, is actually pretty darn interesting. I walked around, I was looking at all the different asters. And here's one of the things I did this past week.

I had to thin some of the honey out on some of the hives. So I went through and I was going to pull the frames that were fully capped. And some of the frames half capped, half uncapped, but yet they were full all the way to the top of the cell. So what do you think I did? I took them. And one of the things you need to do if you're going to take uncapped cells of honey is you're going to want to test it with a refractometer. Refractometer is going to let you know what the water percentage is. Guess what the water percentage is on those first? that had uncapped honey. 7.1% that is very good just in case you didn't know.

Anything from 18 to 19 is okay 19 to 20 better watch yourself over 20 guaranteed to ferment so at 17.1 that met with the requirements of my supervisor who has clients as he told me waiting for honey so if you don't know who the supervisor is that's my nine-year-old grandson he was eight just turned nine had a party and he's older and more of a smart I mean smarter than ever now so if you want to know we're going to talk about please look down in the video description all the topics are there in order and there are going to be some links in there that will help you out today there's some research going on that you might be interested in so if you want to know what to where to go to submit

your own topic for consideration please go to my main website the way to be.org and there's a page also call the way to be, you can fill out that form there, and maybe we'll talk about whatever is on your mind related to backyard beekeeping. And we say backyard beekeeping, we're happy to deal with beginner topics, but we really cover everything that it could be any spectrum, anything in the spectrum of beekeeping. There's no limits. And of course I made everyone happy by putting out a video this past week on the update of my yellow jacket wass, which are in a dawn red wood tree in my backyard and I pulled out all the stops got people up very close and almost too personal based on some of the feedback I got I was told by some of the people that we are no longer

friends just because I am showing them pictures of a yellow jacket wastes that did not include killing them hitting with a flamethrower or blasting with an oversized squirt gun or something like that instead heaven forbid we're learning about them so that's ongoing And if you're one of the people that appreciates that, thank you so much. I think as beekeepers, it helps us out if we know a little bit more about the environment and the other animals, other insects, wasps in particular, sometimes hornets, that share the environment with their honeybees. Maybe they're not as big a threat as you might think.

So keep your mind open, learn some new stuff, or maybe just not be as afraid. I think it's interesting when beekeepers call me to come and deal with. with yellow jacket wasse or the European Hornets because really they're focused on bees and are unfamiliar with a lot of other insect species so I think it's it's good to learn a little bit and slow down and take your time so let's see what else is going on one of the things is coming up before we get started with the questions and there are not a lot of questions today so I have lots of time for filler in the cover shot today I was holding up two bags one of them is

this one. This is from Hive Alive, which I'm sure you've heard of. And the other one is just a Ziploc baggy. Now this is not full of sugar syrup. This is just water because I figured, man, if this thing breaks, I'd rather just have water everywhere. But these are the one gallon size jug, so for a size comparison. But here's the thing. When you get to the end of the year, I had a question recently, do I feed all of my beehives and I don't? It's only the ones that are light. It's always the late season swarm that has to be helped out. If you go and inspect your hives and you find out that they're just not storing enough capped honey to get them through winter and here in the state of

Pennsylvania see it may be different where you are. They need about 45 pounds of honey to get through winter. So I have a deep brood box and then a medium super over that that is just for the bees and that configuration remains the same unless it's a new colony they might have just a single brood box or something like that. If they're light this time of year, first of all that would be amazing. I would be concerned about the colony that was not very productive unless it's a newly hive swarm. So if you don't see a lot of activity in your landing boards right now of an established colony, it's worth an inspection. You want to look in there and find out

if they're queen right. They might have lost their queen or they might have swarmed recently. Swarming is not the end of the world. They still have a little bit of time but they're going to be in a pickle. So bag feeding, please do not put fondant on your hives yet and we're going to have to talk about this every week we talked about it at our beekeeper breakfast last Wednesday which was a lot of fun I'd like to say but the thing is if you put fondant on too soon or even sugar some people put dry sugar on there which is something I did for many years I took rapid round feeders I poured it full of a four pound bag of dry processed sugar and I just let

the bees work on it through winter so if you put this stuff on early they don't seem to pay a lot of attention to the dry sugar right now or even sugar bricks. But if you put fondant on, even fondant you make yourself or my preference is hive alive fondant, they go up into that pretty darn quick. In other words, they actually bypass their own honey to get to it. That's why I just want to reiterate, please wait until the nights are freezing, until the temperatures are dropping, and that's when you start to put on the fondant. So if you've got a colony that's struggling right now that needs a boost, that's why we're talking about syrup.

So one of the things that you can do, first of all, the delivery of this. This is from Hive Alive Alive. This is their easy feed syrup. That's why I'm talking about it. This packet is flat on the bottom and it domes up over the top. So you need a feeder shim to accommodate it. Standard feeder shim is two inches. So sometimes people just take a shallow super or even a medium super, put a on top of their inner cover and it leaves them a big space up there so you would not put this directly over the hole which is in the center of your inner cover for the bees to come up and feed on because you're going to take a needle and poke holes in the top of it that means you set it to the side of the hole and you could even put two of these up there these are two pounds a piece

put two of these up there bees come through the middle go up and they feed through the holes and then they just drain this down zero drowned B's, zero leaking packets. So they're convenient. Now they're expensive. So that's why I'm giving you options. I want you to have a lot to think about. First of all, the Hive Alive Alive Easy Feed, this is the label that was inside the box. It's kind of torn up a little bit. But no mixing, no feeding, no washing, no mess. It says this is a dose of Hive Alive. So that's the other thing I want to talk about as we get to the end of the year. Because when you finish removing honey from your hives. That's when you can back feed supplements and sugar syrup

and things like that to help a struggling colony of bees. So there's only one supplement that has a scientific study published that shows that it works and that it benefits your bees microbiome in the bee gut, right? And that's hive alive syrup. The hive alive syrup is premixed in that easy feed packet, which they just came out with this year. So I went online to look at, at the Hive Live website because they also have a little insert for their fondant packs that's like a little standoff, create space in there, so it won't collapse down on the fondant. I know we're talking about syrup right now, but while I'm thinking about this, I wanted to mention it. I went there, and of course, they're sold out, so you can't even get one of these little things that keeps it open.

So what I do is I take smoothie straws. I don't know if you know what those are, but smoothie straws are bigger in diameter than a normal straw and I have a whole pack of them of course I don't happen to have one sitting right here at the moment or I'd show it to you but anyway I clip them a little two two inch sections and I just once you cut the hole in your fondant pack I stick the little smoothie straws in there that keeps it puffed up and the smoothie straws are big enough in diameter for the bees to travel right through them so that keeps them open so your bees can clean out your fondant packs all the way to the corners and fondant packs do sit to over the hole in your inner cover.

So with these are the holes in them, sitting off to the side, the bees come up through, they go over the top, and they stick their tongues to the little pin holes. It seems like they're not big enough, but they are, and then we'll drink this down. So this helps them out. This is on par with pro sweet. A lot of you might be familiar with Manlakes ProSuite. I've used it in the past. Again, it's a premix. It's a heavy syrup. And so I did a little price check just before I came on today, just for you. I just for you. I'm just for you. ProSuite, so this is, if you get the easy syrup from Hive Alive, it comes nine two-pound packages. Okay, so we have 18 pounds of syrup. If you get a pro-sweet, it's 37, let's see. Pro-suite is 3795 per gallon, so comparably $56.92 for equal amount of Pro-suite, and this stuff costs $49.95. So they're both expensive.

So if you don't want to spend that kind of money and you decide you want to just mix up your own, buy your own sugar syrup, make the two to one. So two to one is 16 pounds of dry sugar to one gallon of water. So once you mix all that up, then you'll put your hive-alive supplement in it, the syrup, because we want to kick off our bees at the end of the year with a healthy microbiome. And then if you wanted to feed it with this method, that's why I showed you my, industrial heavy duty Ziploc baggy one gallon size so then you would just lay this on top of course this is a lot more fluid because it's just full of water but you could put that on

it holds a gallon I don't know how much I would want to put in there but same thing you just poke little holes in it and here's the difference between feeding this way and using let's say an inverted jar feeder with these little packets as the bees drink it down if you notice there's no air bubble in here. There's no expansion of the air inside the bag, whether it's the easy feed from Hive Alive or Ziploc bag, you have sugar syrup, you mix yourself, squeeze the air bubbles out. And then as they drink it down, it just collapses on itself. So when we get those nights where it's 39, 40 degrees Fahrenheit at night, and then in the daytime, it jumps all the way up to the 70s. If that were an inverted jar with an airspace in it, that airspace would

worm, expand, and express the syrup right down onto your bees. Now some people say, oh, the bees will keep up with that just fine. Well, I don't trust that in particular, so that's why I don't like that method personally. Because I've observed it in what? My observation hives. They put inverted jars upon there, and next thing you know, you've got syrup dripping out the bottom of the hive through the screen bottom board. And we're going to talk about screen bottom boards today too.

So these little packets make yourself or bonoom. they don't ooze out sugar syrup because you don't have the expansion and contraction because there's no air in there it's all liquid you cannot compress water think about it so that's enough for that so I covered the easy feed because I wanted you to know this ahead of time because I want it top of your mind I don't want any of your bees starving as you go into winter because then once we get below freezing liquids don't go on your hives anymore why don't we feed liquids in the wintertime. If it's super thick like honey you could probably get away with it but you're adding water to the bees. Bees are going to get their water inside the hive if you

have no top venting. You have condensation that will form below the cluster on the interior side walls and your water bees are going to get that resource and move that into your cluster for you. So we want to take care of our bees but you don't want to give them a bunch of water that they have to hold in their bodies and then wait until they can get out and do a cleansing flight once things get really cold. Now if you live somewhere where your bees can fly out every single day, it's never too cold for them to fly, or it gets to at least a couple of hours a day when your bees can fly out and do cleansing flights, then you can feed. Sugar syrup all winter long if you need to for a colony that's struggling. I'm also not a fan of putting a whole pile of supplements in your sugar.

sugar syrup because a lot of people ask me should you put can I just put a bunch of pollen in there should I put pollen traps out and mix the pollen into it and should I put some ultra bee dry pollen substitute into my sugar syrup and stuff like that please do not what they really need is the carbohydrate but Fred you just told us that this stuff has hive alive in it yes because the hive alive is in the syrup which acts on something that's attacking your bees microbiome, it is nozema, nozima serrana. So those are living organisms that are living inside your bee and making your bees sickly in a way that you don't notice. So it could shorten their lives. It could cause them all kinds of problems. But it also affects

their ability to digest resources. So if we can get nozema down in your hives. Now what if my bees don't have nozema? Then what would be the point of getting them a hive? Well, I suppose they speculate. You'd have to read the study, first of all, and there is a study. And you can go to my website because I linked it there to keep things easy. Because on my page where it says hive alive works, if you go there, any updates to the study or any new things that are learned about the benefits to your bees will be posted there. You can also just go directly to their website and read more about it.

So feed your bees but liquids. if you're in a cold climate where the bees are going to be stuck inside the hive for months weeks at a time in our case it's going to be several months Then you don't want to be feeding liquids. That's why we shift to fondant or Sugar breaks candy things like that. So I hope that's helpful Okay, what else are we going to do? If you have a question right now that's eating you up and you just have to know and you want to talk to somebody about it Please go to Facebook the way to be fellowship and you can ask if you're not a member you can ask to join and I guarantee there's no marketing, there is no pitching of products, there is no spam and there is zero politics. How cool is that?

So anyway let's get into question number one which comes from Chris from Northeast PA. So right here in my state. I've heard you talk about sealing the gaps between the feeder shim and the B-smart inner cover with expansion foam. You basically glue them together for good with the foam. with the foam it sounds messy if you ever want to separate the two thanks so yes that's what i do if you want to do a look on my website or my youtube channel i used to make my own feeder shims and the feeder shims were basically a medium box even though i just built it myself and i put the inner cover as part of this box and that was before be smart designs came out with this polysyrene insulated inner cover that's domed

that in other words feature-wise it's better off than what I was making myself completely out of wood. So one of the things I did was I didn't like it. So I didn't like the B-smart inner cover because of the way it left little gaps around the edges. So it sits on top of an 8-frame or a 10-frame standard Langstroth box. But what happened was there were little gaps there. So ants, for example, could get up in there. and the answer a problem because not only would they access any sugar syrup or feed resources that you provided on top of that insulated intercover, but they would also chew up the polystyrene and make nests in that insulation material because the way those intercovers are made,

there's a channels so that your bees can have a vented setup or you could flip that insert and then you have the channel closed so it's a non-vented setup, which is how I use it. But when you set it to non-ventant on the interior through the plastic, there's still little holes in it, and there's a hole in the outside that allows ants and things like that to get in and chew things apart. So I did two things. One, I cover those holes with a little piece of aluminumized tape or Reynolds aluminum foil. You cover those entrances, cover those holes that way, and now ants and things can't eat it. So now what do I do to keep those ants from getting in above that insulated intercover? those tiny gaps. I took 3M expansion foam. And they consider that a closed cell phone, but I put that around all the edges. I let it expand, build it up around the sides.

Did a whole video about it. If you want to see it, go to Frederick Dunn, YouTube, go up in the right hand search bar there and just type in feeder shim. And you'll see or the insulated intercover and you'll see my modifications. Those videos are listed. So then the question here is, does it become one, and it does. So now I have a box with the intercover, it's one unit. But if you ever needed to pull them apart, and it's happened inadvertently. So I've gone to pull one up because I'd forgotten that it did the expansion foam in there. And what happens is after that foam dries out, you can actually pull it off and it just holds the shape of that inner cover. In fact,

if you didn't want to bond the two, you could wipe the interior surface with petroleum jelly or something like that, kind of like a mold release. And then when you put the expansion foam it then it wouldn't adhere to it so now you've got a shape that you can pull it apart now the flip side of that if you want it to adhere and be really strong and not come apart you can damp it a little bit with water then spray the expansion foam and it bonds really well then if you ever needed to get apart just you know putty knife or something like that cut it away from the interior surfaces and take it off again because dried expansion foam is very easy to cut into work so it's really not that big a nightmare

not a huge mess, but they work really well. So I'm really happy to have those Be Smart insulated intercovers. They've changed winter survival a lot. And they've also changed how much talking about resources and how much your bees are going to need to consume going through winter by having an insulated inner cover. And in this case, I also use insulated outer covers. They consume far less, far fewer resources going through winter.

So that's question number one. Let's go to question number two. This is David from Houston, Texas. So in your videos you've discussed planting borage for bees, and I elected to plant borage in my garden last fall. Then it says, Wikipedia for borage states the following, toxicity, in addition to the liver toxic pyrolyzidine alkaloids found in the leaves and seed oil, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment has advised that

honey from Borge contains PAs and transferred to the honey through pollen collected at Borge plants and advised that commercial honey production could select for raw honey with limited PA content to prevent contamination. I'd like to hear your opinion on the subject. So that's a great question from David. And I'd like to fail safe. If you've been watching me at all. I don't like to play around with toxins or things that could hurt the people that are listening to me. So we need to talk about borage in general because think about where that study was done and what type of borage it is and I planted borage here. But the borage I planted here is common borage is what it's called. So borage officinalis. O-F-F-I-C-I-N-A-L-S. So the species is generally

safe to consume in moderation, however, it can contain low levels of PAs. So the thing is, as with anything, there are some plants in the environment that might contain materials in them that could be harmful even in the honey, even later when they get consumed by people. So we want to be aware, but Borage identifies a whole group of plants. So you really need to look into these things and that's why I always say question everything I'm very glad that this is being questioned because we have a creeping borage which is barago laxiflora laxiflora that species is generally considered safe but it's best to consume it in moderation there's also perennial borage barago longifolia sorry about all these names anyway this species is known to contain higher levels of p a's

making it potentially toxic if consumed in what? Large quantities. So I want to get that down too because there are other species that do have larger percentages of that. So the common borage, Barago officinalis, is what I've recommended, and that's the seed that I bought and shared with you, and that's what I'm growing here. It's low on that spectrum. So the other thing is, in order to get any kind of concentration of that, that would impact your health.

and I have to make a disclaimer here that I'm not a health professional. I'm not a dietitian. So I can't tell you from a medical authority vantage point, but based on my research, this is the one that provides the most for your bees and has the lowest potential impact on people. And the thing would be if your bees foraged exclusively on this, that's when those levels would come up.

So now we're talking about almost a monoculture. And I do regret not having more borage out there because my bees are bringing in those resources from a variety of environmental floral sources, right? So just like anything else, your diet, if it's wide and varied, you benefit from all those sources of nutrients, but you also mitigate any potentially harmful nutrient that would exist in high quantities or high concentrations that then can be unhealthy for people. So even confrhy, which we have here, I wouldn't want, you know, a gallon of confrhy honey, for example. Now, I don't know for a fact that is detrimental, but the plant has lots of toxic properties when it comes to people. The woman that I got my confrory from 20 years ago before I planted it here, she used to eat a leaf a day. One of the first things you look up on that, she was in her 80s.

One of the first things you look up is how detrimental that is to your health, how dangerous the plant can be. Some people use it as a source from medicinals, but you have to have the knowledge and ability and put it in a practice where you prepare it in such a way that you reduce its potential toxicity to people. But she swore by it, of course, and she just ate a leaf a day. So a leaf a day.

Now if that's all she ate, maybe that would be troublesome for her. But she has a good diet of lots of other things. So it's kind of the same thing, too. we hear about exalic acid, which gets used in beehives to treat for the varroa destructor mite. And you would say, well, yeah, exalic acid exists in a lot of other plant sources, kale, carrots, things like that. So it's everywhere in plants on some level.

So then people would say, but it's detrimental to your health. Well, I guess it could be if you ate a lot of some plant that had high concentrations of acalic acid. But what was determined by the Food and Drug Administration was that there wasn't enough, even when you're giving a dose of exhalic acid to a beehive in order to control the varodic rachycinemites. It's considered an organic treatment. And then, so what if there was some residue there? So they did pre-treatment tests of honey in those hives, and they did post-treatment tests of honey in those hives to see what the measured levels were of exhalic. acid and this is just an example of when the concerns were high but the results after

scientific evaluation demonstrated that it was not of concern. That's why now in most states you can use exhalic acid vaporization in colonies with your honey superson even if they're intended for human consumption because pre-treatment levels and post-treatment levels were insignificant as far as the differences. So it's just a matter of what the concentration is going to be. Now, would it be better if you're absolutely feeling safe to do nothing but plant 100% beneficial resources for your bees that could then be used for people? I would say, sure, that's probably pretty cool. But remember, your bees are going to fly up to three miles in every direction and you absolutely can't control the resources they're going to get

into. So that's why we want their forage to be diverse. So I'm providing diversity. But the good news, and I'm glad this question was asked, because to be honest, I had not looked into that any deeper than other, other than hearing it and seeing and learning that borage is a great pollinator resource. And so of course I planted it. There's some interesting things about it.

It, by the way, it's blooming right now. And Borage, my variety of that, um, re-loads its next next. So in other words, once a honey bee has been there and collected nectar and flown away, two minutes later, it's back at the same level of nectar loading that it had when the bee visited it the first time. So every couple of minutes, you can go back to that flower and just watch it, and the bees hit it like clockwork. So even the honeybees understand when to go back and get that nectar. So on the list of all of the borage varieties, the fish analysis,

pretty darn good. So I realize I gave a lengthy explanation, but I want you to understand my thought process behind that and if it were the one, for example, that they listed it. So for example, if said Barago longifolia, L-O-N-G-I-F-O-L-I-A, if that were what I was thinking about planting, I would stop. Just because of all the boorage, it's the high one. So moving right on. Great question. I'd like to be asked about. about things I've recommended and suggested, and if there's any risk, especially to human health and well-being, I definitely want to know.

I welcome those questions and challenges. Question number three comes from Devon, from Arlington, Kentucky. I heard someone the other day say, being able to read IPM gridded insert is an important skill for beekeepers. So if you don't know what IPM is, it's integrated pest management,

which means you're doing something to your hive configuration or the way you manage your bees or you're providing equipment that helps your bees manage pests and in this case bro-destructor mites so is there more than just counting mites that is used for and if so this would be a great topic to cover for us new beekeepers okay that's why i'm here that's why i'm talking about it right now so this ties in because there's a new product and i talked to this at our recent bee breakfast so now i'm going to share it with you uh bees smart designs we just finished talking about their insulated intercovers they have a new bottom board now if you watch my videos and you look at all the videos that show my different beehives sometimes I'll just do a video that like 35 landing boards and 10 minutes or something

like that you might notice you don't see a lot of white landing boards bottom boards on my beehives and that's because I did not like the one that came before this one. It had a stainless steel screen on the bottom. It bent around a little bit. It has holes in the side that sit on the B-smart. You guessed it? Hive stand. So screws to hold that together. So this is all designed to be part of a unit. The new one, when I got it, I thought, I don't know if this is going to be any better, but surprise, surprise, it actually is. So instead of the screen, and I'm going to talk about this integrated pest management because it's a good tie in here so i'm going to explain some stuff so be smart designs made a new bottom board i like this one it's tougher it's more rigid they've got a raised edge

across the back it's got little raised posts in the middle here that uh keep your box centered on it so it doesn't slide off it also has some advantages that i'm going to go over now he says that this is for or a 10-frame Langstroth box. These little plastic pieces here, there is a space in the insulated inner cover that exists just to hold these if you don't need them. So when your box is sitting on here, these segments would be wide open for your reads to come and go.

Then you have these inserts here. This is a mouse guard. So if that were to go on there, I'm going to get around to the integrated pest management, but I'm going to talk about all the features while we're here. So mouse guards go on, but let's say, I don't want my bees going through in and out the whole front. So the way these inserts are, you just flip them over. Now we close it up on the edge there.

Close it up on the edge over here. And now the bees would only come and go through the middle. Or maybe you just want your bees to come and go over here. Or maybe you've got three hives side by side and you have one enter through the side. The next hive enters through the middle and the other hive enters through the other side. because bees like to orient physically to the things that they see. So anyway, now we only have the middle open. Uh-oh, we have to close it up and transfer the bees.

So we're going to ship them somewhere. Now we flip this over and they can vent, but they can't get in and out because the box covers these holes up here, right? But then you might be saying, but Fred, ventilation, how do they breathe? I'm glad you asked. So let's get rid of these, but we'll pretend they're in place. Now it's going to take us to our pest management part.

This has an insert, which by the way, I didn't like the insert before. Do you know why? It wasn't tight enough up to this bottom. This is part of the integrated pest manager. Your varroa destructor mites would fall through these openings, which used to be a stainless steel screen, now it's this rigid plastic, and it's nice and firm. The varo mites would fall through,

and then you have to trap them underneath. them underneath. So they had an insert board before but when you looked at the back of the old one that insert board hung down. In fact I think there were two levels on it. So you could have it open so it would drop down a notch therefore now the back is open and if you did exhalic acid all the vapor just shot right out the back. Now it's not like that. Now we have a single position for the insert board which is part of integrated pest management and it snug up to the bottom. just the way I like it. Now if you've listened to me in the past, I like trays on the bottom. But now we're going to talk about pest management.

Look at this grid. Now if you go and look at these things online, you can get them from Dayton, a lot of different B suppliers sell them. And you'll see them sold as sticky boards. So I did look at Dayton today, D-D-O-H-O-H, however you want to say it, D-A-H-H, D-A-N-T, they're $5 a sheet with this grid and they're already sticky. You might notice with the great penmanship here that I did this one myself. I did this one myself today just because I knew it's going to talk to you about it. So now we have one-inch grids. What is the point of that?

The point is, so when the mites go through that in this case the B-Smart Design's ultimate bottom board, it's called everything from B-SmartDegs, designs is ultimate so once they go through and they get on here they tool around all kinds of other detritus shows up on the bottom here too this is fun I like inserts in this case I am going to be using these because now I like them all of a sudden I like the way it's made I see a lot of potential here so if you buy it for five bucks a piece good for you stick your board but here's the thing once everything gets on it, you know, because they get dirty pretty darn quick.

Once you do that, you're replacing the stickyboard. So mights fall through, get stuck in place, can't go anywhere. So I'm going to tell you how to do your own. Buy a packet of this core flute, whatever we want to call it, and mark your own grid. This is with a Sharpie, so it's indelible ink. And then you smear it with petroleum jelly, a really thin layer of petroleum jelly. just enough because here's what I've noticed and I did do a video which I don't know if I'll

dig that out and add it to the end of today's YouTube maybe Veroa mites are clumsy little pests because I've watched them tool around on the bottom and they'll interact with some little piece of propolis or some little piece of beeswax and little thing it's like it's more awkward than a turtle. They grab something like they're going to climb over, then they flip over on their back and they just lay there completely helpless. A Veroa destructor mite on its back. What if I had a model of one so I could show you what I'm talking about? So look at the way this thing is configured. Now of course this isn't life size. They're not this big, but that little Veroa destructor might will spool along. And of course I break out the macro lens right away because I have to get a video of it. I needed to see

how it was doing. Now this one was just groomed off of a bee. So it didn't fall down because of a varroa destructor mite treatment. It just got groomed off, fell through the bottom, got on the board. Now, if there's nothing sticky to hold it there, which was the case with the one that I was observing, it could, in theory, crawl around, get back up the wall, get back up through the screen, get back up inside the hive, and then get it back, get itself back on the body of a bee. These are female mites. They're capable of reproduction. That's why we want them all dead. So, let's tooling around, try to climb over something, flipped on its back. Darn that little rascal just could not get itself right side up again.

And then it was amazing to me how quickly it gave up. Unless another mite tuled over it or unless a honeybee walked over the top, which can't happen because this is happening underneath the screen, this thing is just going to lay there until it's dead. Isn't that sad? So, but now you smeared your Vaseline on it, your petroleum jelly. And the mite went through, made the mistake of falling through, getting groomed, or was being chased by bees. Bees do try to bite them. It's really frustrating to watch a bee have a mite climb onto it and the bee not even noticed that the mite just did that. I much rather see the

might get the mandible treatment from a grooming bee inside, which is another trait in bees. that helps them defend themselves from varroa destructor mites. This over grooming, this sensitivity to the mites, smelling them, understanding, and then they bite their little feet off. Another sad moment for the mite. So anyway, now they fall through because they got groomed and they're stuck.

Why? Because you smeared petroleum jelly on it. And there it was. Now, in the past, I've also recommended Pam cooking spray. but I also kind of like the petroleum jelly idea a little better. And then later you can wipe it all off. Now here's the thing. That mite was on the board and now we're counting them.

This is why we have the grid because we know that 11C had three mites on it. And part of the question was at what point would you treat for mites? So we put a brand new insert in here. You marked it all off. you taught your understudies, your grandsons, in my case the supervisor, how to use a ruler, how to measure out a grid, and how to establish a one-inch grid on a board, and then how to plot a grid. So this is great for those who have homeschoolers and want to teach a process, right? So now we have 14B, you had three mites, so you write that in your notes. There were two or three

other mites up here at G8. And so that's why we have the grid. It's up to you to decide. at what point you would go to treatment for your mite. Some people see a mite and it's time to treat, boom, go get them. But there is a new study, which I found very interesting. So once again, I'm thankful for Devin because Devin made me revisit something that I haven't looked at for a while. So what do I always do? I look up the sites and see what's going on.

And do you know there was another study published in July of 2024? That's fresh. So these were the results. And I'm going to link the study. You need to read the whole thing if you want to really get way down the rabbit hole and understand all their processes and exactly what the controls were, of course. Controls would be no bottom boards or no screens. And, you know, so they evaluate varroa mite levels in these colonies.

The colonies were all sized about the same, but this was the part that caught my eye here was the results. Colonies that had had sticky bottom boards. So that's what this would be in insert sticky, because you have a resource on it like the Vaseline, or you bought sticky boards for five bucks apiece, wherever you get them. They had 50% less. That's a big number.

Varroa infestation than colonies with conventional bottom boards at the end of the study. So if you want to know the duration, the conditions of the study, all of the parameters, which is why they publish papers. When you publish a paper on a study that you've done, First of all, you have to identify what the problem is what you hope to discover in the paper,

and then you set about writing this lengthy line-by-line statement of all the controls of your study. What kind of bottom board did you use? What climate were you in? What kind of beehive did you have? What kind of screen did you have above the sticky board? So all of these things have to be defined to make a very good, comprehensive, detail. study. So, but that was interesting to me because what I've always said in the past was based on studies done by Florida State. And they were the ones that came out with a 15% passive mite

control just by having screened bottom boards. Now, that's key. Screen bottom board does not necessarily say that they had something to catch the mites underneath. That meant that the screen was open to the outside and the mites would fall through. So when you do that, how do they know, many mites that were killing and how do they know what the mite load was in the hive to begin with and that's where the published studies come in they explain how they discern that right so with this one with the sticky boards 50% might control so now it starts to look like if we're doing other things too so we're approaching this through genetics so you've got bees that are varroa sensitive hygienic bees VsH, right? You might hear that acronym that's Veroa-sensitive hygienic bees. So in other words,

they don't put up with varro-destructor mites being in their hive. They also don't put up with them being in their pupa state. So in other words, when they have pupa and whether it's drones or workers, they can smell it right through the capping. They cut the capping open. They desiccate the mites, which means they dry them out. And sometimes they leave the cap-in open, and that, that bee still completes its growth and development, which is very interesting too. Or at other times, they recap it afterwards. So they're killing mites. They're actively seeking and chewing mites. Look up Purdue ankle biters if you want to find out more about bees that attack mites. So this is interesting. I'm going to include the study, but row infestation levels,

this was the other interesting part. For row infestation levels did not differ significantly, between the tubulous green and the conventional bottom boards. So this is bottom board configuration. Who cares? Now, no differences were observed in honey production between colonies from different groups. So in other words, they were getting a handle on the mites. They were knocking them down.

But the colonies did not significantly perform better with the higher mite loads and those with the lower mite loads. Now you might think, aha, see, you don't even have to treat for mites. Listen, this. is one study one off. This is not saying, let's look at this colony three years down the road with no treatment, the controls with no intervention on the road structure mites at all. You have to follow them for a longer period of time. This is why brand new beekeepers get bees. And if they're like me back when I started keeping bees, I thought, man, I don't want to treat those bees.

I want survivor stock. I don't want to treat them at all. I want them to adapt. And I want the bees that get killed by mites to die and I want the bees that live to live and then those are the ones that can survive the mites and that can seem that seems like a really good philosophy and selective breeding and all of that Darwinian beekeeping so it feels good but you have to follow them for several years to really recognize the long-term damage that the varroa destructor mites and the vectored diseases that they have with them. You have to see how that builds on a colony, how that builds up and eventually your colony can collapse or spread it to others. So there's so many studies going on. So don't get super excited and think this is all you need to do. You need to continue with all of your other monitoring and

evaluation. But this is very interesting to me. I hope you'll take the time to read the study July of 2024 sticky bottom boards because a lot of my beehives are on standard wooden bottom boards that don't have removable anything on them and that's because again long-term I need all these comparisons so I have those with trays those without those with solid bottom boards those with screens those with now we'll be putting these new B-smart designs bottom boards on because guess what no painting they never rust they'll never rot and integrated pest management and this insert is closed up enough that I can still do my favorite treatment which is oxalic acid vaporization and then we'll pull this out

and see after treatment how many mites do we get I'm always surprised when somebody sends me a picture first of all I'm not asking you to send me pictures but when almost every one of these little squares would have like three or four mites in it we're talking about hundreds of mites I've never had that in one of my beehives that is a real problem. So if you have removable inserts, you'll know what's going on and you'll understand what the mite loads are.

It also helps you determine the effectiveness of the treatment that you're using to kill the mites. Because the dying mites, when you do exhalic acid vaporization or whatever other treatment, if you use Formic Pro, or whatever it happens to be,

when the mites die, they fall through the bottom. If you have this type of, bottom board that can actually contain them and then you'll be able to see all the dead mites after the initial treatment so you get a sense of how effective your treatment is and that's why we often say did you treat for mites yeah treat it for mites so how what was your mite load after you treat it oh I don't know I just treat them well what was your mite load before you treat it for mites so I

don't know I just treat them all well see that's kind of a bad practice because you don't know first of all they even needed treatment And if they did need it and you did the treatment, you need to do a follow-up to count for mites. And some people are very resistant to killing bees to count mites. And that means the mite wash, right? 200 bees, 300 bees, whatever the mite wash that you use is. And they don't want to kill them to count the mites. So at your last treatment, put in a fresh board and see what the drop is.

So if your initial one, you had over 100 mites on the sticky bottom board. and you got rid of that, or if you use the petroleum jelly method, you clean it up and recoded it, and now you can use it again. If you did that and you did the treatments and the last treatment that you did, whatever the treatment you've chosen to use is, and now you only see three or four mites on the bottom, that demonstrates to me that your treatment was effective. Now your bees are ending up their productive year with a very low mite load. So all that comes because Devin asked this question.

And because Be Smart Designs came out with a new bottom board that I actually like. So we're in. It's good. Another thing I was thinking about while I'm on the subject. The way that, by the way, really tough. Good job, be smart designs. Anyway, what I was noticing here is the way that goes in, there is room. for an actual tray here. I don't know that a tray exists right now but how much more would I like it

if it were a tray I could slide in and it just has little wings on the sides that then would hold onto these edges as it goes in instead of that core flute now I have a reservoir which I personally like better. Another thing that we talk about in the wintertime condensation that forms inside the hive and drips down if you've got a solid bottom board I highly recommend you tip your solid bottom board slightly towards the front because if moisture builds up on a solid bottom board I do not want that to pool in the back I want it to trickle forward and pour out the front now if you've got a screen bottom board where does that moisture go it does not build up on the bottom of your hive it goes through the screen and in this case with just an insert if a lot of moisture developed inside and it dripped out here

it would just run down the sides of the insert because this is not watertight so a tray collects some moisture because that again I just one of those people that likes to know things to know things so when I pull out my trays I like to see what's in the tray so I sort through all that stuff and I also want to see how much moisture is collecting and because removable trays are partitioned I know if it's happening and it normally happens towards the forward third of your bottom board very little going on back here but there are a lot of things if you're just somebody who wants to know things and wants to see what's in the bottom What is that a lace wing larvae? That little thing looks like an ant lion. Look how ridiculous they are. So it's alive. The stuff that's in those trays. There's all kinds of little microorganisms moving around. So if you like tiny bugs, get trays. Maybe you could configure this to just set a tray under it and enclose the rest of it. Although the designer of this does not want this to sit on a solid surface. If you did that, what would happen? What if I just put this on a piece of plywood and had the insert there? You know it's going to move in under it? A mouse.

Almost right away. Probably the first night that it's out there. You're going to get checked out by mice. So that's it for that. I think I answered Devon's question. So IPM grid. As far as the numbers specific, how to read it is just plotting. You're just plotting where your mites are.

for your records, how many mites you found, and it helps you count them easier. If you have an ungritted sheet and just mites all over, it's very difficult to count them unless you're collecting them as you count them and taking them off the board. So it's fun, it's interesting, and it's a great learning tool. So did you know that that is the last question for today?

That's right, three questions. So we're in the fluff section. So, oh, I want to mention, this is possibly your last, chance for those switchgrass smoker pellets the volunteers that we have have burnt out so and I want to thank you those of you that supported it's a non-profit organization the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association was selling those pellets provided by earned seeds as smoker fuel and exclusively through the Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association we have a website there'll be a link down in the description

below but at the end of this month you might be seeing the end of those pellet sales so i want to give a shout out to the volunteers that we have that helped out with that because the non-profit the whole point of the profits from the pellet sales was to further honeybee research and education right all free no one was paid a dime so i want to give a shout out to bill and wendy who used their house as the staging area drove down collected these things and put it all together and they've been responding to you, the people that have bought it. And the feedback is overwhelmingly positive for the function of smoker pellets that just don't go out that last a long time that provide a cool, dense smoke that your bees respond to.

It is the best smoker fuel I have ever used. And also, the way volunteers are, people just show up to help out when there's work that needs to be done. and so I'm shouting out to Brent and Penny who showed up and did hours of boxing, packaging, and helping to ship out these pellets to people that cared and wanted to support the cause. So thank you for that. There is a link down below, but at the end of the month, that might be the end of it. So I was also told by Bill who runs that. Whoever puts in that last order for the pellets, we'll get a two for one. So two orders of pellets for the price of one. That'll be the last person. it'll just be a surprise a way of saying thank you so I appreciate the support the organization appreciates the support and it goes to a very good cause all

nonprofit nobody was paid so anyway the second part here last honey harvest so a lot of you are long done harvesting your honey but I just want to address those or in the northeastern United States for example that still have some nectar flow going on because we have it going on really strong so I wanted to mention that when you're about to pull off your tops because a lot of people that are brand new to be keeping have concerns or a little challenged about how do we pack down when there's so many bees and a hive and things like that so you have to really assess the population of the bees in the hive and they're working it right now so this is our last honey draw

because we're leaving them enough time so they can replenish what we've taken off by filling the lower cells. And I use always as my key as far as what's going on with the other hives. I look at the observation hives. And I have observation hives right now that are practically honeybound. In other words, I have a queen roaming around that has no place to put eggs right now. And for me, that's okay. Because we've got some rain in the forecast. It's going to be cooling down. And they'll be consuming the honey that's stored in the open cells first, and then that immediately can be used and made available for breed production for your bees. So I don't see that as a problem at all.

And all of my observation hives are just nine-frame hives. So that would be the equivalent of setting up a 10-frame deep and having that be the entire hive. So I look at those and see kind of what the productivity is and if things are really wet and so they're filling it with nectar. And that building smells fantastic because it's full of pollen and, of course, the nectar that's coming in. So for those that are packing down, you use a B-escape.

If you don't know what a B-escape is, please look it up. You can also go to my website, my YouTube channel, Frederick Dunn, and type in the search, B-escapes. And I make comparisons, and my favorite B-escape is the CERCEL B-E-E-E-E-E-Scape. You put it on for a day, so you put it on about this time of day. It's right in the middle of the afternoon now. And then tomorrow, at the same time, you would go back, and that's when you would pull the supers off and the bees will be down below. Now the other thing is I'd like to put the supers back on and let them clean up the frames because this time of year if you put those

supers back on so you mark them for the hives that they came off of and you do your best to put them back on the same hive that you removed it from just as a precaution against the potential of spreading around disease if there happens to be some kind of build-up in the comb and things like that. We're not spreading that to other beehives. So you put it back on you let them clean it up again for another day or several hours they go right to work on it by the way the weather's warm and if you have a rainy day it's a great way to put it on as a resource for them they clean it up really well then you're going to remove it the following day so i wouldn't leave that on for more than 24 hours we don't want them back filling it again with more nectar right

and honey so um then you take it off and it's time to put it in a storage so we're trying to pack down some people speculate that uh we're going to have a warm warmer season longer. In other words, falls really not going to hit by the calendar, right? In other words, we're getting warmer periods a year in the northeastern U.S. and that we're somehow going to have an extended nectar flow, that then the bees will continue to bring it in for longer. So some people are putting off that last harvest of honey and packing down their hives. And if that's your instinct and you feel like, ah, there's just too much coming in,

then you might want to stall a little bit on that. Worst case scenario, you take it off too soon, you pack them down too soon, you get a end of the month swarm, which would be really bad. I've not had in the past a colony swarm in October. So that's not to say it couldn't happen, but I've been doing this cycle this way for many years here and it has always worked, but you're going to have to reach your colonies. So then we're going to pack down, get them cleaned up. Also, as I've been saying right along, please process your honey as soon as possible.

Goldenrod honey, astor honey, and stuff like that. Solidifies, crystallizes very quick. My wife tells me, in a matter of days, it's already starting to look hazy in the jars, and we just harvested it. So some people I was seeing don't even take honey when the golden rod is blooming stuff because they just don't like it. It's too grainy. It's too sugary and gritty and whatever.

I like it. I think it's great. I think it's worth harvesting. Go ahead. Leave your bees with about 47 to 50 pounds of honey here in this part of the country if you're not venting the top and if you have insulated intercovers. So that's pretty good. Planning for winter feeding. So just as we open with today, start to plan and figure out which of your colonies need work and need help. And even if you're combining colonies, remember if we have a struggling colony and we combine that part, population with a stronger colony. We increase the colony population, which means if you get a week of rain, for example, which I really, by the way, wish would happen, they consume their resources so fast that you could end up having to supplemental feed them. So be thoughtful about whether or not you even want to combine a colony together, right? So supplemental feeding sugar syrup until it starts to get cold at night and two to one, the higher concentrations. some people like to open feed and I like to point out something else it's back in the studies

that is really interesting to me spirulina the spirulina powder is something I was using before and it is an algae treatment there's a new study about that and how effective that is for the bees and the only way to deliver it to them is in sugar syrup of course so this would be the time of after your supers are off. This is what it looks like. Spirulina. This is expired. I don't know what happens to algae when it expires.

But I've had this one since 2002. So I don't know. It might still be good. I mean, maybe they just have to put an expiration date on it. This has never been open. So the way, if for those of you who want to try this out, please read the study. So I will link the spirulina study. and show you what the benefits are and what's going on there.

I'll also explain how you mix it up. Because if you mix up sugar syrup, that stuff is the consistency of talcum powder. And that one is intended for human consumption. So it's a little, it's very fine, and of course it's organic and all that stuff. But if you go to take a couple tablespoons of that, you're going to put that into a half a gallon of sugar syrup,

you just dump it in there. It will not mix up in the sugar. sugar syrup. You'll get little clumps everywhere. It sticks all over your spoon. It's on the edges. It's so hard to mix up. So this is what you do. If you get, and this is the one that I chose, it's micro ingredients, USDA organic, vegan, non-GMO, blah, blah, blah, organic spirulina. I'll leave a link to this and where I got it. But what I did is I mix. I put the sugar syrup together. All right, let me back up. I take dry sugar. I put two tablespoons to four pounds of dry sugar. Two tablespoons, it's fairly enough, four pounds dry sugar. And I stir the dry ingredients together

until it's consistent, until it basically looks olive green. It looks army green. So you keep mixing that up until it's thoroughly mixed with just the dry sugar. Then you heat your water up, then you mix it all together and at that point what you end up with is a green sugar syrup and this is a fun test to do because I'm going to do it again by the way just for cakes now that it's resurfaced and now the studies are here supporting it by the way saying that it does a lot of things for the bees extensive really good stuff for the bees so I will be putting out a feeder of spirulina sugar syrup and regular sugar syrup the same consistency without the spirulina and we're going to see if the bees have a preference see if they even know

if it's good for them or not and then a lot of people say yeah well you know you're not going to get your kids eat broccoli so i don't know you haven't met my grandkids they walk around with broccoli and eat it like cotton candy they love it so anyway if there be a sense that this is value you know to their metabolism to their health and well-being and they go after it then it'll be fun to show that so if you want to spike your sugar syrup and your open feeding if you're one of those people then adding sugar and spirulina together and then mixing that with the water and coming up with a spirulina treat for your bees that you know is healthy for them then i think that's a great way to go so look for that i'll link the study down in the in the description of this video below and then that will hopefully help

you out if you really want to study up and learn more about it and what it's good for So one thing's for sure. It doesn't hurt them at all, and it's good for people, they say. So I want to thank you for being with me today and for listening, and I want to thank those who submitted their topics. I try to choose topics that I feel will be applicable to most viewers and listeners. And for those of you who may be wondering, of course, I'm doing this now at the very end. But this is also a podcast. So it's available through Pod Bean and others, IHeart Radio, and so on. all you have to do is Google the way to be podcast and you'll find out you can listen it's an entire

series thanks a lot for being here i hope you have a fantastic weekend and that all your bees are healthy and that they don't leave home and swarm on you