The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Beekeeping Q&A #308 Super Splits, laying workers and more discussion topics...

Episode Date: May 31, 2025

This is the Audio from The YouTube LIVE Chat May 30, 2025  https://youtube.com/live/xXv63B6cw_g?feature=share

Oh, it's time to go live. So thank you for being here. I'm going to kick things off right away with the normal startup. And of course, it's Friday, May the 30th of 2025. This is back here at Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 308. I'm Frederick Dunn. This is the way to be special live edition. No editing. So we've got people here. And yes, I see that Ross wants to know if you can post a question already. Yes, go ahead. Post your questions in all caps if you want to. And that way it'll get my attention. You're more than welcome to answer one another's comments and questions in the chat area. I don't mind that at all. Say hello to one another. I will pay attention when it's in all caps and assume that it's for me. So hang on.

I'm going to get through the normal stuff. So first thing you're going to want to know is what's it doing outside. We're in the northeastern part of the United States, the state of Pennsylvania, northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, 65 degrees Fahrenheit. So what's that mean? What's happening right now? Well, I'm sitting here. Bees are swarming.

That's right. Two swarms today already, but I'm in here because they care about you. That's 18 degrees Celsius outside, five mile an hour winds. It's supposed to rain starting at four, which is right now. So that's okay if it rains, we're inside. Good to know. 6% or 40% relative humidity right now, but that's going to rise quickly. UV indexes too because it's overcast.

And what else is going on? The pollen count is medium to high. So the bees, we're all bringing in a lot of pollen today. Great indicator that your colony is in full production. If you've got 10 or more trips of pollen coming in through that entrance per minute. So very interesting. Look at that stuff. The other thing is robbing potential right now is medium because the environment is providing for your bees.

However, the clover where we are, has a lot of the clover. where we are hasn't kicked in yet. So the bees are foraging everything. They're scouting everything. So robbing potentials, medium, no big deal. What do we have running around here at night? Raccoons, O possums. This is the first time I've had a raccoon actually fiddle with his little fiddly feet

and reach in and try to pull frames and scrape away honey from things. But it didn't stick around for very long because I lit them up with motion-activated lights out in the apiary. That works. And the possum just goes around, eats dead bees. on the ground, they're welcome. And of course, we have skunks. Skunks are always nice to have. If you've ever seen yellow jackets,

building their nests in the ground, they excavate everything. Guess what excavates them? Skunks. So keep your skunks around. Elevate your hives off the ground. How high? 16 to 18 inches at the landing board.

That works. Linden trees are almost blossoming. So that's going to be a good thing. We want that to happen out here. So we do have questions that were submitted during the week, but if you have a question, post it, please, in all caps. And we'll get to those as we go through it. So we scheduled an hour for today, but it could go a little longer.

I have experiments actively ongoing out in the B-yard right now with B. Weaver Queens. And so we're going to kick right off here with Ross Wagner. It says a week ago, yesterday the state inspector was looking at my hives. We saw a queen fly into my queenless, swarmed, hive. I checked yesterday for eggs, but nothing. Should I wait one more a week? Yes, give that queen some time. Definitely wait another week. People get really anxious, by the way, I was talking with someone who's a big queen breeder who sells a lot of nucleus colonies of bees and replacement queens, and he finds that nine times out of ten, when people are asking for a replacement queen,

they just needed to wait another week. They're running late. Remember, our weather's not cooperating in a lot of parts of the United States. So they are set back. Let's jump in here with one shoe. Fred, did you ever set up your two queen Keepers Hive? And how is your One Queen Keepers Hive doing this year? So the One Queen, let's start with that one, because it's the one that's actually out there with things happening.

The One Queen Keepers Hive, if you don't know what that is, please just Google the Keepers Hive. They have great demonstrations. They also have a YouTube channel called The Keepers Hive. It's going well. So in fact, I was just out there checking it out today. It is the hive that I installed a combination of small swarms with Virgin Queens, and the Virgin Queens did not take.

So they are behind in the Keepers Hive, and I had to call in my ace in the hole there from Dan Weaver in Texas there, and we flew in to Weaver Queens, and that's what I was doing this morning, actually, installing my queens. One of them is Queen on a Stick right now. already glomming a big bunch of scout bees onto her. So we just have a lot of different things going on. But the Keepers Hive performs okay.

This is only my second summer with one. They died out over the winters, so I had to restart them, and they used to swarm. So the two-queen Keepers Hive system is not yet set up. I have too many beehives out here. I've been trying to, now don't get excited. I gave away a bunch of beehives. It's too late.

So don't reach out to me. I already gave them away to my mentees. Two of my mentees came and collected them and took them away. Now I have room finally for some of the other hives I want to set up and work with. And the two queen capers hive system is one of those. So we're just late. We're behind on everything. The next one here is from Ross Wagner.

I actually have a chicken question if that's okay. Of course, chicken questions are always okay. Is your opinion of guard geese to protect against five, And aryal predators. So this is a poultry question. Okay, geese, let me just tell you about geese. They can guard, they're better than guard dogs, by the way, and they will protect your flock from predators,

but they can also come after you, and they can do a lot of damage, and they're super noisy. But if you're trying to keep fox and other predators like that away, not so much hawks and things. Your crows are fantastic for hawk protection, but they're definitely great guards. In fact, a lot of people don't know. Geese, flocks of geese, have been used in the military,

specifically the Navy, as early alert systems in woodland, rough, grown in areas, in sensitive areas. I won't say where, but they've been used, and a chief petty officer was actually in charge of the flock of geese. They are very effective guards. Next is Eric Anderson, heavy bearding day after day, something to be concerned. something to be concerned about. Well, not if you're in an area where we have a large nectar flow because what really matters is what your other colonies are doing. If they're all kind of bearding,

then we know that we've got a lot of nectar coming in. I don't personally worry too much about that. If you go out in the middle of the night, I recommend you do. See if that collection of bees. Bearding is when your bees hang on the front of your hive, for those of you don't know. And it looks alarming because it looks like your bees are moving out or something. but this is primarily your foragers. And so they're out of the way so that your storekeeper bees inside can help dry and process the honey that you have. And it's very common for them to move out. And some people use slotted rags, which give them some extra space.

Once they collect on the front of the hive, pay attention to those bearded clusters of bees and make sure you don't see waggle dances on the surface and that it's not actually a swarm and they are actually departing. One of the ways you can tell the difference, go out there at night and see if it condenses more and if a lot of them move in overnight and in the early morning hours. So you don't have to go out in the middle of the night, come out at sunrise and see if the class around the front of your hive is small and then it expands again as the day heats up. That's very. So not that big a deal. So Mr. Big Cookie Crumble says, happy Friday, Fred. Much love from Sweden.

Okay, so welcome. Glad to have people here from all over the world. by the way, I have no idea what time it is where people are. So remember if it's a question for me, all caps, although I do see that John wrote something here, have you tested an EMF or RF reduction measures on your hives? Are you interested in research from Switzerland about the impact on hive health and Queen laying in high EMF RF environments? So electromagnetic frequencies and radio wave frequency environments.

There have been a lot of studies done on those. I always welcome any studies that people have. You can send them to me. The way you do that is you go to my website, which is the way to be.org. Click on the page mark the way to be. It's also titled questions. Fill out the form, put your link in there and shoot it to me.

I'm glad to look at published research on things like that. EMF, electromagnetic radiation, even high voltage, high power lines and things like that have been studied here in North America. and it's kind of up in the air. And of course, the reactions that come from the bees come from being in a near field area, in other words, very close to the energy source. So it is interesting, always happy to learn new things. So this one comes from B-H-O-T-O-8, plucked a swarm cell that was open on the bottom and had a tear on the side.

A few minutes later, I discovered there was a flat, pearly white larvae, still inside. So if it's torn into on the side, that's a common practice. And we're talking about swarm cells and supersedure cells. Anytime it's a queen development cell, which you know comes out from the side of the hive and goes vertical. It's the only vertical cell in your brood area. So when they're torn into from the side, usually that's because another queen has done that. When it's torn off on the end and excavate it out or chewed, those are your workers generally. But it sounds like they're rejecting her. So they may not. They may not. need that queen anymore. They may have sense that something's wrong with her. But if it's

shoot out by the queen, that means your queen is not departing or that's another queen that emerged and is already taking action. And if it's still in a pupa state not fully developed, it just means it's probably behind the times there and another one has emerged and just chewed into it and didn't have to sing it. All they had to do is expose it and that queen that's developing at that stage, probably going to die. So let's see. Let's see. See, remember if it's a question for me? All caps. It's not considered shouting today.

So I see that Gigi is here. Guard geese are noisy, but they can't be bribed like dogs can, which is why they have used them as military alarm systems. I grew up with geese, so I don't have any issues handling them. Okay, there you go. So Gigi says, get your geese, protect your flock. They will mess up all your drinkers. They will poop on everything. And, okay, like I said, geese are awesome.

So the next one, all caps here, beekeeping. Would you requeen a small, overwintered nuke? A boxed swarm has done more in two weeks than six months. So here's the thing. When you've got a queen that's in charge of a colony, not in charge, but the reproductive center of your colony, and you're not happy with brood production, or you're not happy with the performance of that queen,

you can always re-queen. Because the thing of it is, if you have the time to go ahead and do that, you want to replace her, if you can replace her with an already-maided queen of known genetics that you know is going to perform really well, there's almost no time lost. When you pull the queen that's existing and you get rid of her, you can drop her in alcohol, isopropanol,

and make queen lures or swarm lures out of that with the queen pheromone. and you get rid of her within hours, you can introduce a new mated queen, and they tend to be pretty quick at accepting her. So if at any time you've got a queen or the stock is not what you need it to be, you can re-queen in that way. So that's no problem.

Rodney says, tell everyone about the hive visors. So Rodney wants, well, I don't have any hive visors in here, but for those of you don't know, high visors are just a shade that screws on. to the front of your hive and just with thumbscrews, so it stays there, eight or 10 frame. If you go to my YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn, and you go to the top right and you look at the search bar there, so just type in hive visor, and I have a step-by-step demonstration on how to make them. So it keeps rain and snow and everything off the landing board. If you're in a hot climate,

it drops those temperatures on the front of your hive 15 degrees or more. It also gives a place where we talked earlier about bees that are bearding in front of the hive or on the hive, they tend to move up underneath the hive visor and they cluster there, and they're protected them. So high visors are handy, very easy to make. You build your own. Flow hive also has them on their hives now, too, as an add-on. So moving right along, do-to-do-do. So well, there's nothing for me to worry about. I figured once I pull the frame, okay, box swarmed is now on brood, half the nuke is still six frames. Okay, Wildwoods is here. Grayson, welcome. I'm going to get right into the questions that were submitted during the week until I see something in all caps. It's just for me.

So moving right in, we start with Laurel from Lyndonhurst, Illinois. It says one of my hives swarmed two weeks ago. So this is similar to a question we already had here in the chat. I see no sign of a queen, but she might have been out on a mating flight or not yet laying, and I missed her. They were nice. and calm. That's key, by the way. And I decided to check in a week and would placing a temp queen noodle interfere with a new queen. So assuming you've got a virgin queen in a hive and you're waiting for her to mature, make her mating flight, she should finish maturing once she's emerged in about nine days. In the next three or four days, keep in mind what the weather conditions are, what's going on in your environment. Also think about how many drones are around. Are you seeing a lot of drones in your

landing boards and scouting your colonies and begging for food because that's what drones do. They're the male bees. And give them another week. You want to see eggs before the 21st day. If you don't, you need to have kind of a backup plan because we don't want laying workers. And that's where this queen mandibular phone, queen mandibular pheromone, temp queen, noodle, comes in. It's a little translucent, light green.

Noodle, you get two of them in a pack. They're like five or six dollars. You can get them from Better Bee. That's one source that I go to for mine. You keep them in the freezer. You have them handy all the time. Now, there's no reason to put one in if you already have a queen. The queen that is mated and in production will out attract your bees over the Tamp

Queen, which is a synthetic queen mandibular pheromone. So I see no reason if you have a queen there to put one in at the same time because the whole purpose of it, is to suppress laying workers from activating their ovaries and ultimately starting to lay eggs. That's where this magical 21-day time frame comes from is because 21 days after the Queen Pharmon is absent from the colony, a laying worker could have fully active ovaries that then allow that female to produce eggs that will only produce drones. That's kind of the extreme of that clock that we're trying to run out. So just don't do it.

So, uh, two, do, do, do, remember all caps. So we're moving on. Uh,

the noodle does not interfere, but is a waste at that point. It makes the bees think that there's another queen in there. Next question. Number two comes from Hope from Gerard P.A. Can I build a Langstroth, medium long hive by using two by tens and instead of two by 12s for the deep.

Thanks so much in advance. Okay, so this is the first time someone has asked me about this. When we do the Long Langstroth Hive and we have the plans free on my website, the way to be.org, the page is smart plans and prints. You can download the PDFs, print them out and use them as a shop guide. There's a materialist too. But we build them out of two by 12s because standard stock. But this question is interesting to me because it sounds like Hope wants to make a medium depth.

long Langstroth hive. And immediately when I thought about that, I thought, wow, the frames are already pretty shallow at a standard Langstroth deep frame is nine and one eighth inches deep. And if we go to mediums, we're at six and a quarter. A lot of people already complain and say that the bees won't survive in that. But then, aha, you know, I thought about it. Randy McCaffrey, Dirt Rooster, and Mr. Ed, I referenced them frequently. because of all their experience with ripouts and where they're finding bees and the spaces that the bees are occupying.

And they do get into floor joists. And floor joists often are two by ten. And there'll be an entire colony of bees in there with a really tiny opening. And we're talking in the deep south. We're talking in Gulfport, Mississippi area. And we're also talking Louisiana, high heat, eye humidity. And the bees work there. There is something I want to point out.

So for hope or any others that are, and this goes for deep orchards. The horizontal configuration, because I've neglected to mention these. I don't know if you've ever seen frames like this before. These guys were at the North American Honey Bee Expo in Louisville, Kentucky. 21st B is called, but when I saw these, this is the first thing that I noticed were the fact that they have these transit and air passages through these one-piece, plastic, heavy waxed frames for your B. hive because I've been telling people to punch holes, cut corners, if you're doing plastic inserts into your wooden framed frames, then you go ahead, cut those out because the bees can't shoot through plastic, so they can't migrate horizontally very well. They have to move out around the edges, which can be easily blocked. They have to move underneath or over the top. If they can move through, that's more natural for the bees. So I just wanted to mention 21st B has this already molded into

those frames. If anyone out there in the chat has used these, I haven't. I don't have them in any of my hives yet. They're also marked for the cell size. This is a 5.4 millimeter cell size. Same thing, though. So deep or medium. And the reason I bring this up, if I were going to run a long Langstroth hive with just mediums in it, I would want to make sure you had transit holes through that. And based on what bees have done in cavities that they choose themselves and these cutouts that Randy and Mr. Redd and others do demonstrate that bees can use a space like that so it makes it even lighter. I will say though, so now you can use two by tens. So yes, that would fit.

You can do it. You'd even have space underneath for the bees to clean and create more drone come if they wanted to on the bottom of those frames. So you can absolutely do that. It's just something I personally, I prefer the Langstroth deep frames in the long laying horizontal because single deep frames are very easy to lift, but it does save you on stock if you're wanting to do two by tens instead of two by twelts. So Wildwood says, how many hives do you have right now need to catch up on your videos?

Yes, Grayson, you need to catch up on my videos. Okay, the number of hives, I don't know, right off the top of my head. We got rid of a bunch of them. I want to say, I don't know, 37, 38. that's about it for now and let me tell you that's too many hives for one person in a backyard apiary i'm trying to condense consolidate go to very efficient i want to try as someone mentioned earlier on that two queen system um my supervisor's all over me if you guys don't know he's nine years old he sold out all of his honey in an afternoon so they're on me for that

and i need to produce more honey so fewer hives more supers more honey and And that's kind of where we're going to, I think we're going to hover around. If I get my way, I'm going to have 25 hives by the end of summer. If I can do it. Let's see. We have a question here from Railroad 3. What's the best way to deal with EFB? So, EFB is a foul-brewd condition.

And the best way to deal with is never to get it. You have AFB, which is American Falbrood, huge problem there. EFB is something that now we're training veterinarians to give us treatments for. So the problem is you have to treat your colonies. If you have EFB, the thing is you don't have to destroy all your equipment, but I don't like kind of what the procedures are. And these are controlled state by state for your Department of Agriculture Extension Office. here in the state of Pennsylvania,

they are, of course, making sure that we're all in compliance and that you get inspected. But here's the problem with that once you start treating for EFB here, you have to treat that colony forever. So in other words, you know, it's always contaminated. So the best way to treat is to contact is a cop-out.

You're going to contact your local veterinarian that's certified for honeybee treatments. and they're going to advise an antibiotic probably for those colonies, and then you're starting treating them forever. I'm thankful I do not have EFB or AFB never have had, and I've been on site where people did have it, and seeing that place get quarantined was a sad scene. So it's something that you have to pass on through your department of ag

and find out what current practices and approved treatments are. There isn't anything for the backyard beekeeper, just some holistic method that treats EFP that I know of. So I have to stay legal on that. So here we have EL says those frames are available in 49, 5,4, and 666. That's true. And one is drone size, the other is regular worker size, and the third option for. That third option, that small 4.9 millimeter is for some people that want to use small cell foundation.

So the standard 5-4 and 6-6 are what we normally see the most. So there were some people apparently that wanted the 4.9s and that's small cell. So the question regarding what that's good for, I will go ahead and comment on that. Some people will claim that small cell foundations produce smaller bees. There's a process called reverting your bees back to smaller bees. So through multiple generations in small cell foundation, your bees end up being smaller. And there is some claims that she'll run into where people will say that varro destructor mites can't then reproduce inside those cells. It was studied. It was looked at department's ventimology and specifically honeybee studies.

And they found that they still had varroa destructor mites reproducing a small cell foundation. So it was not a fix for varroa destructor mites. So moving right along, but that's where that comes from. Apparently that company, 21st B, is offering all three sizes. And not only that, the frames, if you didn't notice, are color-coded. So you can see when you look right down on the top of it, exactly what sizes is like these brown or, I don't know what you would call this color.

Desert is a 5.4. And then, of course, the blue one is the 6.6 size. So these are, that's drone frame. But so the Kelly coded, they're trying. I mean, it's very easy to see that. I think they're trying to provide what a lot of people want to have. That is the heaviest plastic frame I have ever picked up, ever. So they are, if you're going to move, you know, a hundred hives,

it's going to make a difference in shipping and management. So I think it's really targeted towards the backyard people. So here we go. B-H-O-L-T-0-8 says maybe it wasn't a larva in the swarm cell. Does royal jelly gel up over a period of time, kind of like the consistency of an ointment? That is a possibility without being able to see it. Although if you've ever torn into a larva,

a pupa state B, if it's very early on, as soon as you pierce the skin or touch it at all, it just goos out, right? Sorry to be graphic there, but once it's been torn into or damaged, it can just turn into kind of soup. So those who are familiar with Royal Jelly or the food that the bees put in there to develop that queen, then you'll know that it's very distinctive.

And you could taste it and find out, but it is a possibility, of course. We need to look at that too. So here goes, beekeeping says Scottish native black bees. are smaller amm bs do well against ferromites still oa them okay's and for those who don't know oa is exceolic acid them and so there are some bees that are naturally smaller than others so moving right along so that was hopefully we answered that question you can build those two by tens and the other thing is if you just want to know what your bees are going to build with their natural comb sizes let them build foundation list measure the cells and

see what they do. And it's very good for your bees, especially when it comes to brood frames, brood boxes, allowing them to draw out their own comb is actually a very good practice, I think. And then we just keep cycling that comb through year after year. And then by the time it hits the six year and it's really dark and, you know, tough and kind of it concentrates some of the pesticides that are used by agricultural practices here where I am. And so we rotate them out past the sixth year. but you can do foundationless when it comes to your brood areas because you're not going to be extracting and processing those and that's kind of the argument for why you would need a tougher foundation like plastic.

Okay, moving on. The next question I have here, number three, comes from Diane Scoss and says, when you do the video on the APMA equipment, can you include a demonstration of how to clean out the entrances in winter? I just got one of their bottom boards for a wooden hive and worry I won't be able to keep the dead bees clear next winter. And this is an easy one. I can answer that because we have the Apamahive equipment out of my apiary. We've had it through several winters now.

And of course, I send my grandson out with a quarter inch wooden dowel rod to push through. Because the entrances on the Apame hives are those little radiuses that look like their mouse guards. And because of that, you can't take. a hive cleaner and just scoop out the hive. So you can poke them out. But here's the good news. All the Apamee hives, all the bottom boards, including the ones that are compatible with woodenware.

I just started a video on that today. And I put together the Indora hive, which is also in partnership with Premier because they make the propola hive. That's a wooden hive that has been soaked or, you know, dunked in hot. wax and whatever else they use to protect the wood. And then of course it has an interior surface, which is good for propolis, and that's going to make a healthier hive. And then they're compatible

with the wooden box is compatible with the plastic apame bottom board, which has those little holes in it. And the reason I bring that up is because you can also pull the tray out from the back. So there isn't really concerned that a bunch of dead bees are going to pile up and block the entrance because the ability to withdraw the tray from the back in the middle of winter and shake dead bees out of it eliminates that risk. So with a straight APMA box, they have upper entrances that are on little dials that you open up because there's a vented setting and then there's a queen-excluter setting and then an open setting. And one of them is only three inches off the bottom. So if you have concerns that it were plugged up with bees that are dead inside the hive

because of lack of cleansing flight availability, then you can just turn that dial and have a single that is a little off the bottom that guarantees they can take advantage of cleansing flight opportunities in winter so that's about that okay so the cleaning out that is not a problem and the good news is i just made a video about that today so we put the whole thing together and it includes so what happens is one box comes with the apamah feeding system for the top and the apamate outer cover and then it also has the bottom board with the pollen trap built in and, of course, a removable tray. And one of the reasons that people really like the plastic bottom boards is because, I guess, they have problems with high moisture and rotting wooden bottom boards on their highs. So this eliminates that.

Okay, so this one comes from Trish. It's question number four. Oh, wait, Tommy Chu has a question. How far are How far are out Do you think you are to installing that tempered glass observation hive? It's ready to go. It's just a matter of time So how far out my target?

Which seems to be a moving target because I don't seem to know what I'm doing every single week But this coming week we're going to install it I had bees ready to put into it So I had to put them in a different hive because I just realized they can't It's a big unit and it's sitting there. It's cleaned up. Prep work is done. I have all the support systems ready for it because it's also going to be very heavy.

That'll be this coming week. So we're going to show the whole process how we spec it out, how we determine its load bearing capability and everything else. And we're going to mount it to a south facing wall. And it's going to be a part of the way to the academy building. And next week, Tommy. So I think it's going to work. So question number four comes from,

Trish, it says, you remove at what stage do you remove the green drone frames? The frames had to be drawn out, which the bees did one side at a time, and the queen laid eggs in the finish side while the bees drew out the other side. Now I have cap an emerging drone on one side and larvae on the other side. I'm not sure when to remove the frame and the spec for Veroa to feed to the chickens. So by the way, great idea, feeding those to chickens. So once the chickens do that one time, you have to uncap them for them, but once they realize that's there, chickens are, they repeat what has worked before.

And so it's really interesting. Anyway, the time frame is go by the first eggs that are laid in your drone comb. So we document that. We have a white status board that we write down exactly what's happening when. And hive numbers are really important, even if you only have a little. a few highs for your note-taking because this is date critical so when the queen is laying up the eggs on one side of your drone comb and for those who don't know what that looks like we're talking about this stuff in fact i just got a whole box of this from acorn because i custom ordered i want to

triple wax coating on this so triple wax coating this is a deep lank stroth frame they're green and uh know that we have 24 days for the time the eggs lay to the time we have a drone emerging, right? So that's your benchmark. Don't worry about what's happening later because you've got eggs and different stages of growth and development on the other side of it, for example, first time around, drawing it out. It can be like that. So we go with the first ones because the reason I say that, your varroa destructor mites are going to move into the first drones that get to that stage where they're going to be capped.

right around the ninth day. So from the time an egg was laid. So they scoot in just at the point that it's being capped, and now we have them locked in. So when the first ones get capped, now we're limited to we don't want them to emerge unless we can control the drones after they emerge. So that could be a sliding scale now.

But before the 24th day, if all you're going to do is put them in a freezer and take them out and feed them to your chickens and stuff like that, you can even skip the freezer stage if you're going to feed them to your chickens, by the way. So as soon as you take them out before they can emerge because you can't control your drones. Once they come out, they can fly out.

And then, of course, eventually, after about three days, they're flight capable. And they can go out and spread those varroa mites because we've also learned that the varroa destructor mites attach themselves to adult drones also, and they find them tastier or more appetizing than even nurse bees up until the third or fourth day of life. So the second stage of that is, so you want to get rid of years before they're capped.

Go with the first capped, that's your benchmark. And the rest of them that are in different stages of development, you're just going to have to let those expire. So you won't be able to use them for a instructor mite trapping. The other thing is because we don't want them to emerge and spread the mites, so we wait for the others. Anyway, if you have a cage, the queen introduction cages that we've shown before, but if you can keep your green drone comb inside one of these and then you close it up now we get a double whammy and this would work for someone like trish here who has them at different stages because now we extend our waiting time right so instead of 24 days after the egg is laid we could go 27 or 28 days right right on the back of this exactly when that's going to be then haul them out of there because while the drones after they've emerged they can't get through the queen isolation bars so queen excluders also are drone excluders and then the nurse bees can still feed them and

keep them going they'll serve as living attractants for the varro destructor mites that may still be on the bodies of your nurse bees and how convenient that the nurse bees could be feeding the drones and the varomites cross over onto the drone bodies and we pull them all out and you don't want to let those drones fly. So then you can freeze the drones or you can do a mite count with them. So you can put them in a nuke and do oxalic acid vaporization in a nuke that's closed up. See what the mite count is. If it's really low, good genetics. Let those drones fly. If you have a high mite count, then you know those are bad genetics. We don't want those drones to fly anyway. So now you euthanize all the drones and the varomites with them.

So what else do we have here? When the queen vacates the swarm cell, is there anything left behind her in the cell? Sorry I meant. Okay. Yeah. Well, when the queen leaves the cell, what's behind is not, it depends on what we're talking about what's behind.

So anyway, the queen's cell gets clean almost immediately as soon as she leaves. But she also has fibrous material. She has a cocoon in there. I've seen some people post a picture of a queen cell that looks like it's got a sand colored, cottony, you know, fibrous material underneath the beeswax. Like, oh, what is that? What is that? Well, that's the cocoon that the queen is actually that she developed in.

So it's very fibrous. That's why when these bees are developing in their pupa state, they go through stages and they're casting off this coating. So it leaves the things, leaves these fibers in the comb, is why it becomes so tough over the years. Anyway, so, beekeeping says, has anyone seen a queen with a varroa mite on her shoulder? I've never seen a queen. I've never seen a queen with a varolite on her. If your queen retinue is doing their job, they're better not even be one. Anyway, so that question about drones and when to remove

them should be satisfied. So there again, if anybody has a question for me, caps and then we'll look at that. We're going to move on to question number five, which comes from Peaceful Bees, Westfield, New York. It says, I watch how you did your swarm catch with the sugar water spray and with the hive queen excluder. It worked for me, three exclamation points there. And one more question. Where did you get your big net from? And I would like to get one. I have a smaller one that is not as big around as yours. Thanks again. Okay, so I like to to introduce bees that I collect those swarms on the outside of the hive. I don't dump them in. I don't have to open the hive. I just make sure the hive is prepped and ready for occupancy.

So the next thing is these large cotton nets. The ones that I use, because I'm always on the lookout for a really good butterfly net and I look for a professional butterfly nets. But guess what? They're for butterflies. They're not designed to hold four or five pounds of bees, which is the possibility. So I use the, what are they called rest cloud net? and I get the 16 inch diameter. And what I don't like about them is they're designed to collapse to fold up. They telescope out and they have aluminum telescoping handles. That's all neat and fine.

I would trade that out for a stronger net. So where are stronger, larger net frames made? Go to these fishing stores, these deep sea fishing stores, these bass angler stores, and forget the net that's on them because we don't even care about that. Just look at the structure, the handle, the big loop. it's aluminum in some cases on the really big tough ones it's stainless and uh you can just take the net off and get someone to sew you up some you know unbleached muslin cloth works really well

custom making your own means that you can make that thing as deep as you want rest cloud does make the best ones that i've found anywhere but i like to swap out for 100% cotton cloth and it's very easy to stitch it up and once you've made your pillowcase don't forget to stitch an area to leave an extra piece so that you can grab an area at the bottom of the net. It is not full of bees at some point. So that works out really well. To do to do to do to do. Carmine says,

Hi Fred, will you be at EAS this year in Cherry Hill, New Jersey? So for those who don't know, EAS is Eastern Apiculture Society. And I have never made it to a single one of their meetings. I really wanted to go to the one that was in New York. York, Ithaca, because I wanted to go and see, of course, the Dice Lab for Honeybee Studies there, and I will not be there, unfortunately.

I'd like to be. It just comes around every year, it seems, at a time when I'm already busy or already committed elsewhere, but it would be fantastic. I highly recommend it. I know Dr. David Peck has a lot to do with things that are going on there, and it just seems like a really great learning opportunity. I just can't go. So that was the answer about my net.

And don't forget, yes, as Keith says, put your questions in all caps or I may not see it. The next question number six comes from Jerry from Dorchester, Illinois. Says, I have a swarm that is growing very rapidly. We are on a good flow here in Illinois and have nice weather. Good for you guys. That's great. I am wanting honey production out of this swarm. Can I add supers? or will that cause them to swarm?

Because the queen has both bottom deeps full of brute in all stages. If I needed to add another deep for to lay in, I have the equipment. So just to just not sure what would be recommended in this situation, I caught the swarm in April 12th. So some swarms are big and capable and expand rapidly as described here, and you can't super them up. but two deep boxes full of brood it's all mixed up together it is something that i started doing this year because our weather has been bad no great surprise there i guess what's going to do next week's

it's going to be in the 50s again so i don't even know what's going on but what the result has been because historically i don't use queen excluders so and that means that in spring i rely on the warm up and the population build up inside the hives to naturally push the brood down towards the single entrance. I don't vent. I don't do any of the other stuff. But now what's happened is with the cold weather, they're trying to stay higher in the hive. It's natural for them to do that. So I have experimented with installing the full-size wooden framed metal queen excluders.

And I just put the queen in the bottom box only. So for Jerry, I'm going to recommend, if you don't have one already, get the metal wooden frame style, or you can just use the metal ones. The metal ones are working the best so far as far as getting the most workers through them without a lot of rubbing and difficulty. And by keeping the queen in your bottom box, bottom deep box, more and more, I'm starting to see the merit of that, especially if we're having problems, getting them to move down on their own with weird weather situations. So then you will be able to allow the second box, a brood that's in there. Of course, complete its cycle of development. And then once they're emerged,

they can all, of course, backfill those cells above the queen excluder with the honey and resources that you're trying to get. Rather than go, I would not go three deeps on a swarm that I caught that year. Three deeps is a lot. The other thing is most people are going to super with mediums, but I understand that a lot of people don't like

to mix up their equipment for simplicity. sake, they like to have all deeps or all mediums or something like that. So three mediums, for example, three medium boxes would be the same as two deep boxes. But that's more equipment to get, in my opinion. I don't like that in particular. But the other thing is, if you just have deep brood boxes, and that's where your queen is going to be, and where brood production always is, it makes management easier. These new metal, wooden framed queen excluders are much better than the plastic queen

excluders that I tested in the past that are the reason why I abandoned queen excluders altogether as the bees were having such a difficult time getting through them and the ones that I like the best are from better be I get nothing for mentioning that I'm not sponsored by them I get no compensation they're just making the best ones the same company that makes those cages for queen introduction and queen isolation they also make those new queen excluders that are eight frame or ten frame size. So one shoe says I'm running out of drawn out medium frames which I use for my honey super. So running out of drawn medium frames. So here's the thing for backyard beekeepers in particular. We think in terms of when can we pull the super off when can we collect all the honey from that hive

over there. I'm going to recommend something different particularly since I don't thank a lot of the honey that I'm getting at the end of the year. We get a massive nectar flow at the end of the year here with golden rod and asters and everything else that blooms at the end of the year. And then what we have is honey that sets quick. In other words, it's so granular. There's so many particulates in it that come from that particular source that it'll be setting in, you know, a processed jar of honey in four weeks. We already have crystallized honey. So what I'd like to do is focus more collecting the frames of honey from clover and things like that the lighter honey the less prone to solidify honey so the thing is why not pull it frame by frame so bring a caddy with you my wife

through a whole bunch of frames in a tote that's not built for honey frames so they're all stacked on top of each other they're just piled in there because needed to make room for that colony to expand and it's my son's beehive. So what I would rather do is take hive butler toots with me. And when you go out there and you're doing an inspection, because we often get surprised. We look at a hive and we just want to check it out to see how they're doing and see that they're in production,

that they're queen right and everything else. But then we see, wow, the super is wall-to-wall-to-wall honey, kind of too late to expand. When you do that, if it's wall-to-wall honey, and by that I mean eight out of eight frames, 10 out of 10 frames, all capped, all drawn, that's a stimulus for them to swarm, right? So we can relieve that congestion and we can get intermediate harvests of honey because we don't have to be all in and all out the way commercial operations do it.

So you can go out there and pull every other frame that's capped with honey and replace it with drawn comb. So we want to cycle. When you go out there, I highly recommend hive butler totes. When you go out there and you're going to inspect the hive, you've got 10 drawn frames of comb, right? And it's already been processed, so it's ready to go. And when you come across a hive that has those nice, deep, drawn out, capped, honey frames,

and they're going gangbusters and they're going to be honeybound. That's one of the risks that we have. Pull out frame by frame, checkerboard them, and install in one inspection step. Replace those frames with the ones that you have on the shelf, ready to go. And if you don't, start to stockpile those. That's what we use our nucleus resource highs for. It's drawing out comb and cycling them out and taking away their honey and washing them back, fill that, draw new comb, and keep running going.

These tall, narrow colonies serve that really well. So then we've got a stockpile of frames ready to go. So when we go out, harvest as you go, do some, you know, do three or four gallons of honey processing on a weekend. Instead of waiting until the end of the year and doing it all at once with full boxes and full super removal, but then at the end of the year, you're going to do condensing down anyway. What do you think? I think it's a much better way to go.

So for back-air beekeepers, we got time on our hands, right? We can work on things small scale that maybe are a little more labor-intensive, but you're not lifting full boxes, so big advantage, save your back. So Keith says, Fred, Elo, a question at 445, has a virgin queen and laying workers in the same high. Virgin Queen Laying Workers. Oh, man. So Virgin Queen, laying workers, what to do, what to do. Okay, this is going to tie in.

I want you to do something. Laying workers, you're going to hear a lot of ways for managing that. And I don't necessarily say that it's a bad way. People will talk about taking all of those bees out, shaking them all onto a sheet or something like that, and then reloading up so you create a fake swarm situation, and then you're counting on your laying workers not being able to fly back to your hive and stuff like that. I have another idea.

Okay. So there's something called going in strong when you have a force that is much more superior to the force that you're invading. So let's look at a beehive this way. So if I had laying workers for sure, we've got this virgin queen. So I don't even know what to do with the virgin queen at this point, because they may be ignoring her. If we've got laying workers that are bold enough to start to become productive and start laying those drone eggs,

then they may be neglecting the queen and she may never become productive. So what I like to do is split them up. And I mean, if it's a 10-frame brood box, right, go to another hive. Now, you can't pull five frames off a single hive without doing a lot of damage to their reproduction, right? So we would be setting them back at potentially a time of year when they need all those workers. So another person asked today about my super splits. And I'll talk about that now because it ties in with this question. So you go around to different colonies of bees, use your resource, nukes and things like that.

Pull full frames of resources. So in other words, we've got a frame of capped brood. Get that. Put it in your hive butler tote. replace that frame with drawn comb, push their brood together so you're not checker boarding, right? Go to another hive. Pick another frame that's covered in nurse bees that also is in production and has eggs, larva, capped larvae, everything together, right? Caped pupa, all together. Second frame. Now we have two frames from two different hives. Go to another hive. We have a lot of bees in there too. We have the

potential now to also produce a queen. Go to another colony. Whoa, guess what happened? You just saw queen sells and you found the queen bonus so we find the frame the queen is on they're getting rid of her anyway pull the frame with the queen adder now we have three frames brood a queen different stage of growth and development and we have all these workers with us now we can stop there or we can go and find another one of brood capped brood because we want to build fast so then we take all these frames in our high butler tote with all these bees in them and the queen that we found because they were making preps to swarm anyway take them to the colony with the laying workers pull frames out divide them right in half pull all the put all those frames of brood right in there and put in a queen

excluder and put the other frames of brew that they already had above the queen excluder just so they can emerge come out go back down through and then later you can draw off that box if you didn't need it but now we satisfied that we came in with such an overwhelming force of bees not familiar with the laying workers and a laying worker queen pheromone ready to go if you don't have that if you don't have the queen to do that you don't get lucky enough to come across the colony that is already producing swarm cells that they're going to go anyway it's time to order in a laying queen of known genetics get one from a local friend that really has a very good reputation same thing produce that colony at the same time because we have laying workers in there and

And when you bring in all those workers, that pheromones overwhelming, they can't even begin to fight them. In fact, there's almost no fighting. It's like they just surrender. They're just like, oh, can't fight. 7,000 new bees in our hive all at once. What do we do? Well, we conform. So that works.

That's what I would do. There's a lot of ways to do it. People can shake out the bees. Do those shook swarms and all the other things. Look into those. In fact, look at all the different methods and see if a... They, you know, pulling apart frame by frame from other colonies that makes them all together, see which one appeals to you the most.

So what's going on. So Michelle Armstrong says, if you only have two hives, there will be not many frames of honey. Is it okay to put them in the freezer? Can't get to the extractor for only three to four frames. Yeah, you can freeze them. Sure. Pull them off, freeze them, save them for later. Absolutely.

That's a good method. I'm glad Michelle brought that up. All right. So question number seven, Glenn, Loganville, Georgia. Recently lost a colony, but out of seven others doing well. You had mentioned in a prior Q&A that you were looking forward to trying some super split. Okay, so that's it. Super split is what I just described to you. That means collecting because you can't, you don't want to do a split from a really strong colony. We just want to reduce them a little bit.

Super splits are taking just a frame of resources from a whole bunch of different hives and creating another colony out of it. And so if you're not overriding a colony or taking over one that has laying workers in it, and by the way, somebody may be sitting there going, how do you even know you have laying workers? Well, lots of eggs in the cells, spotty brood pattern, eggs that are only partially down the cell depth. In other words, when a queen is laying, the eggs go all the way to the bottom of the cell. When you have laying workers, they just kind of park their eggs all over the place and their abdomens don't reach all the way down and they don't park their eggs at the bottom of the cell

where they belong. So it's very distinctive. So the super splits are just that. It allows you to make a split, create a new colony that will be very strong, very viable, and it's a perfect time of year to even be doing a super split. And then the colonies that you drew these resources from have almost no impact other than a little bit of congestion relief

in their brood area. which can actually be good if you're trying to keep them. So Be Amazing Hive says Freda was losing the anti-swarm battle this year. Several swarms each had more drone brood than I've ever seen. Does cutting off drone brood from the bottom of the frames help suppress swarming? I wish it did. But it doesn't. Here's this is, there's so much emphasis.

And I've seen the, you know, I scan YouTube sometimes. I see the titles, guaranteed, stop swarms, guaranteed, control your bees, keep your bees. Remember, we're fighting their genetics. We are fighting what they are trying to do. Everyone has swarms and swarming. I have it myself. I mean, I've been doing this for a while. I cannot beat the swarming instinct in some cases, even when you reduce a colony, even when you give them space when they need it,

even when you reduce congestion. You're removing some triggers. You're doing the best you can do, but you can cut a colony down to half strength and still watch them develop queen cells and push out their queen and swarm. Because they could just supersede the queen. That's a perfect world.

You have lots of tools. We all understand honeybee biology. We know how to work that. We know how to keep the population down so that they don't start to thin out their queen, medulla pheromone, which is another swarm trigger, you know, because they even, they know they have to send out bees to survive. It's why we even have bees, by the way, the fact that they swore, that they scoot out, that they occupy spaces that are not under our management in a lot of cases

because some people are killing their own bees through bad management. So their reproductive rate is so high. They have the ability to, I like what Dr. Jamie Ellis referred to as tertiary swarms, because I think of tertiary color. you know, not pure colors. They're mixed, they're tertiary, they're secondary. So we have all these after-swarm potentials. There are colonies that will swarm themselves right down to a little skeleton crew, and it's due to no fault of the beekeeper. So the only way to prevent 100% prevent swarms is to take away the queen that goes with them.

And then they'll produce another queen and several queens, and then those will try to swarm, and then you have to catch those. So the amount of effort it would take to 100% control swarming, and stop a colony that actually is trying desperately to survive in this world by making multiple generations of itself is a challenge that a lot of people will fail at. I would have told you three weeks ago, would have told you that I'm all over it. In fact, I did. I said I'm on it this year.

I'm not going to have swarms. I'm just going to have populations that build. I figured it out. I know what's going on. I find my queens. I snatch queens. I collect them. I control them.

I move into places. And I have swarms. So I don't want you to be defeated. Do everything you can. It will work. But the percentages of success can be pretty decent, but you are still going to, if you've got healthy bees, you're going to have swarming bees. It's just the way it is. So what do we have?

So losing the end of swarm battle, don't feel bad. We're all just when I think I got it. A swarm happened while I was out there working on Queen on a Stick today, which ended up to be perfect because I had to occupy an indoor hive body. And so I put them in there. That's going in right now while we're doing this. Bob says, hi Fred. Three weeks ago, I put a super on a swarm with new acorn heavy wax foundation. Very slow drawing out.

Would it help to take five frames from the stronger hive with nectar and some cap honey to help? it actually doesn't um studies have been done on that by the way so if you're trying to get let's see what it is so it's a swarm when you put a swarm into a hive you have a prime opportunity for them to draw outcome and it stands to reason you would think if i would just feed them honey the honey converts to comb at you know a pound of honey ounce of comb i don't know what the you know the real formula is because that seems widely variable. There are a lot of things that have to come together. First of all, the bees, we have comb builders. We have that. When there's a swarm that naturally emits from another colony, they're ready to build comb. In fact, I put them overnight in a be

vac and they built a comb in the be vac overnight. That's how prime, they're primed to build new comb. So what I do is, personally, I keep that going and studies have been done. The lighter sugar syrup on a freshly installed swarm can continue that cone production in partnership with warm temperatures. This is the problem where when we often, if we put them in a box, it's too big for the swarm, too much space. They have troubles keeping that mid-80s degree Fahrenheit temperature that they need to work comb. So that's another drawback to this year with the rain, with the cold weather with the bad temperatures that we're dealing with, comb production can also be reduced, right? But the lighter sugar syrup, the one-to-ones, actually demonstrated that the bees were more

prone than to continue comb development. And rather than straight honey, for example, because remember, honey has to be metabolized before they can actually use it to build comb, right? Because they have, they have their wax glands, they have them in their abdomen, they have to process a metabolism. It's metabolize it in order to create these wax and for some reason the lighter sugar syrups have worked better It's interesting So I wouldn't waste honey feeding it to a swarm to try to get them to build more wax I would think about being in concert with with the environment's doing so if we have a nice warm day if it's going to be in the high 70s mid 80s you're in perfect wax building temperatures if you have a swarm and it drops to the 50s

Which is what's happening right here. We had one warm overnight so there They're primed. But if you put them in a smaller space, a taller, narrower, narrower hive like these nucleus hives that we use, and they're wooden, five over five over five. As we stack them up, they're better at building comb. They get that temperature achieved quicker with a smaller number of bees than if we put them in a standard eight or 10 frame single deep brood box. So that configuration, all that stuff goes.

So it works. I would give them sugar syrup. And remember to feed that inside the hive, because if you're supering your hives outside, we don't want sugar syrup going into the hives that we have. They're in production for harvesting honey, right? But we can keep that comb going. Let's see, Olivia blocked. Olivia banned.

Okay. So beekeeping, Bob, feed, feed, feed. Cone building takes bees, lots of energy. True. calories, yes. Tommy chew is one to one weight or volume. Okay, so that is by weight. So one to one, which by the way, it's actually a pretty heavy syrup, eight pounds of sugar, a gallon of water. You have to heat up your water really high to get that to melt. And then once it's cool again, then you can give it to your bees. So yeah, one to one. You can even go a little higher. I've heard

Other people say that they're even going one to 1.5. So that's 1.5 water by weight. So it works. There you go. Let's see. This is Glenn, Loganville, Georgia. Recently, this is number seven. Recently lost a colony but have seven doing well.

Had mentioned priority that you were looking forward to some super splits. Okay, I already did that. Moving on. Question number eight comes from Mike Roberts, 4518, that's a YouTube name. I've been stung through nitrial gloves before, so they can definitely sting through those. I don't know what's solicited that comment,

but I am going to talk about nitrile gloves. These are nitrile gloves. And here's the thing. Bees can sting through them. They don't provide sting protection. What they do is they don't smell like your hand. They don't smell like an animal. So when you put nitrile gloves on,

and I use these, lot. These are 8.5 mil nitral gloves, by the way. These are tough. One of the reasons I like them, look for long cuffs on these, right? Because I actually can put these on before I even put on my B-suit. They give you a lot of dexterity. So if you can even, as I did today, I picked up a queen with my nitrile gloves. If you get stung on the hand while you're wearing these, let's say you're grabbing things, you're a little clumsy or whatever, you get a beat of sting you. The stinger gets hung up in the glove. It does sting through it, but when you pull off the glove, you pull off the stinger too.

And if you can do that in less than 30 seconds, you can reduce some of the venom that becomes injected into your body. So these are fantastic. I'll show that again. You can subscribe like I, is it a subscription? Yeah, it's a subscription that you do through Amazon so that gloves are things that are considered consumables. my grandson goes through these. You can get these like every two months, three months, or whatever, and save some money on them. But nitrower gloves are fantastic.

I almost don't wear leather gloves at all. If I were going to war, if I'm handling European hornets or bald-faced hornets, I still go to the thicker gloves. But nitroth gloves are really kind of all you need when it comes to working in your hives. Plus, when you get all sticky and everything, just, have a bucket of water handy when you're outworking your hives on your cart stick your gloves in your nitral gloves in the water and just do that and you're not sticky anymore and you're going right back to work you're not going to do that with your goat skin or your leather gloves or any of your heavy cloth gloves but you can with nitrile gloves the advantages are big i almost never get stung through

those so anyway that was that was all the way back from f aqq 19 that you might comment it on it says a while ago so so let's see dan weaver says nitral gloves just give you a good feel compared to leather you can feel the bee under your penis that's true you feel a great feeling yes absolutely 100 percent wade barns has a question here have you ever tried to really small meanings maybe next time a cup of bees and one of those queens just in case you need one somewhere else, or the one you decided to keep, didn't work out. Okay, I don't. So what we're talking about is, for example, when I'm trying to control a swarm and I find the queen and I don't want them to leave and I take the queen away. And we pull a frame, as I described earlier, if you find

you're inspecting a colony, you're looking in the brood frames and you run your hand over the top that you feel the hottest area. That's where the most brooding is happening because it's 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit in there and there's just warmth coming up and you find your queen and she's on a frame and you find another frame next to that that's got queen cells. They're planning to swarm. Take the queen in that frame and create a resource nucleus hive. I do that with the five frame standard nuke boxes. I've had such good success with those. I don't use anything else anymore. Wooden boxes that are going to last probably as long as I'm going to be a beekeeper. The rest of my life is what I'm saying because you know because I'm old and stuff so creating a resource high pulling her like that

because listen to some of the commentary today you get a virgin queen that never gets mated statistically about 75% of your virgin queen's fly out get mated but you know what that's a regional thing how many drones do you have how many flying days did you have could your queen go out and get mated with the weather conditions that you have did she fly it get snagged by a dragonfly was it late in the year things like that there are all these challenges having a resource colony with extra queens in it works out one per colony because here's what i used to do i tried to bank queens i created i had queen finisher hives that had they were divided into fours they had an entrance on every side and uh they just grew too fast what are you supposed to do you don't need the queen

now you've got reproduction going on this little cluster of bee and it just didn't work out. So full-sized nukes, you end up with colonies that become viable on their own. This way you're not devastated. You go to your prime colony. It's big. It's robust. It's doing fantastic things.

You know that you're going to get a bumper crop of honey and you're going to get rich overnight from that. And then you get in there one day and early in the morning, your queen is dead on the landing board or something. They got rid of her. You've got an emergency cell coming out of the middle of one of your brood frames. couple of emergency cells. They're little and undernourished and things like that. They didn't plan ahead. So now you just squash those and you go over to your resource hive and you pull a frame

of brood so they're not set back. Nice deep frame full of brood and the queen and you're back in business. You're good to go. And the nuke over there, they can replace their own queen. You want them to shrink anyway. So we want them to dwindle a little bit, produce a replacement queen because they've got eggs, they're good to go, and then they replace a new queen, timed perfectly to go right in a fall. So there you go. And those little nukes make it through winter against impossible odds. I don't even know how to do it. This is Wendy Neary. It says, Fred, I started a new apiary in a remote location. No local honeybees within six miles. How do I ensure future Virgin Queen can get mated? That's a very good question.

Let's see, no honey bees within six miles. Do you know how much I wish I lived in an environment like that? You're going to have to set out your own drone mating areas. You're going to have to have your drone producers in satellite areas. But here's the thing. There's no bees within six miles, but you know what? You can set up a satellite apiary and then not even a mile away. You can have drone production.

So you can have all of your drone producing colonies, drone frames, things like that. And then you'll set those out. So you've got drones from other colonies and the genetics that you know. You are in a perfect situation. So you can get drones from colonies from genetics that you really approve of and get them out there. So when you're queens from doing their mating flights, you can get them. That's what I would do. That's amazing.

So I don't know what neck of the woods that is. but yeah you have to make your own drone yards to mate with your virgin queens and the funny part is people talk heavily and i have recently about these drone congregation areas and you can put a virgin queen on a stick in a cage and get those birthday balloons and fill them with helium and use monofilament 35 pound test fishing line I know that sounds specific. And leave her dangling under these balloons and reel that out in your own backyard apiary and just start walking away from your apiary with your queen on a balloon in a cage and see how many drones zip up into her pheromone stream and try to mate with the cage.

That's pretty interesting because there's no drone congregation area. So my question is, how far do the queens have to go to really get mated? Do they really make it all the way to the drone congregation area? And what other hives are sending up those drones? We know that drones can leapfrog hive to hive to hive, so they can come from many miles away. So the drones that are in your own apiary, may actually not even be from yours,

but six miles is pretty much a stretch. But you'd be amazed at, you know, how nearby these drones already are. So I don't know how far the queens really go, the people that have done studies. No, they can go, queens can fly nine miles, but those are queens that are tracked. And that's, of course, probably a record, not the standard. I think queens are mating much closer to your apiary than a lot of us realize.

For me, that's good news because I want them to come from other colonies within my apiary. If I can, I'm not a queen breeder. So it doesn't matter that much, but there you go. So Kevin says, how's your buckwheat coming along? problems keeping the deer out of it i have not had problems keeping the deer out of my buckwheat's coming up great by the way um because i broke the rules i did go out there and throw buckwheat seed and frost seeded it and then i was immediately reminded by one of my viewers that you know you're not supposed to put that stuff out there until it is at the appropriate temperature you know soil

temperature 60 degrees whatever so i just thought frost seeding it would be fun nothing to lose i have pounds of buckwheat seed it came up everywhere it's over a foot tall already so it actually worked and sure it's probably set back a little bit i don't know you know but it definitely is showing up everywhere i've seen uh buckwheat seed try to germinate on a pile of leaps it's it's like very non sensitive to the soil type and areas i just went around and threw it everywhere anyway It's going well. And when it flowers, I'm going to video that. It's going to be fun. But what else? So do the queens find the drones, or do the drones find the queens? Hmm. Okay, so that's from Keith. I'm going to say the drones find the queens. Here's why.

I think the queens just take off. I think they just go high and fly out. And the drones with their oversized eyes and their ability to kick in those massive motives. that they have on the thorax and their oversized wings and everything else i think they zip after those queens so the drones are designed to see queens let's look let's look at the equipment they have who's got the biggest sniffer of all the bees the drones they have the most sensitive olfactory functions in their bodies right so that's so they can sniff queens what else they have they have the best eyes in the business by thousands they have more they have thousands more lenses than a worker and a queen look at the way she's built. Her eyes are small. Her antennae are pretty fruit and small. I don't know. I think queens must do orientation flights. I don't know what they do. How do they know

where to go? I think they just zip up there and maybe the queen sees, you know, dark spots hovering in the air somewhere, but they have to get pretty darn close to do it. Their vision isn't super high resolution. So I think these drones see queens on the wing and they just zing after them. And then the competition is on, and they have a comet of drones. This is something, by the way, I have to do this year because they have to video it and photograph it. So we're playing with them. But I think I'm going to get my work done very close to home. I think the drones, just based on their gear.

If we looked at them as mechanisms instead of living organisms, the drones are built for speed, for power, for short bursts, short distances, and catching up with queens that they spot. and the idea that they have an unobstructed view over the top of their head means when these queens are flying high, they're going to see that movement. What other insects are up there? I don't know. So the queens, that's her job, just do it. Anyway, I think they just, I'm telling you, I think it happens nearby. Because the other thing is, you know, returning queens after their mating flights, and drones are following them. It's like a swarm just arrived at the hive, and I call it a drone rush. I don't know. There's probably a scientific term for it. But hundreds of, of drones just descend on that hive because they're still trying to catch the queen before she

lands. And then in she goes. She's mated. They're done. They get some food. They fly off and they live to search for another virgin queen somewhere else. Wendy Neri says, so are colonies different genetics enough for Virgin Queen mating flights? Well, colonies, think about it. These genetics things, Let's be clear. I'm not an entomologist. I'm a master beekeeper. I just soak everybody for information. And whenever I have access to somebody who's a geneticist or an entomologist, I soak them for information. So we know that even the drones that are produced from your queen come from a bunch of different drones. So a bunch of different fathers, all their genetics are very mixed up. One thing we know for sure is that, that the drones that made it with that queen were the fastest flyers.

We want that competition. That competition doesn't exist at all in the laboratory. So when you're doing artificial insemination, you had selected drones from colonies that you thought were doing really well, but you took away the competition from the individual drones, and you just started inseminating. And that's where these breeder queens that cause so much money come from. But we're dealing with mutts.

So keep in mind that even throughout your colony, I've had people ask, oh, something's wrong with my bees. These bees are really blonde. These bees are really dark and their work is in the same colony. Something's going on. Yeah, something is going on. She's releasing sperm from her spermatika and she's fertilizing eggs from a variety of different genetic

lines that she interacted with when she did her virgin flight. So we've already got a bunch of different genetics mixed up unless these were inseminated queens, right? So they're not all intensively inbred. right so if you've got mutts as i do i did bring in those weaver queens this week but mostly i have localized genetics so feeding back on itself and cycling back in itself genetically with those bees that are doing the best in this environment northwestern part of pennsylvania so these genetics are already pretty diversified unless i'm doing insemination and really locking down very limited genetic

sources, I don't have to worry about them being inbred. And when that happens, let's say that happens. Let's say the queen actually produced drones and those drones made a mistake and actually made it with the queen that produced them. The nurse bees inside your hive that attend to your developing larvae, right, sense that those are too genetically related and what do they do to them? They cannibalize them. They eat them. It's called policing. So, with, Within the hive, we have the ability to determine genetics that are too near to the queen herself. And so they consume those and they don't allow them to develop. And this way, they guarantee genetic diversity.

So I don't think as backyard beekeepers, I'm not worried in the least that I'm going to exhaust the genetics and end up cycling back the same genetics on top of themselves because we have all these variables that are already existing in the localized stock. What do you think? Sally Offer says, Hi, Fred, I watch your demonstration on the Flow Super Lifter and purchased one. I thank you so much for that demo. The Flow Super Lifter is a game changer for me. Okay, so from Sally Offer, thank the Flow team for the development. You know, that hive lifter, superlifter, it's called a superlifter, not because it's a superlifter.

It lifts your super. So this thing breaks the seal. It looks too simple. So I'm glad Sally brought this up. You can have two deep supers on in your brood box and tip them both together. It is so effortless and the ground doesn't have to be perfectly level. It is a fantastic innovation. And one of the biggest problems with it is that people are associating that with flow hives,

only and it is not this works on any wooden langstroth box so everything from nukes all over up to 10 frames and it is the easiest thing to work with and i'm really glad sally brought it up so there you go there's a plug for flow hive super lifter um to do to do so that small mating thing that doesn't work for me i just do it so anyway guess what we're in the fluff section today right now. So here's one of the things that's held back this year. Usually we have clover by now, but the temperatures are so low that they're just not flowering.

When the clover flowers, this is the time to super these colonies because they're already, it's a mystery to me how the bees are doing so well with such crappy weather. We have all this rain. We can't even, no mo may happen for real. I have grass that's tall as tall as my knees.

So we, when the clover blooms, we're going to be getting some really good nectar flow out of that. Appamea rapid rounds. Oh, yeah. So for those who need to feed, right, this time of year. Appamee have feeder tops that work on wooden hives. Those are great. Rapid rounds. And it's best to feed in hive.

Why do I say that now? Because I want you to be good beekeeping neighbors. People are going to be supering their hives. They want all of their honey. to reproduce from floral sources. Please do not. You know, I know people don't like to be told what to do, but I'm trying to make you a good fellow beekeeper.

Don't put sugar syrup out in the open for all the bees to feed on and feed your neighbor's bees. Again, and likewise, you don't want them putting stuff out and giving your bees goulade. You don't want that. So feed, if you have to feed, and you've got colonies that are either newly installed or you're trying to build up a tiny nuke and make it a big colony and you want to put sugar syrup on and stuff like that please do that inside the hive on top of the hive on top of an insulated inner cover

in a feeder shim so that's all i'm going to say about that it's really good to do uh harvest individual frames as i said before consider doing that and as someone else mentioned if you've got the freezer space if you've got one of these big horizontal freezers and you can store them up and then process them all at the same time, you're going to need a honey warming room. So that's one of my goals this year. I don't have one. So I want to make a warming section where I can roll frames or boxes of honey in the frames into it to warm them up. It speeds up your uncapping process. It makes it so easy and also can reliquify crystallized honey in the cells. Because you ever do that? You're uncapping, you know, a beautiful frame of honey and you find out that it crystallized in the cell and then your

uncapping knife just skims over the surface now what do you do feed it back to your bees or something or you could warm it up to about 110 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours I was even thinking about just putting them in my car on a sunny day and I got 130 degrees on the dash too hot but 99 degrees in the cargo space for a transit ban So that's something else I'm thinking about. I want these things to heat themselves. I want to melt it. So anyway, because we want to keep that melting temperature enough to reliquify the honey that's in those frames,

but not melt the beetswax and not damage the raw honey properties that you have. So that's where that 110 comes from. So what do you think? Good idea. Oh, Kelly per year says Lison has a, So a warmer that you can come stock supers on no room needed. Well, I'm already, Ross Wagner, pay me $10. I'll bet the rest of you can't beat them on that amount.

Thanks, Ross. I appreciate it. That's going to be, I'm going to go to the Patriot coffee store today. Super warmer that you can stag. So a super warmer, here's what I'm, Kelly. It's probably a great idea, but I already have this other great idea and I already bought this big ceramic heater and I have humidity and temperature controls. And I'm creating a four foot by four foot by six foot space that I can roll things into, warm them up. And it's right next to my honey extractor.

But I will look into super warmer that you can stack. In fact, I would really like to see a link to that. So Kelly, if you have a link after this is done, please. put your link in the comment section. I'll release it so everybody can see it. I want to see what we're talking about because I'm wide open on the honey super warmer because I'm going to do it. I'm not playing games this year. I'm going to overload my grandson until he stops asking me for honey. I don't want to hear about all his customers that are waiting. So add supers have those ready, favorite electronic. Oh yeah. This is where I want to use the people that are watching and

listening, I want to know if you have a favorite electric power wagon. So it's kind of like a garden cart, but they run on batteries. And so like, I don't know, you twist the throttle or something and it wheels itself through. So no gas motor, no thumping of an internal combustion engine that makes your bees angry. And if it's electric, you know, just let me know what you've tested, what you like, or if it even should, if you should have one. Yeah, if it should exist. So that's it. I don't know what other people are doing regarding Virot destruct or mite treatments for those of you who are treating.

Some are treatment free. I know that. So if you're treatment free, I would like to suggest that you use as many integrated pest management practices as you possibly can, including removing your mites with your drone comb. If you do that. Just do your best.

Get the best genetics that are demonstrating Veroa resistance, mite biters, Purdue ankle biters, all that stuff. Jason Egan says, could you maybe inform us about feeding bees sugar during the honey flow? Why is it not a good idea? Well, it's not that feeding bees sugar during honey flow is a bad idea, is that we don't want it in the honey. So here's the thing. Often people will say that they just keep sugar syrup on their hives all year long.

and when I hear someone say that, I think, well, that's, then that's in your honey. And they will say things like, well, when they have the nectar flow in the environment, they don't take the sugar. And so when the nectar flows on, you can still leave the sugar on. All right, let's just clear it. If we want nothing but floral sourced honey, then no sugar syrup when your honey's supers are on as a minimum. And so the reason we don't want it is because sugar syrup,

is just, it's a carbohydrate, it's your bees need when they can't get it from the environment. So if you have a dearth period, for example, this isn't the time to super your hives, because then they're just going to consume the honey right back. This is why in the past I've had a deep-brewed box and a medium super that medium super was for the bees to fill and consume from during the year, and then anything above that was for me. So you don't want processed. sugar syrup as part of your honey that you're going to harvest for people. And that's just it.

So Sally Offer says, I used varoxan this spring. Excellent. So varoxan, for those you don't know, that is a slow release, exhalic acid treatment. That is not a vapor system. Although the safety data sheet on that thing wants you to wear full respiratory protection, everything else, eye projection. But Varoxan, I've heard good things. So I have it, haven't used it. If we get a high mic count, that's what I'm using this year. So thanks for that feedback. And Jason says that makes sense. Good. So we just had that discussion, which is really interesting. Lice and warmer. So I want to thank everyone for being here today. If anyone has a last minute question, this is your chance. Otherwise, we're going to wrap it up. So if you've got a question,

All caps. Of course, if it occurs to you later, you can submit your question by writing in the comment section underneath this presentation today. You can also go to the way to be.org. Click on the page marked the way to be questions. And you can fill out a form there. And then I'll do my best to answer. I always respond to comments on every video. That is three hours of my day, every single day. thank you all for being here and thank keith for being here and being my bouncer i want to thank ross wagner for the kind donation and i appreciate it so oh sally has a question have you set up your keepers hive on that question was asked earlier uh so i have my keepers hive the single queen system the two queen system is not set up which i know has to be a point of frustration we just have terrible terrible weather i don't like out and we had this conversation with my wife earlier today 51 degrees and rainy i'm not going

outside to do anything that's what cabuccino is for so thanks a lot everyone for being here i hope the rest of your weekend is fantastic happy friday and i hope your bees are all doing things that bees should be doing thanks a lot this is it end the stream