The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 280 October 18th 2024

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/IVasBMf2Q5w   When to start your winter feeding and more.    

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, October the 18th of 2024, and this is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and Answers. Episode number 280, I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I want to thank you for being here. There's a lot going on right now. People have very similar questions over and over and over. So I filtered them down. What are we going to talk about today? Please look down in the video description below, and you'll see all the topics that we're going to do. discuss and some important links that I hope will be helpful to you. If you want to know how you can listen without watching, it is on Pod Bean, and the podcast is titled The Way to Be. So, you can do that. This entire series is also a playlist. So question and answer series, 280 episodes. I want to thank you if you're one of the people who has listened to each and every one of them, because that's a lot.

So if you want to know how to submit your own topic for consideration in the future, please go to my main website, which is the way to be.org and click on the page mark the way to be. There's a form you can fill out right there. You can also just comment on the questions or videos that you see already on YouTube. So what's it doing outside? 60 degrees Fahrenheit super sunny. Very nice day. The wind speeds are very low too. Four miles. an hour which is six kilometers per hour and by the way that 60 degrees Fahrenheit is 16 Celsius for most of the world 59% relative humidity although there's no venting going on right now in other words the bees aren't trying to dry out their honey because I think the nectar flow is officially over with so now what's next we have to make sure that our bees don't rob each other so I hope you've already reduced your entrances I hope you're keeping an eye on things and there is little bit of forage left out there some cosmos but you know what they're they're quickly

waning they're disappearing some of the asters are still around the blue ones the new england asters is a whole bunch of varieties of asters also getting very little attention from the bees which also tells me that even if the flowers are there they're probably not producing what the bees need so salt water is still in demand and for those you who don't know we put out Freshwater for the bees. I also have a decent-sized freshwater pond for them, which they go to all the time. And that was the opening sequence today. They were checking out dry leaves next to the edge of the pond, which was really interesting to me. And they were focused on the dry leaves that were from, let's see, Aspen. So primarily, they weren't on any maple leaves. They weren't on any of the walnut leaves. So they were specifically looking at and scraping away on the surface of,

aspen quaking aspen so that was interesting to me and I was told by someone who I respect a lot that they're probably gathering micro nutrients from those dead leaves which is really interesting to me because you know what it's the first time I've ever seen that happen so the other thing is I'm growing moss inside why would I do that well the bees benefit for moss so I've noticed that and you may notice too wherever you go to a natural water source and you see where the bees are choosing to get their water and water remains in demand for beehives year round. So even in the dead of winter, when they get days where it's warm enough for them to fly,

they're going for fresh water before they do anything else. Much like us, we need fresh water. Or we're going to expire quick. General rule of thumb, you can go about seven days without water, assuming you're completely hydrated ahead of time. And that's when you die, of course, so don't test it. And you can go 39 to 40 days with, food so long as you have water. But there again, that means you're at the end of your

ability to handle that. So bees know, as does every other living thing, that it needs water to survive. But the bees have shifted, so they go after things that have heavy mineral content and I don't know really what's going on completely with the different composition of the water that they pick at the pond because mossy water, that gets into a mucky area, no pun intended, because there's lots of different kinds of moss, and the moss is damp and the bees prefer to land on that. They like to also get their water through sand, so silty sand. You can imagine there's a lot of mineral content in there. These things are impossible for us to replicate, although if we can provide natural bodies of water for the bees that are constant year-round, that goes a long way for your bees. And of course inside the hives in the wintertime, the condensation that forms on the interior surfaces of the hive below the cluster, best location, the bees use that water. They need that water.

So the reason I bring up salt water is years ago I did testing to see what the bees were going after because people like you were sending me comments saying, well, you have to give them Himalayan salts and you have to give them sea salts and you have to give them Celtic sea salts. There were a whole bunch of names of all these expensive sea salts, and salts like Himalayan salts aren't from the sea. They're from deep underground. And the reason that people think that those are fantastic for your bees is because it was prior to the Industrial Revolution and before humans began polluting everything. So there you go, cleaner salts.

So I tested all of that. Do you know what the bees demonstrated a preference for out of all of the popular salts that are set out there for human consumption, by the way? it was the sea salts that came from Morton so those come from the salt flats and that's what the bees demonstrated now the other thing was what salinity density did they prefer two teaspoons of Morton sea salts per quart of fresh water now this is not in place of fresh water that does not have that so we have dual drinkers out and this is

how I make my observations because I want to see if it's consistently showing that the bees have a demand for this high mineral content, salt content water, or if they're just going for fresh water now. Well, right now the freshwater feeder, and remember they also have alternatives, they've got the pond and probably other areas that they know about, and I don't, but the freshwater feeder that I put out is being ignored by the bees. Maybe one bee comes to it while there's a whole row of bees getting their water from that sea salt slant freshwater mix. So it's in demand right now. And this does not remain the same all year long, so you don't have to worry about that.

The other thing is, if the water evaporates away if you're in a hot area and you've put the sea salts in your water, you don't have to add sea salt when you replenish the water because the salts remain. So if it evaporates off, I'm just saying that the salts don't evaporate with the water. In fact, that's one of the ways that we distill fresh water from salt water desalination through evaporation. So, a little bit of trivia for you. you there but you want to keep the salts up and your bees will show you what they want and what they don't want and that's just something I thought would be interesting to share so

salted water hive alive I'm going to mention this in case I don't want to forget it nobody asked about it during the questions today although there are questions about feeding but I just want to make sure that you understand we talk about the fondant packs all the time now and I know a lot of people are selling them and trying to get you to buy the fondant packs and they work great they're fantastic but we're still in a transitional time where we're not freezing totally yet so it's not too late to use the hive alive syrup and the reason i bring it up is it's a treatment it's not just an appetite stimulant if you add that the dose in this particular because each one of these has its own dose marked on it so i don't know if they shifted through the ears 1.5 teaspoons per gallon of sugar syrup so whatever it is heavy syrup one-to-one whatever you're giving your bees right now to help bolster them going into winter. This is one of the things because it's a treatment that I recommend that you try to get all of your colonies to consume because it helps them with nozima, along with

some other things, but the zima was really what was described specifically in the study regarding hive-alive. You can go to my website, the way to be.org, and there's a page marked, Hive Alive works. And it links the study that was done to test this to make sure that it does what they claimed it does. So one gallon is the dose. I did ask them when they were at the North American Honeybee Expo last January if the fondant packs were a complete dose as well. So probably if you're feeding them the fondant packs through winter and see here's the key, if the bees are going to consume the whole fondant pack. See some of my colonies didn't even get through one pack. didn't need it, didn't use it, and therefore, if I'm looking at the fondant pack as delivering that dose

of hive alive to mitigate the impact of nozema on your bees digestive system, then it wouldn't get to the bees, wouldn't get to the colony because they didn't consume the pack. So the sugar syrup, we know they consume, we know they'll use that up, and getting a good size colony to take a gallon of it down this time of year is very easy to do. I don't recommend you open feed that dose and here's why there's no guarantee that which colony is getting the lion's share of that sugar syrup. The other thing is please do not put hive live and things like that in open feeding situations because this is out of respect for other beekeepers they may not want these essential oils and additives and seaweed extracts and things like that. Even though all those things we know will benefit our bees, we still want to

respect our other beekeeping neighbors and make sure that we're not feeding their bees and dosing them with something that they're completely unaware of. For all we know, they still have honey super is on and they still plan to draw that off to consume it. So hive alive treatments are not to be put on at a time when you're going to consume that honey because it's not strictly from floral sources in your environment. So just think about it that way. Sugar syrup, nobody's going to freak out on you probably putting out honey again if it's just for your hives the best thing to do with honey that you want to cycle back to your own bees is to put that back on the hive that it came off of or a hive in your own apiary please do not

try to open feed honey to your bees because that's a high sucrose high glucose and fructose concentration it's finished honey so bees will fly potentially miles to get it if they can get in there So once again, we don't want to feed our neighbors bees, our honey. The other thing is, why would you give away your honey to your neighbor's bees? Put it back on the hives that need it, close it up, and let them consume that inside. I think that's really good. What else?

Oh, and I showed Spirilina. Why? Because if you look up Spirilina, look for research papers on Spirulina, the impact, the health benefits to bees. It reads like it's too fantastic to be true almost. So you might be thinking, why aren't people selling spirulina premix for bees and in faunate packs and things like that for bees? And the thing is, spirulina is readily available. This one I get from Amazon. I'll put a link down below for that, but you can just Google search it. This is organic spirulina, micro ingredients, blah, blah, blah.

It's vegan, it's non-GMO, and on the go. So this is the one that I use, but it's inexpensive and it's readily available, and you just mix it in with your sugar syrup. and then you feed your bees that way. So if you're not going to, let's face it, high-alive syrup is expensive. But of course, if it's only 1.5 teaspoons per gallon out of this, then this will last you a long time. But this is a pretty decent layout of money.

So if you don't want to spend that money, but you want to benefit your bees and also help their microbiome, Sparolina, which this is set up for human consumption, but there's no real distinction other than identifying it, this blue-green algae, in the studies that show, and I say studies plural. So we've got studies from all over the world

that showed the health benefit to your bees. So readily available. Remember a couple of years ago, they came out with spirulina patties. So they were supposed to be just like winter patties. But what happened to them was they dried out too quick, they got brittle, they got really hard, and the bees could not metabolize the spirulina.

So very expensive to ship also, where if you buy it has the dry powder, whatever your source is, and then you just mix the sugar syrup at home and put it all together and do it yourself, then it's a much less expensive way to go. Here's the other part of it. And I'm not trying to shoot down hive alive, but I'm saying that you don't necessarily know if the honey in your supers has hive alive in it, because it's just going to look like everything else.

Now, me personally, I wouldn't care, but you have to let people know if there's a potential additive in the honey, if you're going to bottle it, sell it, share it, whatever. Spirilina makes everything blue-green. In fact, it looks like, from an artist's perspective, it looks like veridian green. So it's a really brilliant look. And here's the thing. If they go to store it, even they've metabolized it, they've used invertase and reduced it, it has this blue-green tint to the honey that they store. So it's a little, a pretty good tell that you know where it went and where they're storing it and then when they consume it. So when you pull a frame of honey, you would definitely see where spirulina is being

introduced. But there again, it's a proof for human consumption. So unless you really hate spirulina, it would indicate that this is not 100% from floral sources, which some people want their honey to come from exclusively. So this is a visual tell that it's not from those sources. So I hope that didn't muddy the waters too much. So those are great things. I wanted to get them out of the way before I get into today's questions, so I don't forget. What else you probably need to know? If you've got a question right now, it just won't wait. You need somebody's opinion, so you can go to Facebook, the way to be fellowship, and join for free. There is no advertising there, no posting of things for sale, no self-promotion, and no politics, period.

So it's a great place to go, get answers from people all over the world, really outstanding moderators there. And I hope you can go and check it out. First question is number one from Jerry Eubanks. And it says, that was probably the most interesting video I've ever seen. Your close-up shots are tremendous. Thank you. My target zone is above average images. Okay.

So one thing, when they do the waggle dance, it says, which way is the pollen source? Is it, and are they pointing their head or their butt to the source? So this is interesting. A lot of us that have kept bees for a long time and studied bees for a long time, already understand the way the waggle dance works, that there is a waggle dance, and we forget often, that we show people behavior on, you know, it could be a waggle dance even on the front of a hive, by the way.

There is a dancing area inside the hive on the frames, usually near the entrance. and that's because they're sharing information about resources outside the hive. It could be water, it could be nectar, it could be pollen, it could be a combination of those things. So von Frisch is the one that did all that research and decoded that for us. So what I want to share is that when you're looking at the waggle dance, the bee waggles in one direction, and it's usually off to the side a little bit, a little angle there, and then they turn clockwise.

and then they waggle again, they turn counterclockwise, and they might change their direction a little bit. This is not the direction immediately to the source, but it's a direction relevant to the current position of the sun. Now here's the other part of that. They can also forecast the ever-changing position of the sun. So they actually adapt when so much time has passed when they fly out. Let's say it was high noon, and let's say the source was straight at the sun,

then the waggle would be straight up. So when they fly out of the hive, they fly directly at the sun, right, in that direction. And then, of course, if it's been a while, then they would fly a little bit, what, towards the west of where that sun position was if the original indication was that it was directly toward the sun.

That's just an oversimplification. But they waggle longer for, what? A longer distance, sometimes a more complicated terrain, and also for a higher quality resource and one of the most frequently things waggled for or the dance is for inside the hive is water over all other things water is the most popular thing that they waggle for but the bees that surround the waggle dancer of course they move in concert and remember this is supposed to be happening in total darkness so it's tactile in fact they are listening by the way and for those of us who

understand the way bees can hear they were can't hear from any distance. So they feel vibrations, but they have something called the near field or near zone effect with their antennae. So they can actually hear vibrations airborne within that tiny, that near field zone and give vibrations on their antennae. But here's the thing that I've noticed that the waggle dancer is physically in contact with those bees that are paying attention to the waggle dance. They move with it, right? And they're paying attention. You'll also see them sometimes stop and sample what that forager has brought back. They don't do a lot of sampling when it comes to water.

When it comes to water, they come in and do the waggle dances. Some of the bees might even get a drink from the forager that got that because they're not going to alter the water. And those bees that forage for water don't forage for other things. So they could pass that on, but if they're bringing in pollen, for example, the other bees might actually lick the pollen, smell the pollen. And one of the reasons they do that is because not only do they follow these instructions through the waggle dance direction and distance and things like that when they get there

they look to identify the same material that that forager brought back to the hive with them so if it's pollen that they're out to get they're going to be smelling the pollen they're going to be sampling the pollen because they want the same pollen and the nectar same thing the nectar has its own distinctive scent so they will go out hone in on the area and then they'll zoom in closer and closer until they figure out exactly where it was and they'll identify it by the same scent, flavor, and so on, what the waggle dancer had on her body when she came in. So it's really interesting, and it is the head, by the way, that's indicating the direction, not the tail.

So that was an interesting question, and we should always keep in mind as be educators, that there are a lot of things that we take for granted every single day that we think everybody just knows, and they don't, so it helps to refresh. Let's go on to question number two. This is Dave Maloney. and it says regarding adding fondin.

So we're talking about the fondant again. Do you automatically add it when temps drop in the fall even though there's plenty of cap-tunny? Now we just talked about this. It would be breakfast that I was at on Wednesday. Not every hive needs it. So for me, right now, every hive out in my apiary does not have fondant on it.

In fact, this is the week, by the way, in the northeastern United States, state of Pennsylvania. where we are putting on fondant for the first time because they didn't want the bees to all move up, right? So every colony does not get it. If they're loaded, I've got colonies that have two levels of honey above them, so they're not getting fondant, period.

And it says, it will wait until December or January to add the fondant as emergency feed. And it's because the bees are all at the top and appear to be starving. And then it goes on to say, by the way, I have often heard that if bees are at the top, they are starving. This is not always the case.

The bees are often at the top here in the mid, here in mid-Maryland, even on cold days, not because they're starving, but because it's simply warmer or more comfortable at the top near the feeding shim. So there's something I want you to understand about that. This is one of the reasons that I did not want people to put their fondant on early while it's still warm,

because the bees have a tendency to accumulate up directly under it. They'll consume those fondant packs and specifically hive alive fondant because I'm not one of these chef types that can make a decent fondant at home that I feel would compete. The other thing is it would be missing all the ingredients that benefit the bees that are included in hive live fondant. So hive live has kind of become the standard now for beekeepers here in the U.S. But if we put it on too soon, they go past their resources and they cluster right under it and they work on that right away. And that's why I don't want them to do that.

Because what really anchors your bees in a cluster in a fifth? position inside the hive as the weather gets colder. What anchors them is the brood that they have. So there's always some level of brood inside the hive. And this is where very small clusters of bees have such a hard time getting through winter because we need to multitask. Much like Dave here has said, the bees can go all the way to the top, maybe to take advantage of that heat capsule that's in there if you've got a non-vented cover, if you have an insulated cover. And so it does provide a pocket of warmth that is retained there and remains under full control of the honeybees.

If they move up there, they also don't move off of the brood. So that means we have bees that can go up there, but if you are taking a heat signature using a heat scanner, right, like a Fleer, C2 or something like that, or you might have it for your phone, when you scan the side of the hive, you'll see the heat signature spread out and you'll see a smaller heat signature near the bottom and then you'll see a much larger heat signature at the top. So at the bottom, the only reason for them to stay down there is because they've got brewed. This is also what anchors smaller clusters of bees going into winter in one position, and which becomes later a huge point of frustration for new beekeepers who open up a hive in spring,

find a tiny cluster of bees dead. And then they find out there's honey all around them. Why on earth didn't those bees move over the honey? Well as you clean up that dead out and you sweep all those bees off the frame you'll find that they were hovering over a cluster of brood. The last of course living member of the colony in the center of that tiny cluster is going to be the queen. She gets all the resources. They take care of her. They shelter her. They keep her worm to the very last bee. So when you look at that if we have a colony in a hive that's much too large for it and the cluster cannot multitask, then early feeding is a mistake for the reason I described before. The cluster moves up and they might be trailing out and not adequately covering brood. And if you get chilled, brood, how would you know without pulling apart the hive?

Well, the next cleansing flight day that you have when it warms up, you go out there at sunrise. That's right. Get up early and go out and see what's going on on your landing boards. And if they're dead out, so they'll be dragging out their dead and leaving them on the landing board and you can see them there. So if you have a lot of bees, they can do it all, right? Also, sometimes once they migrate up, if they're laying eggs as they go, and so the root is with them,

then they don't go back down because now they're anchored at the top. And if they consume all the resources, they immediate to the cluster and they never get a break. So when I say never get a break, that means no warm days that allow them to move out and take advantage of those other resources. So inside the hive, that climate is really important.

The amount of space available inside that hive is very important. And by that I mean enough space for the population of the bees and the hive, but not too much space just because you're being generous and thinking that you're leaving them way more honey than they will ever use. So that's why we wait, hopefully, until now, until the end of this week, because next week it'll get cooler again. And that's when we want to make sure that the fondant packs are on. because now guess what they're already anchored over their brood and they won't just run like a bunch of kids that just saw a bunch of candy and went nuts over it right so we want them to stay and then a very measured pace move up gradually through the honey and then they're of course thawing the honey caps and uncapping and consuming it as they move and dr leo shirashkin measured that movement in the winter time if the cluster remains at about one millimeter a day so you can also kind of forecast you know your cluster

how much they'll move up. And then that's why I was also, I like to canvas people and ask those especially who have really good winter survival rates and things like that where we are, so where you are is going to be different, I'm sure. But the 10 frame Langstroth Hives, the number one and the number 10 frames tend to also not be finished out until the last. The other thing is in the springtime we frequently find that those were never accessed. And this is why even Dr. Tom Seeley said that he much prefers now the eight frame size boxes in the state of New York or in his case. I think he's in Maine now. And that way they're using more and there isn't a bunch of extra space that doesn't benefit the bees. So it's just an area that would have condensation,

which again the bees need, but they don't need too much of it. So eight frames in cold climates is also showing to be much more efficient overall. So we have tens, eights, six, six, and fives here so and that's because just I get to make you know comparisons year after year winter after winter so I can see trends and keep notes and I hope you're keeping notes also so the bees moving around again I hope I explain that and when it is very cold outside it is often nice and cozy in the feeding shims since I use insulated inner covers that retain the heat plus I do not use an upper entrance either so much like we just described no upper entrance no venting for me if you

have an insulated inner cover if you're uninsulated the way i started out with my beekeeping because i bought the kit standard langstroth by the way so here also we're testing a variety of different beehives and often people when they see my apiars is why do you have so many different beehive configurations out there this because we want to see them but this is a Since I can't put out, you know, 20 lands hives and compare them to 20 long Langstroth hives and then have a whole bunch of polystyrene hives that are from BMX and Lysin and all these other companies, instead of being able to do them all at once and getting a better, you know, better analysis just by having more numbers, better statistics, right? We use the same configurations year after year after year. So instead of multiple hives, because they only have 42, then now we can just see the way the same styles perform year after year,

which in my mind, to some degree, is a little bit better than just putting out 50 hives and doing 25 one way and 25 another. Because throughout the years, we have different weather extremes and different weather patterns and different challenges for the bees. So if we're keeping really good notes, we would be able to demonstrate after many years, that's a problem. A lot of people aren't patient about this information. So waiting many years to get the final word is hard for some people. So I'll just wait to see consistently if one hive, because what if one winter, they all died out

in one hive and I would say, wow, that was that Epamay hives. Those things are garbage, and bees died in it. But overall, the trend is that year after year, they do extremely well in Appame-insulated hives. So we get to figure that out, but here's the thing. The consistent thing through the years now is the larger hives, the 10-frame vertical Langstroth hives are more of a challenge to the bees. They don't use all the resources in the extremities. So that's where you end up starving bees in spring.

That's really rough on new beekeepers. Third year is the benchmark. So if you're going into your third year, your hives have had lots of time to build up bad things and potentially suffer from them and have sublethal impacts that ultimately don't crash your colony until the third year. Statistically, that is when things end up really bad. Or on the optimistic side, if your colonies come out of your third year in spring and look really strong and do really well, then apparently you've got a very good mentor or you've done things right or your instincts are good. and the combination of what you keep your bees in and the stock of bees that you keep and how well you manage them all come together for a perfect survival in spring so moving on to question number three this is from Aaron it says I have been feeding and we have had frost at nights I'm in Canada but my polyhives so here we are polystyrene right I put a box on and feed with jars and they are building comb on the

top bars and storing the nectar there is it because the hives are warmer than wood is why they are still building there's a lot to be said for insulated colonies insulated hives so we have several insulated varieties of hives right here but yeah if they have people have done etchen tardiff you know it comes to mind he lives in i want to say the klondike right um he does all these interior sensors and measurements of what happens inside the hive in winter in extreme conditions, which I don't have here. I live in the snow belt, but that doesn't mean I get extreme cold. We get cold temperatures enough for the snow to accumulate, but we don't get like minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit or whatever that is in Celsius. I don't know off the top of my head.

So the heavy insulated hives definitely help the bees preserve the climate they would choose to have. So just like in a bee tree or something like that where the average thickness of the wood would be about six inches I'm told. Then they of course directly above in that cavity inside a tree what's above them nothing but wood. So it is very well insulated and they can encapsulate that and use those resources but here's the thing the liquid feeding that and the reason why you know I want to tell the people that are kind of following my methods is is not to use liquid feed once the temperatures draw so low.

And it's not because of so much what's going on internal to the hive, but what's going on outside. If your bees go to the entrance and they want to fly out and do a cleansing flight or something like that, regardless of the interior climate, right? Because we know that at some area inside that hive, it's still a balmy 94, 95 degrees Fahrenheit in there. And that's because they have brewed. So there are really nice, comfortable ones.

areas inside the hive where they could continue to mend resources they could unlikely but they could be building comb and things like that but when it comes time to eliminate your bees have to go to the bathroom the more water there is the more material there is in their digestive system that needs to be eliminated they have to hold that until they have flying temperatures outside so just on an average they need about 50 degrees Fahrenheit to leave the hive and fly successfully and return. That's the key. There are bees that will self-evict, even in winter, on the coldest day. You might be out there looking in your bee yard and you're looking at a landing board and everything is dead silent the way it is when there's heavy snow everywhere and there's no wind and you just out there and you hear the

crunch of your feet going through the snow, but then you stop and you listen and you hear you think did a bee just fly out of its hive right now and it bombed right into the snow over there well that's a self-eviction that bee did not intend to come back anyway so when they sense bees are able to sense the outside conditions so when they sense it it's too cold to fly they don't fly so because they've been doing this from forever long before people have been around They go to the entrance of their tree entrance or wherever they live and regardless of how warm and cozy it is inside, when they feel that blast of cold air on the outside, they just don't fly unless they're evicting themselves because bees do their very best not to die inside the hive.

This is one of the ways that they protect the colony from infection. Some bees do die and that's where we need the undertaker bees to get them out. So anyway, I just want to say this because of Aaron's comment here, it's, you know, saying the polystyrene hive, more insulated, therefore they can do more activities inside. That is true. So the more insulated hives have looser clusters. And this is very difficult to see, though, when we're using things like the Fleer. And why is that? Because these thermal scanners read surface temperature. This is an x-ray. We can't really see inside where the cluster is. So I don't get to see the lands hives that are insulated

with sheep's wool. I don't get to see inside the Apame hives. They're terrible for do surface scans on the outside to see where the cluster is. They don't work on the lice in the hives. They don't work on the, you know, the B-smart or B-Max colonies. So when you have a really insulated hive, great for your bees, but I don't have a lot of information then. So that's when we have people like Etchen Tardif who have the sensors inside. They know exactly what's going on and where things are happening, and maybe even CO2 levels and things like that, all of which, by the way, have been thoroughly studied. So we kind of know, but the warmer they are, the loose of the cluster,

and of course they have more access to the resources inside the hive. But again, this does not improve their ability to fly out and eliminate the extra moisture that they might be getting because somebody decides to feed liquid later in the year. So insulation is good. Question number four. This is a first-time beekeeper. And this is interesting because the very first thing it says, I often get confused for other people.

I don't know why that is, but it says I'm a first-time beekeeper who took your beekeeping basics course at Asbury Woods a number of years ago. That's not me. I did give presentations at Asbury Woods, but they weren't courses. The courses are taught by Charlie Shrek. He's a longtime Penn State guy who is the volunteer beekeeper at Asbury Woods

here in Pennsylvania and he teaches a course every year. And if you're local to the area, I highly recommend that course for beekeepers that are just starting out. So anyway, moving on, that wasn't me. So I wanted to make sure Charlie Shrek gets credit for that because most of the people I talk to have been through his course. Anyway, this was the year that I pulled the trigger

and started my own hive. I did not get my bees until late July. So all I was concerned with was letting the colony build. so all that I have is one deep box going into winter. So these are the questions. Do you think that it's important to wrap the hive going into winter? I watch several of your videos and it doesn't look like you wrap yours at all. My hive is in a side yard and will be semi-protected from wind and it gets a lot of shade.

So siding your hive, by the way, makes a big difference. surviving winter and what your bees response to sunny days and winter is has a lot to do with sun exposure of course here that would be facing to the south right and it's true i don't wrap i've never used a hive wrap so i've never used a hive cozy and i get a lot of promotional approaches by the way from people that make be cozies and all kinds of removable rigid insulation board wraps that go around your hive and everything else and so i should probably explain that I'm kind of minimal in that regard. In other words, and some people become powerfully opinionated about that,

and they will say possibly extreme things, like you wrap your hives or your hives are going to die, period. When people speak in those absolutes, I don't really understand how they justify that when it's clear that there are people and there have always been people that kept their hives in standard three-quarter-inch pine boxes. I'm not saying it's the best way to go, but clearly they survive. So we all want the same thing from our bees. We want them to make it. So I don't wrap my hives and here's why I have too many bees and I don't want mega hives coming into spring. I am not a person who needs bees for pollination

services. I don't need them to produce 55 gallon drums of honey and I just want to see what my bees do. So coming into spring if when dandelions bloom my bees are throwing swore. and their wall-to-wall bees inside the hives, that it doesn't make me step back and go, oh, man, I need to do something different now to improve their wintering. I need to up their survival. Now, if it were different,

in other words, if spring came along and 50% of my colonies were dead, I would definitely have to take a look at what my management practices are and what those things were that caused my bees to die out. Nobody wants to clean out dead colonies. of bees. They're stinky, they're wet, it's yucky. So what I did is incrementally,

like I was all excited because I made feeder shims finally. So I got rid of the standard Langsroth inner cover, telescoping outer cover, and I built my own box for the top that had a built-in inner cover and a central hole for feeding the bees. And that was heavy stock. In other words, you couldn't ship those. I had people asking if I would make them and ship them. you can't because I was using red oak and they were weighing 35 or 40 pounds each, which to me was great because it also helps hold its position on the hive and so on. But then right after I got those going, I learned about some other things. So I would put a rapid round in it.

So we progress through the years. Now I was not losing all of my hives. So I was losing before I started to insulate the inner covers, I might lose two or three out of ten, right? So I was already doing pretty darn good, but I was always starting out in spring with very small survival colonies of bees. Now that was survivor stock. They were doing great. Yay. They were making it, but then they would spend all summer just getting up enough resources, just enough bees to help them restore themselves and then make it through the following winter. So this is kind of subsistence beekeeping for the bees. Now, when the insulated inner covers came out, and also there were some published papers regarding what happens inside the hive,

and the venting that people were doing and the cost of that to the bees, because they were thinking that they were trying to get rid of the humidity inside the hive, that this venting through the top was getting rid of that high human air, people were really pushing quilt boxes and things like that that would allow airflow through them, but reduce the airflow enough so it didn't cause a draft for the bees. So all of these things, I made incremental changes through the years until I got much better success, and we measure our success, not just by the survival of the bees in spring,

but by the population of the colonies in spring, how robust they were and how many frames of brew did you have coming into spring. And the reason I'm running down all of these details is because this is why I never got to the point where I wrapped the hives themselves because my feeder shim solved big problems for me and gave me bigger colonies in spring. And then after that, B-smart designs came out with the insulated inner cover and I put those on my hives. And now I put those on almost all of my hives because one of the ways that we measure the struggles that your bees have going through winter and how much their stress and how many resources they need

to survive is how much honey is left in spring partnered with. How many bees are still occupying that hive in spring? Were they on their last leg? Or are they really a nice big cluster of bees and do you find yourself having to race around and super a hive? Well, once we close off the entrance, upper entrances, closed off upper venting

and added insulation, if nothing else, insulate directly over the hive. So the cover, the inner cover. And then I stopped there because I can't imagine wanting them to do better than they're already doing. So that's my logic. So now why would I wrap them? That's an added thing that I wouldn't need to do. But we will talk at the end today that you need to look and make sure you don't have gaps

and airflow areas and misaligned boxes and things like that. All these contribute to challenges to your bees and cold climates. But that's why I've never wrapped them. Now, however, if I was losing a lot of bees and I knew that my mites were okay, I knew that they weren't facing other challenges, which would result in a reduction in the number of bees, then I would start to add insulation. Now, I've got other colonies, so I can make these comparisons. Right now, I have at least six or seven apame-ins-hives out there.

I have two layens hives out there that are insulated. I have a licean hive out there that's also insulated. So if the insulation is making a huge difference, right, in the populations and behaviors and health and vigor of these colonies, if the insulated hives were showing a marked or significant difference, then I would start to insulate all the hives. But guess what? They're not. They are all performing pretty much the same.

So I don't need to wrap the hives. I also don't need all this additional insulation. And their honey consumption is very similar to. The key was the insulated inner cover. And I know that people like to use extreme language and say you're torturing bees, you're mean to bees, you don't care about your bees unless you wrap them, unless you cozy them up and all these other things.

But my point is, how do you measure that you're mean to your bees if the results are the same. So that's where you're going to have to find out in your climate where you live, what configurations and what bee genetics are going to do the best in your particular climate in your zone with the resources that you have for them. So really good bees handle themselves really well. And that doesn't mean we want to intentionally challenge them. That's why I did make that shift. And I no longer vent through the top. And we have insulation on the top. Now, the only difference is my observation hives also my observation hives used to die every winter guaranteed 100% they just died the reason for that was the observation hives were large i got them the big one was from bonteira bees

and it has two frames going up so four high two deep frames so that's eight deep langstroth frames and the thing was strong colony go into winter but it's in an unheeded building now observation hides are supposed to by design be in an enclosure and be protected from the elements so a bee shed or an observation shed where i was doing a bunch of video work uh wasn't adequate right it's just as cold inside as outside and with just two frames side by side look at the exposure that we have i had insulated panels on it but when i went to triples so in observation hives three in a group three in a group and i realize that means we have four surfaces on those frames that are not for us to see and that the point of the observation hive is to be able to observe and so I'm perfectly fine with only having two surfaces of the three frames in exchange for my bees doing so much better getting through every winter 100% survival in all of the observation hives in an unheated building with a south facing windows at the top so that we can get some warmth in there and a double bubble insulated ceiling

right that's it they make it even the one i'm really i hate to say it but i'm kind of expecting them to expire because i have another observation hive i want to install and i want to wait until they kind of die out on their own or you know abscond or do something to go away so i can install my new one because i'm at capacity and they fool me every year and they live so hive configurations insulation all of these things are measured by the beekeeper year after year as you troubleshoot and come up with your recipe for successful beekeeping where you are and the reason we have so many beekeepers with so many methods so many different ideologies and beekeeping is because guess what there are a lot of ways to

keep bees and they all work to some degree so the point is what's going to work for you if you're not killing the bees then you're probably on a pretty decent track and then you just need to out how to optimize the colony design and the configurations to best suit the bees and the way that you hope to keep them and what you hope to get from them, if anything. So, and I gave it, that was a very short answer, I know you probably wanted a much longer answer. So anyway, so I don't wrap. But if I were going to wrap, what would I wrap with? Again, I don't like the wrapping. I like the observation hives that I make hot pockets, which is just like making a pillow

case out of double bubble with that aluminumized tape and I just pull it over the top and that's it and I have sensors in those so I know that they're 10 degrees warmer for example than the rest of the interior of that building when they have hot pockets on so that's what I do I think I wouldn't look to temporary wraps this is the other thing that always puzzles me Why are we putting insulation on hives just for winter? If we have an insulated hive configuration, think of permaculture. You know, I don't want to do things differently and change it up every year. And I don't also want a big storage area just for all the insulation material that I'm going to wrap around my hives.

So why not just have better insulated hives and leave them that way? Because insulation benefits your bees all seasons. So your really hot days in the summertime when the sun is just pounding down on your bee hives and it's really hot. If you have insulation, you want insulation to protect your bees from that exposure to the sun. And so we want insulation year-round. So that's why when I've set my hives up with these inner insulation covers, you know, then I leave them that way. I don't take them off for summer.

The only changes that I make are the number of boxes that we have on. while we're getting supers during the summertime because of the surplus honey that they're going to store. And the entrance, you might open your entrance is a little more, that kind of thing, the way I manage bees. So you'll come up with your own thing. But wrapping hives, unwrapping hives, you know, wrapping them for winter, unwrapping them for summer. Now you have to store all that stuff. And I understand why they take out some of them because they're black and they're like heat sponges because the sun hits a black surface. Boy does the temperature sore. So you know think about the color of the wrap that you're using too. I like Dr. Seeley's thinking in that he would like to see clad bee boxes. So it would be similar to what the lay ines hive is right now with its insulation sandwich between plywood.

We would have rigid foam board insulation with plywood interior, plywood exterior, rigid foam board in between and then you get a nice thick hive if it were in an area. where you felt that was absolutely necessary to get your bees to make it through winter. So more insulation might be nice, not be necessary. So let's see, planning and feeding my bees over winter websites such as better bee.com, sell their winter feeding cakes and other supplies. Should I be looking at some of these products? Also, how would you feed a single box over the winter? Should I look to shim the top?

bored to make room for food. Yes. You always need a feeder shim above your hive. For any number of reasons, you just always need it. Because in spring, just for example, early spring comes along, they brood up really huge and you're all excited and you think you're going to have so many bees and then three or four days of rain come along and then you look in your hive again and you find out that the brood's all gone because the bees cannibalized all the eggs that they had because what happened? They used up all the resources. So the ability to to feed in a pinch. Now if you're a Darwinian natural beekeeper, survival of the fittest beekeeper, and you don't want to feed at all and you just want to see what makes it and what doesn't.

Obviously you don't need a feeder shim because you're never going to do it. You're just going to wait and see if they die or live. I don't practice that, but that's what that is. So because I get criticized if I had a colony that was struggling, wasn't going to make it, and I saved their lives with, you know, one quart of sugar syrup, brought them right, back and they all went back to work and they survived when they were at their brink of death because they had used up all their resources in early spring early spring huge challenge for your bees because they're waking up with the environment and they're burning a lot of calories because they're producing brood and then they also need a whole bunch of nectar to support that but a bunch of pollen comes in

early and the nectar doesn't seem to keep up so sometimes you find out you get a light colony so they could like an accordion collapse on themselves again or you could help them sustain that by a little sugar syrup in your feeder shim at that time so yes feed or shims are great because it just gives you choices right so i think it's really good to have that and so look at all products question everything what's the product supposed to do what's it going to cost you do the bees really use it and if they do how well do they use it and what's the benefit so always ask questions about that stuff and we have to consider the cost of things too and so but you i always recommend that people feeder shim and a space above so they have choices to make. It also a feeder shim, if you keep it

close, because like the B-smart designs intercovers have a little cap that you can put on that. So it's insulated, you don't even have to let them up in there at all. Guess what? It's a great storage space for the equipment that you might need while you're out there. You can leave a hive tool inside every one of your hives if you want to. You can, you know, just any number of things. Whatever you want to keep up there, ready for you. I have the insulated intercover of feeder shim. and an insulated outer or upper cover as well so that space is pretty decent so it gives you options that's all moving on to question number five this comes from captain brine should i remove the trays in my screen bottom boards and insulate my bottom boards aren't closed with a removable panel in the back to access the trays so a lot of hive configurations now i really like that they have trades in the bottom if you're you've been listening to me you know that it's my favorite configuration even though I still have

for comparison purposes solid bottom boards with no trays no removable anything so what we're talking about here is do they need to be insulated so think of just the thermodynamics inside the hive we don't need to insulate the bottom board all we need to do is close it up so that air doesn't freely flow through there I also have on some of my hives what's called a slatted rack slatter rack makes a two-inch spacer above your bottom board and it helps keep your bees out of a lot of winter gusts of wind and things like that and encourages your queen to lay eggs all the way down on the frames that are above that two-inch shim which is then on your bottom board so the removable trays flow hives for example have removable trays already built into them and the tray becomes the bottom of the hive so

pull the tray out and you have an open screen bottom. So I always recommend keep the tray in, keep the back closed up, and there's a venting setting on the flow hive bottoms that it's either vented through the bottom or you flip it over and now it blocks all airflow through there. So if we can keep the airflow out and just have the bees control the air that comes in through that entrance,

then that's all you need. Now, I know that some people swear by open screen bottom, summer, winter, every other time of year, just have a screen and nothing underneath and it supposedly works perfect and everything. That has not been my experience. So why have a screen bottom board anyway? You want to just close it up and have solid bottom board because it's integrated pest management. Because screen bottom boards with a tray underneath and a way to capture what falls through the screen is a very effective way to passively kill those varroa destructor mites that we don't like. And your bees don't like them either. That's why your bees are grooming them off. And that's the reason.

and for the screen bottom boards to begin with so that your bees could groom off romeites they would fall through the screen at the bottom and they would go onto the ground and then they would just die because they can't find another bee to climb onto and they can't fly and they can't get an hive so but i don't like that because those open screen bottom boards send the smells of your hive out everywhere and it takes away the channeling of airflow that your bees otherwise would control so by having a removable tray in there in an enclosed reservoir under the screen we eliminated the airflow and we left that in the control of your bees which is my number one priority and the other thing is now we have a removable tray that we can use to collect vera destructor mites and we can also see

what else is going on down there so it doesn't require insulation in my opinion so because they're doing just great now here's the thing it kind of becomes an extra piece that involves extra work because when you have a tray underneath the screen which is out of your honeybees control that means goes in there too. So it does prevent moisture from pooling up inside your hives, right? If you've got a solid bottom board, then when I set up my hives and every time I teach someone how to set up a hive, year round, the bottom board slopes towards the entrance. So your hive is tilted ever so slight. The whole purpose of that is. If there's condensation coming down the interior side walls of your hive in the wintertime, and if it pools on the bottom of your hive,

you just brought a lot of moisture into your hive that your bees don't control. So if the hive tilts forward towards the entrance, then if moisture really does build up a lot, it runs out the front, right? So we don't want pooling because it can rot your wooden wear and stuff like that. Now screen bottom boards with a tray underneath

and that moisture continues on into the tray. And now that requires you on a nice warm day in wintertime when the bees are flying, You can pull the trays out, wash them. And of course, I like for you to have two trays for every hive that's configured like that. So you're not going out multiple times. You can go out, pull the dirty tray, put the clean one in, close it up, and take all your trays back for evaluation and cleaning,

just to see what kind of mites you have in there. And what are the things you might find? It's very educational. It's a lot of fun. So I hope that covered that. Guess what? That was the last question for today. so we're in the fluff section. I know, that was quick. Anyway, I want to thank Jeff Ott and Becky

Masterson for having me on the Bekeeping Today podcast, and that was last night we recorded it, but I understand it's not going to go out until January. So, but I just want to give them a shout out. If you never checked it out, Bekeeping Today podcast is sponsored by Better Be, and you can listen to a lot of people being interviewed with them and get some insights. The other thing is for people that are buying hive alive you can go to my website page that says hive live works there's a discount link there or the company says they've assigned fred 10 this is just like hive butler they have fred five you get 5% off if you use fred 10 on any of the hive live products you get a 10% discount so they're giving you that discount I

think that's great for my listeners and viewers don't forget read up on spirulina tell me what you think the hype is over the top so and not like I said there's multiple studies Google you know spirulina studies nutrition for honey bees that kind of thing read it for yourself see what you think it's pretty amazing and I'm feeding it right now while I'm talking to you so go outside and don't forget to check make sure that your bees are not being robbed out make sure that the entrances are reduced sometimes you might have lost the queen this time of year and when that's the case they put up almost no defense and the colony gets robbed. Hive alignment is another

thing. You look at people's hives and you'll see the top boxes are shifted a little bit. I don't know how that happens sometimes but we need to keep up with it and what I like to do is take a bar clamp out there with me, the kind that has a twist clamp on it. I line it up so that the top box has moved over a little bit in the bottom box is aligned where I need it. I used a bar clamp on it and then I use that twist clamp function to slightly move it over in alignment because we don't want these gaps going into winter. It really does challenge your bees. We're going to get to a point where they can't tuck point anymore with the propolis that

they find. So robbing, hive alignments, use bar clamps, things like that. You can also, if it just doesn't budge or if the box you discover through your bad management, you discover that your hive is actually damaged now. It's split or something and you can't fix it. I wrap landscape cloth. It's like a felt. I just wrap that around it and it comes with a big safety pin and some of them have velcro and I just put it out there and it cuts the draft until you can do things right in spring. The other thing is a lot of you have extracted honey. So you've got honey in five gallon buckets. That always stresses me a little bit because my concern is that this late season honey, Astors, Goldenrod, all that stuff, Cosmos.

Cosmos is really good honey, but the bees are mixing it up, you know. If you've got your honey sitting in buckets, please do your best to get that into the smaller jars as soon as possible because of it sets or crystallizes in your buckets. You have a big chore on your hands, and it's very difficult to provide even heating to restore that. So much easier while it's liquid right now, get it in your jars, and then as needed, you can warm up your jars and relinquify it if you want to. And think about your bear deterrence. If you're in bear country, we are here. And this year, there are record sightings of black bears in the state of Pennsylvania.

So think about it. If you've got electric fence, make sure, you know, your weeds and stuff haven't grown up around it or leaves aren't piling up against it. You know the bear is going to come on a rainy night when all your electric fencing is grounded out and it won't do anything. So think about, just check it. I'm just telling you do your perimeter walks and make sure. that you're bear repellent ready. All of my noise makers are out there, these things. That's all I use now. I've had my, the last time I had a bear here was six years ago. Well, we had a little one this year, but I caught it in time and chased him away. And he never made it to the bee yard. He was after

Sueet feed bears. So people that feed bears, huge mistake, because bears start to look at houses as resources for food, especially this time of year. My issues here actually come more in spring than they do this time of year. So I think the bears move down near the rivers and stuff like that. So, but just heads up, make sure you get yourself on bear watch lists and things like that. Check in with your wildlife management group because they often have shotgun emails that they put out when they're troubled bears. I guess there was a bear in a township that had multiple tags on its ears. So it was a troublemaker. It doesn't know enough to stay away from people. And usually that's because people have done things to encourage it to be around. Big mistake. Don't feed bears. And that's pretty much

it for today. I want to thank you for spending your time with me. I hope that your bees are doing fantastic and that this weekend is going to bring good things your way. Thanks for watching.