The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Beekeeping Q&A #296 spring topics.

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/IEahwhAWblY   Posted March 7th 2025

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, March the 7th. This is back-aird bekeeping questions and answers episode number 296. 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 today please go down in the video description below and see all the topics in order as well as some very important links and further information that you're going to want to know about. What else is going on? Well outside. You know they tease us. It gets warm. Got warm for a day. Snow didn't even melt all the way, although now we are seeing the grass. For quite some time, we've seen only snow, and it's 35 degrees and sunny outside. But I'm here with you, rather than being outside, risking a sunburn.

That's 2 degrees Celsius, by the way. 8 mile an hour winds pretty constant, which is at 13 kilometers per hour. and the humidity. Here's a surprise, 64% relative humidity, so that means your bees can actually start to dry things out if they've got a lot of condensation inside their eyes. And the UV index is five, which means, yes, you can get a tan today. So get right out there. Of course, this is the northeastern United States, the state of Pennsylvania, northwestern part of the state, which may differ climate-wise from wherever you are. Guess what happens Sunday at 2 a.m. Daylight Savings Time. We're going to spring forward by an hour. So if you didn't know that and get ready to change every clock and Finally you can fix the timer on that VCR that you have. I'm sure you still have one and some people are very unhappy about Daylight Savings time. They want to get rid of it because they don't want to lose that hour

You spring forward, lose an hour turn it back and gain an hour in the fall which still messes people up But for those who are griping about that take it from me. Somebody who has sailed across the international date line. Do you know what happens when you're going west in the Pacific Ocean? Your captain decides when they're going to cross that dateline and what date you're going to lose going west and they ditched Sunday. That's right. We went straight from Saturday to Monday. What do you think they did coming back?

We could have got two Saturdays or two Sundays. Nope, two Mondays headed east across the international date line in the Pacific Ocean. So that's much more messed up. than just one hour springing forward turning your clocks or springing back so what do you think should they get rid of that daylight savings time is it seen as day should we ditch it anyway if you want to know how to submit your own topic for consideration please go to my website which is the way to be.org and fill out the page marked the way to be and there's a form information you can fill it out maybe I have a question right now

You just can't wait. So you need to go to the way-to-be Fellowship on Facebook. You can share pictures. You can see what pictures other people are putting up. You can bring your knowledge there or ask for knowledge. It's an exchange. Really friendly people. Zero politics and all that stuff.

So I think that's just about it. We could jump right in. There is a fluff section at the end, and there's a video at the end of today's presentation, which I think is pretty funny. So the first question that comes in is from Don from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Says, have you seen the winter paddy feeder from Datant? Thoughts, concerns?

I like the idea of keeping a cluster intact near the paddy. Okay. So Dayton, good company, by the way. I recommend lots of companies here. I don't have connections to any of them. So we did. I looked it up. It's just a feeder sham.

What's a feeder sham? Well, it's a one or two inch wooden spacer that sits on top of your box just under your inner cover, so it creates a space so that you can put fondant or a patty. In this case, we're talking about pollen patties or winter patties. And I looked it up and it has hardware cloth on it. What is that? Hardware cloth in this case was quarter inch hardware cloth. It means the openings are a quarter inch, galvanized steel, and it's stable to the

two inch or inch and a half feeder sham. Cush a little over $20. Not a bad investment. It comes in eight or ten frame sizes. So if you could order that, go ahead and get them. They're easy to make. And one of the things I want to talk to you about is what you do with your old B boxes?

Because they wear out on the edges, where one box meets another. So in particular, I have an area that I really don't like in Beehive design, and that's where that rabbit joint where your frame sit on comes to the corner that is the one that breaks down the first it warps out does something weird and now you've got bees having a separate entrance so they have to block up with propolis or robbers make their way in anyway it's a weak point in the box i retired a bunch of high boxes last year my wife uses them for planters in the vegetable garden

so they're tiny raised garden bed you know boxes that's a good way to repurpose them But one of the things you can do, and I hope you have a table saw, and if not, maybe I have a friend that does. You can take those old boxes and you can cut off the worst area and then you just set your table saw for an inch and a half or two inches and you cut a bunch of shims. Watch out for nails and screws if you have those in there. So then you cut spacer shims and then you use that to put your patties, whether it's a fondant, whether it's a pollen patty or a winter patty. what's the difference anyway? Well, fondin, depending on which one you use, may also have treatments or time all or something else in it that helps your bees. If you talk about a winter patty, those are designed to give your bees energy through the wintertime and they don't

have the protein for brood. That's where we get the pollen patty. That's the third and most expensive one. That's because it has pollen in it. I just recently ordered a bunch of that. Why would I do it? well I'll explain that to you at the end of today's Q&A. But we need space for that. Otherwise, you have to smash them down on top of the frames, right? The top of the frame. And your bees normally this time of year are up in the higher parts of the hive. So this emergency resource needs to be right on top of the frames.

You can put it on top of your insulated intercover, but if you've got a feeder shim under that, the space is there. And the bees now have access to all of it. and then your little paddy remains in that little heat capsule, that's secondary heat that comes off of your cluster of bees, and they can have access all the way around. And here's why that's important. They need to get to every edge of whatever patty you put in there.

We don't want small high beetles because where you are, you might have small high beetles zipping around already, looking to move into hives. And it's very interesting how far they can travel. I don't have that problem here. really sorry that I can't share in that challenge that you have, but I don't have small hive beetles. I hope they never show up.

Because a small hive beetle can smell the air, smell a hive, and smell the pollen and whatever else is inside the hive that it likes to get to for reproduction, and it may fly more than a mile to get to your hive. So, create a feeder shim, provide access to every edge, top and bottom of your paddy that you put in there. and insulate over the top of the paddy so that you retain that heat capsule and don't vent up through there. If you've got a pollen patty or something like that or a winter patty on top of your hive inside that feeder shim

and you've got an entrance up there, you're just ringing the dinner bell for pests to also come in. So I highly recommend no venting through the top. So my thoughts about that, 20 bucks. If that's worth your time and energy to build it yourself, because you can build a whole bunch of them if you've got small boxes sitting around. If not you can just go to the hardware store, lows, you know, whatever your big box stores are, Menards, Home Depot, and buy one by twos. And they'll come in six or eight foot lengths and then you're just going to cut them all down. So measure front to back, side to side, how many of those we need to make each one. You'll find out that

once you've spent the time and energy, because you also want to screw them together, glue them, and have some kind of finish, which is not so critical up there because what's over the top? You have an outer cover that covers it unless you've got those migratory covers, which provide very little protection. But you may not have to paint it because it's going to be up in protection underneath your inner cover, outer cover, and you might have an extended sidewall. If you've got gabled roofs like this one right back here, the rain and everything will miss it. So you could have an unfinished chimp.

plus you may not leave it on all the time. So once you put in the time, you've got to go get it, got to finish it, you got to put it together, have to glue it up. Would it be worth your money instead just to go to date and order that? And if you do that, please tell them I sent you so that you can pay the same as everyone else without a break. Moving on, question number two. This comes from Pegg from Carmel, Indiana.

I extract when I have enough frames to make it worthwhile. I do it because of limited time, cost, and space to store additional boxes. Some friends extract one time at the end of the season. Is there a difference in the amount of honey produced in a hive with a large amount of supers, more than three, rather than pulling fully capped frames enough to fill four or more supers? I usually return the wet frames to the hives, either for cleaning out above the inner cover or in the super for additional. honey. Okay, here's the thing about superts because it's going to come up. Spring is on its way regardless of what the weather's doing, which by the way, the weather people

have forecast temps in the 50s this coming week. I'm going to hold them to it because they're always right. Here's the thing. I don't, if you look at my B yard midsummer, middle of a nectar flow, you will not see more than three boxes on any hive because here's what I do. I take take it off as it goes. I pull frames as they fill. Now one of the things that can happen. So there again, we're talking about my area. We really do not have a dearth here. Once summer starts, once spring starts, once the nectar flow begins, we have some level of a nectar flow all the way through the golden rod, the asters, and everything else at the end of the year. So I don't have a dearth. If you want to know if you're supposed to have a dearth and you're a new beekeeper and you don't

have the experience to see what's actually going to happen where you live, You can go to B-Scape.org, B-E-E-S-C-A-P-E-E-D-O-R-G, putting your information and find out what the conditions are where you live. So here's what I do. And I've noticed this problem before. I had a single deep, I had a medium super that I put on top of the single deep. Eight or ten frame made no difference. So what happened was that second box is supposed to be the winter,

resources for my bees. So I let them fill those with honey and they cap the honey. And this is the risk we run into. And that's why I'm telling you now, this is a timely question from Peg. Because if you let them fill every frame in your first super above your breed box, and they'll do it. I mean, that's their goal. They're preparing for winter as soon as spring hits, that's what they're doing. And they're preparing for reproduction, which is a colony you don't. want them to do if you're trying to hang on to most of your bees. So what happens is if they fill that all up, it creates a honey barrier. In other words, they think they're full. They're done. So what's the next thing they have to do? Well, they've stored up all their resources. They've seen the fruits of

their labor. The colony has plenty of protein in it, which will be the bee bread, and they've got a lot of brood. What's the natural instinct that's going to come along next? They're going to swarm. So the other part of this is we see that the box is full and it's got all the frames there capped and that looks great. So now we just throw another super right on top of that. So we expand them up. I've had a problem in the past where they never moved up through that capped area of honey into the new super and continue their work. The reason they did that is they had no sense of there being more space above that or they lost their inspiration. to continue to draw a comb or fill cells,

and they just stopped and propylized everything. And it was one of the reasons that I stopped using queen excluders like that, because they were also propolizing the queen excluder to the point where almost nothing could get through it. So what I realized was that then I could take that box and I could move it up and then have the next super underneath rather than on top, beyond that honeybound box. And then they went back to work on it because they're passing over all this available space and they started using it, storing resources, and off they go again. So here's why I like Peg's idea and practice of pulling frames that are captain-ready

and then going ahead and processing that honey, because the fresher you process your honey from the frames, the better it's going to be. The other thing is spring honey, where I live, is the best. So we're talking about all the way through about mid-July. That is the best honey of the year. So because when we get to fall, we've got Astors and Goldenrod and all the strong flavored honey, but it also sets the quickest. It becomes crystallized honey.

So I like the idea of checkerboarding, pulling every other frame of capped honey, and also taking those outboard number one and number eight or number one and number 10 position frames. They're probably not completely done. And putting those near the interior when we pull those other frames out. And the ones you've extracted that honey, put those back with a drawn comb and the number one and number 10 or number one and number eight. And then you'll have plenty of room for them to refill it and it's already drawn out. So they have to worry about it. Why do they do that?

Why do the bees tend to leave the outside of those first and last frames unfinished? Think about it. They need warmth to draw a comb and to work it. So where's the warmth? generally around the cluster, generally up through the middle. These outboard sides, you know, the west facing or east facing, depending on how your hive is faced, they're not as warm from the cluster and from the work that's going on inside the hive, so they can't work the waxes easily, so it gets done last.

It can get done, just not on time. So by pulling out individual frames and hauling as you go, you save yourself a lot of work. The other thing is you're not reaching up high and lifting off a heavy box. They can't count the resources that they have. They're just doing instinctively what they're supposed to do, which is continue to fill open spaces. Every space they can find that can handle honey, they fill it up when the nectar flow is strong.

It's your job to convince them that there's always more space available for them to do that. Once they achieve it, the shelves are full, they're done, they take a break. So that might be an oversimplification, but that's what I do, and that's why you never see my colonies stack upon stack upon stack. If you have a flow hive, for example, you can empty your frames as you go and keep them productive that way too, but you can also just pull individual frames. That's the way it works.

Question number three comes from Mike from Franklin, Wisconsin. This is located in Milwaukee County. We have been hearing information on heating hives to 120 degrees Fahrenheit to kill. for o-destructor mites. Did a little research and it seems this temp will disrupt or kill mites. If you raise the internal temp to 120, wouldn't the comb droop? Honey bee degraded and the bees would have to spend a ridiculous amount of energy

to get it back down to 90 degrees. Seems counterproductive to me. What are your thoughts? Okay. And this comes up in cycles years ago. people were using or they saw videos which is how little fires get lit and ideas get spread a company was producing a hive heater in principle it seemed really cool because they would generate enough heat inside the hive they would close up the bees and they weren't really

actually you can probably still find these videos they weren't closing it up very good because as soon as they started crank up the temperature bees were all over the outside of the hive. So there were some flaws with the system, but I understood the principle. Let's get these bees to warm up their hive, and let's warm the hive against what the bees would want, because the temperature here that's described is back down to 90 degrees. Remember that your brood is already at 94 to 97, you're not that far off from 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So by raising it up, putting your bees at a high stress level, and then killing mites in a number. In a number, chemical way. That sounds really appealing. And it was appealing to me too. So my contact

of the company, I reach out to them. In fact, I've as recently as two weeks ago written another company, not in the United States, but they had another smart hive, so to speak, and it had complete thermal control inside, and therefore they could do these varroa mite controls that way. So once again, I wanted to understand how much ground has been covered, what the drawbacks are, and then what you find is, you know, something about beekeeping. They're a pile of retired engineers. There are technicians, there are people that really understand high-tech equipment these days and can come up with stuff. So they come with these systems and they're not cheap and the duration of this exposure to this temperature is not a short one. So there are some drawbacks and that's why I would

say, wait and see on all of this stuff because your bees while they're in there are trying to do what? Protect their brood for starters. So as soon as you go above 97, what are they trying to do inside the hive? They're trying to cool it down. So that also means if you have any open brood in there, you run the risk of desiccating it, right, of drying out your brood because they're going to be fanning like crazy. They're going to try to use evaporation to dry, because the only way they can cool a hive is moisture and then evaporating it off and moving it with their wings. So we're running it through a huge stress test, which has been done on bees. And they find that honeybees in a colony are very good at protecting areas from extremes, heat or cold.

And so in this case, I'll be trying to cool it down. So what you have to do now is lock them in. And depending on which system is being advertised, they're very sure. on data. And so you have to, again, as I always say, question everything. It doesn't make you rude that you're asking questions. You want to know how they proved the efficacy. You want to know what else might have happened because certainly the things that are described here for at 120 degrees Fahrenheit for an extended time frame. You do have soft beeswax in there, particularly the wax that's got the honey in it. A lot of people were opening their

hives and finding that they're without foundation. The honey that did not have plastic foundation, that was just beeswax that was holding that in suspension, in some cases collapsed. And so now they had a huge honey mess inside the hive. So there are things to consider you would have to have wax foundation, plastic foundation that wax is drawn from in all of your frames that are going to be in this heat treatment environment. So was the impact on the bees, longevity? Because remember, just because they're not all dead from this heat exposure doesn't mean they're not in some way having a shortened life. So in other words, are you really going to come out that much better than if you did some kind of varroa mite organic treatment? Or are there other alternatives?

But here's what's happened in the cycle that comes over and over, and I don't know which particular system Mike's talking about. But those are fair questions. And we need real independent data validating what happens to the bees, what happens to the brood, what happens to the queen, because remember your queen can have an impact on her fertility that is heat related. So we need to ask, have you guys done testing on the queens in particular that are in lay? And can she sustain that temperature for the extended period of time that you're going to expose her to that? And what is her reproduction like afterwards? What kind of long? and fertility can we expect from a mated queen that gets exposed.

Because we know the queens that have sometimes been purchased from other producers all over this country. We need to look out for temperatures that they're going to be exposed to in transit. And sometimes queens get exposed to high heat and by the time they get to the person that paid for it, she looks fine, everything looks healthy, she gets accepted, she goes into the colony, you start to see some eggs and you think she's great. But she could have an impact on her reproduction that reduces her longevity, the number of eggs that she can produce, or the amount of fertile eggs, so she could have fertility challenges just based on heat exposure. And I'm not saying that

120 hurts your queen. I'm saying those questions need to be asked and they need to deliver proof that that's not going to happen to your bees before you get out there and run your colony up to this temperature for an hour, two hours, however long they've decided that this needs to happen in order for the varroa mites themselves to die where inside capped pupa, right? So those cap pupa cells, I guess that would be the hardest ones to get to. And we just need to know a lot. So for those that are sitting there pulling out their wallets and checkbooks, just dying to buy one, wait and see because none of the early ones panned out.

They are not for sale everywhere, but this theory comes up because it's sound. Couldn't we just get them above the threshold where mites can live? This is how bed bugs are best dealt with, by the way. They take bed bugs above and beyond the temperature that they can live, and then you can kill them without chemicals. Interesting. I like the idea.

I just haven't seen the system. And as I mentioned, who am I anyway? They don't need to write me back, but if they have answers to my questions, would they not please just respond to my concerns? I would think that would be great. And then we could say, yeah, they said, and then now you could put that into practice yourself.

So if you have a thermal system and it's worked really well, what were some of the challenges, what were the benefits, what did you see? And over what period of time have you been using it? How many years? How many cycles? How many seasons? So moving on to question number four from Marion. in New Paris, Ohio. Cannot paint my wooden hive with waterproof sealant that is used for roofs and gutters.

It is a rubber liquid coating, and it is waterproof. Okay, so roof sealants and gutter sealants and things like that. I'm guessing that the only reason that Marion is asking this question is because there must be some extra sitting around maybe in five gallon containers. and some of it's tar-based, you know, so I don't know you might even, I don't know what's in it. So there's, I didn't get a name of the actual sealant. But here, these are my thoughts in general.

Those are rubberized sealants because they have to move with the dynamic of the roof and everything else. Your gutters need to be sealed and protected. It's not something I would personally jump on for beehive finishes. For the exterior woodwork, the roofing of your beehive, I wouldn't be looking at heavy. rubber sealant like that what I would look for because I have to give you an alternate solution valspar exterior semi-gloss or gloss gloss is more expensive semi-gloss less expensive exterior latex paint that is I did a recent video well recent within the last year I showed all the different finishes that are

here in my apiary and how they have made it like through the years we looked at the endura hive which comes from you know nature's image farm we did eco wood we did latex paint we did unfinished cedar and things like that so you can see how they're all faring through the years because we've had a lot of years to test them out so i've got hives out of my apiary and woodwork that's been out there since 2006 so i would say that's quite a bit of time for them to be exposed to the challenging seasons we have here. And ValSpar exterior,

semi-gloss latex paint, and you might go that and get sticker shock. You go to the paint store, you go to wherever you buy your paint, and you see that that stuff is $30 or $40 a gallon or even $60 a gallon, depending. And I've said this many times before, but we'll revisit that.

Make friends with a person who custom, tints, paint, and the person that shakes it up, and I don't care if it's your local hardware, store, big box store, paint store. They all have those customers that ordered a custom tent, went home, tried it out, didn't like it, brought it back, said it wasn't what they thought it was going to be. Even though the person that mixed it up put a little dab right on top of the lid and said, there's your color, how do you like it? And they said, it's awesome. Then they get home. They don't like it. Now they come back. That is a bonus for you. Why? Because that $60 gallon of

exterior gloss paint, just because became a $5 container of paint underneath the counter where the custom Mix Master is working. They can't tell you the habit, you have to ask for it. It's like when I used to go to Home Depot and talk to the department managers and say you got any of this and scratch and dent, they don't want to tell you about it, but if they've got one and you ask, now you can get a big discount on that. So I did that for exterior doors and everything else. I just, I'm one of those people. So anyway, semi-gloss latex paint. Now if you want, want your wood not to rot. Okay, so this is different from an exterior finish. This is a wood

treatment. Eco wood. E-C-O-T-Tac, W-O-O-D. You can get it with different color tints and things like that. I don't. I just get the natural stuff. You mix it with water because it comes in a little tiny packet. Seems expensive, but it's five gallons of finished liquid. It goes on like water. I've never had any woodwork that are true with that. I've never had it rot. I've used it on wooden benches, everything else. I've got a wooden bench out in the northeastern corner that has been here since I built my house at the turn of the century.

Still there, not rotten. Now, Ecowood I didn't start using until much later, but when I got it, I went out there and then I painted that because it was unpainted, so I let it so can with Eco Wood. Now, one of the things that Eco Wood does not do, well there are many things it doesn't do it doesn't prevent cupping cracking even though it says it will it says continues to fill cracks throughout the life of the treatment whatever that means it doesn't because it does crack however it doesn't rot so we've all pulled up you know

b boxes and things like that because they get rained on they have condensation inside condensation outside moisture wind weather ice snow you name it sun and all of that and if that doesn't break down under those exposures, then that's good for me. Now, they just kind of look like old wood. That's also good for me because I like my beehives to blend with the environment. I don't want somebody to look from a dirt road across a big field and go, huh, beehives over there, let's go scope them out. Or let's do some hive tipping, like those people that tip cows and stuff when they're sleeping, although I think that's folklore. I don't know if anybody who ran out into a feel of cows and was able to push one over because it happened to be sleeping.

I'm pretty sure the bull found its way to lead them out of that pasture in short order. Anyway, so, Valspirist number one, you can just look at ratings on paint. And that's what I recommend. I do not recommend the roof tar and the sealants for gutters and things like that. Just because I know these others are good, Valsparry cleans up with the water, you know, so I don't know. Maybe somebody else has experience with it. Question number five comes from Dustin, Bolverity, Texas.

Hey friend, not exactly sure how to phrase the question, but I'm curious how having chickens and bees can be beneficial to one another. For example, I've heard the chickens love eating SHB larvae, but I'm not sure if they'll mess up the comb. So SHB, small, high beetles. I want to stop on that part. Well, now, I'll finish the whole question. I'll tell you what my thoughts are. I'm not sure if the other benefits are, if any, that there may be. I've had bees for a while, but I'm new chicken keeper had six for about a year and just got 24 more that are in the breeder now. So congratulations on being a chicken keeper. We have had chickens here for a very, very long time, as many as 80. And so because I'm a poultry technician, my thing used to be Fred's Fine Fowl,

which is why if you go to the way to be.org, you might land on fredsfinefowl.com. website because same person used to be Fred's Reds I only bred Rhode Island Reds the American breed anyway I think there's a huge benefit to having chickens in an apiary here's the thing my chickens roam through my bee yard every single day several times a day they also bite away at the grass underneath the beehives they eat any bug they can find any moth they can find so chickens will see a moth flying through the grass and they'll run 50 feet to get a moth so they may be helping with our wax moth problem so the wax moth larvae which are wax worms which eat everything

and so here's the thing the part of this that was a little odd to me small-h beetle larvae now when you get small heart beetle livy larvae in your hive they are up in your honey super sometimes and they slime things out I have never first of all I found one once that was slimed out I don't know if it was from small hive beetle larvae because I've never seen the adult small hive beetles but they had slimed the honey soup or in such a way that the bees won't touch it it's not like you can take it and put it out and have bees and moths and other things just clean up that frame for you I would not try to feed those to my chicken. So small hive beetle larvae, unless you're catching them in a trap or something like that,

I wouldn't try to feed them on the frame because if you had a slimed out frame from small, beetle larvae, I would power wash the whole thing off. I wouldn't even play with it at all. That's just personally what I would do. This year, I'll tell you, ahead of time, I'm experimenting with reconstituting old frames with bees wax and everything else because I have a couple of wax melters, good sized ones.

And because I have temperature control on those, and we know that bees, wax, propolis and all that stuff melts away roughly 155 degrees Fahrenheit. So even if we have these complex materials of the frames and all the intricacies, and in particular, the flow frames, the really old ones, because I've had those. Now this is the 10th year with flow highs and flow super, and flow frames. So by the way, very key that you do not put plastic frames of any kind and in particular flow super frames in sunlight. No ultraviolet light. They get brittle. They will break down. So what I'm doing is taking the oldest once, I haven't done it. This is my plan. I'm telling you ahead of time so you can look for the video.

So you can subscribe and stay with me because you're going to want to see. There's a lot of satisfaction and seeing things get cleaned up in a in a way where we're not using harsh detergents and you don't need a power washer. So I'm going to bring it up to 155 degrees Fahrenheit in the water. We're going to soak them and these are we're even going to do it with the tough residue. Things like old, brood comb. So I'm going to get that to soften up and we're going to scrape it away from everything and in the honey supers because parts of the way these mechanisms work,

I don't know if you're familiar with flow frames themselves and you may not care, but the hot water will get in there and you can agitate it and soak everything out of it and clean all the inaccessible areas and have it hopefully pretty darn good for follow-on use. So I want to see how the oldest ones have held up. I have new ones already. I have new frames ready to replace them so I can afford to mess them up if it doesn't work. I'll just show at what point they failed. I did reach out to Cedar Anderson, who's the inventor of the Flow Hyde,

find out what the upper limit would be, and he said that would be 160 degrees Fahrenheit, that we should be fairly safe up to that point. Freezing has demonstrated no negative impact on that material, so the heat might be the other thing is if it's soft and we cycle it or do something to it while it's in that soft condition, maybe it would be damaged. I don't know. So maybe we should go out of the nondesructive testing realm and keep jacking up the heat. until we hit a point of failure.

Maybe we should start to establish that. I think that might actually be fun. So I'm thinking about that while we're talking and of course. So I, you know, this all comes from this question from Dustin about, you know, chickens eating small high and what their benefits are. So let's jump away from that, but I would clean myself up. I wouldn't let the chickens clean up, slimed out small high beetle frames. Now we'll move on.

A lot of, this will shock you. A lot of people don't like spiders, which is sad for me because I think spiders are pretty darn cool. And you don't have spiders around your house if you have rearranging chickens. You don't see spiders around your gutters, around your foundation, you don't see them on your low-hanging trees, because chickens eat all spiders. It's pretty funny. Some of the things that don't like that chickens do, they eat baby snakes for Pete's takes. those little tiny brown snakes the decay snake chickens will eat them run around like they're having a soccer game with a piece of spaghetti until one of them swallows it i don't know if you realize this the chickens are omnivorous that's right they eat rocks even pebbles goes in their gizzard that's how they chew things up

so they eat baby mice i don't know if you knew that too so chickens are eaters here's the thing i think of a small high beetle showed up didn't make it right into a landing board right into a hive that if it landed momentarily on grass while my chickens were around their chances of being eaten are extremely high the other thing is are there adult small high beetles cruising around right now no they aren't because here's what happened they're in their pupa state they're in the soil now this is why i think in my area we don't have very many of them because you know what they have to go deep enough in that soil to avoid the frost line now the frost line i'm told where i live is about 32 inches into the ground which means that little small hive beetle larvae the worm has to get into the soil and make it that far down to get away from the frost line where it would die to some degree they manufacture their own kind of antifreeze this is how a lot of wasps for example and hornets get into piles of humus and they supposedly make it through winter remember last winter was really mild and we had this high population of vespids, right? So we had a whole bunch of wasps out and about because their queens made it,

the queen's emergent spring, and each queen starts its own colony on its own. So small high beetles might be having a tough winter and then, but of course they have to emerge from where? The grass. When they do that, do they do that at night? If they do it at night, they're probably safe from the chickens. But if they do that in the early morning, worst time of day to be avoiding chickens because they are everywhere. and when one chicken finds something, they make this little staccato sound, and they call over all the other chickens because something interesting is there, and they all start feeding on it. Japanese beetles, they would eat 100% of the Japanese beetles

if Japanese beetles hung out in that low 14 to 18 inch range from the ground, but they don't. They get up in the trees and stuff and get away from them. So it's all very interesting. I think there are benefits to chickens that we don't know about, and they're great companion animals for your bees. They won't eat your honey bees. I wish they would. I mean, I don't wish they would go there and eat live bees,

but I wish that the first thing the chickens did when they cruise through the bee yard would be to eat dead bees on the ground. But we have skunks that do that, and we have possums that do that. So, but yeah, I think there's benefits. In fact, it may have quite a lot to do with why I don't have small hay beetle larvae to worry about. And, but of course, we also have not had any issues

with wax worms. And there again, I see chickens eating moths all the time. If it's near the ground, it gets munched. So maybe those are waxworm moths. I don't know. We don't get them. But there again, the colonies are all occupied, so the bees don't let wax moths in

and they don't let their larvae develop inside a hive that's well populated. They will take care of business. Question number six. Burl Helms. Happy leap year from Southeast Kansas. Been keeping bees since the early 60s, mostly in Arizona. Maybe you could touch on a hive venting or no venting in the cold. I closed off all my screen bottom boards.

I would dare, says I would dare to do that in a hot climate like Arizona. My hives all made it through the winter okay, open them up today. Still have good resources, but I fill their feeders anyway. Okay. So even in hot climates, now this was interesting to me because I thought kind of the same thing. Let's talk about venting right off the back because it's easy for me to clear up. Through the years, I stopped because I used to. I vented through the top. I vented with nickels on top of the inner cover. I had the little top vent system so that it went through because I was told that from the very first time I bought my very first hive.

I mean, even the inner cover came pretty notched for venting and an upper entrance. So it all seemed pretty copacetic to me. it's like this is what you're supposed to do. Later I learned and started putting into practice. Not all hives at one time. I did it part of my apiary so that I would have comparisons and through the years I could see what's working and what isn't. And I've arrived through all those years to right now,

no top venting at any time of year. So I don't. Single entrance. No upper venting. And that's it. Now, the Appameehives, for example, come with a bunch of built-in alternate vents on them, and you could open and close those at any time on a whim, and that's fine, but I just, as I said before, I stopped using them.

So I also recommend people in hot climates don't use them either. So here's the thing. I was talking to people who live in hot climates also. And one of them, in particular, she has flow hives. The flow hive has a bottom board that's in the sink, closed it's a screen and there's a tray and in the back there's an insert that has two positions vented and unvented and she was giving a demonstration and i asked about it whoa you're you're in that hot climate and you're in the desert southwest and you have your vent closed don't you want to open it

no because the bees control the climate inside the hive so they do a very good job if we are going to insulate insulate the inner cover insulate the top of your hive minimum um because what happens is with all the heat what happens inside the hive. Now remember we talked earlier 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit for the brood. If we force vent it, in other words, if we create an upper opening that the bees don't control and they don't have time to close it up because keep in mind also bees close up these upper vents if they have access to them and there's a screen there or something like that, they're going to propolize that nine times out of 10. They don't want the venting because what she explained to me and it made perfect sense after I heard it,

even though it's hot out here, they're trying to control the humidity inside the hive. They need more than 65% relative humidity inside the hive or what's happening? You're drying out the open brood because what are they doing? They're sitting there in pools of nourishment, and that nourishment is largely composed of water, and if that water goes away, they can't feed. So now what do the bees have to do?

They're in overdrive because of venting that some beekeeper installed, that wouldn't exist in a cavity they occupy on their own, by the way. And they're in there just painting all the surfaces they can with fresh water. So now we ramp them into overdrive. Do you know what? Where's your bees out the most? Forgerers that have to leave the hive, and it's the more flight time they have on their thorax engines,

their muscles that activate their wings so that they can fly. The flight time exponentially reduces their life. lifetime. So if they have to go out, get water, get in there, they're trying to save themselves because somebody's venting the hive with what? Super dry air. So you think they're just cooling down, but they're not. They're actually having to humidify the environment so they can use that dehumidification to cool down. And they're also trying to keep the humidity up at the same time so that we're not killing the open larvae. I hope that makes sense. So and here's the thing. What do I always say? Do some with and some without. So if you're absolutely set that the bees feel the way you do

when you're inside a hive. First of all, we would never survive inside the hive. But that's why people think, oh, they need to be cool down. Look, it's 85. This is people in the state of Pennsylvania. It's 85 degrees. It's so hot outside. We need to do something to cool our hives down. forget they're still trying to achieve 94 to 97 in the brood. So it's actually not hot for the bees. So we have to stop thinking like a person inside the hive and think like a bee inside the hive and what they're trying to accomplish with that protected space. And it's our job to help them do that, right, while we keep because it's required that we have access to the interior hive so that we know if things are going bad.

So I hope that answers the question, and the same question comes up over and over again about venting, non-venting. And my thing is, if you wanted to find out, because people are going to be talking about swarm traps now, because what, swarm season is upon us, so everybody is putting up swarm traps. There are people that do a lot of venting on their hives,

but they don't do it on the swarm trap. So if you want to find out what your bees would choose on their own, what we're doing is luring them into a swarm trap which has a single entrance it has frames of drawn comb in there it smells like a hive it will have hopefully old brood frame old brood comb in there and you will also have bits and pieces of propolis to make it smell homey and this gets the attention of scouts scouts go inside and they do so many they walk off the interior space because they're deciding if the space is adequate for the colonn it's about to move in and they're looking for a little creases and creases and openings and gaps and things like that because even if the entrance is too

big they might reject the cavity and dr tom seeley did a lot of research about that how badly damage can the interior of that swarm trap be before bees rejected before the scouts decide not worth their time you'll find out that they're liking it because more than one scout shows up and starts checking out the same one and they spend a lot of time pacing it inside you'll watch them go in and they spend minutes in there before they come back out. Come back later, five, six, eight, ten of them all go in. They're also getting a consensus. That's what the honeybee democracy is.

They're agreeing upon the interior condition and the space available. Then they all go back and they bring this warm in. Now, set one up that's got an open vent through the top or screens in the back or all these other openings that people seem to want to put on later. And then have that next next. an enclosed one with only the single entrance and no venting. See which one gets the most attention. It happens pretty darn quick. They don't want the vented box. They want the one that has the opening

and no venting. So then what we're doing is we're getting them into your swarm trap. And then, surprise, surprise, once we get you to lay eggs and we commit you to the box and now we're going to vent it and do all the things you would not choose on your own. That's all I'm going to say. And I recently had a really good interview about Be Mindful is the name of the company, and it was Natalie B. And we talked about the horizontal hive. I was really surprised because she's in Texas. She does not vent her hives either.

So she has top bar hives with a single entrance at one end, and that's it. That's even in Texas. So take a note from people that are doing this in environments that I've, high heat, low humidity, and they have these challenges, and if they're succeeding with their configurations, then those are people that we should take a lead from, I would think. So that's my thought on that. So that's the end of question number six. Now we're in the fluff section for today. That's it for all the formal questions. Please continue to send in your questions. And again, just if you happen to have a topic, people just send me ideas. Hey, have you seen this. Hey, have you heard about that.

So I do like to know and I do my best to keep up. I'm one person. A pint can't hold a quart, as they say. So I cut it off every morning, three hours of reading interviews, and then I quit. So, also, for those of you submitting ideas for me, please don't write a book. I don't have the time to read a full page of some thought process that someone has about some management style. Also, if it's something that's been generated by artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence pages, when I see that that's how it's composed, I do a cursory check of it,

and I really just don't have the time to read the entire thing. So think in terms of bullet statements. Think of an elevator pitch. Let me know what your thoughts are and what your question is in brief and concise statements, kind of. That's really helpful for me. So anyway, the first thing I'm going to mention, pellet sales are available again. So those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, we did a fundraiser for the Northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association.

It was a fundraiser for pellet sales. These are smoker pellets that are made from switchgrass. Now, the cool thing about it was they come from Ernst Seeds. So they did it as a fundraiser, and people like to talk about different pellet smoker fuels and the ones that burn the longest have the best smoke easy to light things like that okay so these smoker pellets do not land high on the easy to light list I use one of those propane torches light it up until I see smoke coming out the bottom intake of the smoker and once that's lit though here's what happens it will be lit for the entire of the day that you are using your smoker and I don't mean one of those really tall smokers the standard smokers those smoker pellets generate a cool dense white smoke that your bees react to and calm down with right away so in the past

myself and my supervisor my nine-year-old grandson we would line up a whole bunch of smokers in a row preloaded with pine shavings which is what I used to use and then when a smoker got down to about a third, we would go ahead and light up the next smoker before we went on to the next beehive. With these switched grass smoker pellets, once we got them lit, it stayed lit for the whole rest of the day. In fact, if you left it outside,

instead of putting a cork in it, I recommend you put a cork in it and save the pellets, it would have burned all night long on its own, just sat out there and just smoldered away. So we had lots of fantastic feedback from people like you that are watching right now. And we ran out of them because it's a volunteer thing. This is a fundraiser.

This is a nonprofit. And everyone had pellet packing parties where they would just fill up the boxes and everything, get them ready to ship out. Anyway, they're back in stock. They are available and you can buy them. I don't know what the ultimate quantity will be or when we'll run out or if we'll run out again.

But if you keep them in a cool, dry place, it's not like they have a shelf life. and they work extremely well. Now, I see other people make comments like, I can just get, you know, because there are pellet stoves, right? I can just get pellet stove pellets from the stove store or the local hardware store, and they're a fraction of the price. Well, first of all, this is a fundraiser.

This helps outreaches and honeybee education. We're not profiting personally from it. I get zero for promoting it, just to pay. put that out there. But on the other side of it is, what is a purpose of the pellets for a pellet stove? They're designed to burn hot. They're designed to burn with reduced amounts of smoke. And they're designed to burn effectively. In other words, generate a lot of heat from the pellets. And they've got these worm drives that gradually feed the pellets in to keep the fire going. So that is the opposite of what we want.

in pellets when we're putting them in our smoker to work our honeybees. We want the smoke coming out to be cool, not hot. We want the smoke coming out to be dense, heavy smoke that causes them to have the passive reaction that we're looking for. We're neutralizing their volatiles, which are their alarm pheromones that they would spread when they're being interrupted by the beekeeper. Let's face it, they don't like us being in there. I don't care how much you think your bees are. love you, the minute you open that, your puppet with light smoke, it's just enough to get those guard bees to turn away and lose interest in you and not put out an alarm pheromone. Every see a honey bee stick its abdomen in the air and you actually see the stinger sticking

part way out. Some people look at that and go, oh man, this thing is, the stinger got stuck. No, the stinger as it starts to extend has been coated with an alarm pheromone. They're bothered. You're bothering. You're bothering. them. They're mooning you, only they're sticking their stinger up and that singer is a pheromone flag that informs all the others around. Get ready to sting something. So, dense, cool, smoke, support honeybee education, and get something that won't have you pulling your hair out when you're all suited up. You're going into your next beehive and you go to puff your smoker and it's out. This one does not go out. So once it's lit, you're lit, you're lit, you're

good to go and please support the Northwestern Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association Pellate Sales. Again I get nothing for it. There'll be a link down in the video description. You can also do a Google search for them and you'll find them. So those are back in stock for how long. I don't know. I appreciate your support in advance for that program. And then get ready to feed your survivors. Now here's the good news. The people that have been watching my channel that responded to my survey, which by the way, the survey is still active. I put it down in the video description for last Friday's Q&A. I will also put the survey in the video description for today's Q&A. It's very basic whether or not your bees are

alive, dead, whether they're meeting expectations, whether your losses are surprising you and things like that. Overwhelming, overwhelmingly, the people that are watching my channel are reporting that they have the expected normal losses or they've got better survival than usual. So things seem pretty darn good. Now here's the deal. This is no, you know, commentary on what's going on in the commercial scale. Other parts of the country, these are, well, of course, it's other parts of the country. These are my listeners are all over the world. So I appreciate those of you who took the time to do that because your responses to my survey provided more responses than Project APISM received from backyard beekeepers. So it's kind of helpful.

It's very cursory. I appreciate it, and it's comforting for people that are starting to think, whoa, things are bad. People that have been doing this for a long time lost 90%. In some cases, 100% of their bees. Even backyard beekeepers, some of them have lost 100% of their bees. And then there becomes this polarizing conversation. Well, that's because of treatments, and that's because of amatraz.

And that's because of this and that. Well, some of the people that lost 100% of their bees are treatment-free. beekeepers as well. So we shouldn't be overly confident in what we think, you know, cause and effect is, but look at this way. What part of this is under your control? So that's just it. That's where we're at right now. Spring is coming. Northern climate. You're starting to find out now what your real losses are. The next survey for Project APISM is going to be April 1st. In the meantime, though, I just want to share with you what I'm going to do. So we're just now seeing the snow melt away.

We're just now above freezing. We're going to get into temps in the 50s. Yeah, we had 48 degrees. They told us it was going to hit 60 last week. We got 48 degrees. And what was it doing all day? Raining. I mean torrential raining, not just sprinkles.

So we couldn't do anything with the bees. But I'm telling you to please be prepared to go out and provide emergency resources to your surviving colonies. this is a good news. This has been a tough winter. It's been an extended winter. Here where I am, we've had blizzard conditions, and we've had heavy snow, and there's 180 out from what we had last winter. Last winter was so mild, it was a problem because the bees flew too much. This year it's a problem because they're locked in, temps are cold, and we get a warm-up and a cool down right away. So we're coming up to the next warm-up. So all I'm suggesting is that you do everything you can

do to guarantee the survival of your honeybees under your control. That doesn't mean that right now we're jumping on treatments for mites and things like that, because let's be honest, you don't know what your mite counts are. You can't open them and sample for mites. But what we can do is boost their proteins. We can help them recover from a tough situation. And the good news is the bees that we have still alive right now, they're tough. Why?

Because they made it through this rough winter. So I think that's good. if you've got bees to work with, work with those bees. Don't, you know, I can't tell you what to do, but if my neighbor across the road gives a big delivery of a whole bunch of package bees, and I'm kind of getting into it all over again, we have southern bees brought up and our genetics are changing. I want to work with the bees that are surviving here, that are making it here, and that are reproducing in spring on their own.

and it's tough you cannot convince other people because they're commercial. They need to make money from their honey. I don't. So I understand. You know, they're going to order all their bees in and they have profound losses year after year. And there's nothing you can do because there are people that won't talk to you that won't help with locally adapted. That is if you look for, you know, people gripe about. about. I know my conversation is a little scattered right now. You know, they say it all the time,

talks three beekeepers, get six answers, whatever you want to say. Here's the thing. There's more than one way to raise a B, and that's why, you know, opinions that are shared about one thing working, another thing working, everything to some degree must be working or you wouldn't hear the same thing from so many different people. Because when you're new, that's kind of what you're looking for, the common thread. What are these people doing, these successful beekeepers? What are they doing that keeps their bees thriving year after year in face of all of our challenges with agricultural chemicals, agricultural practices, poor bee genetics and management and hive configurations? And there are so many moving parts. Someone will frequently do one thing, get a very good survival rate one year,

and then everybody rushes over there to do exactly that thing. What we're looking for is a combination of practices that people are doing, and these are called beekeeping best practices. How do they arrive at that? It's when beekeepers from a lot of different disciplines in beekeeping are reporting a consensus about what is working, what is not working, and then that is compiled into a list of statistically the most successful things you can do to keep your bees going. So we need data like that.

And in the absence of that, you need to keep your own really good records because you know whether or not you're lying to yourself. We can't always trust what other people say. Pride is in the way. and if things didn't work or advice it was given wasn't good, then it needs to be caught up to date. We need to explain that I used to do this, I used to do that, it didn't work, this is what it did instead, that seemed to work. Did it work for a year?

Did it work for 10 years? Oh, it's worked for 10 years. That sounds like a pretty good practice. So these are the things that you're looking to do, things that you're going to have to help you succeed. So look at the colonies that you have that survived through this particular winter and make notes about what the hive was configured like, right down to where it's placed next to a tree, next to a rock,

open field, no shielding, no shelter from wind, the facing of the landing board. The landing board facing one direction isn't going to kill or save your colony, but these are incremental improvements. every little thing combined together ultimately comes a very good way to keep your bees all together. Screen bottom board. A lot of people are doing away with them. That was something that they came out with early on. They wanted to deal with varroa mites. They were told that the mites would fall out and that they'd land on the ground. And that's why. So they started using screen bottom boards.

But see, the passive control of varro destructor mites through a screen bottom board still exists. It's an incremental advantage. Now, in light of providing a whole, whole bunch of varroa destructor mite treatments then combined with a screen bottom board how much of an advantage then is a screen bottom board is it offset the fact that you're a commercial beekeeper and you need to haul around a bunch of extra equipment screen bottle boards and an enclosure for them no but for the backyard beatkeeper yes and that's because that screen bottom board is still letting mites fall through and you're still going to catch them on that removable tray underneath and if you'll close that all there's no free flowing air through the bottom. You've got another advantage in the toolbox of what you're

going to use to control varro destructor mites, keep them away from your bees. Once they groom them off, how frustrating for the bee if they could feel frustration. They go to all this trouble to groom off of a varro distractor mite, it falls on the bottom board, scoots along goes right back up the interior side wall and gets right back on a bee. See? All that grooming effort was worth nothing. That's why they came up with the Purdue ankle biters that are biting the feet off of them. Now they can't crawl back up. But I could be getting the ones that get their feet bitten, which is a very small percentage, by the way. And I can get those that just happen to clumsily topple through a screen and into a tray underneath and stick to something.

Because once they stick, and it is fun to watch them because we don't have any empathy for the Verro Destructor Might. So whenever we get live ones, we sit in the way to be. Academy building and we watch them scoot along the bottom. Even climbing over little bits of detritus, little bits of beeswax and probalus and some pollen that didn't quite make it into the cell that's laying there when that little mite tried to clamber over it and flipped over, that was like a turtle on its back. The little thing was like wiggle on its feet. It had no means of writing itself once it was on its back. These things are not as dexterous as we think they are. Now sure, while they have their footing, and if they're on hair, and if they're on the

body of something, they can move along pretty darn good for something that can't see. But in the bottom board space with Pam cooking spray, vaseline smeared on it, whatever you think you'd like to use, and I started out with, why did I use mineral oil in there? Not because it's easy to deal with later when it's got a bunch of stuff in it, but because mineral oil is clear. And I can get pictures of the mite through it. So you understand my motivations are a little different, maybe from yours. But it is amazing how difficult it is for a mite

that actually goes through a screen in a bottom board to get its footing and get back up into the hive after it's made it through that barrier. So for me, the backyard beekeeper, having that screen and that passive mite control benefit is another step towards the reduction of Verona structure mites. And I can see them. I can pull that board at any time and look because it pulls out from the back of the hive. And I can see had there been any mites falling down here over the last two weeks.

Maybe you had to do a treatment on a colony that had a high mite count. And then you want to know, did my treatment work? Some people don't even check. They don't check to see if there were mites to begin with. And they just do a treatment. And then they don't check to see if there was a mite drop. They just do another treatment. They just follow the label and just keep. keep treating. And then if you don't see the mite drop, if you don't understand that it has efficacy, if it's efficient at killing mites, if it does what it's supposed to do, if you're not counting them, what are you doing? I don't even know. But again, I'm one of those people that just has to know for the sake of knowing. So I want to see it. I want to see dead mites. I want to see

mites on their bags, helpless, trying to gain their footing. And so all these things together. Let's say that a study, let's say maybe it's even a one-off, but it's not more than one study supports this. Let's say the closing up the winter hive and create what now is being called a condensing hive. Let's say that increased CO2 and reduced oxygen. Terrible, right? Oh my gosh, terrible. They need oxygen for Pete's sakes. They're bees.

They need precious little oxygen. Do you know it needs oxygen in airflow? and a low CO2 environment and low humidity environment. You know what needs that? The varrodistructor mite needs that for reproduction. So what if some of the varroa mites in that brood area in winter non-vented are suffering a decline in their reproductive effectiveness? Then that's another thing.

Look at that. We've got bees that are healthy that survive. We've got varroa mites that are suffering under this environment that the bees can still survive in. We've got screen bottom boards that the mite falls through and can't get its footing and dies on its back. Lonely and sad in the recesses of the tray that the mean beekeeper put there as a trap for it. And all of these things eventually benefit your bees, which benefit you as a beekeeper, which benefits the environment, which benefits pollination, which makes you look better as a beekeeper.

Which means that you don't have to go to a bee meeting in spring and say, I'm out of bees who wants to sell me a nucleus hive, right? And there's nothing wrong with people that are selling the nucleus hives. I just don't want to be the person buying them. That's all. That's all I'm saying. So be ready to feed. Oh, what am I going to feed? So I just ordered a box for the first time ever.

Remember, pollen patties are expensive. So, because I have plants for bees, I have to expand my, apiary this year, which I didn't want to do. I want to go the other way. I want a smaller backyard apiary. So I'm actually going to be one of those people that builds up my bees in spring, and so I went to the hive alive pollen patties, which are the most expensive ones. And we'll be putting those on colonies that I plan to work with, because now there's pressure on me. You know, I have the keepers hive I'm going to have to set up. I need to have the numbers of bees to do that I'm not buying any bees in I'm not buying in any queens I'm working just with a stock I have

here and so I'm going to feed them so I'm going to boost them up so if you want to know what I'm doing I'm putting hive alive pollen patties on for spring and that's what we're going to do these survivors are great bees to work with clean your dead outs because here's the thing over the past couple of years too I don't put out swarm trout anymore, just don't. Statistically, I know that's a really good thing to do, but here's what happened to me. First of all, too many bees. Okay. I hope I'm saying the same thing at this time next year. Because what happens is all I did was clean out, you know, a hive, set it up, have it ready to go, put frames and everything in it, and I could either install a swarm myself

that I catch from its Bivouac location, or guess what else would happen? Bees just moving on their own. So bees will move into a space in your apiary. Now it's better for you to have your whatever your property is spread your hives out as much as possible. Give them unique features like one's next to a tree, another's next to a bush, another's next to a big rock or at the corner of a building. So because the geographic location of your hive makes it easier for your bees to orient to visually. So and then if you've just got evidence that it's a it was lived in before and of course break it down to where it's a single deep box. So single eight deep, single 10 deep.

No difference as far as what the bees choose. You will get scouts checking that out. Do not put a bunch of sugar syrup in there. Don't put pollen patties and things in an empty hive. We don't want to set up a picnic for them. We want to set up a pre-furnished apartment that they inspect and decide that it's time to move in. If you leave a bunch of dead bees in it and you leave a bunch of dead bees in it and you leave a bunch of Retritis and frass, which is the waste from Varroa destructor mites and things like that,

if you leave those things in your frames, you might get rejected by the scouts unless you're the only cavity in town. But you might be in competition. So let's make it smell sweet, propolis bits and pieces and all that stuff. Clean it out really good. So low pressure air with a focused nozzle is, I think I just started doing that last spring or the year before, but you can actually blow out any dead bees that are in the cells. Just the L.P. Air just puffs them right out of there. So you have a touchless way of cleaning out your frames and your bottom board and everything else. Get it all cleaned up. Now the next thing you might want to know is how do I know if they didn't die of a disease or something? This guide, which is the thumbnail for today,

is the Pennsylvania Pocket Manual. I don't, you know, You could have been keeping bees 100 years, and this is a great field guide. It's a field guide to honeybees and their maladies. Get these. If you are a bee club and you're the leader of that club and you've got money at hand, this little spiral-bound book is something that every club member should have because it has photos and explanations of everything that can go wrong, wrong with your bees. And I'm going to tell you where to go to get it because I might

forget to put this down in the video description, but go to extension, E-X-T-E-N-S-I-O-N-S-I-O-N-P-S-U. Go there and get this publication. This will help you understand cause and effect what you're looking at with your bees. And when you're looking at comb or even dysentery on the front of the hive, I mean it just goes on and on. This is a great book. So off my soapbox on that. Have a reference like that. If you're teaching other people about bees, we can all use a refresher. You know why? Because we just don't see these diseases very often. And I did do a video on my long Langstroth hive on what sounds. brood looks like and how to test for American foul brood and European foul brood.

So in very close detail showing how to use the test kit and everything else. So that's a dead out. It shows you frame by frame. It's a long langstroth hive. If you want to know how to access it, then go to my YouTube channel up in the search bar next to the magnifying glass. Just type in long langstroth, dead out. And I take you through it in great detail. You will see mites going around without a host in that. It has very above average video sequences. So everyone needs that. The other thing is, so clean yourself as possible, get them ready because you will see bees not wanting to move in if you've left dead bees in there or something that just doesn't smell right to your bees. So if in doubt, throw it out. Seeds are on sale. I get those daily notifications,

Eden Brothers, all the different park seed company. So this is your time. I think they have not sold as many seeds as they thought they would. So this is a boom for us. You can get 35% off, whatever it is. But seeds for pollinators. I like perennials and things like that. I also want to thank Alec, who came up and gave me Jerusalem artist. chokes whole bag of them by the way met at the north american honeybee expo i'm going to be planting those i researched them a little bit they're really interesting and i'm thankful for that so i'm adding stuff this year uh the other thing is if you're having problems with deer in closing today i just want to say that that super stinky stuff again liquid fence it works you can lose your holly bushes the deer are eating things this

year that they normally don't where i live uh someone explained it to me that the we have such a big deer population in state of Pennsylvania is what happened over Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, I guess, historically, is one of the biggest deer hunting weekends. And what happened? We had a huge snowstorm. The roads weren't even passable. So the hunters didn't get out. They didn't harvest the deer that they normally would. So we literally have herds of deer like cattle standing in fields, eating everything. I don't know what the farmers are going to do in spring. It was bad enough last year. the deer were eating everything.

It's just like somebody's cattle being off the range and eating everyone's produce. They are bad. Liquid fence, I get the concentrate, I mix it up, I spray it once a week, it protects your bushes from the deer. Rabbits don't seem to give a hoot. Vols and moles will eat all your stuff and let the shrews go. We need shrews to hunt out those voles and moles.

We need them to eat them. I hope they do it really quick. I hope they survived. And that's all I have for today. So I want to thank you again for spending your time with me. And if you don't already, I invite you to subscribe to this channel. And I hope that you're getting really good news that spring arrives and you see what's going on in your own bee yard.

Thanks a lot for watching.