The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Beekeeping Q&A 282 is there a new Flow Hive Competitor?

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube Video:  https://youtu.be/-TF__S5wlcE

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, November the 8th, and this is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and answers episode number 282. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down in the video description. And you'll see all the topics. There are 11 of them today. And you'll see them in order.

There'll be related links, additional information, discounts, things like this. that all good stuff you might be wondering what's going on in my neck of the woods right now well the national scene is pretty interesting but right here in the northeastern United States state of Pennsylvania 50 degrees Fahrenheit the bees are flying barely it's getting colder warmer sun clouds we are in a rain dearth so extra dry period we have a fire ban right now and by the way 50 degrees Fahrenheit is 10 Celsius. Seven mile per hour winds pretty constant. Not very good if a fire starts. Somebody started a fire by flicking their cigarette out the window of their car. That's what

the fire marshal said. And it burned a bunch of woodlands and grassland areas around here. So now we can't have any outdoor fires here at the end of the year. And rain deficit is no joke. It might rain a little bit this weekend, but they say it won't be enough to do anything worthwhile. It's 80% relative humidity outside, and at warm days are ahead still, so bees are flying, lots of flying opportunity. Downside to that is the foragers can go out, but there's no pollen for them. There's no nectar. They're just cruising around looking for trouble.

UV index, by the way, for those who want to know that, is one. That means your chance of getting sunburn today is really low. But the national scene was what's really interesting to me. accordance with the NIFC which tracks fires all over the country just today right now the 8th of November 14 large wildfires and 492,295 acres have burned California is getting the brunt of it so that's there's 14 there's 13 states involved in fires Pacific storms are expected that's good news for those of you in California you're supposed to get some rain this weekend They hope that helps.

But look at this, just for the year, 2004, here in the United States, over 8 million acres have burned. So anyway, if you want to know how you can submit your question for bee-related stuff, I don't know what the bees are doing in those fires. I think people are losing hives just from the heat, the smoke, and everything else. But if you want to know how to submit your own topic for future consideration, please go to the website, thewayto-be.org. You can fill out a form on the page marked The Way to Be.

If you have a question right now, it's on the top of your head and you just have to talk to somebody about it, don't call me, I don't take phone calls, but you can go to a fellowship on Facebook called What else? The Way to Be fellowship. And there'll be someone there that will be glad to help you with your immediate concern. So I think that's very helpful.

And what else can we talk about? I think that's just about it. Things aren't great. Outside is too warm, actually. Here at this time in November, we should have cold temperatures. And that should be keeping your bees inside. You might think, well, that's fantastic news that the bees can fly, that the temps are high, but it isn't.

We want them in a state of torpor. We want them inside their highs. We want in the 40s, for example, Fahrenheit. We don't need this stuff. But hopefully, that's coming soon. We'll get right into it. The very first question for today comes from Fred Stewart. Oops, I used the last name.

It says, Hi, Fred. I don't recall hearing this question before. I'm wondering how often I should be changing out my respirator cartridges that I use for my OA vaporization. So what's OA? Oxalic Acid. I have four hives, and on average I do a spring and fall vaporization treatment. I've been using the same respirator cartridges for a few years.

now but I'm wondering how often you recommend changing them out to a new set so easy peasy that's the picture for today's Q&A the thumbnail these are the cartridges by the way exhalic acid vaporization one of the reasons that some of my close friends don't use it is not because it's not effective against rhodostrater mites it really is particularly here in the northeastern United States this time of year brood is low the effect effectiveness or what's referred to as efficacy is very high in killing those exposed mites. So exhalic acid vaporization works, the problem is it's a respiratory risk. It should not come in contact with your eyes, your nose, your respiratory system.

So here's the thing. And of course I showed I have a couple of different respirators that I use. This one's by 3M pretty trusted name. And what you're looking for is an organic. certified organic vapors, right? So you always need to go to the website that produces these and make sure that the canister, the filter that you're getting is rated for the gas that you are going to be potentially exposed to. Now the other thing is, see how this is a half respirator, it only goes over your nose and mouth.

If you're wearing this one, and I understand why, people get very claustrophobic, some people fog up their mask and things like that. And you need to wear goggles, real, safety goggles, not safety glasses. It needs to be, again, a vapor barrier all the way around your eyes, just in case your exhalic acid vapor system pops off and blows exhalic acid right into your face. Protect your eyes. And so I use them kind of interchangeably. But the thing is, and this is why I often tell you, no matter what it is, that you're buying for beekeeping off, and if it's got a shelf life, don't stockpile them. So there are two dates on these.

that matter to you. One is the data manufacturer. So some people pick that up and look at that and go, oh no. This one says December of 2019, they're expired. No, that's the data manufacturer. So it expires in December of 2024. What I don't like about the way they label these for 3M, the data manufacturers on it, which you could misunderstand and think that that means that it's expired. But if you look at the package that they come in, it has a use by date. of December of 2024. So these are still good. So you get about five years out of them. So if you've had yours for a few years, chances are they're still really good. But the date that's on the unit is the day to manufacture, and then of course you'll get five years after that.

So I recommend they have a spot on here, a space where you're supposed to write the day you started using it. So you don't have any way to measure the cubic feet, for example, of flow through this thing. so go with the use by date I recommend and of course these things can change through the years so I like to fail safe I always want you to go to the NIOSH write up and find out what the limitations are as far as how long this is going to be good for because the conditions that you keep it in or use it in I guess you could actually probably accelerate the deterioration I don't think a beekeeper using OAV exhalic acid vaporization is going to exceed the rating for the filter portion. And even with all the ones, because I have made the mistake of picking them up and using them when they're out of date, but I've not noticed any sense of breathing through that filter.

But organic filters certified for exhalic acid vapor, that's what you're looking for. 3M makes really good ones. And they have numbers, but there again, I almost don't want to tell you the number because that could change, but this one says it's certified for organic vapor acid gas cartridge. So then it's 3M number 60923. So if you look those up, make sure they're still rated for that. I think those numbers have been consistent for as long as I've been using safety gear.

So that answers that question for changing them out. Look at the use by date, when you take it out of the package, of course, write that on each filter. So you'll know when it expires. Let's move on to question number two. This comes from Michelle from Troy, Michigan. Does it make a difference? If the entrance to a long Langstroth hive is on the narrow side of the hive and thus facing the wide part of a single frame, or on the long side of the hive and thus facing a few frames at their ends,

in either case, having the entrance in the southeast corner. Thank you. So here's the thing. There's a lot of discussion about that. It's a question that people commonly have. Would it be better if the entrance comes through and it's the size of the frames, of course, the end of the frame instead of the face of the frame? Well, it would even be better if it just came in underneath of the frames, altogether so that kind of doesn't matter then the next question comes in wow with the long langstroth hive wouldn't it make more sense for the bees to move through it if the frames were parallel to the long axis of the horizontal hive and then there again what do you think i'm going to do go back to what the

bees do and we don't have people looking at them right and we don't have people kind of directing the comb and how it's going to be organized so you look in these floor joists and things like that which are basically horizontal spaces that the bees occupy and arrange the comb themselves and you'll see it goes for all this curviness and sometimes in vertical cavities long straight comb starting at the top working its way down and then of course in the hive that's a long laying it starts in the entrance and works its way into the space which hopefully you have a follower board which means that you expand the space as you go and you understand that this follower board is what makes the decision for me. In other words, long length,

Roth Hives have been around for quite a while and just keeping the frames, you know, side by side and then perpendicular to the long axis, right? We have follower boards that are there. So when you first started out, you might only have four or five deep frames. If we were trying to do it lengthwise parallel with the long axis, then we've already got this long space and it changes the way you would run a follower board, which complicates things. So, for simplicity's sake, we run the follower board in the same direction as the frames, perpendicular to the long axis of the hive. So then the next part of the question is, what about that entrance?

The way I run it in my long laying is to have it facing the opposite side of where I'm going to be standing when I'm working the hive. So it certainly wouldn't hurt to have an entrance on the short end of the hive facing east by southeast, which is in the question here. And that's because morning sun and the wintertime gets in there and it's very helpful to get your bees kick started and get them foraging early in the wintertime, particularly in March and April and late February in some cases where they'll go out and access tree pollen and tree nectar and things like that. So the reason I have it on the long side on the face of it at the end is single entrance, by the way, that's what I use. because that's replicated by the bees in horizontal cavities that they voluntarily occupy.

So it's just because when I lift the lid and I'm working it, if the bees are right here at the end coming out to the side right there, then I have more interaction with them than I otherwise would if they were just on the opposite wall and flying and coming and going there. Now I do recommend that you put your entrance at one end or the other and not dead side, Now if we start dead center, we have to have two follower boards, or maybe you're doing multiple hives, multiple colonies in the same hive. I don't do that, some people do, but now I have to have two follower boards and I have to expand it out whichever direction or in both directions at once to keep that center entrance. So I prefer to do it at one end and then let them work their way across.

But there's lots of options, lots of room for experimentation, but there's lots of options, lots of room for experimentation, but there's That's my explanation for why I do what I do. So moving on to question number three. Comes from Keith, Half Tracks and Honey, by the way. Question about winter bees. He says, I know what is different about. I know what is different about a winter bee, but how is a winter bee made?

So those you might be sitting here wondering what the heck is a winter bee? I think we should actually almost call them Dirtbees. because what happens is these are nurse bees and when does it happen so it says here so do the workers feed the larvae differently than a normal worker doesn't think the queen would lay an egg that's different and that's correct the queen bee is going to lay two casts it's either going to be haploid which is going to be a drone or it's going to be diploid and that's why you hear them say these are diploidal and that means that it's going to be a female it's going to be a worker

and the diploid also egg could be the same, just a worker egg. They could be turned into a queen, which is the miracle of nutrition coming from the nurse bees. Because not only can they make a fat-bodied winter worker out of a standard worker egg, just by altering the diet that they feed it, and the frequency that they feed that diet, and how they care for that larvae as it develops, they're not feeding an egg, they're feeding the larvae after it hatches on the third day. So then they can take a worker and they can just feed it different resources, different food, and create a queen in a much shorter amount of time, by the way.

So the feeding opportunity remains the same pretty much, right? They start feeding them when the egg hatches. They feed until they get into the pupa state. And it's the time they spend as a pupa that is much shorter if it's a queen. But she's been fed huge amounts of resources. sources and her cell is much larger so the queen can grow bigger. Fat-bodied worker bees are different, and I'm not sure that science has really caught up with all the details nutritionally regarding exactly how that happens, because their physiology is

different. In other words, if we catch bees mid-summer and we pick nurse bees and we slice them up and we look at them to see how much fat they have stored in their body. We look to see how much space is available for fat development. Because you can't really look at a winter bee and say, aha, fat-bodied winter bee. A-ha, normal winter bee. Fat-bodied winter bees live for months, by the way, which makes them super interesting. They have more space in their body to store fat. So it's not like a normal worker bee could just overeat and put.

on more weight and then become a fat-bodied winter bee and live longer, they are actually different in their ability to hold fat in their head, in their thorax, in their abdomen, more of it. There's been some discussion amongst entomologists, not normal people like you and I, right? You and me, I don't know how you say it. Anyway, there's discussions about whether or not that should actually be another cast of bee because it's not always in the hive but when they're around they're a resource they behave differently and they have this ability to store more fat and they also have pollen they've consumed it it's in their body so it's not even so you look at a frame you say oh no there's no pollen they're all going to die well we've got these fat-bodied winter bees going around like little

kind of reproductive battery charge systems right so they've got the proteins stored in their bodies that they need to feed brood to continue kind of with a skeleton crew going through winter just enough to keep things going because no other foragers are going to burn out once they reach the foraging age they're good for about two weeks and they burn out quicker because they're flying like those bees are doing today they're outside flying around wasting their energy burning out their motors and wearing out their wings so the fat-bodied bees to save that resource as a fat-bodied reproductive resource they can feed, brood, even when no nutrition is coming in through the door, they don't fly. They don't go outside. They don't risk them. They stick around.

They are in the nursery all the time, whether eggs are present, whether larvae is present or not. And then when the queen does lay, and they need to sustain themselves because they need reproduction of workers to continue doing tasks inside the hive through winter or an extended dearth period elsewhere, these fat-bodied bees kick in. So that's why, by the way, people talk about getting your diseases under control, getting your varroa destructor mites under control because they're vectors of disease and we want to do it early. Not now. Because it's too late now to make them healthy so they can have healthy reproduction. Because what bees are feeding the new eggs that are

hatching? The new larvae, right? It's going to be nerdy. bees that are already in the hive. Well, how healthy are they? And did they grow up healthy from the time they were an egg when they hatch and then they got fed? So that's why it all backtracks into late summer when we need to really be taking care of our bees and making sure that they're not challenged with all of these vectored pests, pests that vector diseases like ferro-destructor mites. I'm sure small hive brings some unpleasant things into your hive too. I don't have those. But this is why you need to keep your bees healthy for as long as you can, so that when nature does shut down the buffet,

that all those bees that have been developed as fat-bodied winter workers are more healthy and more capable and can guarantee your stock going through winter. So to answer Keith's question, it's diet-related. It's a miracle. I don't even know how you begin to figure out, first of all, all of the different variables and the proteins and everything else that your bees are able to feed to developing larvae. I suppose you can analyze it and it might be something if it changes. In other words, here's how it gets all muddy, right?

Does the nurse be that's feeding a fat-bided winter bee only feed those? In other words, because at the same time, they might still be, I don't know, growing some drones over there, even though they're not going to be able to use them in winter. so they're fed a different mix right maybe a leaned out mix that does something different maybe you know they lost her queen near the end of the year so they're developing a queen is that a different nurse B that now has different resources or do they have the ability to you know it's kind of like a soda fountain where they can mix up a bunch of different things together for this one and then this one smells different so now they have a different concoction to feed that one I don't know

I'm speculating. But I'm sure there's a nutritionist out there somewhere in entomology that understands more to it. But for us, for the layperson, we just know that they're produced and that we need to do the best we can to have a healthy colony at the time. They are producing those fat-bodied winter bees, because that is the future of the hive. Let's see. Here is question number four that comes from Marie Jacksonville, Florida. Says, I'd like to make a honey house in my back. backyard. Can you have three to five, let's see, I can have three to five hives max per city regulations. I was thinking of buying a pre-made shed just to speed things up. And what would be the ideal square footage so I can store all my equipment, including my extractor? I will have electricity and water

in the shed. So that thing about electricity and water. in the shed. That's pretty darn handy. We don't run water to my outbuildings here because we get so cold in wintertime, so kudos to you down in Florida where you can have this year round. I don't personally recommend a prefab shed as a honey house because here's what I want you to think about. You only have three to five hives, but I've seen some people with three to five hives have a lot of honey resources. So the heaviest piece of kit you're probably going to have and there's going to be your extractor. It's going to be full of honey. You're going to store some honey maybe but when the extractor is running here's what I do with my extractor I built it up on a heavy duty carriage by that it's a big triangle it's got those big industrial wheels that you can

lock and they're on ball bearings so they swivel in every direction I built that base out of red oak I'm starting here because I'm explaining why I don't like the shed with a plank flooring in it so I prefer a concrete slab personally, right, for that. So anyway, I built it up on that, so it does two things. As a triangle, the ground can be a little uneven. So if you had four wheels, for example, you can get one a little off level and you can get a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It could be teetering back and forth. But if you've got three wheels, they're already going to be engaged, even if the bottom of your slab or something like that is a little bit uneven. It works. The other thing is, while I'm

extracting, often the load. Now sure enough, every manufacturer of every extractor is going to tell you these are balanced. They are. They absolutely come balanced. If you run them empty, they run perfect, they sit still, there's no vibration, they're quiet, everything's great. But you're going to fill that with honey, you're going to put frames in there and your frames are not all going to be loaded. They're not all going to be loaded equally. So you have an unbalanced load. So when I first started out beekeeping, I had the hand crank, right? And I used to crank it up, and then everybody would hold on to it, and it would like vibrate. G-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cch-cch-cch-cch. And so the thing is, if you have it on wheels, all it does is oscillate around in these little circles. So a lot of things

happen when you add wheels to your extractor. And it works fantastic. I'm just here to tell you. It works great. I run my electricity, by the way, while we're talking, I don't put the outlets on the walls. Put the outlets in the overhead. Now your electrical wires are out of the way. So when you run your wire to plug your extractor in, it runs into an overhead plug. So now where are your wires up and out of the way? I like that. See, I'm not going to give you all the details and I'm not going to give you a square footage. So that's going to be very disappointing for some people, but see, there is no one size fits all. I guarantee you this. No beekeeper has ever walked into their honey extracting

room and said, wow, this is way too big for me. Never. That's because you end up with so much more stuff than you ever thought you would need. You'll never run out of a need for horizontal space. Since you have water in there, you're probably going to have a nice deep sink like you were in a laundry room or something like that. So the ability to wash your hands off, that's super handy. That is good. So you need wall space for that. I also am a big fan of those open. rack systems, the heavy wire racks. Like if you went into a restaurant and you walk back in their store room, you'll see a bunch of heavy duty wire racks for maximum air movement. You see everything through them. They have ratings. I have racks out there now that are 800 pounds per shelf,

that they're rated for that. Am I going to put 800 pounds of stuff on there? No. I like to over design it underutilize it. Once again, no one ever complained. Wow, that shelf is way too stout. I can't believe your grandkids can climb up on that and sit on those shelves and they don't even bend the least bit, right? First of all, don't let your grandkids do that. Those monkeys don't belong on shelves. But here's the thing. Space to move your stuff. So that's another bonus.

Not only would your extractor be on wheels, which makes it handy for absorbing the stress and just oscillating around, but now you're through it with it. You can wheel that thing right outside. You can hose it out. You can put it on an embankment. tip it up and all this other stuff. The other thing is the wheels elevate your extractor so that the wheels and the base that you make for it pick it up more. So now when you put buckets underneath of it when you're draining it, there's room for the buckets and the buckets themselves can be, I use seven gallon buckets and those can sit on little dollies, right? So those have wheels too.

And now those just roll around while they're full, right? So I like the idea of things being easily moved around. So the other thing is when they're not in use, you're going to wheel that over into a corner, you're going to unplug it from the overhead, and you're in storage mode with a 55-gallon trash bag over the top of it, the clear ones. Those are what I like. So anyway, what I would like you to do, for those who are thinking about their honey house, what are you going to store in it? I think it's likely that you're going to probably be storing your frames in there. Why not make it a multi-purpose storeroom, right? And I like when. Here in the northeastern United States, I like the south wall to have windows in it because I want the winter sun to come through those windows and warm the space. I do not want windows in the ceiling. I don't like skylights because in the summertime when it gets really hot, I don't need that room to be 100 degrees. I don't want it to be. So there are things that you think about. A prefab structure is going to have wooden floors. Now let's say you went that route, right? You have to have a ramp going into it or it has to have to have a ramp going into it or it has to

be built on grade because you're going to be wheeling things into and out of your honey house. So if it's just a big garden cart, let's say, you have to think about how big a door do you need to run that through and then do you have to go up a ramp to get that in there, which means more energy, right? So if you had it on a slab, then that's pretty decent. Plus, you have to think about drainage, right? If you're in Florida, maybe the terrain is flat and you need to make sure that you put in a knee wall or something like that, which could be cinder blocks. or bricks. And when you build up the knee wall, it's to prevent water from just washing down your landscape and going into your honey house. So if you had a slab, now you have something to build that

onto also. So I'm a fan of slabs. Now here's what I recommend. I recommend that you go to other beekeepers in your area that are on the scale that you are and see what their honey houses are. I think you're going to find out a lot of them are just using their garages. I've seen people use just the carport or they go behind their house and they've got this two-story house with a deck sticking out and under the deck where they have their walkout basement which probably is something you don't have in florida but uh they have a natural structure that's already there that they've just put a bunch of insect screens around so they don't have a bunch of bees flying into the honey that they're working with right because you have to have uncapping station for uncapping tanks

you have to have a place to stage all of your frames that are waiting to be uncapped, and most people call that a hot room. So would you have an area that you could drape off and have it stay nice and warm? I suspect down in Florida you have days when it's in the 80s and 90s and where the hot room is already built into kind of your environmental air. But you have to worry about humidity levels too, so dehydration. So there are a lot of things to think about. And go and visit someone's space and say,

do you have enough room for everything? What do you wish you had? Do you wish your overhead was higher? Do you store things in the overhead? If you built a 12-foot high wall, would you have then a mezzanine area at one end that you could have a platform that's six feet up or seven feet up and you have storage above and storage below it?

That could be handy with a little step ladder, something like that going up one side or even some narrow stairs that go up one side. of it. So I think build that thing as big as you can manage it and have it built in place on a slab personally. That's what I think. Mine is 24 by 32 feet. It is not big enough. But I like to be able to drive a golf cart right into it that pulls the wagon that's got the honey and frames and everything else right on it because then we want to close the garage door behind it so that the bees don't follow me in there. I like to have double-hung windows in your honey extraction slant bee storage area, bee equipment.

That's because you're going to inevitably bring bees in with you. Double-hung windows, if you just pull down the top sash, bees naturally fly to the window light when there is no other light source in the building, and then they go up and out those double-hung windows. And that puts them right back in the bee yard and gets them away from your honey processing room. So thinking about how your bees are going to make an exit is another. thing. There's just a lot to think about. It's not a simple question, but it's regional. Some people around here where I live, a lot of people have old barns and stuff, and

barns make fantastic spaces. Now if you're going to sell your honey, this is, I don't know what the rules in Florida are. State of Pennsylvania, where I live, if you become someone who wants to sell your honey. Now you can sell your honey, producer to consumer. Backyard beekeeper can do that, according to our Department of Agriculture. But let's say even you want to post a little ad on Facebook and say, we have honey for sale. You just advertise your honey that puts you in a different category according to our Department of Ag.

Now you have to be inspected. So when you're thinking about the building that you're going to put up, that you're going to use for honey processing, it would be to your advantage to check in with your department of agriculture. I'm assuming they govern honey production, and find out what those requirements are if you're ever going to be inspected. That can change the material that you build

your honey processing shed out of, no matter what the size is. If you have to sanitize it and prove that you can clean it, top to bottom, floors, walls, ceiling, that can change how the structure gets put together. And if you know that those requirements are eventually going to be put on you and you can feasibly

there are people with five hives that end up with, you know, a few hundred pounds of honey through the year, and they want to make some of their money back. So they want to label it, sell it. They want to sell it the local Whole Foods or something like that. Just a little niche market, which can actually run into quite a bit of income. You want to make sure that now you don't have to go back and change everything. So if you build to those requirements in the beginning, you don't have to retrofit it later and deal with some of those problems. So there's a lot of food for thought, and that's kind of the basis of my response is to get you thinking more about what the requirements are and see if the sheds. And some of these companies build really elaborate sheds, and they can spec them out for you, and then you can get one that's got a better load-bearing capability.

Maybe you're happy with a ramp. Maybe your property is already on grade, and you can have the ramp be nice on level. So when you go into it, and the low side of that has like a couple of feet of clearance off the ground. I don't know. So. Question number five, moving on. This comes from Navarra. N-A-R-R-A-4.

That's the YouTube channel. Okay, this one's interesting. And cost me a lot of time, by the way. Says, can you please, please, please do a review next year using the Paradise Super Honey Extraction System. It is the competitor to fly. and I want to decide what to get. Blue Sky Honey sells them out of Ohio. Please reply. Okay, so here's the thing. I didn't know anything about the Paradise

Super Honey Extraction System, so I had to look it up. So where did I go to look it up? I went to YouTube. I looked at YouTube videos and I see what it is. It's another system that has your bees putting honey in a super that has cells within it that can be cycled. In this one, it looks like they collapse on each other and then drain the honey down. And in this case, I have to say it was really different looking. And I found a couple of YouTube channels that were showing it. They didn't do any follow-up showing how well it worked. I found a lot of introduction to it.

And then, of course, I found this company, Paradise, the Paradise Beehive system. These are polystyrene hives. They have a plastic frame. It's different from the flow hive frames. And you run a rod through it. And when you run the rod through it, it causes the cells to collapse on each other. The honey trains out. And it's got a built-in trough system.

So it does differ from the flow hive. Flow hive is always a standard wooden hive, three quarters of an inch thick. It's not designed initially for cold weather. The Paradise Super Honey Extraction System, but later I found out it was called something else. The Smart System is what the Paradise Beekeeping Company calls it. So the Smart Super System is designed built in with a trough

that brings all of the honey from. all of the frames together into one trough to drain it and then a vertical stack pipe that goes down and you collect it into a tote or a bucket or something like that so I wasn't excited about that right off the bat because I thought what the heck one of the advantages of the flow frames which have now been around since 2015 by the way when they first came out I bought the super as a fundraiser I got that. So I have all these years of experience with that one. And so I can kind of make a comparison, but as you know, I like to get things in hand and I want to look at it physically. I want to see how it's going to go. I don't really like just chiming in and seeing what other people are doing and

see kind of how they liked it, although I found the information to be really sparse other than the website of the Paradise Company itself. They show it and they show it working, of course, you know really well i couldn't find anyone else that would answer my questions about it now so that led me on a thing here because it says right here blue sky honey sells it out of ohio so blue sky honey is not the company name it's blue sky bee supply and i did go to them but i also went to paradise themselves i reached out to them i tried to call uh they're international by the way no response And I went to their Facebook page and I sent them a message, no response. And I sent them emails requesting information and where I could source one.

Also, no response from the company for the last, ever since this question was posted to me. So it's been out for a week. I waited for a response from them. Then I find out there's one company within the United States that sells it. Blue Sky B supply. wouldn't you know it that we just had one of their owners come and talk to our northwest pennsylvania beekeepers association so i called them on the phone and you think answer the phone the very same person that came the one of the owners of blue sky b supply so great now i can talk to somebody

about the system so i can get a hold of one so i can properly evaluate it okay so it's listed the super by itself on that blue sky bee supply page before we've been made the call, $399.95 for the super by itself. These are polysirene hives, so you could say that there would be an advantage in cold climate beekeeping that maybe that would work better, right? So, but what I found out was, of course, it's out of stock. So everywhere I went, this smart super is out of stock and from the Paradise Company. So I also, when I spoke with the owner there at Blue Sky Bee Supply. They're a little frustrated with the company because I guess they showed up at the North American Honeybee Expo. They were looking for sellers, merchants that would carry their products. And that's where Blue Sky B supply came in.

They're the only designated seller in the United States for this smart system. And they don't have any of them. They can't even test them. The other thing is they have concerns that the price is going to be way higher than what they initially said it would be. They're not getting good communication from the company either, and they are the only U.S. supplier. So everything is just speculation, which I don't like, so it was a little frustrating. All I can say is I hit a wall with the company talking about that specifically. I will say that the owner of the Blue Sky Bee Supply said that the polystyrene hives that come from that company are well made. They're really good.

It's the smart super that they're kind of balking on. And they don't have plants to carry it. So I won't be able to get a Paradise Smart Super honey extraction system to evaluate. And by the way, Navarra here is not the only person that's asked me about that. There seems to be a rush of information around it or people wanting to know more just this past week for me as far as I'm concerned because several people reached out. So I'm kind of responding to everyone with this one question. And I'm not personally interested in buying one anymore. If a company can't communicate details about their products or doesn't show a bunch of different people, some people do fundraisers and jump.

starts and you know they do indigo go-go campaigns and things like that and when they do that they're big on all the details of course and then people have a bunch of feedback on it uh showing how great it works so if you know of a youtube channel or a YouTuber who has one who uses it and demonstrates that it does in fact work i recommend that you direct your questions to them like how is that going How did it really work out? In the onset, you know, looking at it, when you look, make comparisons just again, I've had the flow hives in hand. So I know that when I pull off the back panel, I can see the end of every flow frame. They have a transparent end panel on them.

So I can see what's going on. I see the bees filling the center and starting to work things out. We also have windows on either end, so now we can see them. Based on what I could see in some of the reviews and things like that, you have to pull the frames out just to look at the face of the frame or see if they're even working it. So the end panels, of course, that's the last thing that gets finished. So you could make an assumption that if the end panels are capped with beeswax and that they've got nectar in there or honey in there,

then it looks like it's kind of ready to go. So but you can't see it through the end panel. So you just be sitting there not knowing even if your bees are working it yet. With the flow frames, you see that they're working them right away through the center, you see if bees are even in the super at all. So I highly recommend that for those who are interested in that, if your money is burning a hole in your pocket, you still can't buy them here. I don't know yet if the company is going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo in January. If they are, I'm going to go right over there and get a firsthand look and talk to them about it.

But it sounds like they have a supply problem with their smart super. I suspect that we're going to see, they also sell nucleus, which are polystyrene. And according to Mel at Blue Sky B supply, those are solid. They're well made. They're nice and heavy duty. It's just this smart super

that I think they're going to abandon and not carry. So I can't give an answer about that. But I thought I would at least mention it now and say that there are supply issues here in the United States with it and that if you get an opportunity, if you see one on Etsy or you see one on eBay or something like that, I'm going to personally recommend that you wait, that you don't spend your money.

Wait to see other people demonstrating that it works first. Let it go for now. So that's it. For now I have to say, don't buy it. Wait and see and see what the company comes out with later and see what their explanations are. But I'm never comfortable with companies that don't respond to requests for information. There was a company years ago that came out called tapcomb that was similar. They had another way to cycle honey out of the frames, much like flow hive and then train that out. Tapcombe disappeared overnight after people put in lots of orders and they never delivered. I got one. It was a terrible system. And I could not believe that that kind of got through the wickets. And of course me, why did I even? that was over $400 for a tap cone system and I just gave it away it was a terrible system and so I'm sorry to Dan who I gave it to by the way it just was never going to work it's garbage okay question number six comes from Fred's Honey six four five eight that's the YouTube channel name says you had this Ciracell robbing screen on another episode and it had more of a solid area up by the exit tabs I think you brought this

feature to our attention so I bought a bunch and put them on my colonies and even though they're like the one in this video so this video that we're referencing right now came out this past week I'm doing beekeeping quick tips so these are short videos and this particular one was how to stop robbing or yeah how to stop robbing and I did another one on keeping mice out of your hide so please like those up if you're interested in them and it says they've worked well but but how well do you think these will work as mouse guards? So I'm going to show you what we're talking about.

First of all, I think Fred is confusing two different types. So this is the Cirousel robbing screen. And it has flip-ups. You can open them both. So it opens them all the way. This thing is pretty deep, or you can open one side at a time. And of course, it has all these air vents in the front. So the robbing bees try to go to the front.

They get frustrated at the gate. And then other bees come and go. I demonstrate that in the video. But I think we're talking about the B-smart Design's robbing screens when we mention the blackout area. So this area up on the corners where the entrances are that you control, and this is a dirty one. Of course, there are brand new ones that are nice and clean.

Let's get that. So this blackout area means that the robbing bees go where they can smell inside the hive. up here they can't smell it so then that gives the resident colony the home advantage to come and go there so beat smart designs robbing screens has the block out the blackout area and the cerocell units do not they both work this one also has the standoffs as a mouse guard so we're going to talk about that too will they work as mouse guards now here's why i don't like them as mouse guards be smart designs they do a lot with their plastics so that they can of course

deal with ultraviolet rays of the sun which is going to damage plastic even the best plastic over time does not hold up to sunshine now i've had the be smart designs um robbing screens these also work to transport hives you can close them up and ship your hive move your hive keep the bees inside anytime you need to maybe somebody is going to spray pesticides nearby and you need to close up your bees for a day these are great for that um what i don't recommend is leaving them out because they get exposed to the sun and they break down and they get brittle and so you wouldn't leave it out so as a mouse guard right we want a mouse guard that's going to stay up all winter long so please watch my mouse guard video because it's more about the

entrance opening size than it is blocking your bees because I don't want the bees to have to go up and out you do see them like undertaker bees they carry bees right up the front of this and out and haul them away because I watch them do it this past week a mouse can chew the plastic the plastic left out and the weather is going to get more brittle and it's going to eventually break down so I recommend using robbing screens temporarily so in other words you're going to move a hive somewhere bring it out put it on, put the screws in, mount it to the front. Now you've got a place that's ventilated that you can transport your bees, right? When it comes to preventing mice, here's an example of a metal mouse guard.

See these openings, your bees can come and go through them. A mouse cannot. I don't like this. Let me tell you why. I like these. 3 eighths of an inch. See that opening right there? 3.8.7 inch.

Mice cannot get through. it. Now I had a viewer that called me out on my three-eighths of an inch opening because I also said shrews don't get in there. But remember, I'm talking about the state of Pennsylvania, northeastern United States. There's another shrew on the west coast or in the northwestern United States. It's actually smaller. I was told that a tiny head can actually get through the three-eighths of an inch opening. So you're going to have to find out what are you trying to keep out of your hives in wintertime and what kind of tiny mammals are actually. trying to get in there because I still have my cameras out on the hive that was being visited by deer mouse a deer mouse is pretty darn big house mice are a little smaller they cannot get in the 3 eighth of an inch the smallest shrew we have here is the pygmy shrew that's tiny it cannot get through the 3 eighths of an inch but this other shrew in the northwestern United States apparently can so the next question and the reason I like this opening

Winter's coming remember clean out. So I like to be able to get my clean-out tool in that opening and scrape out dead bees in wintertime. And I can do it with this. Now this by the way this metal plate actually goes with the hive gates. This is a hive gate. Mice cannot get through the hive gate. The hive gate goes like this on your entrance and if you could do two at a time. That's where this really comes from. So if you want to know about hive gates and of course the bees come up inside directly under your winter cluster and so things that want to rob your hive including wasps and maybe visiting bees from other colonies they have to show up right under the cluster where there will be guard bees that are going to deal with them plus on their way in and I've made videos about this too I put a endoscope inside so we can see the wass come in the entrance and try to make their way down this long

channel and what happens is the guard bees jump them right here in this channel so they don't even get all the way in and if they get in this far they have this little lip that gets them off kilter and then they get attacked here by the defending guard bees and then let's say it gets all the way inside and this is coming in through the entrance of your hive now they're unfamiliar and they're all disoriented because the angry bees are trying to defend everything inside now they try to run out the front and they can't because they're running out here the risk Resident bees know that to get out you have to go through this channel and out that long run. The robbers don't. So they end up dying at the gates right here on the inside. They can't even get out to go and get reinforcements and come back and rob further. So the hive gate is what that's made for. Anything that you can do to produce a 3 eighths inch opening is going to keep mice out of your hive.

So the next question I have, and that's why I'd love to talk. I did a nice interview with a small mammal biologist here in the state of Pennsylvania, but now we're talking about Pennsylvania species and the world is bigger than that. So in other words, how much would that tiny shrew even eat? Like, how detrimental is that? I hate mice inside my house and inside bee houses. I don't know if you've ever watched a mouse moving around, but they constantly defecate.

They drop mouse pellets just as they're going about their routine. So they are soiling the inside of your beehive. Someone else said, well, on the video, why aren't the bees just stinging the mouse when it goes in the first place? Because what do your bees do when it gets cold like it did last night? They cluster up. When they do that, if your entrance is big enough for a mouse to get in, the mouse goes in and starts dragging as much moss and grass. And this was bringing in milkweed seeds because of how fluffy they are. And it creates this little packed-in nest area that your honey bees can't get to the mouse when they come out to do their cleansing flights.

But because of this weird weather that we've had and how warm it's been, the bees were throwing the mouse material out the front. And of course the mouse had to leave too. Even though it's nocturnal, it doesn't want to get out there and run around in the daytime. It's a deer mouse. But it also can't stay in the hive now because the garden bees are going everywhere. So if it were wintertime, they would be able to build in there, stay in there. And of course, feed off of honey and comb and pollen and all the other proteins that it wants to survive on.

So my question about the shrew is, how much is it really going to eat? We know that a tiny shrew has a meteoric metabolism. They have to constantly eat. So if they don't have access to resources, they're going to die. And they definitely will eat insects, right? In fact, if you had a shrew inside your hive, it could kill and eat a mouse. So that's very interesting too. The short-tailed shrew here in the state of Pennsylvania is venomous.

and can actually bite and paralyze a mouse and then feed on it at its leisure in its little den. So it's very interesting. If you have a shrew, you don't have mice because it's going to be running them down and killing them. But how many bees would it eat? In other words, comparing a shrew to a mouse, how much are they going to really mess up the hive? So I don't know. But as far as those working as mouse guards, they do, of course, temporarily. but I don't like leaving robbing screens on for extended periods of time

because they don't hold up well to sunlight and we want the bees to have a direct entrance in and out. So that's it for that one. Question number seven, what do you thoughts on treatment free? That is the easiest question I've had all day. If you're brand new to beekeeping as I was at one time, treatment free sounds pretty darn good. In fact, I'm all about holistic everything.

I don't eat fast food. You'll never see me in a fast food store. Treatment-free just seems like that's the way to keep bees, right? I did it for 10 years. I felt like I was doing really well at that. My inspections were really clean, too. State Inspector came. He was very interested in the stock I was keeping.

Treatment-free shifts on you when you start to realize what's going on with the bees. We can keep our bees alive, maybe a little bit. The studies, keeping the bees treatment-free, everyone kind of goes back to the Arnott Forest, where Dr. Thomas Seeley did his research, Dr. David Peck from Better Bee was part of that research as well. David Peck would be a great example of somebody who understands the ins and outs of treatment-free beekeeping,

survivor-line bees, survivor stock, feral colonies living on their own. and he highly recommends treating your colonies when they have parasites present. So treatment free is both a philosophy and kind of overlaps the responsibility you have towards your bees which are livestock. So I would love to breed out weaker colonies and colonies that don't do well with Varroa and continue to work only with bees that are sustaining that on their own. I find that a lot of people that want to be treatment-free want to be hands-off beekeepers. Dr. Leo Shurashkin goes a long way in the book that he helped translate to English

called Bekeeping with a Smile, which deals with the land's hive, two inspections a year. That's it. Spring and fall. And in fall, it's to take the honey, and in spring, it's just to see how well they wintered and maybe make splits if necessary, things like that. I think when that book was originally written, I don't think Vero destructor mites were maybe a thing. Before Verroa destructor mites, there were tracheomites and other issues. There was American foulbrood.

There are other things that go on. So you have to decide what does it mean to be treatment-free. If I find American foulbrood in my colony, the treatment here where I live is to burn the hive, destroy it. So the state inspector has to come. You have to let them know that you have American. African foul brood. The treatment comes into play for adjacent hives and you have to have a doctor of veterinary medicine to write a prescription for that treatment. Then if you start to treat for that disease, you can never stop because the disease is present. There's also European foul brood,

which is treatable. Okay. So all of these things, what is treatment free? Are you trying to just not treat for mites, for varro destructor mites? So, Then we want bees that are very hygienic that start to munch the mites. I love those bees. I watch them do it all the time. I look at mites. I love to see their feet chewed off. I love to see the Varro Destructor mite get its comeuppance from the bees that seem to be holding their own.

Then you have new beekeepers across the road from you. Hypothetical that get packaged bees from the south. That get Italians, for example, that come up from Georgia or wherever. And they're bringing these packages. and they're treatment-free. These people have a great philosophy. They're brand-new to beekeeping, and they're treatment-free.

So did you do mite counts or anything? You have an opportunity when you get a package of bees to give them a treatment with oxalic acid vaporization, which has a very good track record for knocking out bees, up to 96% knocking out the varodistractor mites, while those bees have not yet started to pupate, right? So we know that if you treat them within the first seven days of hiving them up, there are no capped pupa in there, which means any varroa mites that they have,

this is a great opportunity. Knock those things out completely. So we know that there's so much drift going on. This happens to treatment-free beekeepers. It happened to Daniel Weaver from Texas that has the bee-weaver line, which when I was reading up on treatment-free and trying to find a bee stock to work with, that's where I got my bees. and they did extremely well.

And his were doing extremely well. And they moved them north to breeding yards and things like that. And then they had a whole bunch of their bees collapse. They started to show high vero accounts, high borough numbers. And this is not second end information. This is what Daniel Weaver told me. A commercial beekeeper came in with an 18-wheeler and unloaded a bunch of unregistered bees there

and put them in a field right in flying. distance of his mating yards. So it disrupted his stock. And this is what happens. We're not on that scale. We don't have thousands of beehives. If you're a backyard beekeeper, what are we doing? It's a tiny drop in the bucket, right? We are trying to do the best we can. So if you're going to be treatment-free, you can do it, but it's a very active thing that you have to do. So again, talking to Dr. Thomas Seeley, what would you have to do? Be ready to euthanize colonies so don't meet your standard. In other words, colonies that are not sustaining themselves against a destructor mites or even some other diseases, you would kill the queens, you would get rid of the colony.

So you have to euthanize them. And then someone who thinks that hands-off beekeeping would just be fantastic, we just won't treat. And then, you know, we're only going to reproduce from, we're only going to split from the colony that does not have eromites and stuff or has low mites and is living with them. Because that's the other thing, you know, beast or tolerant to varodistructor mites that are not succumbing to those diseases that are carried, right? So, but what was proven then was that if you leave these colonies that are not doing well and sustaining themselves against a varodistructor mite, the mite numbers start to grow. And of course, they're brooding up, and the reproduction of the mites are high because the bees

are not grooming them away, they're not chewing them, they're not uncapping the cells that have varroaumites in them and desicating the mites, and then you can have a boost in mite production in a colony that otherwise are in an apiary, your backyard apiary, that would otherwise be holding its own. You can have one bad apple in your apiary that becomes the distributor of all of your mites. So thank you again to Dr. Zachary Lomas, who did the study that realized that that a observed and proved that the road destructor mites are attaching themselves to the bodies of what the drones what are drones doing now let me tell you about drones if you wanted to spread things around your apiary here's the good news about drones and the bad news the good news is they're not feeding

bees so in other words a drone that's infected with some disease is not passing it on by feeding other bees because drones are 100% takers, not givers. The chances of a disease drone, out-flying healthy drones, and mating with a healthy queen in a drone congregation area, very low. That's kind of a self-check system. But here's what the drones do. Dr. Lamas showed that a three-day-old drone will be like a varamite magnet that they're feeding on the drone. And because we don't count drones, we don't count mites on drones, historically, to see what our mite levels are, we don't know that they're there. And they'll show up at multiple hives in your apiary. So let's say you had bees that are doing well, and they've got varomites, but now you've got a whole boost of drones flying out, all with varomites distributing them.

Where? Where are your drones being fed in the hive? They get fed by nurse bees. Drones hit up the nurseries. They go right to the brood area to be fed. And this is not a resident drone. I sent my grandson out not because he was being annoying and not because I was trying to find something for him to do, but he was nagging me to mark queens.

I'm not going to let him pick up a queen and mark her thorax with his paint pen. But I told them that he could go over to the observation hive building and stand at the entrances and collect drones and mark their thoraxes. and I'm not kidding. Within 15 minutes, I was dealing with a swarm that I was installing in a hive. And do you know that multiple drones showed up

with their thoraxes painted on my swarm that was moving in to a hive? Which means that he is collecting drones and marking them at observation hives 50 feet away and that in less than a half hour those drones have left that. colony after being fed and they are now joining up with swarms that are moving into other. Who knows what other colonies are moving into? But the point was, with him only marking

handfuls of drones, they are showing up at landing boards everywhere. Now, your drones can leapfrog diseases or vector mites with them out to multiple colonies as they go on their happy way because for some reason, drones land on a landing board and they're welcomed and they're fed and they go right in. You see it all the time. This time of year, even while drones are being cast out and not being fed resident drones, you'll see other ones hit the landing board and scoot right in. So the idea, if we were isolated, that would work. If you're going to be active and you're going to euthanize colonies that have high might loads,

that could start to work. The studies for those who follow scientific methods and scientific practices, right? You have a control, you have colonies that are treated, you have colonies not treated, same environment, same stock, and so on. We talk about the Penn State study that was done here in Pennsylvania,

and I think they included some of Ohio, and they compared treatment, treatment-free, and the different stocks, and the food resources that they were given. The treatment-free stocks, the study extended, I think it was a three-year study, none of the treatment-free stocks were viable at the end of three years.

Now, this is why, and of course, you know, that's not in Georgia, that's not Alabama, that's not Tennessee, it's not Texas. So in different climates in different places, I don't know, maybe treatment-free is working. Maybe if you have a bunch of African-I's bees, they're reproducing so often, and swarming so often and practicing something called usurpation,

where they move in and just hostile takeover another colony of bees, kill the queen, and move in and take over all the resources. These are different bee stocks, these are different behaviors. And so treatment-free, I don't know. So you could do it. It's an active method of keeping bees. So you might be wondering, well, what happened at 10 years that made me stop? going treatment-free. Well, exhalic acid vaporization became legal. So that was the other thing,

part of the study that Dr. Underwood and those at Penn State did, was treatment-free, organic treatments, that's me, and then, of course, synthetic treatments, which a lot of commercial beekeepers use, right, the synthetics. And so the happy medium between treatment-free and the synthetics, right? Treatment-free, I'm going to lose a lot of bees, I'm probably vectoring and continuing diseases. If I just use organic treatments like exhalic acid, and then take that extra step by the gear to do exhalic acid vaporization, which is demonstrating better efficacy, and also I don't have to pull the hive apart, and I can do a treatment at the end of November with exalic acid vaporization because I'm not pulling the hive apart. And if I get a warm day,

where it hits 60 degrees Fahrenheit and the cluster breaks up. That means the brood air is exposed and then I can get that exhalic acid vapor in there and all over the nurse bees, which are our target zone. But again, what I mentioned earlier is we want them under control before they're even making the fat-bodied winter bees, right? So you want to monitor mites. And that's the other thing a lot of people don't want to do. I ask that question at our local bee meetings all the time.

We have a bee breakfast. who counted their mites? Like one person raises their hand. How many people are treating for varro mites on their hives? So what we need is transparency, right? People need to be honest about losses, right? Often there'll be a completely treatment-free beekeeper who has 10 or 12 hives or something, but then you realize later that that same beekeeper collects a lot of swarms and repopulates their apiary with swarms that they collect. So, and then if that's the way you work and you're happy with that, are you benefiting the stock and are you, you know,

are your bees really healthy? I don't know. But I know that when I started treating with salic acid vaporization, they ended up with 100% survival. That didn't happen every year. but I ended up for the first time ever 100% survival of my bees through winter. That seems to be kind of the test of if your colony is really viable here in the northeastern United States where we have heavy winters. Usually, right now, it's not happening.

But the way they behave in spring and how they look and how healthy they are and do we see deformed wing virus and do we see K-wing and all these other things, you know, K-wing could be an indication that you've got trachea mites in there. You could have a deforming virus, which could be vectored by the varro destructor mite. And of course, they can get these diseases from other sources too. So what we're trying to do is keep our bees as clean as possible, keep our stock as healthy as possible. And my original philosophy was send out a million drones of my healthy bees and take over all the other bee yards in the vicinity. But then there they go. They lost all their bees and they bring up packages for everything.

But they could have just hit me up. I would have given them splits. I would have helped them with my own stock. What's referred to as locally adapted stock. So then your bees end up being kind of mutts, but they're in sync with the climate that they're in, with the seasons that come through here, right? So bees that manage this well are the bees I want to continue to keep. So I haven't bought packages for a long time because I make all my own splits. I make my own bees. I get my own queens and I collect and cycle back my own swarms.

So that becomes at least a zero cost for me. I don't have to buy any bees. Now if I were buying in a queen, there are two that I look at now, carniolins and I like the beeweaver stock still. So when I need to buy a queen, now right after COVID, their stock was really expensive. It was like $65 for a queen. So I wasn't really interested in spending that kind of money, but now that they're back down to 35 or whatever, if I need a queen, I like to refresh by bringing those in because then again, now we're talking about survivor line stock from a family that was willing to let hundreds, if not thousands of colonies of bees die out while they selected treatment-free survivor line stock. And so that's what you need. So we should be supporting, because that is the long game. I don't want to tell you that treatment free is not possible. I'm just giving you the reasons why you kind of get cut off at the knees on your attempt to try to make that happen as a backyard beekeeper because our neighbors are bringing in bees

and are messing us up. And if you're not monitoring, you don't know what's going on. You just think, oh, they look good, you know, so. So I want the long game to be. genetics that work but we have these outliers of people that just want to believe their bees are doing great they don't want to come to a bee meeting and say yeah most of my bees died I don't know why because they don't know to look for frass in the cells they don't know to look for evidence of disease in their hive and they're happy not knowing they'll just say well my

queen died well my queen was gone so they all died but until you autopsy the hive until you know really what the cause was, what really occurred. If you're queenless, then you don't have a lot of brood, right? So then what's happening, you're going to get some drift, and there's massive drift. I love giving my presentation because I talk a lot about drift and how I prove that it's happening on a massive scale. So they're spreading to all the other colonies in your hive, and if they, in your hive, in your apiary, and if they've got varroa destractor mites on them, they're just spreading the wealth. They're brewing them in, with them. So that's why euthanization, and that's why you don't know to euthanize the colony

if you don't know that they're being overrun with varomites. I've had people write me. I have a bad day if I do a mite wash and there's four or five mites in there. I have people that tell me to do mite washes with 50 and 60 mites in the mite wash. That is not good stock. Those bees are not handling it. That is like, and don't even get me started on the people that have hundreds. I had somebody show me a bottom board and said, see, no mites. And I looked at that bottom board and it was full of mites. What they thought were little bits and pieces of, you know, you have to know how to identify a mite,

but little bits and pieces of propolis and things like that that have that little amber color, they thought they were just looking at propolis. But they were all mites, like hundreds of them. And then being upset that their bees did not, survive winter. So the point I'm making is look at these studies. Look at the Penn State study, by the way, where they make these comparisons. Because it takes three years for them to kind of doom themselves in a treatment-free environment if you don't understand the stock and you don't know

what you're working with and you're not actively mitigating disease in your apiary. So there's a very simple answer to, and then there's people that, you know, know I respect a lot that have never treated for hives. One of the big channels on YouTube is Jeff Horchoff, Mr. Ed. He's a treatment-free beekeeper. So he keeps bees. He has a lot of honey production, and he produces for the Abbey. But guess what else Jeff does that he sets records with Randy McCaffrey, too.

They're cutout masters, they're swarm collectors. they are constantly able to replenish and refresh their stock in their apiary by bringing home swarms full on. So if we get down to those numbers, like how many swarms do they bring home? What's what are their losses? I think he said his losses maybe were 30 or 40 percent. 40 percent is pretty much the average for the state of Pennsylvania and that's for commercial beekeepers that treat including the backyard beekeepers. So my losses are way under that. but I'm doing exhalic acid vaporization only.

I've never had to advance to another level because I'm giving them the one-two punch. I'm only keeping stock that shows resistant to mites that are hygienic, right? And I'm treating those that show that they have high might levels. And for me, again, that's five or six mites in a wash. They get it. Boom.

Treatment. Right now we have very low brood this time of year because what we have this dearth going on we have rain that's not happening and so what's happened is my bees have drawn down on the brood by a lot so I think the brood levels now here in the state of Pennsylvania are what they would normally be at the end of November so what's my opportunity treat the colonies with exhalic acid, a single treatment, for example. And I need to quantify whether or not I got a bunch of mites or not. So am I going to open up a hive in 48 degree or 50 degree weather and do a mite count at this time of year? No. I know, based on the records that I've kept through the year,

which colonies struggle and require treatment. So I want to see on their bottom boards what the mites are like, and then when I do a treatment, I have to see what the drop is, what are the mites that are dying and landing on the landing board so I can see how effective that was. So a lot of disciplines, a lot of thoughts out there. And you can do it either way. You can be you can treat, you can be treatment-free. I much prefer personally the organic route if you're going to do treatments. And somebody else brought up a new study that was dealing with ultrasound for a German patent

that was just filed for ultrasonically destroying mites. when it started to read that study, that was major cumbersome. Like the extension, the amount of time that they have to expose this colony and focus this acoustic bombardment on the Verodistrachtermites to get them to react to it was like 80 days or something. So that's a wait and see for sure. I don't even know what it would cost to have an ultrasonic mite killing system in your own B yard.

But there's what I'm saying is people have their minds open, they're actively looking, just pretending that everything is healthy and great when it potentially is not, isn't being a very responsible beekeeper because I'm telling you deformed wing virus, there's going to be pushback against beekeepers. Deformed wing virus and things like that are proven to pass on to native bee stock. If this is coming from managed stock, then that's on you if you decide not to control the spread of disease that could impact native bees. So all I'm going to say, keep your minds open and try to do the right thing for your neck of the woods, not just the colony of bees that you have. Question number nine

crumbs from U-A-A-A-A-M-A-B-L-E. That's interesting. I love the intro footage. I want to learn how to support bees in my regions. That was intro footage of last Friday's Q and A and here's something that I want people to know often we're telling people get more beekeepers get more members in our bee club let's get them set up with bees hives equipment let's get them started in beekeeping I want to turn that just a little bit because I like this question I want to learn how to support bees in my region and this I think is a much better angle we all have met people who should not be beekeepers who have bees and there could be any number of reasons for that one is an inability to grasp beekeeping at all like not understand the first thing about how to manage them

they get stung all the time um they're just people have in some circles been pushed into beekeeping let me set up a hive in your yard let me get you going let's get you you a bee suit let's get you you know started you're going to love beekeeping why not just get them to be aware of pollinators and get them started in understanding what's going on in the environment that they hope one day possibly to keep bees in and let's get them started on what kind of plants and trees what kind of flowers are going to provide the most for pollinators aside from just the bees let's improve our footprint a little bit and improve our impact on the local ecology, right? There are neighbors often that don't want anything to do with bees. In fact, they'll never come

up your driveway because you've got a sign on your driveway that says bees kept here or caution bees or honeybee crossing or whatever you decide to do. Let's face it, there are people that are afraid of flying insects. So let's talk them into you know, baby steps, right? Let's have gardens, let's have things, and let's teach them about the pollinators that visit the garden. Let's get them going on the fact that a honeybee on a dandelion in your yard is not there to sting you unless you step on it with your bare feet. Let's look at them out there. Let's get them involved in the X-E-R-C-E-S-I-S, I believe, X-E-S-R-C-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-E-S-E- Because they will talk about all pollinators, right? that's important it's not just honey bees some beekeepers have tunnel vision but let's not get them

started on keeping bees let's get them started on changing the green space under their control so they can feed our bees and other pollinators in the process i do not want every person on my street to have their own beehives i don't but i would like them to not spray pesticides i would like them to not kill off every weed in their yard and on their property. And in this area, we're talking acres, just so they can mow it in this criss-cross diamond pattern and have a big, beautiful lawn. I want them to let the weeds grow. I want them to understand that ecology is important.

I want them to see how other insects, butterflies, that's a perfect one. Don't even tell them about bees. Let's see how to get a butterfly garden going. And then what you do is you're talking about all the plants that are going to benefit your bees and you get them to plant an acre of it. So let's get all these people started like you amiable here, which is the YouTube channel name, which is pretty funny.

Let's get them to grow, you know, fence row flowers and hedge rows and get their ditches going with ground cover and help them not have to mow. Who doesn't want to just blow off mowing and get started on low growing ground cover that has flowers? on it. Those don't hurt your feet. Let's talk about ways that we can get people to provide for all the pollinators and then the people that are really kind of born to be beekeepers that really get into beekeeping end up being the beekeepers and the rest of the people support us in the fringe areas

by just beautification of the environment. What do you say? So I'm going to recommend they're the top 100 plants for pollinators. It's a book. Christmas is coming. and I realized in my survey that only 58% of my viewers buy books or have bought a book in the last couple of years. But pollinator resources, the Xerxie Society is online. Look at your region, look at your zone, and help people grow and start pollinator gardens. And let's talk them out of just having a big mowed-down green space yard that doesn't produce anything. Even a small yard can have a tree. Who doesn't want shade?

It's going to cut down on your energy. We can hit them from all these different angles and shade your yard and get them to grow trees that benefit bees. There you go. So there's a lot going on there, but I think as beekeepers, we shouldn't be talking everybody we know into keeping bees.

We should be talking people into keeping the environment. Provide water, bird bass, and stuff like that, flowers and veggies and get your bees to go over there and benefit from your neighbors and get them to support pollinators and not use insecticides by the way question number 10 moving on this is another interesting YouTube channel name cushy-tushy bees my only fear with exhalic acid vapor is cooking the queen hopefully she is never near the gate but I still worry about it sometimes okay so cooking the queen I've actually been at seminars where somebody who kept a lot of hives said they don't approve of

exhalic acid because it cooks your queen. So that has never happened to me not once. Now, it's one of the reasons I have slatted rags because when I initially started using exhalic acid vaporization when it became legal, by the way. So there were two stages. One, it became legal to use because it was ubiquitous it was everywhere it was in all the veggies that we eat already if you're eating carrots you're eating exhalic acid so the first thing i got was a pan right so the little wand with a pan at the end it's aluminum pan and there's like a glow plug plug built in it you clip it on your batteries and it heats up and the exalic acid sublimates so phase two was you could use it to treat for varomites the phase two was you could treat for varomites with honey

superzon because they proved that the amount of exhalic acid in the honey before and after treatment was insignificant food and drug administration didn't worry about it didn't care thought it was inconsequential so now we could treat with honey superzahn there so when you put that pan in though and you put it under your slided rack which gave you a two-inch spacer up into the brood area you stuck your pan in there and some of the bees went after it. So every time you pull that pan out, after your hour, not an hour, after your minute and five seconds of exhalic acid treatment, that's how long it took to sublimate it. Then you had some dead bees in there. So they went right after it and they cooked themselves. So bees that attack

the pan definitely died in the pan. So the next thing is, what's the likelihood of queen is going to rush down and attack the pan? Almost not existent, right? So one of the things that we can do, though, let's err on the side of caution, right? So let's say, I want to keep the queen away from that initial blast. When I stick my exhalic acid vaporization quarter inch brass tube with my instant vape through the back, I also don't stick it through the front, so I'm not using the front entrance. And there's a new version that's out that I've never had in hand, but Laura Bees, which carries the instant vape. I've seen it on social media and stuff.

There's a new super lightweight, smaller, less expensive, battery-powered, exhalic acid vaporizer that will, has a, looks like a brass tube. It's going to stick in the back. I hope to talk to them when we get to the North American Honeybee Expo here in 50 days, or however long a way that is. So there's another method. It's even more affordable for people. But you stick that through the backside, off center.

so that when the vapor goes in, because here's what the bees do, they circulate it, that goes throughout the entire hive. It goes everywhere. So you don't have to, like, get it in one certain spot to make sure you really target the brood area, right? So you don't have to get it dead center and try to shoot that in there. So I like using it through the back of the hive because the entrance is on the other side. I lay a cotton cloth over the entrance. I keep the bees from coming and going. And then I introduce the exhalic acid vapor. off center. So the chances that your queen are there. But let's say we want to make sure the queen is not down in the lower area of the hive at the time we do that treatment. What would we do? Well, get done with your smoker. So take your hive smoker. If you've got smoker pellets from the switchgrass pellets that we like so much that works so well that are going to come back, by the way, they're going to resell those. If you puff a little smoke in there, then your bees are going to retreat. in and they're going to what are they protecting they're going to protect the queen so they're also consuming honey and things like that so you don't want to oversmoke them but a light smoke would cause your queen to withdraw and then she would be of course surrounded by her retinue of bees so now you've added

kind of a layer of protection and now when you introduce your exalic acid it's not going to blast the queen directly she's not curious anyway she's not going to run up to check out and see what's going on through that hole in the hive that's the guard bees job in fact i'm pretty sure it was hard bees that died in my early pans so that was my progression the pans the wands first then I had the pro-vap 110 which is a really expensive four hundred and sixty dollar unit that you plugged into 110 right and then there was the laurabes another version of a pro vap which plugged in and then we had the instant vape from yanos that came up with that and that's the best exhalic acid vaporization unit that I've ever had, the instant

vape. And I use it, so that's perfect. And I've not fried a single queen. I've not lost a colony because of exhalic acid vaporization. But if you have those concerns, light puffs of smoke, get them to get the queen to safety, and then you introduce it

in the bottom of the hive, or you can even come in at the very top of the hive. Because what's up there, the honey souper. So your queen's not going to be up there, so you make another very easy to drill a quarter inch hole. And another question that came up after I mentioned that was, do we leave the hole open or do we plug it up? You put a quarter-20 threaded bolt through the hole as a placeholder,

and then the bees will propolize up the tip of the bolt on the inside, but they won't plug the hole. Because plugging the hole is bad, we want to be able to introduce exhalic acid as needed to a colony that requires treatment. So that's cushy-tushy bees question. Let's go on to question number 11. This is from Anita. It says, I'm thinking of investing in a horizontal hive or a long lang, but was wondering,

how do you clean the bottom? Does yours have removable trays? Also, I remember you saying, Beardsville bees, had a good design, or is there another you would recommend? This is the last question of the day, by the way. So the horizontal hive thing, I don't clean the bottom. I never have the bees keep it spick and span I have never opened up the hive and seen a bunch of junk on the bottom of the hive ever So bees keep it super clean The other thing is though we do have removable trays and they're under the brood area

The reason we have trays under the brood area is because if there are Verodistructor mites being groomed off and you have number eight screen underneath there the varro mites fall through onto the tray passive mite control you'll hear this term ipm what's your ipm integrated pest management screens that your bees can groom off the mites and let me tell you about these mites they're pretty clumsy they're pretty incapable when they get on a tray like and i'm talking about like a lunchroom tray fall through the screen onto the tray an option to uh the prints that i've shared about the long length Stroth Hives that I have, which is on my website, the wayto-be.org, and there's a page marked

prints, drawings. Those are free to you. They are PDFs. You can download them. You can print them. And there are options, right? With trays, without, and so on. So when they fall into the trays, it lets you, it's a feel good moment. You look in there and you can smear Vaseline all over that tray and then the mites that fall in it gets stuck in place and you get to examine them so and again there's i don't see a reason in a horizontal hive to run that through the full length of the hive because we know that they're focused on the nurse bee area we also know that they go on to drones right i've seen drones get pinned and groomed intensively by these grooming bees that are after them and make sure they don't have any burrow destructor mites on them and this happens in the

brood area so if you have a horizontal hive you know that first 10 to 12 frames would have brood in them and that's where your trays are and then the rest of it is honey so I don't worry about that so much so that works so what I recommend so here's the thing and I try to you know this last minute thing this is nothing against there are two companies that really like now to be fair I purchased full price I bought from horizontal hive which is Leo Shirashkans their lambs wool sheep's wool insulated layens hives I have two of those the long Langstroth hive is my favorite going into the future there's no question that's absolutely my favorite hive Beersville

Bees I'm gonna spell that for you B E A R S V-I-S-V-I-L-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-A-L L-L-E-B-E-E-S dot com. They are a very interesting company. So I've run into them at several different conferences. Their woodenware is made extremely well. So their skills and working are fantastic. They're also making insulated hives. And they're harvesting and milling their own wood.

So this is 100% amazing. American stuff. So anyway, they also make a long Langstroth hive. Here's the problem with these big horizontal hives. And I like them. And I always talk to those people. Whenever I want to see the latest things that they're building, I like all the stuff they make. I always wonder about shipping. So shipping's expensive. You're talking about a hive that weighs a lot of, it's, this is dimensional lumber. This isn't where when I purchased my hives from horizontal hive which is dr leo's group uh they're they're thin plywood so it's quarter inch plywood sandwiching insulation quarter inch plywood interior very minimal structure much lighter overall

shipping will cost you a pile if you buy a heavy well-constructed hive i'm going to talk about that in a minute so beardsville bees check them out they sell long langstrass and they also sell the land's hive I'm over the top impressed with the way they build their stuff. And then there's horizontal bees. Maybe you've got an idea, a custom idea. You want to speck it out. You want this thing to be built to your concept, right?

So horizontal bees is Ricky Rourke. And I've known him for years, right? So he's making custom hives. You can hand him one of my PDF prints and say, Ricky, would you build that for me? And he goes, anything you want to change about it? And he says, yeah, I want to change everything on it. They work with you, and they're always at the North American Honeybee Expo.

And now I'm getting to this, right? Because I see video after video of Ricky and his wife delivering these custom horizontal hives, which are long langstroths, by the way. And they're delivering them people. So are they driving these for hours to deliver them? room shipping would just ruin you so here's what I'm going to say find a conference that Beersville bees will be at or horizontal bees will be at and so we know they're going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo in January down in Louisville Kentucky so if you get an order in with

them and it might be too late I don't know how long it takes them to build something but they often bring stuff that's just for sale. Like you don't have to custom order it. But those are the two standout companies, right? So Beersville B's, horizontal bees. And those companies, I would try to, maybe you've got the time you want to go and pick it up yourself. That would be, because if you're going to pay $500 to ship something,

that's worth a day to drive somewhere and just pick it up. So that's what I recommend. And those are the two companies. So removable trades is my reason. You can go do it right with or without them. Removable trades are for people that like to see dying mites. That's me. I'm in that category.

I like to see that my bees are killing mites. I like to see after a treatment that the treatment was effective and it killed a bunch of mites. I like to see that the subsequent treatments, I have a lower mite drop, which means the treatments have been effective, right? So I think that's it for today. So the fluff section for this is, right now in the northeastern United States, a lot of people are asking about nutrition. It is just a fact of life.

Everybody wants to know what to feed their bees. I want to do the best thing they can for their bees. If you want to put out dry pollen sub, I did that too. Is that for the bees? Well, the bees are getting it. It's more for me. So here's a part of beekeeping that I want you to understand. I like to watch the bees come in and getting resources.

I like to see them actively doing stuff. It's a feel-good thing. Is that going to kick off a bunch of brood or make them healthier through winter? The science does not support it. Dry pollen substitute, of course I'm feeding AP23 because it was the top-performing dry pollen sub between megabee and then of course ultra-bee was third. So if you put that stuff out, is that really going to kick off your bees and make them super healthy? No, it's just giving those foragers something to do.

It's a feel-good thing. You can watch them. It's great. The thing that's really going to help your bees is going to be your sugar syrup. So that's the other thing that I've been just this year. I do put out sugar syrup, but I'm not one of those heavy feeders, right? Remember that your colonies that are already loaded with honey and everything else are set for winter. They're good.

Your heavy-bodied winter bees, your fat-bodied winter bees, whatever you want to column they're in there they're set it's over with you've done your part now all we're doing is providing recreation for your bees to forage so if you put out Ziploc baggies with sugar syrup in it with little tiny holes poked on the top so none of your bees drown it's a feel good thing to watch your bees come and get that you also get to see what kind of wass and hornets and things might still be around that are trying to prepare themselves to go through winter solitary So our honeybees have all the advantages.

By the way, they would run off everything else at these feeding stations. And you can just see your bees. So if you want to put out dry pollen substitute, is that going to really boost your bees? Not in a significant way. So have you wasted your money then? No, it's a feel-good thing. You like to watch them.

They're doing it right now. They're out there collecting dry pollen sub. It's fun to watch. The sugar syrup does help them. Now let me talk about a winter feed-in-shub. policy that everybody talks about everybody well people that feed their bees the fondant so hive alive again it is too late for the syrup cold weather is coming so we don't want to feed them that but the fondant packs and by the way hive alive will give you a discount of 10% so if you go and buy

fondant from hive alive use fred 10 all caps fred and then the number 10 and they will give you 10% off so if you want to know the science behind hive alive that stuff upped my not just winter survival but when i because remember i don't do everything at once in my apiary every hive does not get the same feed, treatment, whatever, every year, right? We have to see differences. We have to see differences over several seasons in order to really say, wow, they really do do better. It didn't change too much. So if we put hive life fondant packs on, we're not facing starvouts. That was one of the things, by the way, when I said I was not getting 100% survival through winter and I had these survivor line bees and stock and things like that.

Opening up a hive in spring that was dead. Here's the other thing. Don't open up your hive in the middle of winter just because you think it's dead. You don't benefit from that at all. Your bees could be killed by it if they're just in torpor and not dead. And it was you that opened them up in a snowstorm because you just had to know. Let them pan out. They're on their own now. But lightweight colonies that do not have enough. funny on can be lightly resuscitated by putting hive alive fondant packs on they come in two sizes

two pounds five pounds so my colonies that i think are going to need extended resources they just did not put enough resources in by this time of year and look at us right now we're in a dearth and they're flying and when they're flying that means they're burning calories and when they're burning calories it means they have to consume carbohydrates so that they can continue. Those colonies are going to need fondant packs for me. What about just dry sugar? What about sugar bricks? Those can go on too.

If you don't have fondant, I'm not saying don't feed them. Something is better than nothing, but they benefit far more from a fondant than they do from dry sugar or a sugar brick or a candy board. The number one thing that they would get out of that is sucrose. So we want it to be sugar. You don't need to mix in a bunch of other stuff. If it's already dry sugar, you don't need to add, like hive alive is a treatment for nozema, right?

But you don't need to put hive alive, honey be healthy, and things like that in your syrup to extend its life to keep it from spoiling as you would maybe early in the year when it's warmer. but with the drier feed like dry sugar sugar bricks candy boards if you have that stuff you don't need to add any of the other essential oils at all to it you also don't need to add any synthetic proteins right see we don't need ultra b or mega b or api 23 mixed into that in the winter time because where those proteins are ready in the bodies of your nurse bees in the middle of winter are there what they really need and what will kill a hive if it's not there will be the sugar

content so that's really what's going to help them out now I'm also because I said hive life fontant what else is in the fondant that's not just straight sugar right so there are other nutrients that have demonstrated remember is too late for the sugar syrup here in the northeastern United States if you're in a warm climate down south you can still use it it's one gallon is the dose for no nosema spores. There's some secondary benefits that are not really clear on, but a lot of people, it's anecdotal that they're claiming there are other benefits that we're just not talking about. But that's 1.5 teaspoons for a gallon of sugar syrup. That will help your bees here in the north

because we're freezing now at night. No more liquids. So that's it. The fondant pack will provide the nozima slam that we want them to have. So what is nozema anyway? A lot of you don't understand or maybe don't want to read deeper about it. But I will just say this, that they're living organisms in the gut of your bees that really hit them later in winter if they're allowed to propagate. So these are spores. And initially when hive alive came out, I wanted to practice counting nozema spores. So I was decapitating bees.

I was using a hemocytometer on my, which is for blood cell counts and things on my microscope, and I wanted to see the nozema spores, and I wanted to compare those that had the hive-of-life treatment and those without, and I wanted to see if it had any impact, and it was a conspicuous reduction in nozema spores. That's why I was comfortable saying, yeah, I used that, it definitely works. I was not comfortable saying any of the other essential oil mixes could be proof. to work because they're also not specifically naming what the benefits are you will get anecdotal statements like well i add so many more bees in spring but when they were feeding honeybee healthy pro health beekeepers choice all these other things when they were feeding that to the bees

they were also giving them sugar syrup it's the sugar syrup that boosts the colony the other stuff is unproven, the only proven one that had a published paper to show it and that I could verify myself as a backyard beekeeper with microscopes was that nozima spores were reduced. So would your bees die from nozima in spring? There are sublethal impact. So once it's present, and by the way, I highly recommend you learn to do it. If you're science-minded or you've got homeschool for kids and things like that, get a microscope, get set up, learn to do it. The stuff is inexpensive and once you have it, you have it. Once you have those slides and you learn how to count, it's very easy to see nozima spores. They're light with a dark halo around them with a dark outline. They're very

distinctive. They almost glow on the slide and it's very easy to see them when they're present. It's also a great teaching tool for your young biologists in your house that wants to learn things like that. So I know that that works. You can use Fred 10. There's another discount if you're Christmas shopping for somebody. If you go to Hive Butler, those are things for storing your frames and stuff. Hive Butler has a lot of different uses. They still offer a discount called Fred 5. So F-R-E-D-0-5. Now, Fred, when I'm buying from Hive-Butler and I use Fred 5, you get a kickback for that? No. I Don't. She just did that for my viewers. And of course, I send you to them because I use hive butlers. I like them. I don't get a monthly statement. I don't get a kickback. They don't even ship me a free hive butler for that. But Fred 5, that's $5 off 100. So there you go. So that's it for today. I want to thank you for watching. Don't forget to write your own comments down below. If you have a question for me, go to the way to be.org. click on the page, mark the way to be, fill out the form, and I'll see it.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a question. It can be something that you just like me to look into, like that fancy new competitor for the flow hive that we can't buy. So thanks a lot for being here. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Thanks for watching.