The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 279 October 11th 2024

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

This is the Audio Track from Today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/bp2OO3BsBpo  

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, October the 11th, and this is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 279. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is The Way to Be. So I'm really glad that you're here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down in the video description below and you'll see all the topics listed and any references or links that might be helpful associated with the topic. You might be wondering, hey Fred, where do you come up with those topics in the first place? Great question. Go to my website, thewayto-be.org, and click on the page, mark the way to be, and there's a form that you can fill out. You can also comment underneath any one of the videos on my YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn. And hopefully I'll see it. I do look at all comments, and I try to respond to those that are coming up, and sometimes someone will post a question that just can't wait for a Friday response.

So what would you do? You'd go to Facebook. way to be fellowship on Facebook and join up. There's always someone there 24-7, always somebody around the world will give you an answer to your current issue. So what else can we do? We can talk about the weather. 64.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 8 degrees 18 Celsius, 4.3 miles per hour, wind 7 kilometers per hour. 52% relative humidity. Think are nice and dry out there. Unfortunately, because we need rain here. Fortunately, for those who don't need rain, because we've had a lot of rain in this country this past couple of days. So, low rain up here, low chances. This is a perfect day. A perfect day not to be sitting in front of your

computer or your tablet or your phone or listening to this. Unless, oh, you could go outside and listen as a podcast. What's the name of the podcast? It's also called The Way to Be. You can just do a Google search the way to be podcast and you'll find it and you can listen while you're outside gardening and enjoying the sunshine that we have right now 64.6 Fahrenheit and sunny you might be wondering what's going on in the environment what is the deal with the bees and can they find what they need no they can't we're down to nothing but cosmos now and primarily we have some asters out there different varieties of asters. I was on the hunt for jewel weed yesterday because I was trying to impress some visitors with the touch-me-not behavior of the jewelweed seed pods and how they launched their

seeds out and we couldn't find any. So we're down to milkweed seed pods. We're coming up on a time when you could actually start planting for spring. So in other words, plant in the fall, they come up whenever the ground temperature warms up and times are right for you, wherever you live. Where do I live? You might be wondering, the northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania, northwestern part of the state. Ag Zone 4. I'm at 1,300 feet above sea level. So we have a lot of microclimates around here, and you probably do too, where you live. So what else can we talk about? I think that's it. Robbing risk is very high right now in the northeastern United States because it just goes in concert with the fact that forage is diminishing, and that means that we have. We have a surplus of workers that are unemployed. So, great chance to open feed if you want to.

If you've got some colonies that are lagging behind, this is the time to feed them. We'll talk more about that in the fluff section. So I want to thank those of you who did submit your questions and comments this week, and we'll get right into it with question number one. Comes from Linda Decker. Linda Decker, that's the YouTube channel name. Anyway, Fred, thank you for the update with your current experience.

Will you continue to use eco wood on new hives instead of pain? So this is in reference to a recent video I just published this week. And what I did is it was in response to a question I had from someone else about the finish on my beehives and how long it lasts. So I decided what the heck? I'll just go out there with the camera and I'll walk to a bunch of different varieties of hives that have been out and exposed to the weather. for several years in some cases. Of course, some of the hives are new, so we don't know their longevity.

But I have a variety of different finishes, including unfinished wood. And that depends on what kind of wood it is. But anyway, we're referencing specifically ecowood. Eco wood is not a finish. It's considered a treatment. It's a mineral treatment, by the way. Goes on like water.

And so it works out really well on woodenware like pine, for example. I have used it. also on Western Cedar. And if you use it on Cedar, the cedar gets really dark, really fast. Now, that Eco Wood is available through a lot of home centers.

Home Depot, Menards, Lowe's, they all carry it. You can look online, you can find it. Of course, it's on the Amazon, and what do you think I'm going to do? I'm going to give you a link to the Amazon resource so that if you want to, you can use an affiliate link and help me get a nickel for my trouble. So anyway, Eco Wood,

is a one-time treatment. So you soak your wood in it. The longer you soak it, the more sinks in. And one little packet, a dry packet, mixes with about five gallons of water. So it actually makes a lot. So I like to wait until I've got a bunch of unfinished wood ready to go and then I just dip it all. So eco wood is not so much in place of paint, depending on what it is you want to do. if you're expecting it to prevent your wood from cracking, splitting, and in some cases, even warping, eco wood does not stop that behavior. So what the heck does it stop? What does it do?

It even says in the instructions that it will heal cracks as they develop through the years. I have found that not to be true. Now maybe we're talking about tiny cracks, like little tiny crazing or stress cracking and stuff like that. Maybe it does work for that. but it definitely doesn't work on bee boxes where the joints are finger joints, dovetails if they're angled, and box joints are what we commonly see on beehives. So what I've said already to this commenter, I do like it.

So I like the way it looks. It has a natural look. It's a natural wood finish look. It kind of gets darker with each rain and thaw cycle. It gets a little bit darker. So it accelerates the aging look of your wood. without the wood deteriorating. So it's lasted for many years,

but you're going to have to be careful about how you assemble the woodenware, and I assemble and glue and screw it together before I treat it with eco wood, because I like the boxes to be together. And I just use a shallow pan to get one of those big plastic storage bins that's designed to go up under your bed, you know, the store socks and woolenware or whatever

you put under your bed. anyway. And I just fill it up with the five gallons. That leaves me with about four inch deep section, but it's also big enough to handle full-size Langstroth boxes, one side at a time, and then you're supposed to soak them for three minutes, then you just stack them outside, they dry out, they're ready to go. I soak them inside and outside, because another question I get about that, is it safe for bees? And then somebody will go to the website, and they'll look at the composition of Eco Wood, and then they'll say, whoa, dangerous to bees. Well, it would be if we gave it to the bees in that concentration,

but we're talking about a treatment of the wood, and that concentration is not the same once it's mixed, once it's prepared to be used in wood. In fact, it's used by a lot of commercial beekeepers for many years without incident. So I'm pretty confident suggesting eco-wood for beehive, woodenware, inside, outside makes no difference. It's going to be dry before you put it in with the bees.

and the concentration is the treatment concentration, not the little packet that comes that makes five gallons. So I hope that makes sense to people. The other thing is I leave some wood untreated, so the cedar is just going to last a really long time. I've had untreated cedar last for 20 years already. So that's interesting, and you might say, but Fred, you haven't been keeping bees for 20 years,

and that's true. I didn't start keeping bees until 2006. So how would I know that untreated cedar lasts so long? Because I have bluebird boxes, more than 30 of them, so that we can see the bluebirds nest and all that stuff, and we get tree swallows and all that other stuff, and of course we chase away the house sparrows. Anyway, so that's how I know that untreated boxes,

even an untreated pine box, for example, that we use for bird boxes, not occupied by or protected by honeybees. It can also last about six to ten years. So that's interesting too. You can get some use out of untreated wood. So the next thing was, and I'll just let you watch the video if you want to see what lasts the longest. But spoiler alert, the longest lasting finish, it's tied.

There are two finishes that are doing really, really well, but the painted wood, which is exterior semi-gloss latex. You'll find out the price goes up as soon as you jump to gloss and semi-gloss. any exterior latex paint. Some people prefer oil paint and primer and stuff like that and that's great. It's probably going to add another layer and the primer will of course sink in and that allows your paint to grip better. I haven't had much of a problem with paint peeling off of brand new boxes. So the other ones that we're watching years ago I did a review of the Hoover Hives, which are bees wax coated. So they're dipped with paraffin maybe the first time around so it sinks in. And then the final coat

is beeswax. Now Hoover Hive gets a lot of pushback and that's because they're being sold by a company that also sells Amish woodenware. And so people think it's kind of a shell game because the Hoover Hives actually come from China while the same company also sells some woodenware made by Amish builders, right? So it is from China. Hoover Hive is from China. There's no question. Okay, so then the other more natural finish that's out there that gets that same hot dip treat. and a lot of people have demoed this stuff but Endora Hive which comes from Nature's Image Farm they have one that I'm testing now but I've only had it out in the B yard for a year looks great so far I didn't get it until last January so

we're coming up on a full year and where I live we get rain snow everything in between so it's a great test yard for the resilience of different finishes and materials that people are using on the exterior of their beehives so I'm keeping an eye on a drawer hive, it's far better than Hoover hive finishes so far. And, but I don't have a lot to compare it to, because I don't have a lot of other wax-dipped hives, and I can't do that myself because big investment. I don't know if you've ever watched, like Kamen Reynolds, for example, use an old chicken scaldor to dip his hive boxes in. I think he's got some new high-tech paraffin dip system. I don't have any of that. Now, if you're thinking,

How could you afford to do that? There are wax melters that are pretty darn expensive, by the way. And you could wax dip your own stuff, but what I want people to understand is bees wax dipping by itself. First of all, you can't get the temperatures up high enough to make it soak into and displace moisture that's already in the pine, for example. and pine would be the most frequently dipped in hot wax and paraffin. So because the paraphon mixes can get much higher in temperature, therefore they're much more effective as the primary treatment. And then the final dip would be beeswax. Now the other question is if you find someone that supplies that and the only supplier other than Hoover Hive that I know of right now who's selling it is going to be Nature's Image Farm. So that's Greg Burns. And Indora Hive is what it's called. If you just want to

Google it. And that stuff you can buy ready to go and they've partnered with Premier. Premier is the one that's making the propola hive body so you get the propola interior. But what I would like to say is if you set up a wax dipped beehive and you're using it as a lure or a trap for swarms in spring, okay, if you put up a painted hive, someone also suggested that you could stain the hive. And I have a stained swarm trap that I could smell the stain on it, oil stain, a year later.

It was stinky, and it never got a swarm of bees. So I'm not saying that that's the cause, but I'm saying if it doesn't smell right, I don't think the bees are keen on investigating that as a space to occupy with their new swarm. Okay. So, but if it has bees wax in it, The same thing as sprinkling bits of propolis, sprinkling bits of bees wax and other things into a space that you hope your bees will voluntarily occupy. Likewise, if you've got boxes that are dipped in bees wax, real bees wax, then the bees, of course, get a sense that, wow, this must have been occupied before, and so then they green light it and go in to get it.

So this question is, will I continue to use eco wood instead of paint? Now it's in addition to. So some of the boxes get equal wood treatment. Some of my boxes are getting exterior, semi-gloss latex paint, and then you go to the paint store. And Valspar is what I like, by the way, because I'm a big fan of consumer reports and stuff,

so I look at things and see how long they last and what the finishes are like. And then you go in and you find out that a gallon of paint could cost you $35. Who's going to pay $35 for a can of paint to paint your beehive. Well, people that are very specific about the colors, the tertiary colors, the primary colors, all the things that make them happy in their bee yard. Or you could go into any paint center. You could go into true value where they mix paint. You could go into Home Depot

where they carry all these different brands. They have their own brands, but they also might carry Valspar, and you go to the paint counter and you make friends with those people. Why? Because there are picky people out in the world and they buy paint. custom tints, custom mixes, they buy gallons of it. Sometimes they get the five gallon thing and it's super expensive. They go home and they paint on whatever it is that they were hoping to match perfectly with their latest pair of socks. And guess what happens? It's a mismatch. It's a clash. And it makes them very upset. And then they bring it back to the store and they return it. And because it's a custom tent where because it's custom mixed, it doesn't go back on the shelf.

Where does it go? Behind the paint counter on the shelf down there. And I don't know why. they keep it, but now you can get that for up to 80% off the price. And guess what? Maybe not just make friends with the person behind the paint counter. Maybe you should make friends with the manager and say, hey, you got a problem with a bunch of paint that's built up in your paint center that they can't get rid of, and maybe you're actually taxing them to get rid of it, to unload it. They won't tell you it's there you have to ask for it. It's kind of like scratching debt. You have to ask. Got anything damaged that I could get at a cheap price, which is one of the things I always do. I want to go to a building center. So get the paint that's been returned, that is exterior grade,

and then just don't care about the color. Bring it home and mix it all up. Treat it like a tie-dye. Don't mix it all the way. Just pour them all together and see what you get when you roll it onto your boxes or something. If you don't care how things look, and all you care about is preservation against the elements, that's my advice to you. That's the end of question number one. So, ECO wood, great, paint. Number one, neck and neck with beeswags if you're trying to get the bees to move into your box. Okay, question number two comes from Brian Alex Dan.

This is the YouTube channel. Can someone please give me an answer on this? Can I add my brood booster to the hot sugar water, or do I have to wait for it to get room temperature before adding the brood booster stimulant? So this is not specifically for brood booster. And this gives me a chance to talk about something else. Brood booster is something I've tested, by the way. Beekeepers choice, I've tested.

Hive Alive, I've tested. And also, of course, honeybee healthy, who hasn't used that? It's like the household name in beekeeping supplements. But I'm going to mention Hive Alive right now. Why? Because this is the one that's actually a treatment. So it's not just a booster like this, here's how it plays because even in their instructions they caution you not to mix this with your sugar syrup

because here's why this is important. This time of year a lot of you are mixing heavy syrups. So what's a light syrup? Light syrup is one to one. What's one to one? Well that's pound for pound equal water and then dry sugar and then you mix it up. So two to one, just imagine this. A gallon of water weighs roughly eight pounds. Okay. So that's means I need 16 pounds of dry sugar mixed with eight pounds of water. That's a lot. Well, it's not called syrup for nothing. Okay. So the heavy syrup requires that you really heat that water. So you bring your water to a boil, you mix your sugar in while it's cooling down, and then you have a heavy sugar syrup. Now, don't put whatever your essential oils is, whether it's hive alive, whether

it's in this case brood booster beekeepers choice honey be healthy whatever it is wait until it's below 120 degrees Fahrenheit and then you won't be damaging all those nuanced additives that are inside your treatment whatever it is you're adding to your sugar syrup now sometimes the sugar syrup is just it just makes it smell good to the bees they sell it and call it an appetite stimulant. So I've done those tests too. Is it really an appetite stimulant? What would that mean? So in other words, if you've got a colony of bees, it doesn't look like they're wanting to take the sugar syrup. This is supposed to help them take the sugar syrup quicker or more readily or to find it, right? So being that, I'm recommending you feed inside your hive finding it's not a problem at all.

So the bees have demonstrated a clear preference for sugar syrup. with nothing else added to it at all. So they can get the carbohydrates, they can get that heavy sugar syrup, which by the way they will store as honey this time of year. That's why it's important before you feed any heavy syrups in the fall that you have already taken whatever you're going to take off for honey extraction and that we're now in a phase where we're packing down our hives for winter.

And notice that because it's frozen overnight, Now we've shifted modes. You can only feed a heavy sugar syrup or you're going to fond it and I'll talk about that more in the fluff section of today. So the real question is once we heat it up, how much you have to cool it down so it's no longer detrimental or compromises this really cool composition of the feed stimulant that you have as a preference below 120 degrees Fahrenheit would be good. The other thing is you wouldn't be putting it on your be hive at that temperature anyway. So go ahead and let that go right down. So keep the tabs down and the reason I recognize and talk about hive alive is there the only ones that have been able to offer me a actual scientific study that we can review how did they do the study? What were the results? And are these results that we can validate ourselves as backyard beekeepers? Well, if you can count nozema spores then you can validate whether or not it's working and a dose of hive alive is one gallon of mix and it doesn't say whether it has to be heavy sugar syrup

or light sugar syrup or somewhere in between. It's the dose of a gallon of sugar syrup with, in this case, 1.5 teaspoons per gallon of that, which means one of these bottles goes a long, long way. One of these lasts me more than a year, by the way. I have 42 colonies. But it doesn't go on all of my colonies because all of my colonies don't get fed, so it's only the weak ones.

I should, if I'm being a responsible beekeeper, and really want them to be vibrant and healthy, as they come into spring, I should dose every single colony. But let's be honest, I have some colonies right now that are honey bound. That, in fact, they've occupied so much real estate on the comb with honey, and they've capped it, that there's almost no room for brood. So if I'm going to try to boost them now, the other thing is, would they even consume it? If they don't need it, and the colony's full, I think, eh, I don't need it.

So if I've got colonies that are weak or have fallen behind, then those are the ones that are, you know, in my case, going to get the boost of hive alive. And hive alive is what I'm feeding now, even though I've tested all of the others, but keep in mind, if all you're trying to do is give them a carbohydrate, get their activity boosted,

maybe it's a colony that hasn't had the surplus foragers to go out there and bring in the resources they need, or maybe you're in a dearth. Your immediate response to that is to give them a sugar syrup that will be consumed and spread throughout the colony. What happens is you'll see an immediate turnaround. If you've got a colony where the bees are really lethargic, they can't forage and they should be foraging on a day

where you see other colonies foraging. If they've dwindled, then you risk losing them because they can't put foragers out into the world. And for some people that start winning and beekeeping, and they don't mind and they'll just let them expire. So I'm sharing with you so you have the choice to boost them with a sugar syrup. Question number three. This comes from 904Bs. Do you secure the double bubble gasket or just use the weight of the lid?

Okay, this was the thumbnail for today. We're going to talk about double bubble because I think it's funny to talk about it because I have a tiny obsession with it because it works so well and they're so versatile. I take double bubble and this is where I think, this comment comes from because it doesn't stay right on here but anyway I really improved my long langstroth hive winter survivability by making a quilt kind of out of double bubble so the long lankstroth hive lifted the lid open measured front to back measure the length it's a five-foot-long hive so I just rolled out my double bubble and I cut it and I let it stick out beyond the edges Now in this case, I covered the whole interior surface, brought the lid down, and it closes up all those little irregularities, little tiny gaps between the roof and the bottom of that hive. Now, keep in mind, the way my long lengthroth hive comes together is they meet flat.

In other words, they don't overlay like a telescoping cover would. So a telescoping cover prevents, you know, prevailing winds from just blasting into those gaps and joints. but vastly improved wintering when I put this stuff on. Because it just made it so air wasn't leaching in or out from inside the hive or from outside blowing in because that thing is exposed. It's in an area where it gets the full brunt of prevailing winds out of the west here. And so double bubble. I put a new thing this time of year when we look at a hive and we find out that we find out

that were bad beekeepers because we haven't kept up with our woodenware and things like that. So what we do is you look at the edges of your hive and if you see gaps, in fact, have your buddy or your grandchild or somebody go to the other side of the hive and shine a flashlight through it. And if you see light coming through, then you haven't sealed it and the bees have not sealed it.

This also happens when people take apart their hives late in the year because the bees have a very difficult time once the temperatures drop, getting propolis, and working their seals back up inside the hive. That's where this gasket material comes in. So it's not, you know, it's reflect tags. It's really not gasket material. But you could also cut out the inner area

and just have this be, you know, your standard woodenware is about three quarters of an inch thick. You could let it go a little beyond that and stick out beyond the edges. And that's where someone else said, yeah, but I get bugs and stuff coming in here and going into these edges. Now this is not double bubble. This is actually single bubble, which is pretty funny. Double bubble is just that double bubble thickness with this aluminum foil surface on it.

So that's where, also in the thumbnail today, there is this aluminum foil. I don't even know where I got it. But anyway, you probably can get it at any home center. This is Ramida 3.9 Mill, 2 inches by 65 feet. This aluminum foil tape and it's got this little backer paper on it that's very easy to peel off. And then what I do is I just run the tape along these edges, fold it over, and I create sealed edges. So if you're having a problem with critters getting into your double bubble edges, just seal it up with the aluminum foil or aluminum tape and you're good to go. But this can be used also underneath your insulated inner cover. Well, how would you do that?

Because you're going to feed right through the middle. It's easy. You just instead of cutting out the hole interior, you just cut out a little circle right here and put that under it, aligning with your insulated inner cover, then the bees can rise up through there and still feed, but they get the benefit of the rest of it

sealing outside air from blowing through the edges. And some of you have problems with little teeny weeny ants and stuff that can creep into those holes. This also defeats those openings so you don't have ants trying to take advantage of areas in your hive that your bees cannot pull lease. So it's just the way to the lid. I don't use any kind of adhesive. I do glue this stuff to the interior. So I've got gabled roofs on some of my hives like the flow hives, for example.

And so what I do is I just smear this with wood glue. So type bond three. And then I just let it get a little tacky and stick it right in there. And it's lasted a couple of years already. So I like that. If you've got interior surfaces, that you're just trying to coat with this, that are not in the working area of your bees. So this is up above your inner cover and your insulated intercover and your feeder shim and stuff. Then you can also just glue it to the side walls.

But as far as gase of material, it's not glued down. The bees glue it right up, though. Let me continue to talk about that for a second. The nucleus hives that have these migratory covers. I put this under the migratory cover now. and that has improved things but you'll notice that then it's laying right on the top bars of your langstroth frames and when I peel this up when you open the hive to look at it you do have to peel it up and guess what every little frame is outlined with propolis so your bees are propylizing the surface here

and you might be thinking doesn't that defeat the space that you've made for your bees and your langstroth hives which gives them bee space over the top of those frames that the bees can go across it does So it really glues this right to the frames. So now the bees have to go around the edges of the frames under the bottom and then back up. So it does take away that space over the top, which with my migratory covers, the benefit of adding this is much better. Now how much our value does this add if you're going to put it right on the frames and then a three-quarter inch migratory cover right on top? Well, it's like having an inch and a half migratory cover on there instead of just a three-quarter inch. So it adds some, it's not fantastic.

If you add an airspace, so if you had this stuff, an airspace, and then another layer of this, the R factor is exponentially increased. So again, by locking in the air and having no air exchange occurring up in the top of your hive. So that's it for the gasket question number three there. Moving on to number four. This comes from Maureen, Bethesda, Maryland. Question that occurred to me today while you are talking about robber bees. I know that bees carry nectar, lots of liquid in their crops.

Can they also carry honey, low moisture in their crops? Can they suck up something that thick? Can I associate winter eating of honey with bees and using water that is condensed in the hive mixed with a capped honey? Thanks. Okay, so here's the thing. Yes, honey bees can collect carrying their crop and transport home finished honey when bees rob other colonies and that's happening right now to one of my hives one of my hives is being robbed that's right you should go outside and look at all your hives and see if anything's being robbed and what's going on what's the status of the hive usually they're queenless they dwindled they can't defend their hive all your entrances should be reduced at this point in the year to prevent or reduce the chances of robbing some colonies are so weak so

small that they just can't defend themselves. So be aware of that. And yes, robber bees get right in there. They rip away at the covers of the cap honey. They go after anything that's uncapped first, which is pretty handy because they're going to clean out all of the unfinished honey if there is any in there. And just as described here in the wintertime, bees do use condensation inside the hive that they find. That's why condensation is so important to bees inside the hive in winter. winter because they're going to use it to help metabolize the honey, which is thick and viscous. And they do get their cluster up against the honey. And as they cover the honey, they warm it. And as it gets warm, they can chew the caps off. And then they can get the honey out.

And they can get this maximized carbohydrate resource that will give them the energy they need to keep the cluster warm, to keep the brood warm all the way through winter until spring. So bees that are foraging can also get finished honey because I have videos of it. In fact, I don't think, I haven't decided yet on my opening is for today, so I think it's bees flying with spirulina around them. But I've also done recent tests with honey in Ziploc baggies with little tiny holes in it. And then that lets the bees feed it back. And here's why I'm doing that.

Now, you get a lot of pushback on open feeding honey, and the reason is, honey can carry bacteria and disease. Now, honey in itself is antibacterial. We know that. There are diseases that can be born in the honey, and therefore are transported by any other bee that consumes that honey. Now, I want to explain my thinking on this. If you have an apiary and you are out away from a lot of other people, and you think that your bees are not spreading around the resources that they're already getting in their hive, you would be incorrect. Here's what goes on. There is a huge amount of drift going on, and bees are visiting each other's hives all the time. In fact, it's been said that there could be up to 20% of the occupants in your colony are not from that colony at any given time. So think of your apiary,

your backyard epiary as a community. And just consider that if one's got something, they've all got it, because they're all sharing and mixing and matching, and they're all over the place. So that doesn't mean that you should put honey out and let your neighbor's bees get it any more than you would want your bees to visit your neighbor

and get honey from them. Honey that is exposed is incredibly dangerous to the bees, not just because you can be spreading American foul brood, or you could be spreading European foul breed, for example. But open surface of heavy syrups and honey itself, if the bees contact it, they can get bogged down in it and drown quickly. So for those of you who have ever put out your equipment, after you've done an extraction, for example,

it's a favorite thing to do. Put it out, let the bees clean it up in your own apiary again. And you're feeding back honey, right? So, but the thing is, you ever see your bees land on that and they just can't get off of it? And then they try to fly away and they flip and their wings are stuck on it. So next thing, you know, you've got a pile of dead bees in whatever it is you're trying to clean up. So I highly recommend that you hose out, you know, extractors and things like that. Don't let the bees clean them up.

My exception to that is I let the bees clean up the frames that have been extracted that have honeycomb on them. And that's because they do such a good job of cleaning out everything. every cell and utilizing the leftover honey. The good news is there they have such good footing that you don't find a bunch of dead bees on frames that have been extracted. You do find a bunch of dead bees on pans in tubs in extractors and when you let them go after it like that they just get stuck and it's not good. So the solution to that that I'm playing with, I don't like to feed honey back to bees by the way. First of all, honey is fantastic. It's valuable, right? So, But one of the things that you might have honey in an extraction tank or an uncapping tank,

so you might have honey in the bottom of an uncapping tank that's full of particulates. And you just know if you put that in a jar, it's going to crystallize really fast because the more particulates there are in your honey, the more likely it is to set and crystallize, right? So that's a great thing that you want to start to think about feeding back to your bees. So letting them clean up the wax cappings, for example. I even stopped doing that. I rinse off the wax cappings and let them air dry and then those are going to be melted later and that's where I'm going to get my resource bees wax from, right? So, but the honey that's collected in the bottom, it seems like a lot. You can have a quart of honey in there,

depending on the scale of your operation, you could have quite a bit of honey left over. It's in the bottom that's been through a 200 micron screen or a 600 micron screen. One of my favorite uncapping tanks is made by the Pierce Company. And it has a 600 micron filter built into it to get the wax capping separate from the honey. And then that's an example of something you could feed back. So then how do we keep the bees from getting stuck in it and dyeing Ziplot freezer bag?

So I take a one gallon Ziplot freezer bag and I just take, if it's a gallon, I don't fill it with a gallon of honey. I fill it with half a gallon of honey. And that way it's got some leeway. It's a little tougher and I don't have to worry about it oozing out honey, right? And making a mess So here's the advantage of that. I talked about it before, but I'm going to talk about it again because it works so well and it's going on right now while I'm making this video I just take pins and poke little holes in the top of it not all the way down to the corners not around the periphery Just the top within you know two or three inches from the edges and what it does is it occupies the bees that would be

robbers. It also gives them 100% finished honey that they can take back to the hive and that they can use right away. And that's what they do, by the way, this time of year. They take that back and it gets consumed and utilized right away. It's rare that they would forge for that and then not use it up because we have cold nights. So once we drop below freezing, uncapped honey in process and finished gets consumed first. Caped honey. last resort. So that's our long-term stores. Okay, so by having that Ziploc baggie out there, there are wasps on it. There are bald-faced hornets, which are just wass. It's just a common name that distinguishes them. European hornets showed up, and they spend very little time at those feeding

packs, and that's because they can't get into them. So even just those little pinholes, the honeybees can get their proboscis in there, they can get their tongue in there, and they can access it. And those are the target insects that we're trying to give the honey back to. So, and then that's honey that was going to crystallize anyway. It was going to be bad. You weren't going to use it. Why not feed a bag in that way? So the reason I was testing it like that is if I want to put that inside a hive. So let's talk about that. I wanted to make sure before I put a Ziploc baggie inside a hive that there's not going to be any circumstance where it's going to leak.

Because honey dripping down on your bees inside the hive is hugely detrimental. Now if they can keep up with it, that's great. You're all set. No problem. So if you've got a feeder that oozes a little bit and the bees can keep up with it, that's fine. Where are most feeder holes located on your inner cover? Dead center. I don't like that.

But it's on a practical end. It makes sense. You're what are clusters in the middle. They come straight up underneath that resource, therefore the warmth, the secondary warmth from the cluster also warms the surface of the honey or whatever the food is that you've got directly in the center. And then it allows the bees to metabolize that easier. However, if we want to let them feed and we don't want, if you've got a jar up there that has an airspace in it and that airspace expands and then we've got, as we had last night, it drops at 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

But then right now it's in the 60s. look at that temperature increase. If I add a half a jar that's inverted with an airspace in it, as that temperature rose, the air expands, and it would express out the honey, the liquid, whatever it is it's in that jar, down onto the bees. And if it's honey, they have a very difficult time coping with it. So, Ziploc baggie, no air in it. As the bees consume it, it just closes down on it. So here's another thing. I have a feeder shim on top of the hive. insulated inner cover. So I can't put that bag on top of that center hole in the insulated inner cover because the bees can't access it because remember the holes are on the top. So I move that

bag off to the side and then you might be thinking to yourself but yeah there's a big space in there won't they build a bunch of beeswax up in there and you'll have a bunch of feral comb to deal with? Yeah, they would if this were the warm time of year, but it's not. Things are cooling down. So we've got frosty temperatures at night. So the bees are not in comb building mode this time of year. Therefore, you can pull the plug out of that center hole. You can put your little bags up there. And this is equal whether you're making your own. I also highly recommend the new easy feed syrup that comes pre-bagged. from Hive Alive, Google it, look at it, go to my website and click on the page marked Hive Alive Works.

The science is there. Okay, so they go up in there, and they can access to feed, and then they can go right back down. This doesn't mean they're going to go up there and suddenly build a bunch of comb, and now you're going to have brood up there and everything else, because it's the wrong time of year for that to happen. They're already anchored by the egg and brood production that's already going on late in the year, down below your stored honey inside that hive. So that's when I'm testing it.

Test approved. It does not leak. It allows the bees to access it and gives them something to do besides rob each other. Now if you happen to live in an area because I did notice that there was a comment that some feeding is illegal. If some feeding is illegal where you live, then don't open feed. It's that simple. I believe in Australia, in New South Wales,

it is illegal to open feed. I don't know about New Zealand. And I understand the concerns are that your bees will rub shoulders at the feeding station and that they'll spread disease. And we do not want disease spread. So if you're just feeding your own bees, I fall back on it's a village. So all of my bees are mixing and matching anyway. All this comes from Maureen's question about whether or not bees will transport 100% finished honey.

Yes, they will. When they go to sip it, you'll see their mandible opens up and they really have to lap it in. If we have a really thin syrup or even if we have water bees, they keep their mandibles closed altogether, and then their little tongue, their gloss that comes out and then it draws the liquid in. And in some cases, the tongue doesn't move at all to draw up the syrup. If it's really, really light or if it's water, for example. Okay, moving on to question number five. This comes from Hunt Lady.

How should I put out comb for my bees? See, we're on the same thread here. How should I put out comb for my bees to clean up so that the red ants don't swarm it? Okay, yeah, this is a different question. I set up a station covered in foil and squirted dish soap along the walls, but the darn ants still got into it. I also made the mistake of putting more comb residue from a cutout Then they could clean up in one day.

I had to leave it out overnight. I'm anticipating a red ant mess that I'll have to drown tomorrow, possibly getting ant bites. I expressly wanted to use the wags. Update, surprise. Just went out with a flashlight and not only had the bees all gone for the night, but the ants were in their nest as well. There were several cabbage butterflies.

Okay, so if you're putting out resources and you don't want ants to get to your stuff, we have to create a moat system that your ants can't cross. So some of the hummingbird feeders, my wife feeds hummingbirds, and we have the suspended feeders that have a water moat in the center of it. So anything that follows the hook down, like the ants would, they have to cross the moat and then get to the sugar syrup that's for hummingbirds, which is much lighter, a much lower amount of sucrose and what you're giving to your honeybees. So anyway, getting them out there to clean things up, if you set up a little table for them, then put a pie pan underneath each table.

Pie pans, table leg. Pie pans are dirt cheap. You can also use old paint buckets and things like that. Is it enough just to add water? I don't know if you've noticed, but ants can walk on water. They scoot right along the top of it, and sometimes the ants connect to one another, and they form an ant bridge, and then they're walking across each other, and then they're going in. And I know from my time living in Charleston, South Carolina, that fire.

ants are no fun. I've been attacked by those and they are little jerks for sure. But here's the thing. We don't want them to form an ant bridge. So we need a water reservoir that your stand sits on and the ants have no physical path to whatever the resources and you happen to be putting out there in this case frames of extracted or cutout frames, right, that we're trying to cycle back to the bees. Add dish soap to the water. Does need even take a lot. All we have to do is break the surface tension. What? This show, would I recommend? Just happen to have it right here. Done, ultra-free and clear. I always say this because you can put this anywhere and it's part of their Pure Essentials line, which means that it biodegrades. So it's not

bad for the environment. None of the detergents and stuff. I don't know all the details about what's bad for the environment. I just know that picking something and recommend, you know, Don because they're the ones that volunteer their resource whenever wildlife needs to be rehabilitated and degreased after they've been exposed to petroleum spills in our bays and stuff like that. So Don Ultrafrine Clear is going to break the surface tension on the water. The little ants can't get across. They will be sinking and they'll be wishing their mothers never met their fathers when they start going down in that soapy water. Now the other thing is you're going to have to keep up with it because I know that where Hunt Lady here lives a very dry arid region, so it'll be drying out, so you're going to have to replenish that every day.

So keep the ants off your stuff. Don't get bitten and stung by those ants. Okay, so moving on to number six. Illuminate. Interesting observation today on my landing boards of seven of my 16 hives. those solid black bees that I've seen at feeding stations in previous years are now living within some of my colonies. Wasn't like that a couple days ago. They are slightly smaller than my bees, but working right alongside them and bringing in pollen. Very cool to see how many there are. I wonder if a colony of them nearby was collapsing and needed homes. So there are a lot of possibilities here.

these dark colored bees do show up a lot but here's something i noticed too this time of year there are a lot of hairless bees zipping around too if there's a lot of competition if there's a rob out going on so if there's a colony that has collapsed which is a suspicion here if the colonies collapse and the bees are robbing it out you know what they're scrambling all over each other and there's a lot of fighting and scuffling going on and i noticed that bees that engage in a lot of fighting and scrapping at a feeding station or a place that's being robbed out like that they end up losing a lot of their hairs and the more hair they lose the darker they look and some of them look completely black and shiny like those weird looking

oil beetles look that up if you want to be creeped out some time but so this is part of it i'm not saying they aren't all black bees they could be but also some of them are losing their hair and then what's left is a black bee there are bees that have like a dark bee there are bees that have like a dark burgundy colored exoskeleton right but uh the really dark bees they're a welcome site for me i love it when i see an all black or really dark queen because those tend to be really cold weather hardy bees overall but you could see a sudden change in the population or in the appearance of your workforce for your bees because when they do lose a queen they have a tendency to just follow other queen pheromones around and zip right into how

that they don't even originally come from. This is the drift that I was talking about earlier. And in my presentations, my in-person presentations that are coming up this year, I'm going to show dramatic examples of bee drift. So it's a lot of fun to see and know what's going on, but bees are pretty fickle when it comes to jumping ship and leaving the colony that they're actually belonging to and just joining another one out of the blue. So I think this happens to a lot of bees, a lot of colonies that have lost their queen, the pheromones reduced as a time of year when they're not going to replace the queen or they can't. They just didn't have the workforce.

Or they do swarm and then the queen goes out to get mated. Remember I explained before, this is the time of year where we have a high number of predators on the wing. Your chances of mating a queen in my neck of the woods are very low because everything is out there maximizing its resources and its concerns. to survive winter. There are queen yellow jackets everywhere right now and there are little drones flying around everywhere. In fact, I just collected a European Hornet drone. That was a lot of fun. And I've been grabbing bald-faced hornet drones. I didn't realize their cuticle is so slippery that they just, it's like you grab them and they just snap right out of your fingers. It's amazing. You should try

grabbing bald-faced hornets sometime 100% risk I accept no responsibility if things go bad for you But you grab them they just get right out of your fingers so those are amazing with the European hornets They're easy to grab now you may wish you didn't grab them So fair warning there you better know what you're looking at if you think you're gonna grab a European hornet drone know for sure that that's what you're grabbing they also have very efficient flesh cutting mandibles. Be aware of that too if you're going to go out hornet grabbing. So anyway yeah darker bees they could easily

colonies are collapsing this time of year and a lot of people will say this commercial beekeepers number crunchers people that are really concerned about return on their investment do not go into winter with low-performing colonies colonies that need a lot of help. They take their losses in the fall because why just let them go through? Now here's the other thing I want you to think about. A lot of people will be worried about, I don't have small high beetles, that's no big deal for me. The wax moths, so let's say you had a colony, you go out right after you watch this.

You start thinking, oh, no, I might have a colony that has, you know, collapsing and they're getting robbed and everything else. I've got to go check them out. And now I need to take it all apart because wax mods are going to go in there and they're going to consume all the beeswax and the resources. They're going to mess up the whole thing. here's the thing. It's already freezing at night. Freezing at night will kill the wax moth larvae. It'll also wipe out their eggs so that they don't succeed. So your chances of having stored equipment this time of year being invaded by wax moths. So the wax moth comes in, lays the eggs, and then of course the eggs hatch, and they've got these little worms chewing their

way through everything. Those little worms can chew wood and everything. You know what else they can chew, which is really funny? They chew plastic. They put a bunch of them in plastic bags. like the little Walmart shopping bags and they had wax worms in there and they were just holding them in that little bag for a while and they realized that hey these wax worms are all over the table what the heck is going on it looked like they chewed holes through the shopping bags to get out I mean it makes sense they get in the bag they chew through the bag they get away that's their job to survive right but so the question was did they just chew a hole in the shopping bags to get out or did they eat the plastic and if they ate the plastic did that digest the plastic and if they digested the plastic did the product of that worm poo demonstrate that the plastic was mitigated in other words did it turn into something besides plastic or did it become a microplastic which further pollutes.

Guess what? They chewed the plastic, digested the plastic, pooped out the plastic, and the scatologists, the experts in poo, discovered that it was broken down and therefore now organic

and not a synthetic. Sounds like somebody might be wanting to set something up like that. But anyway, back to the wax moths. Not a concern right now because freezing temps at night are going to kill off the larvae and they're not going to make it.

So a robbed out colony, in other words, is not going to turn into a huge mess. Now, ultimately, between now and spring, when the weather warrants back up, or if you're in an area that doesn't hit freezing temps, you do have to do something with those colonies right away. If it's a dead out, clean it up now because you're going to lose your frames and stuff. Other critters are going to move in. Mice too, if your openings are too big on the entrance. So moving into question number seven.

says here this is from popcorn and it says fondant can honeybees store hive-alive fondent feed now this is the thing that we really don't need to get into can they store this can they store that anything that you're feeding your bees so here's the failing safe part in the event that you have honey supers on that you still plan to use for consumption so if you put fondant on Specifically, hive-alive faunit. What does that even look like? Oh look. There happens to be one right here. This is hive-alive fondant. This is one of the big packs.

This is the five-pound pack. So if you put this on your hive, you cut your hole in it, the bees get up there, they start to use it. Would they take it from in here and would they start to store it in the frames in your honey super in the hive? I would have to say there's always that potential. It's extremely unlikely that they would do it because when they're accessing this resource here, it generally goes directly to consumption for their immediate use. It's like these athletes that take these, you know,

these Vita Power packs and stuff that look like little ketchup squatters that they squirt on their tongue and they get a boost of energy and off they go. That's kind of the purpose of fond. They get their carbohydrate boost and the bees that access it up in your hive in the feeder shim hopefully that you have. Then they distribute that to the other bees in the workforce down below. So they're in a mode where they're really not storing a lot of resources. This is also why, and we're cutting into the fluff section here already.

This is why now that we've got freezing temps at night, the metabolism of your super organism if we look at bees as one giant living thing the metabolism's changing so now they're in survival mode so they've put on a lot of fat through the year so just like the bears that are roaming around right now that are super heavy because the environment has provided huge resources for them they put on all these fat layers well the fat layer for your colony is the stored honey and the resources that they have there so they've got that this is an insurance policy so do i put this in other words do i have 42 of these am i going to put them all out no um i am putting these as my emergency resource on

now that we have freezing nights this is going to sit right on top of that hole in the center of my insulated inner cover now if you've got a regular standard intercover it still goes on that you got the hole in the bottom you put it there it stays there if you have perfect luck they will not consume all of this going through winter and here's the good news i did these last year because they came out with the five-pounders they had two-pounders before that i still like those i used the two-pounders because they cut those up and those are what go into the feeders on the apame hives and stuff like that you can cut them up and just stick them in there they used a hundred percent of the fondant that i put into the apomah hives so that worked these were put on my standard langstroths these were put on

what else i did not put any supplemental feed on the long langstroth it didn't get any supplemental feed at all because I just want to see what would happen and they're huge so the colony is fantastic so I put this on other standard lengths and just to see how far it would go I did not have a single colony consume 100% of one of these so maybe I don't even need five pounders maybe only need the two pounders so you decide what you need I had a friend recently asked me one of my mentees how many of these should he get for winter and I said two of the two pounders that way hold one in reserve they have a shelf life of two years hold one in reserve and put one on your hive and as they get through two-thirds to you know three-quarters of it then you go ahead and swap them out don't let them be

empty like when you get one of those days where it gets to be 35 degrees Fahrenheit and it's sunny outside and you just decide to take a peek pull the lid look inside and because these are clear you can see where they're at like this one expires in October of 2020 So I still get a year to use it. And anyway, then you'll swap them out. And when you swap them, that's the good news. You're not pulling the hive apart. You're only pulling up your fondant pack,

putting another one right down. And the other thing is that they came out with, which I'm very disappointed about right now, is they have this little blue plastic standoff that's a circle and one side of it actually cuts the hole for you. I didn't have any problems cut in the hole. that was no big deal. But you cut the hole with that little circle and you flip it around and has these little feet that go into this and acts like one of those pizza box plastic things.

You know how the pizza box they put it in there so you wouldn't smash the top of the box down on the pizza and mess it up for those of you who get pizzas delivered. They have a plastic thing that pops this up so that while the bees consume the resources, it doesn't collapse down on top of them. So I think that's really handy and I told them right. a way that I wanted one so I ordered that and I go on the website and what the heck they're out of them. So in fact they ran out of the fondin again but now I think it's back and stop. So once again, if you don't know where to find it, there's a link to it. I also link you to the study so you can

understand what hive alive does for your bees and what it doesn't do and you can be the judge for yourself. But fondant this week if you're in my neck of the woods, We're in the green zone for swapping things out. Liquid transitioning to fondant. Now, some people put on sugar bricks or dry sugar and things like that. And you can do that. The bees have a much more difficult time metabolizing dry sugar. So the next question might be, if we put in a sugar brick or a sugar block or a candy board

or something like that, do they store that resource in the hive? So I have to give you the same answer. Highly, highly unlikely that they would store it. It takes them so much effort to access it that they're just going to metabolize it right away and they're going to distribute that. So you kind of have like little candy dealers that collect it all, do all the work, and then they bring it down and then they migrate those resources in and through trophylaxis. They share that with the other bees that are down in the brood area, for example.

So nurse bees that are in the brood area don't leave the cluster and push their way up and go to these resources and then bring them back down in. They also don't push their way out, get to the water that's hopefully condensing on the interior surface of your hive on the side walls down below the cluster. They don't push out and do that. We have water bees whose job it is to do that. So they go out there, they get the water, they push back in, and then they provide that resource to the bees that are doing all the work because we have heater bees. You've got bees that are using their thorax that are heating up the area for the brood because guess what temperature the brood has to be. even in the middle of winter. Look outside when there's a blowing storm and we've got 30 mile

an hour wind gusts and it's minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside that beehive in the middle of that cluster there is some brood and it has to be between 94 and 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Most commonly 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Bees have to generate that heat and keep that cluster keep that brood alive. And so the bees that are going around, that are bringing these resources down, and then, of course, that entire cluster tends to move. And here's the problem when you have just a tiny collection of bees going into winter. They have a very difficult time multitasking. That's why they're in so much trouble so easily. Number one, the space they're in might be too big. The honey that they need to access might be too far away, way up inside the hive, way up,

above them and well out of the secondary warmth that's coming off of them. This is why we pack down our hives going into winter. If you've got, because you might think two or three boxes full of capped honey is going to be fantastic. My bees are going to do great. But your cluster is all the way down six inches above your entrance. That area way up at the top will be cold early in the morning and condensation can form on that capped honey early in the morning.

then when it thaws, right, when it, when it warms up a little in condensation forms and the driplets start going down, where are they going to drip directly on the bees? It's out of their control. So sometimes your cluster of bees will migrate to a back wall or to an east wall or to a corner to avoid this dripage if you've got a non-condensing hive. So we want the hive to be sized for the bees. And this is why Miracle of Miracle's, tiny clusters, do survive in small boxes, nukes, for example, it can get through winter. But they need an emergency resource above it so that you need, there are nucleus hive feeder shims.

If you don't have one already and you're in an area where it could get cold or you can get extended periods of rain and things like that, you need to be able to provide an emergency resource for your bees. These are livestock. you are keeping and managing them. These are not feral colonies. And if you want them to live, then those are the things that you can do to make that happen. So we're in the fluff section. As I mentioned, robbing risk is high. Make sure entrances are all reduced now. I've already reduced all of mine. I have one colony that is being robbed, and that's because they lost her

queen, she didn't mate, had a decision to make, try to, what could I? Could I? to requeen them, I can buy a new queen and bring her in. Now, if you did that, a mated queen, she has to be mated, other than she can't fly out this time of year. The drones are all being kicked out. The drones are being starved and killed. So right now, if I had somebody that had a made it queen, I could bring her in. I can combine colonies. Now here's the problem with that, this time of year. We have to add a box. We have to swap frames. We're breaking a part a hive to combine colonies or we're adding a lot of space without adding a lot of bees. So the other side of that is we can just let them run their course.

A lot of them will move out and move into other hives. Some of the laying workers, those that become laying workers after three weeks of being queenless, will try to rear these drones. And that's why sometimes when you're looking at a colony that looks like they're in trouble. And you see, oh, but they have brood. And you see these little capped brood areas. But you see the cappings are half open and some of these heads are poking out. Look at those little heads.

and you'll find out that it's likely most of those are drones. So what's been happening is you've got a dwindling workforce without replacements, and they're trying to just get their genetics out there, and they're just dwindling until there's nothing left. And on top of everything else, they get robbed out because other bees, check them out, and that's it. So once they are robbed out, you could close them up to prevent other bees from getting in there. You can save whatever resources there are.

you are going to want to clean out any dead bees that are in the hive on the bottom board get them all out of there because the smell of dead bees smells like a dead animal they are dead animals and then you'll find out that other bees won't want to occupy that box in spring so that becomes next year's swarm box so clean things out and while we're talking about cleaning things out if you've been following me and like some of my ideas regarding how to configure your hives screen bottom boards that are enclosed that have removable trays underneath. So about half of my hives have removable trays, the rest have solid bottom boards and things like that.

So this is the time to be pulling out your trays. Don't just dump the contents. Look to see what your might loads are and see what's going on in that hive. But cleaning out the trays, leaving no residue in there, because that contributes to robbing, by the way. If there's pollen bits and stuff down there, when pollen falls through the screen on your, bottom board and goes into these trays, it has nectar in it. It smells sweet. It is appetizing.

And that's why you may see robber or potential robber bees trying to get into the bottom of your hive and going after the hives that have vents in them that have trays in the bottom. And that's a good sign for you that you better be doing some tray maintenance and cleaning those out. I have duplicates of all my trays so that when I go out there, I'm pulling the tray out that's dirty and I'm putting a replacement in right away don't have to visit again so and then we clean them out and look at what's in that we're looking for mites right now I want to see if anybody's really in big trouble so I already have a note here time for fondant temps at night are below freezing so that's the key right there zip-block baggies work for heavy syrup poke tiny holes in the top

it's a slow release heavy syrup no leakage no expansion and contraction due to weather the changes in the morning from cold to warm in the afternoon. Wasps can't access it. Bees have a huge advantage there. Let's see. And sea salt still in demand. Two teaspoons of morton sea salt per quart of water. Bees are going for that really strong. They're showing a preference for that over regular fresh water right now. So their demand for salts, for whatever the reason is, is still strong right now. finish packing down your highs if you haven't already. So if you've got hives, they're too big for the bees that are in them, guesstimate.

So my area here, I need about 45 pounds of honey to get them through winter. Since I've added insulated inner covers, and since I'm using double bubble to insulate the covers, their winter consumption of resources has gone way down. So I don't want to gamble with that, but so I leave at least a medium super, 8 or 10 frame, depending on the size of the Langstroth. I'm assuming you have a Langstroth hive, that's enough to get them through winter.

For the long Langstroth, the horizontal hives, five deep frames of capped honey is all I've needed to get them through. So if you've got the brood area where your bees are now, and you've got a couple partial frames that are empty of honey, and you've got full frames of honey beyond that, I would pull the partial frames of honey out, scoot the solid frames of honey next to the brood and then put the partial frames at the opposite end. And there's no reason to have more than, you know, four or five of those frames full of capped honey, deep Langstroth frames, because beyond that, we'll have the problems that I talked about before with those that have a bunch of extra space above. And that's that these capped honey frames act like heat batteries, but they also act like cold batteries. In other words, they get really cold,

at night and then when the temperatures change and it warms up condensation forms it can ruin the honey under the wax cappings so that condensation that forms on the surface of unattended frames of honey can increase the moisture content of the honey so be careful don't leave more than you need and of course adjust follow reports and things like that um and the other thing is i got a request it came from Swarmed.org, the guy that runs that, that is a free website. He provides that service for free. And here's what's happening. You have lots of people are spotting bees. And the word has gotten out that they can log into beesworm.org. They can report a swarm of bees wherever it is anywhere in the country. And beekeepers get the alerts on their phone. If they sign up, people like you, if you sign up at beeswarmed.

org, it doesn't reveal a bunch of your information. This is not something that is, they're not invading your privacy. You are going to give a contact number and you are going to list yourself as a beekeeper. No one gets your information except, of course, Mateo, the guy that runs the website. So when somebody spots a swarm in their yard on the side of their house on a bush or something like that, because now leaves are falling. Sometimes bees have created a bivouac somewhere. on their way to occupy a final cavity and they never made it. So as the leaves fall away, we start to see that there's exposed comb hanging from a tree branch and there's bees on it.

Their chances are zero, okay? Now maybe if you live somewhere tropical, it's not zero. But here where I live in the United States, northeastern part, as we see comb exposed like that, they're not going to make it. So if you're a beekeeper and you want free bees, you log in and you log in and you're at beesworms.org, you choose the range. So for example, I don't want to call from somebody in Cleveland, Ohio that has bees hanging from their swing set. I only want somebody because I'm lazy right now. I want somebody two miles out in every direction. Those could be my own bees because they can

move that two miles. Who knows? You can choose five, ten miles, a hundred miles. Whatever the radius is that you want as a beekeeper, go to B-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-D. and register to go and get your free bees because the way it happens is the person that posts that there's a swarm and they post pictures whatever information they have and then you get an alert oh three miles up the road from you a swarm has been reported click on your phone to claim it so then when you hit that button you say i'm claiming it that just relieved you of what often happens when there's a swarm which is somebody says i have a swarm If you go on Facebook, they say, I have a swarm on my trees.

Can somebody come and get them? And then somebody will say, I'll come and get them. And then while that person's on the way, driving the 20 minutes or whatever to get there, somebody else goes, I'll get them. And then you're halfway there and somebody goes, already gone. So besworm.org works better than that. And here's why. Once you click that and you say, I'm coming to get it, it's identified as a claimed swarm.

So now the alerts are canceled. They don't go out to anybody else. And anybody else who tries to claim it, they hit that button to claim the swarm. And oh, too late, already claimed somebody's in progress on it. Now you get there, you don't like what you see. There's too many bees. They're aggressive.

They're whatever. You don't like them. Then you just say, well, I don't want this swarm. So now you unclaim it. And then that alert relaunches. So others that want to claim it can now go. And you could have provided extra information on it too. They're feisty bees.

They're jerks. Nobody wants them. whatever. So please, if you're a beekeeper and you want free bees, you have nothing to lose, beswormed.org, free bees. I got lots of alerts and I don't live in an area that has a high concentration of swarms. We have two really good swarm seasons here, but that's a shout out. Of course, they ask me to remind people because they have more people reporting swarms than we have beekeepers to collect them, which is pretty good on the part of the beekeepers. free bees. Now the other thing is people do report cutouts and things like that.

So if they report a cutout on beeswarm.org, then it's a category. What are you willing to respond to? What do you want to get alerts about? If cutouts aren't something you ever want to hear about, because you're not going to cut into someone's T11 siding or whatever, to get to bees, then you're not on that list. So only those who agree to do cutouts. And then if there's any fee associated with what you're doing for cutouts that is directly negotiated between you and the person reporting that they have bees in their house so i hope that you found today's information helpful if you have questions that have come to mind please make a comment down in the comment section below i also invite you to subscribe if you like what i'm

doing because it's 100% free thanks a lot for being here i hope you have a fantastic weekend