The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Bee Keeping Q&A 288 last edition of 2024

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/1ni_bRwey9I

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, December the 27th. This is the last Friday of 2024. So this is back here at Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 288. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here today. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down in the video description,

and you'll see all the topics in order. And some relevant links, maybe some more information, stuff like that. So if you've got a question that just won't wait, please go to the Way to Be fellowship. You can just Google it. You'll find it. It's on Facebook. No politics. No marketing. Just good people that are interested in helping you learn more about beekeeping. So post your questions there. If you want to know how to submit your own topic for future consideration, one of these Q&As, please go to my main website, which is the way to be.org and click on the page marked the way to be.

There's a form, you can fill it out, and you might end up just like these people right here. How did you like the opening sequences today? The sun is shining and the temperatures went right up there to 44 degrees Fahrenheit. That is 7 degrees Celsius. The wind is low, two miles an hour, which is 3 kilometers per hour, 76% relative humidity and some of the bees were at the entrances fanning them out. because there's condensation inside. When you get a warm up like this, condensation occurs inside the hive and they need it.

So what's going on this weekend? Up where I live, northeastern part of the United States, northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania, we have two very warm days ahead. But with the warmth, what's going to happen? We're going to get some rain. So things are going to turn to mud out there.

Time to check your sump pump if you live around here. Mine quit on me last time it happened, but now we're all good to go. So rain and warmth. One of the good things about the warm-up coming is that you can check on your feed. You can replace fondant, things like that. It's going to be very important. So we cleared all the entrances, and it was a good thing too because one of the hives,

just one out of all of them, was waiting to have the entrance cleared. In other words, there were a pile of dead bees there, and they couldn't fly out to do their cleansing flights today. And I thought they would come out and be really thirsty, but they're not. they're just going out to go out. So who knows what the bees are doing right now? The questions that I'm responding to today were submitted during the past week.

One of them as recent as two hours ago. That's how quick I am, just for you to answer your questions. So we'll get right into it with question number one, which comes from Craig from Green Bay, Wisconsin. So it says I have two questions related to winter checks I did recently. So it says, who am I high? have the bees all the way in the feeder shim, even though the weight of the hive is heavy.

Says, I have been giving fondin, and one is eating it quite fast. If I stop feeding, will they migrate down to where the honey is, or do you need to keep feeding for the remainder of the winter? The second question is about the license six frames. So we'll take the first one first. If they're already at the top of the hive

and you've been putting on fondent, and the fondant that I recommend is hive a live fondant. It works so well. If they're already up there, will they go back down? No, that's the problem. So we do kind of need to know, and I was going to do thermal scans today, but my little thermal scanner, my fleer, the battery was so low, so now it's on the charger, so of course I wasn't ready.

And now with the warm up, it won't be so distinctive. But the next time it gets really cold, I'm going to use it. Thermal scans, see where the clusters are. but if they're already at the top they're kind of going to stay there that's what happens and that's a lesson learned from the previous fall some people were so anxious to get fondant on or sugar bricks or sugar in rapid rounds and things like that just to get the bees going and some people would put on winter patties which are also really good formulated to give your bees energy through winter and the bees went right up to those going right past their honey. We don't want that. That's why I try to recommend not putting on

winter feed. Those are the semisolids, the fondants, the sugar breaks, the dry sugar, whatever you're going to put on that's not syrup. Wait until you have freezing temps at night. So, and I'm not sure that Craig did that. I'm not sure that you might have done everything perfect and they zipped right up there anyway. But here's the key. Once you start feeding, you have to keep feeding. They're kind of like wild bird populations. Some people don't feed wild birds at all and that's fine But once you start feeding them, they kind of congregate in the area where the feed is And we feed wild birds here too and that's why we don't stop once we start because they depend on the food and resources that you put out Your honeybees are managed and they're in boxes that we've put them in and

So now we have to take care of them and even though the frustrating part is as described here. There's honey on lower frames. The hive is heavy. I was out tilting hives when I did the video sequences for the opening today and they are loaded with honey. So it's frustrating once they're above it. Now when you get a really good warm up, so that's the other thing. We're going to hit the 50s this weekend. It's going to be rainy. So once they break cluster inside the hive, they do actually access other honey in the hive. That's good news. So if you've got a lot of extra honey in your hive, capped honey that you did the responsible thing, you didn't take too much off and everything else, on warmer days they can access it. But on days when it stays cold, which is what we kind of hope for in wintertime,

and the clusters stay semi-tight, that's when they're clustered over the brood, and they're gonna hold their position. So they will only tend to move up, and that's why we have a lot of frustrated beginning beekeepers that end up in spring with the clusters, near the top and no food and they starve out and that's because that beginning beekeeper did not put additional emergency rations on just in case they get stuck with no food and lots of brood.

So we don't want to starve out our bees. If they've made it this far, that's good news because we're at the end of December, beginning of January and we're going to find out that your bees were not killed by Varro to strike your mites. Thank goodness. Here's the other end of that. Now they can die because the beekeeper didn't keep their hive in good condition and also didn't provide auxiliary emergency feed. So, and again, southern states, more forgiving. I don't want to go as far as to say it's easier to keep bees in the south. They have other challenges that I personally don't have. I'm not fighting small high beetles.

I don't have a big problem with wax moths going after my stored equipment because all my stuff is in cold storage. And wax moths aren't flying around this time of year, so no wax worms. Small high beetles, I don't know why they don't make it. They just don't. So I don't have those things to deal with, but on the flip side of that, it's easier to keep your feeds going in the south because your bees will access more of what's in the hive. So if they've got a bunch of stored honey and you're in a warmer climate, they're going to be able to get to that. That's the good of it. The bad of it is because they're accessing it, they're also probably moving around a lot. They're also probably foraging a little bit.

Here in the northeastern United States, we don't have any forage for the bees this time of year. So what you put on for emergency feed, once you start, keep feeding. And here's the thing. Let's say you put a fondant pack on as I have, and here's my regret. After walking around with my wife, Annette, we're out there looking at all the hives today. It was clear that the ones that had hive alive fondant on them were flying the most. Now, what are they getting when they're flying out? Nothing.

And by the way, if you're going to check your, entrances and clean entrances on a nice warm day like today. We're a veil. Just general suggestion there. You can be stung. Your bees just fly out and don't take it personal. They don't know what to do, so they just sting you. And so the thing is, the ones that have the fondant on were very active. Had a lot of bees coming and going. So what they're doing is they're getting water. I hope. If they're scouting for resources, they're not going to find any. So that's pretty much it. Do I Keep feeding. Yes, keep feeding. And if those of you, if you have not purchased fondant, dry sugar is your next best backup. You can put newspaper print down on top and just pour your sugar in there. If you've got rapid round feeders on the top, if you've listened to me for the past several years, and you have some kind of feeder shim on top, then there's a reservoir there, and that's where you'll put your dry sugar. And the dry sugar will automatically have moisture dripping into it, and your bees will need that. moisture to metabolize that. But if you have the resources and if you can shop for more food for your bees

and you're not going to break the bank on it, you can go to the hive alive website and get hive alive fondant. That's what I highly recommend for myself and others. I need to go out. So that's what I'm doing this weekend. I'm going to put more fondant on the hives that I did not put it on if they're already at the top is described here. And for those that do have it on, I'm just going to check to see how far they've gone. It will make a video to show you what the bees are doing. Of course, there's the promise of rain too. Isn't that the best ever? So the next part of this question is from Craig. I have three Apame six frame nucleus hives. They're all six six six configurations, six deeps over six deeps over six deeps. It seems that the die off each week

is more than any of my other hives. I did not add any extra insulation on top. Not sure how I would do that. Wondering if that could be part of the problem. I don't know if it's part of the problem for the die-off aspect. The way Apamate hives are built, they are designed to be vented through the feeders. They have the best designed feeders. They're so convenient. You unclip a couple of clips. you pull off the top and you have access to the feeder without letting your bees out so that is really good and i spoke with them about that because the vents if you've had these hives through the year all year long they propylized them up themselves so the bees will seal those holes and they shut down that upper venting if you want to know we're going to talk about or what we're referencing as far as this configuration goes they've started calling it the condensing hive so that means a single entrance down below no entrance up above and because they come built in with all these vents on them, I recommend putting a single sheet over the top of your feeder

under the cover and then just clamping it down. In a perfect world, your sheet would be not double bubble, but single bubble. This is a single layer of bubble insulation, reflectorized. You can put that right on top, just like a quilt on top of your bed. And then you just put the lid on, and that stops all air movement and reflects heat back in.

And you get to take advantage of the warmth it's already provided by the Apame insulated cover. So I kind of have a question for Craig whether or not, you know, how long they've been on and why the bees didn't close it up on their own. So that's it for question number one. And insulate, in fact, the guy said that you could just put even a thin layer,

like if you don't have, you know, single bubble or some kind of reflectics, you can put just a trash bag or something like that under the lid. over the feeder and that will stop the airflow. So pretty simple solution, easy to go, well designed hives, those apame hives. Lice and hives, by the way,

we're also doing really well out there and just looks good so far. So now all this left is we run the risk of starving them out. So question number two, this comes from S from Mishawaka, Indiana. Says, I would like to hear your thoughts on Randy Oliver.

observations on robbing screens found in this video and then there's a link to the recent video so I have the robbing screens that Randy Oliver is using for his study and his study was disclosing that the bees were drifting a lot in other words when you put a robbing screen on your hive so he's questioning the robbing screen designs what they do this is a robbing screen this is a robbing screen so we have different designs out there and the one that I have from Randy, they're metal, and they kind of do the same thing, in my opinion. The good news is the North American Honeybee Expo is coming up next week, if you can believe that. We're already on that.

Randy Oliver is going to be there. I hope I can pin him down, and we'll talk a little bit about that because I have some questions. It was regarding foragers going out through robbing screens, and then being unable to return to the hive and go through the entrance that's now established by the robbing screen. So in other words, you put this robbing screen on the front of the hive. Hopefully you did that at night, not during the day while foragers were out. You open one of these top tabs, and this becomes the entrance to the hive. Robbers unfamiliar come through.

They jam up here. They don't find their way back in. So part of the study with Randy Oliver is that the bees that come out through these openings in the top, go and forage and do the thing, come back because their memories are coded to lead them right back through the established entrance and they may forget that they were coming through an entrance here. So then what they do is they drift to another hive that has an easy, accessible entrance, and then you've got forager drift, forager loss from the hive that had the robbing screen. So I have my own take on it. That's why I want to talk to Randy about it.

If he's got the time, he'll be very busy, as well many of the presenters at the North American Honeybee Expo down in Louisville, Kentucky. because my question is there's so much drift already going on. In other words, even without the robbing screens on, these foragers are randomly, frequently going to other hives and not returning to the original hive at all. They just kind of drift around. And there have been a lot of studies on that as well.

So the question comes up, how much drift was going on before the robbing screens were put on? and then how much did the robbing screen itself frustrate the bees? And then my question is, does the benefit of the robbing screen if the hive was actively being robbed outweigh the loss of some of the foragers that might be routed and take the easy route and go into another hive once they're returning with their nectar and their pollen or whatever they happen to have?

So there's a lot going on there. And it's an ongoing study. So there's no conclusion drawn yet. So I will say just from my own observations, and I'm not doing the magnetic tabs that Randy and his people are putting on the bees. They put these little magnetic tabs so when they go to the other hives, they can register and they trap the bees that go there, and they know what hive they originated from.

So there are lots of drift studies that I've seen recently where bees were coming back and just going to different hives on their own anyway, and this is aside from the robbing screen. So it's kind of unclear to me whether or not we're talking about a better design, for a robbing screen because the metal ones that he's talking about come from New Zealand. Or are we just talking about robbing screens in general causing this confusion and then causing drift. So I have looked at it.

I watched the video and good news. We'll be able to talk to Randy, I hope. And his presentation at the North American Honeybee Expo is his latest research. So maybe that's going to be included. I'm going to try to attend that. and in between my visiting with the vendors and things like that, people that I want to interview, I have a list of people that I have to see.

So my thoughts are that there's a lot of drift going on anyway. The second part of that is, and don't get me wrong, I am not questioning Randy Oliver's scientific beekeeping methods or tests. I'm just saying that through my own observations, there's a lot of drift going on anyway. So that would alter it a little bit. In other words, if there's 25% drift going on, when you've got a robbing screen up.

And if we've normally got up to, and several studies validate that there's 20% drift at any given time in any given hive, then we're talking about possibly a difference of 5% on a colony that otherwise would be getting robbed. So it's an interesting study. I look forward to finding out what the final outcome is and what the variables are.

So question number three comes in, and this is from Sabiman, S-I-B-E-E-M-A-N. Okay. Do you have a preference on the type of camera that you use to monitor your hives? How are they set up? Wi-Fi, wired, and then a second part of this question, how much spirulina do you use per gallon of sugar syrup

when feeding in the spring and fall? So I'll do the spirulina first. Spirulina is blue-green algae. You get it in, it's like a talcum powder form. and it's for people it's an organic spirulina so anyway we mix it with bees multiple studies prove that it has benefits to the bees benefits yet undetermined as far as the extent of the benefit so there's even more that they're discovering so i'll answer that first i use three heaping tablespoons of dry spirulina powder to four pounds of dry sugar that's it so if you're doing one-to-one one

then you're going to have eight pounds of dry sugar and that's going to be six tablespoons, heaping tablespoons. I know that's not a very critical measurement, but it's enough. Trust me, it's enough. So that's what I use per gallon of syrup. And I'm glad that that question's mentioned because I'm recommending that you pre-mix a bunch of that. If you've got warm days ahead where you live, through my experiments last year, you can put them in Ziploc baggies, heavy-duty freezer, zip-lock baggies.

If you end up with bees foraging out, because you've already got fondant, you've already got some emergency feed on your hive. I like to provide a resource for those that might be foraging on these odd warm days. I'd much rather they find something that way and then bring it back. We don't have honey supers on. I'm not worried about having green honey, which you will have if you put out sugar syrup with spirulina in it. It looks almost black. It's a dark veridian green. And so when the bees go and get it, you're going to know where they've put it in the hive if they store it at all.

But this time of year, if they're flying out and they get to these Ziploc baggies that you put out, one of the reasons I like those is you can make a very heavy syrup. I'm going to recommend two to one. When you have that, it is the consistency of honey. And so it's really dense. We don't want bees flying onto this stuff and getting stuck. If you put it out in open feed situations, they do get stuck. They push each other into it and they flip on their back once, they die.

If you put it out there in a Ziploc baggie with nothing but pinholes in it, there's an advantage. First of all, you're going to keep it inside nice and warm until you actively see bees flying and foraging. Then when they do, you'll put it out at a predictable, consistent location for the bees. The scouts that learn that that resources there are going to find it over and over. And when that spirulina heavy syrup is missing or whatever you've decided to put out for them, you'll see scouts go out and scour the area looking for it.

And then that reminds you, oh, I need to put that out while it's warm now. And it gives them something. And the reason I say two to one, we want them to get maximum resource, maximum payout for the energy that they expend to find that. And this is well away from your hives, not on your hives. It's a liquid. So the type of camera that I use, Arlo, Pro, Fours. They are wireless cameras. They work through a Wi-Fi base and they have rechargeable batteries.

Very easy to use. The range is about 300 feet from where I am and I can check them wherever I happen to be because they go through your Wi-Fi so they're registered on your system That means you check your phone. I can be at the North American Honeybee Expo and I can look to see what my bees are doing. So, and that's just a curiosity thing. We want to know what our piece of doing. What are you going to do about it? Nothing.

That Arlo system, and I have the prescription base, so that means that I can have as many cameras as I want. We were just talking this morning. We worried a little bit about our sump pump because it's plugged into a ground fault circuit interrupt outlet, which is required by the National Electrical Code, which is very annoying. but that outlet can trip and then your sum pump turns off while you're away. That's what happened.

The ground fault circuit interrupt switch tripped and my pump was not running and wouldn't genoa the basement flooded. That was fun because when I went down there all I had to do is push and reset the GFCI and it fired up again and has consistently worked ever since. So the reason I bring it up now is I'm talking about these cameras, Arlo Pro 4s, they're inexpensive because they've come out with the new Arlo Pro 5. There are a lot of variations, but I use them without wiring them. You have that option. They also have solar panels you can get with them. So the ones that monitor my pond, for example, have solar panels. I never want those units to have their batteries run down. You get an alert when your batteries are low on those. And so there are sirens. You can talk to

people through that camera if you want to. You also can have an emergency alert. So if you get a notification, there's activity at one of your entrances. Somebody's trying to wiggle the door, or they're just standing there looking weird, whatever you want to do. You have a panic button that you program that you punch in that is an alarm. You can also have them turn on spotlights. So minor set for passive observations at night. So in other words, they have the infrared, the glow lights that animals don't detect. And that's how we're I get the end of video videos that I show most often. So I really like those.

And the reason we're talking about the sum pump is I thought, man, I'm just going to take a camera and I'm going to point it at the sum pump. So that even while we're out of town, number one, we can tell if it's running. It has audio and video. And you can even set the alarm to trigger when audio goes off. So let's say you want to know that your stump's running. So when it triggers, if you have the audio sensitivity turned up, then even though there's no movement that you see the sound of it would trigger the camera and then you can dictate how long you want

it to record so then you know it's running it's not and then you could tell a friend hey go down in my basement flooding flooding flooding get the rescue and assistance detail down there right now with their P-250 pumps and get that out of there turn on all the adductor systems so yeah the Arlo Pro Force I do have the pro two's those are older and I consider those disposable because they're so old you can really treat them kind of chunky. They don't have spotlights on them. And I think they're 1080P.

The other ones are 2K. So that's the other thing, higher resolution. So you can stick those inside bird boxes and things like that. Put them in a hollow log and see what's occupying that. See what kind of critters are running around inside your barn. And so the cameras, you just take them and put them anywhere. They're magnetic. They'll stick to metal plates, angle iron, anything you want.

I think I've covered the ground. I've done reviews on how they focus, the focal distance, and they get pretty darn close. Blink cameras would focus closer, but I don't like blinks because they don't have rechargeable batteries. You have to use double-A batteries in them. There's no way to tell if your battery is running low. The Arlo cameras, you go on the app, it tells you the battery status, everything else. So that's it. Good stuff. I'll put a link down in the video description. They're on sale right now. And I think think you can get them anywhere. The even sell refurbished ones if you want dirt cheap ones to try them out. Question number four, Jason Seward 8506. That's a YouTube channel name. I was wondering we are part way through winter now and I currently have an entrance reducer in and it's bringing my entrance down to 3 eighth inch approximately two inches. Am I able to remove my reducer now so that the

entrance doesn't get clogged with dead bees or are mice still out and about do they hibernate or do they forage year round i'm quite curious thank you so much for the videos okay first of all i can talk to you about the deer mice deer mice and house mice they do not hibernate here in the state of pennsylvania they are active full-on i have videos of them talking about the arlo cameras i have videos of these mice every single night so I know where they're going and a barn cat recently went through the apiary and was hunting things, but it seemed pretty casual. So not a very hungry barn cat. I don't think the chances are high that's going to catch these mice because if you've seen deer mice skitter across the snow, they are moving like lightning. And if it weren't for their little glowy eyes, you almost wouldn't see them. But yeah, they don't hibernate,

so they're around. Here's the thing. I'm going to put more of these back out. My eye opening is three-eighths of an inch high two to three inches wide so that accommodates the clean out and it keeps mice out so the other thing that we're gonna jump back into a little more next year because I backed off on it this year I don't even know why I guess I pulled them out when we were doing modifications these hive gate units we're gonna re-implement those on hives that do not have the slatted racks the slatted rack move the brood away from these entrances a little bit so these have really good first of all and I was

thinking about this too with Randy Randy's study there Randy Oliver his robbing screens these work as robbing channels because they're so long this is seven and three quarters of an inch from the entrance to where they can actually come up under your bees inside if you want to know a little bit more about these go to my website the way to be.org and click on the Hivegate page there is a lot going on here and it's more than you can condense into a reasonably timed study or presentation there is a lot with the ventilation and everything else but they serve as robbing screens as well so they keep mice out three-eighths-inch opening and the width of this opening is two and three-eighths

of an inch so I think my optimum next year if I had to pick if I were making a whole bunch of entrance reducers and I wanted a one-size fits all entrance reducer it would be three eighths of an inch tall the opening and they would be three inches wide so I think that is a good opening defendable by bees even a new colony can do that and if use hive gate entrances and Betterbee sells these so I recommend these. Now the one thing you might think about, well if this is in here, look at the length of the channel. If we had dead bees in here, how would you get those out, Fred? Well, the Be Smart Design's little hook thing here would go in at the side and it hooks into this

post and you can pull the whole feeder out, shake it out, feeder at the entrance. Shake out any dead bees that are in there and then push it right back in. And then the thing is, when this is in the entrance, it can pivot a little bit left or right. So if your cluster moves a little bit to the east, which it often does here where I am. South-facing entrances, clusters kind of migrate to the eastern side because that's the sunrise side. You can move the entrance on a pivot over towards that side too, so it comes up directly underneath your cluster. So they work. They work really well.

Fantastic as robbing guards. and so we're going to put these back into business back into operation next year so don't remove your adducers and open your entrances all the way yet because they're still out there and as the colonies weaken now here's because here's the thing what do your bees doing well they're moving up into your hive towards your inner cover and they're consuming resources as they go up now do we have a bunch of space underneath. So we have unprotected space when it's cold and they're clustered. And so the mice, that's why later in winter, the mice love to actually move in more than earlier in the year while the cluster's lower and they're more likely to engage with bees and their stingers. So

but we have several deer mice zinging around and they're using their little feet and they're grabbing out dead bees from the entrance. So they're actually functioning as entrance cleaners from so I'm actually liking the deer mice a little bit because they're not getting in the hive they're just cleaning the landing board and so they're eating dead bees if a bee is dead anyway it might as well go to some use why not let it become a deer mouse

we see the deer mouse I don't see house mice jumping around we've seen a couple of shrews the shrews are not climbing hives so the shoes are on the ground and the snow cover is melting so the shrews are being exposed and I'm not sure of voles hibernate but I don't see a lot of volu activity but of course now we're uncovering all their tunnels under the snow. So it's real interesting but no it's not the time of year to open your entrances up all the way. In fact, I'd like to recommend that you take half of your hives and for 2025 don't open up all of them. Let some of them have full width or whatever it is you think you like to set up for.

for spring and summer or during heavy nectar flows and things like that. And leave others still reduced at the 3 eighths by two to three inches and width. Or those that have the hive gates. The ones that we had hive gates on did just fine in honey production as well. The reason I removed the hive gates and didn't use them anymore, robbing was not a big issue for my bees. So the colonies that were big and strong and easy to defend themselves, I just pulled out the hive gates to clean them and then just left

them out because I was thinking that the number one reason that I would use them would be as a robbing guard. And since these colonies, nothing was going to rob them. They had hundreds of guard bees ready to go at any time. So these large colonies tend to not require defense and don't require those channels. But then I was, of course, completely overlooking the ventilation aspect of that. So in order to revisit, and why do I say 50%, because we want to be able to make comparisons. If you do everything to all of your hives at one time. Then you're just speculating that you had a great year or a terrible year because of the modification that you made. So please modify only a percentage and keep really good records. This is how I know I'm frustrated right now because I wish I had put

a hive-alive fondent on all of my hives again. I didn't listen to myself and it is obvious which ones have it already. And here we are not even at the end of December yet. So question number five, moving on this comes from nick it says i'm a new beekeeper that used your long lang plans to put together two hives so just to clear up what we're talking about long langsroth hives i give you the plans for free they're on my website the way to be dot org and their hives and prints and ross millard designs those for me in other words i sketch them up i do technical illustration and ross actually takes them into a drafting program and makes legitimate looking prints out of it. And there's even parts lists and everything else.

So that's where this comes from. Now, we're talking about the long Langstroth hives. In those prints, you have two options. There's an alternate shim. Pulitzer gas activity. There's an alternate shim that you can put underneath, which is a 2x4, which bumps up the 2x12, that houses your long length deep langstroth frames.

So why the open space underneath? And the reason it's optional is because your bees will create deeper frames if they want them. So you have a standard Langstroth frame, standard deep, and then we have this additional space underneath. Now, some of those, they don't draw out at all if they just leave the space open. This is of interest to me whenever I see a cavity that's occupied by bees, on their own, they're not managed by people. Often you see, first of all, that they're attached to the top

and they'll be attached to a back wall and they run these long fins of beeswax down, loaves, wafers, whatever you want to call them, and then, but they'll often be even a foot of space at the bottom of the channel that they're occupying. So sometimes they don't draw it all the way to the very bottom. So depending on the configuration. So if it's a horizontal hive like you might find in float,

Lorjoice, for example. Farrell colonies that move into those, they tend to run the comb all the way down, but they don't connect it to the bottom. And so they leave a variable space under there. So that's what we're imitating with the long Langstroth hive that has that two by four shim at the bottom and a solid bottom board. And at the end where the brood is, you have the option there to have screens and removable trays and so on. But we're talking right now about that space that is below your standard deep Langstroth frame. So when the bees do build comb under there and now they have the option to do it because there's additional space down there. And so they'll build, they tend to do drone comb. So this gives you an advantage. It allows you to remove drone comb if you want it. So if you want

more bees wax to harvest, this is your chance to do it. If you want to leave it there and just let the bees manage extra comb, what did you just get? You got deeper Langstroth frame. Now if you're going to put this into an extractor, you're going to be cutting that off so that it fits into the extractor. If you have a tangential or a radial extractor, it'll need to fit the standard nine or the standard deep langstroth frame. So if they're a little longer, then you could cut it off. But here's the thing. If that's your brood frame and the brood area is the one that has the deeper comb on it and that's what they're going to use, then you can just leave it on. And let's just leave it on. I'll let them continue to use it over and over stuff gets really tough so that's what that's there for and what a lot of people are seeing is that the bees don't use the space don't draw more comb at all and they just have additional space there so it actually benefits them the bees clean it up they keep it policed up really well and then the screen bottom boards again i prefer to see your screen bottom boards in your long langstroth under the first

third towards the single entrance uh the last The long laying that I designed only has one entrance, and that's because we're imitating what the bees most frequently do on their own when they occupy spaces under feral conditions. So if they draw out the comb up there at the leading part of it, then it's good to go. And the screens are under that because we want passive mic control. The numbers are variable, the benefits of having a screen bottom board.

So in whatever hive configuration, you're thinking about this year. And again, I can't wait to go to the Expo. I'm going to be talking to different. I have some targeted B equipment producers that I want to talk specifically about bottom boards, screens, enclosed bottom boards, removable trays, things like that.

So I'm very interested in seeing who I can influence to make the perfect bottom board the way I have it in my head. So we want the first third because that's where all your brood is. And where most of the brood is is where we want to target. passive integrated pest management. So you hear people frequently say IPM, we have IPM that's an IPM method, integrated pest management. So if you have hardware screen, number eight hardware screen is pretty standard. The bees can groom off the varroa destructor mites. They go into what I call lunchroom trays. We want these trays and things that are being used in the hive to be as

versatile as possible. So we don't want any unique things that will cost you an arm and leg to have or you know cost you a meant to build and that's why the entire thing is built out of two by 12 two by stock. And then over the years we've insulated the top. What did I insulate with? So there's the back of the frames, there's a three-eighths inch gap, there are coverboards. The cover boards are one inch thick and then on top of the cover boards we put reflect or double bubble and we do several layers of it and I got a lot of improvement out of the hive configuration by allowing that double bubble to go out over the entire bottom box. In other words, now it becomes a gasket. So when you bring down the top on that it closes up and that double

bubble or reflect text, whatever you want to use, becomes the gasket material and it takes up any little gaps in variation when the wood comes to surface on the other wood below. And then we have a great contained environment that does not have any condensation over the top of your bees. So I know that's more that was being asked, but that's the reason for the big space. Optional, highly recommend. What's the cost of a couple of two by fours if you're building this thing yourself? You might be wondering why we don't have long Langstroth hives everywhere and why they're not just shipped all over the place. Because they're super heavy.

These things are potentially massive. I see a lot of variations of it. So if you want to see what other people have done based on my prints and drawings and you want to see what kind of hives they've built from that go to that page on the way to be.org and look at the photos because I post the photos that are given to me by viewers like you who have built based on my plans and I encourage people. This isn't like do it my way or you don't know anything about beekeeping. No, this is a foundation, this is the beginning. This works for me, but maybe where you live, you'll want to do some variations. And here's the beauty of a static hive like a long langs rod. Once you set it up, once you know where it's going to be, you can build it in place. You don't have to ship it anywhere. You don't have to carry it around, build it in place, paint it up, and now you've got a hive that can be as heavy and as insulated as you want it to be. So that's the intent. I had handles on it. In fact, I think still in the prints, Ross included handles because the original drawing had handles on the ends. And I thought, after the fact, why on earth do I have handles on this thing? Nobody's going to pick it up. Nobody's going to move it. It's weather tested.

So if you build it, as per these prints, this thing is so heavy on its own, even before the bees put honey in it, which is only going to add to the mass and the weight. It's withstood 64 mile in hour. plus winds storm conditions in wintertime and didn't budge and guess what it's not strapped down it just has the short axis standing proud to the wind and the long axis running parallel with the wind and that now we have the long axis facing south so it's kind of the perfect storm the perfect hive so not going to lie it's an above average hive works really well the bees in that thing are doing so well and don't even know what to say about it. They're borderline, annoying. That's how well they are.

So space beneath frames, that was question number five, and that was from Nick. And I was very disappointed to see that horizontalbees.com, I recommend you go to their website, too, to look at Long Langstroth Hives, Horizontalbees.com. They're not listed among the vendors for the North American Honeybee Expo. I was really looking forward to talking to the, them about their latest and greatest hive configurations but there are plenty of other people that will be there that we can still talk to so sorry they're not going to be there we are in the fluff section now officially so winter time we're getting into the first week of January

you'll hear frequently and it's probably true most of the hives that are heavily loaded with ferro destructor mites and the diseases that they vector you'll find them dead by now so what we're dealing with now if you've got them this far through winter is going to be under the control of the beekeeper and what I mean by that is the bees are either going to starve or suffer from exposure or badly built equipment and things like that so now it's up to you so it might seem insensitive sometimes a beekeeper will come up to me and say yeah my bees died this is what they look like and they'll be describing it to me in February and I'll say the good news is all your bees

are dead 100% because of you. Now the reason that's good news is because we know what the problem was. We know that your bees starved. They ended up in a tiny cluster. You had lots of dead bees at the bottom. All of their abdomens were contracted, so they were starving out. And then their heads were all in the cells. And in that tiny little cluster at the end. And then people will say things like, well, I think they died because they got wet. And they had mold on them. They died because they had mold on them. Okay, first of all, they died and then dampness occurred because you've got this mask there and during these cold nights and warming days, dead bees, they can't do anything about it. So condensation forms on them, mold forms on them, and even you'll get microcilia, you'll get bacteria that grows

and starts to consume them. They are just like a single dead animal, even though they're composed of multiple dead animals. So if you had only provided them with extra, food. What food do you think I'm going to recommend? People don't like it when I recommend that you buy stuff. So I'm going to say go and get some hive alive fondant packs and use a discount code called Fred 10, F-R-E-D-10. And you get 10% off from hive alive. I'm telling you, it works. I won't be facing any dead bees that are my own fault. If you've got the, we talked about the Apamee hives. Apamahe hives have these little feeder blocks on top

and so I cut my fondant in half and put them in Ziploc baggies so they don't dry out so these are ready to go so when you pull the top off you plop them right in there the bees come right up through the candy setting on those of course I'm pretending that you know if you've got Apame hives but put them in Ziploc baggies keep them from drying out all my stuff is ready because this weekend tomorrow I have to take a bunch of pictures

but after that we're going to be taking advantage of the warm weather and we're going to put fondant packs wherever they're more than two-thirds consumed because we don't know what the future is bringing weather-wise so while we have access to them for me personally if it's two-thirds used up I go ahead and replace the pack save the unused portions bring a big food-grade plastic bucket with you save those up because in spring you can mix those into a sugar syrup. So there's that. I thought they

would be foraging for a lot of water today. They weren't. They're just flying out. So eliminating and flying back. That's the good news. So if you've got covers or problems, if you're looking at your hives right now, he's, oh man, there's a gap in there. Oh, geez, there's air coming through where it shouldn't be. then I don't recommend that you try to replace or pull apart your equipment right now. You can make straps out of reflect tax and things like that. There is aluminumized tape. These are used by HVAC people, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning. You can strap the hive, close that up.

This does not take on moisture. All we're trying to do is provide a barrier so that air doesn't go blasting through there. We want your bees to have control of the climate of the cavity that they're occupying. And where are your bees located? As we mentioned already, if you started feeding them and they're at the top, you're going to continue to feed them, or you're going to face starved-out bees in the spring, and it's going to be the person in the mirror. That is the reason that they're dead.

Empty your trays. If you've got removable trays, underscreen bottom boards, we were out there doing that today, too. Just pull the trays, dump them out, get them right back in there. Good news, there was no moisture dripping down in there. So this is another thing that your trays do. If you've got screen bottom boards and trays underneath, if there's excess condensation coming down the sidewalls, it goes into the tray.

And you can see that. We emptied them, they were all dry. That was great news. And so if you don't have fondant, dry sugar and to wrap it around, dry sugar on paper, Mountain Camp method that's referred to as, keep the feed on. So good news.

Part of the fluff too. My Keepers hive that I purchased for the fundraiser arrived in the mail yesterday. Yay. So I hope to see some of you at the North American Honey Bee Expo. I want to thank you for watching today and for being here. And I hope that your bees are not going to starve out this winter.

And I hope that if they do die, it's not your fault. Thanks for watching. Have fantastic weekend. Thank you.