The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Beekeeping Q&A Episode 281winter feeding considerations and more...

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/EBV7uZIQVlk  

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, November the 1st, and this is Backhart Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 281. 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 look down in the video description below for more information, links, and other helpful stuff, as well as a list of everything that we're going to talk about in today's video. Sorry about last Friday, never got one in. and that's because I was at the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association Conference in State College, PA.

It was a fantastic time. A lot of good stuff going on there. And, of course, I was a presenter for two different days. So just good all the way around. I know what you really want to know. What's going on outside right now? Well, let's tell you what, it's not good. 48 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 9 degrees Celsius.

We have winds at 7 miles per hour, pretty constant. That's 11. kilometers per hour, 79% relative humidity, and 28.4 mile per hour wind gusts. That's 46 kilometers per hour. And the bees are not foraging today, needless to say. That's what's going on. Not much rain either. We have some rain in the forecast, but by the way, what part of the country am I in? The northeastern United States, the state of Pennsylvania. And it's the Keystone state, by the way. So I'm at the way. AgZone 4, if you want to know. And I think that's pretty much it.

If you want to know how to submit your own topic for future consideration, please go to my main website, which is the way to be.org. And there's little tabs there for all different pages of information, everything from chickens to honeybees. And you can submit your own topic for a future episode. It's on the page, also called The Way to Be. There's a form there. You fill it out.

You can be anonymous. I don't need to know everything about you. So that's pretty much it. The questions that we're going over today actually spend now almost two weeks. So if I promised you last week, I was going to talk about it last Friday, it's this Friday instead,

the first Friday of November. So the first question comes from Hunt Lady, who is in, I believe it's New Mexico. Anyway, my question is how to clean goat skin gloves. Says, it did a massive removal on Monday, killer bees. I got 23 stings, but people that assisted me were unharmed. When I was done, I was literally soaked in honey from my head to foot. How do I clean my goat skin gloves? Okay, so I brought a whole bunch of goat skin clothes in the

house now. I went around and foraged for those. Because, first of all, you might be wondering why goat skin, why not cow leather, why not raw hide? Why not some of the big heavy gloves that are sold by most beekeeping suppliers? Well, goat skin has kind of taken over as the number one choice for beekeepers. The reason is your honeybees are less negatively responsive. In other words, they won't sting your hands as often if you use goat skin gloves when compared to cowhide or rawhide or any other leather good that comes from cattle, right? So the first thing that this comes up this time of year, almost every year like clockwork, and that's because what are we doing? We're storing our stuff. We're closing down for wintertime. And we want to know how to recondition things.

If you've ever owned horses and had to take care of tack, you know, the bridle, the altar, the saddle and the straps, belly straps and things like that, we're all familiar with saddle soap. So historically, I've used saddle soap on my leather gloves. But you know what? Because of this question, I went ahead and looked up some other alternatives and I have to tell you in advance I haven't tried them yet because because of this question I ordered it. So I'm going to be doing this test in the coming days and I'm going to do both gloves equally soiled. I'm going to use one on one and one on the other and then we're going to make comparisons. So that's going to be an upcoming quick tip video. But there's something called leather honey leather cleaner.

That's one and I don't think it has any honey in it. whatsoever, but these are the most popular reconditioning oils for gloves and boots and other leather goods, including chairs and things like that. The other one is BIC for leather conditioner, B-I-C-K for leather conditioner, and it's a leather cleaner also. These things can run into money, by the way, so I bought the small ones, eight ounces. They'll be here tomorrow, and hopefully they'll work fantastic because it says it's good for shoes, auto interiors, bags, all other leather accessories. I'm going to do two things. I realize I'm telling you ahead of time.

It might not be helpful, but these things were like exponentially more popular for reconditioning goat skin gloves and other things based on responses I got for beekeepers I trust. So I'm going to do things. One, I'm going to see how well it cleans up the gloves and are going to make that comparison. And then we're going to see if there's any response. from the bees. Now, when would I do that being that it's so cold and the bees aren't even flying right now? Well, we have warm days coming up next week. So I'm going to go out there and get into some of the beehives. I just happen to have a beehive. I want to try this out on because it's really hot hive. It's not on my property. It's on someone else's property because I don't have

unfriendly bees here. So we'll find out. You know, does one smell a little different? Maybe get some a little agitated and the other not will behave perfectly the same for both. We're not going to intentionally antagonize the bees. So in other words, if both of them don't draw fire, ah, there we go. We'll have something that cleans and reconditions your gloves and does not antagonize your bees because that would be the goal. And see how they clean up. Because I had bees that I left out in one of my buildings

and snow came in through the wintertime and drifted down onto the gloves that were all laid out on tables and things like that. So they're moldy. So I figured, yeah, that'll be a really good thing to test. Now, while we're talking about that, So those are the two. Leather Honey Leather Conditioner.

BIC for Leather Conditioner. If you have other ideas, maybe you're a long-time beekeeper and you've just got the perfect formula for reconditioning your gloves. Let us know. Put it down in the comment section because I am on the hunt right now for something new. Saddle soap, old standard. So here's the other thing. How to fit new gloves.

We want, if you've ever watched my grandson, and I hope he's listening, he has access to any size goat skin gloves that he decides to wear, and I always see him with a couple inches ticking past his fingertips. Now that bothers me because I want maximum dexterity. Now, you also may know that instead of leather gloves or goat skin gloves, I use nitral gloves because they're just better. So they just fit your hands better, they're disposable, you don't have to clean them up. But there again, if you're trying to limit the amount of waste that you generate as a beekeeper,

natural gloves aren't going to do that because you're going to be throwing those away every time you inspect a hive. So I like dexterity. So sometimes, and this is something they caution you about when dealing with leather goods. So I'm going against the grain, I guess. Get it, leather, grain. Anyway, I get medium-sized gloves, even though I normally have large-sized gloves for my hands. And I get them wet, which is something you're not supposed to do. and then I stick my hands in them. And I pull them nice and tight around my fingers and snug them up.

Some glove experts say you're supposed to pull through the palm to snug them up, not like chop in between your fingers, which is what a lot of people do to get their gloves on. So pull them through the palm if you're trying to look like a pro. And then while they're wet, they'll take on the shape of your hands, right? And then very carefully get them off of your hands with that nice tight fit,

and then just let them dry out. right in a nice cool space not in the sun don't put them in the dryer cool space let them dry out naturally use desiccant packs if you want to they have a bunch of those here just having to grab them they're called wise dry they're rechargeables you not throw these away you put them in your microwave and they dry out and their color indicated if you want to look them up wise dry so these are the 50 gram sizes i use them for photography gear and everything else but you can use them for your gloves so then what you have are gloves that are custom fit to your fingers. And it works great.

I'm telling you. It's good stuff. So anyway, that's how I'm going to recommend cleaning them. I don't know the definitive word on these things yet because I like to test it myself so that what I'm telling you is from my personal experience. End of question number one. Moving on to question number two comes from Ross Wagner.

That's the YouTube channel name. When is it safe or safer to return reducers back to normal? and replace the robbing screens. Well, when the robbing pressure dies down. We're still in high robbing pressure right now, but of course today the temperatures are cooling down. So no foragers, no robbers. But I say it is you don't have to have robbing screens on. Entrance reducers by themselves can do the trick. Now, a lot of people may wonder what size entrance reducer should you use? Well, here where I am in the state of Pennsylvania, where there's wildlife of all kinds in the woods. We have deer mice right now pinging on the hives and I mean like ping pong balls.

I don't know if you've ever seen a deer mouse running around at night. They're a nocturnal mouse. They have large eyes. They have a brown back fur much like a deer, white-tailed deer. And then they have a white underbelly, also like a white-tailed deer. And they zip across the ground like really fast. They jump from the ground onto landing boards and they scoot back and forth really fast and they jump off. They're looking for a way in. So for years we've established that 3 eighths of an inch,

and that's easy to remember as a beekeeper, it also happens to be bee space. So if you make your openings 3 eighths of an inch, two or three inches wide, that's totally defendable for your resident colony of bees and mice can't get in. Also you find that if you've got some pressure, of course it's key to do it ahead of becoming the victim of a robbing attack because once you're a victim,

once the bees find out there's a problem, resource in there and they can get to it, it can be bad news, and I lost two colonies to robbing myself. So they seem like they were doing okay, but there's another layer to that that I'd like to share it with you. What colonies are getting robbed? Colonies that don't defend themselves very well. And then you might think, well, what kind of colonies aren't defending themselves very well? Do I need mean bees? No. Colonies that have lost their queens also seem to have lost their interests in really defending the hive. They're noisier hives because they're unsettled, which means they're stressed, which means they don't forage very well because guess what? They don't have a lot of incentive

to rework or fortify their stores inside the hive. And those are the ones that this late in the year, you would probably be seeing some tiny drones in. Drones of the male bees. When you find a bunch of those and you're kind of looking around, this is not the time of year that a strong, healthy colony would be producing a lot of drones because they're not producing new queens and not getting ready to mate and send them out. Right. So this isn't colony level reproduction season here in the state of Pennsylvania. So when they're without a queen, other wasps and things like that seem to get in pretty darn easy. Wasp pressure this year has been very low. So I'm really interested in that because I thought last year, you know, we had a mild

winter and I thought that would translate into a lot of solitary wasp queens. making it through winter and then therefore more wasp nests coming through the summer. And it has not been the case. The other thing is we're going to go over feeding in the fluff section of today's video so we're going to talk about that and I've beat out the wasp when it comes to having them feed at the same stations that I'm feeding honeybees at. I think you already know the answer. But anyway, save for a return back to normal and replace the robbing screen. So for me, normal, these reduced entrances are the same. same year round. And then here's where new beekeepers get so frustrated because every beekeeper's got an opinion about it and they usually preface it with, I've been keeping bees for 152 years.

I know everything about bees and if you don't do what I do, it's not going to work. So opening up your entire landing board, full width, 10 frame, 8 frame, whatever size your landing board is, is what a lot of beekeepers historically will recommend because they don't want you to impede the progress of bees going out to forage and of course the returning bees that are heavy with resources that are out getting. So I'm going to quote two of my favorite guides when it comes to entrance sizes and how much that plays in your bee's ability to store resources and really get out there and take advantage of forage when it's available and the temperatures are suitable for them to fly. Usually that's above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. So Jeff Orchhoff and Randy McCaffrey, right? Dirt. Dirt,

Rooster and Mr. Ed, you may know them on YouTube. So anyway, why don't we look to these guys? Well, they're in a hotter climate than I am, and they're in a much more humid climate than I am. So if they're finding large feral colonies with very tiny entrances and look at the amount of honey that they remove from these cavities that have a single entrance that often is just a little tiny crap between a couple of clapboards that didn't quite come together well, or some damaged OSB or some T-11 and siding that's around a conduit pipe or something like that, these entrances time and time again are tiny. The colonies are large. So what can we learn from seeing these tiny entrances and big cavities that are all sealed up inside with propolis and everything else and their healthy colonies

with piles of resources? Could your bees in the northeastern United States or some other northern climate, do okay. Could they do okay? Let's choke there for a second. Anyway, can they do okay with these tiny entrances and still dehydrate the honey that they're bringing in? And the answer is, if we're looking at what the bees have done, and we're not talking 50 hives or 80 hives or 100 hives that are feral, we're talking more than a thousand hives that have been observed and worked by these two people. So I listen to them, I pay attention to them, I watch, and that's all I want to know. Where was the entrance? How big was the entrance? How are the bees coming and going? And how are they managing these massive traffic jams and wouldn't have benefited them more if we had a wide open entrance?

And just think about honeybees. Think about the fact that they're living in areas that there are other animals that would like to exploit their resources also. Would honeybees throw open the front door of their dwelling wall-to-wall as big as they could like a barn door just so that they could get more bees in and out in a shorter period of time or will they keep it small and help defend themselves while managing the airflow throughout the hive well the tiny entrances prevail and that's why through the years i've decided my entrances are going to kind of stay the same and of course i don't do them all the same because i want to make comparisons and to make the comparisons year after year, season after season, and I have some hives that have the entrances that are

only three-eighths of an inch high. Flow hives, for example, come to mind the brood boxes. If you have the flow bottom boards, they're only three-eighths of an inch high already. And they don't have our deer mice and voles and moles and everything else that runs around in their yards there. They have cane toads, which I was told by Cedar Anderson, can get into a hive while it's little and grows up inside the hive. I don't like that story. I'm going to glad we don't have those here. But if we allow our bees to keep small entrances through the year, so you can widen it, 3 eighths inch high, three or four inches wide, that's all my colonies have needed. Now, the ones that I allow to be full width, like the one I just described, and 3 eighths of an inch high,

they do not produce more honey than those that have the small entrances on. And this is not a one-off. This is year after year after year. Once I decided that I was going to prevent mice from getting in. And I've had discussions. I seek out experts. So if I want to know about mice, I talk to small mammal biologists. And I find out the real skinny on what's going on. And so when we want to find about bees, we look at what bees are doing if we're not doing anything with them at all. So what are bees doing on their own? That is kind of our best way to collect information. So it is normal to replace or remove robbing screens now. I put robbing screens on and I have not put a single robbing screen on any hive this year.

And you might go back to, well Fred, you had two colonies that were robbed out. Yeah, because they're queenless. So there were a loss anyway. The other colonies, even little nucleus hives, and I did reduce their entrances because they have just a little three quarter inch diameter hole, I even cut that in half. And they're defending themselves. So good colonies going into winter. Those that were queenless, they were going to die. anyway. So hopefully in the coming week with the warmer weather we're going to do an autopsy on a queenless colony that was robbed out and we're going to see what happened inside. I can tell you ahead of time, I 90% expect to find nothing but tiny brood that actually was not maintained very well

and what would be in those brood cells, drones, because they're queenless. So then we ended up with laying workers and as they dwindled, they did their very best to produce genetic stock that would carry on their genetics, which by the way, why do we want to carry on their genetics? They let their queen go. They didn't make another one, and then they dwindled. So tiny, we'll see partially emerge drones and things like that. I'll call that ahead of time. So that's what's coming up. And yes, it's a good time if you're in the northern states right now.

Robbing screens, always be aware what's going on, but this has been a really good year. Question number three, moving on. This is from Alec and says, hi, from New York. How good is it to use regular pollen on sugar water mix? So if it's sugar water mix, we're talking about syrup. So regular pollen. On the other hand, I had a beach sand that I looked at when I was fishing, and the bees were digging in to the sand,

to the point of making small holes in it. Very common. If you're going next to any of the shorelines, and if it's fresh water, you find that they drill those little holes because they're sticking their proboscas in over and over because the water bees revisit this. same water sites over and over again. And they were very busy and right now humidity is kind of up

as you saw in the opening today. And they're not that desperate for water even though we're still needing a lot of rain. So body of water like that's very common to see them getting minerals and things like that. So anyway, sugar, water and pollen. So regular pollen. I don't know what regular pollen is. This question does come up because there are pollen traps, right? So if you've got a really strong colony and you put a pollen trap, a pollen trap on, some hive designs have pollen traps built into them. Two come to mind. One is the Apamehives.

They have pollen traps already built in. It's a matter of opening or closing where your bees go through the entrance or whether or not they pass through a pollen trap, right? So you can collect that. The other one is a colony that I just learned about or a hive design that I just learned about last weekend, which was the hive IQ, polystyrene hive, it also has a very elaborate bottom board system, which includes a pollen trap that you have to buy as an add-on. I think that thing is about a hundred bucks more.

So some beekeepers collect pollen for different reasons. Some of them collected to feed back to their bees. I personally wouldn't wouldn't do that. But then again, I'm not a big pollen collector. I only collected pollen for a couple of reasons. One was to evaluate pollen traps, see how effective they were, how much pollen gets through, how much of it is combed off, and how effective it is as a pollen trap. And the other part was, of course, we were sending in our pollen because it was being tested for pesticides. So we wanted to know if neonicotenoids were showing up in corn pollen and things like that. So I don't collect pollen to feed back to bees, and I don't collect it to feed it to people either. But let's say you wanted to do that, because back-car beekeepers, they always seem to want

to add things to their syrup and feed and we want to boost our bees. The very best thing you can do for your bees is provide a diverse habitat for pollen foraging. If you're saving it yourself, pollen degrades really fast. So you're going to have to freeze it. You're going to have to arrest the degradation of the pollen because fresh pollen is preferred by bees. So if you look at pollen substitutes, pollen additives. So when you buy pollen, pollen patties and things like that you'll find that the price of those things really goes up and the shelf life really goes down and that's because you want it to be fresh so don't buy a bunch of this stuff and stockpile it and think you're going to feed it back to your bees the other thing is

i highly recommend you feeds you read studies on pollen additives pollen being fed to your bees and i'm going to send you to the university of florida bee lab and look at their published papers on pollen and how it benefits bees particularly going into winter and during winter, right? So these things are very convincing. These studies are good. Now here's the thing. Often in areas that do not have a lot of forage, don't have a lot of pollen. Maybe you're in an area that won't even sustain honeybees unless you're feeding and taking care of them. That is an uphill climb all year long. I don't have that environment. So I live in an area where pollen forage is available throughout the productive or blooming year,

right? And also pollen kicks back in in spring. Usually it's tree pollen. Salix discolar and pussy willows and things like that provide early pollen. You get pollen from maple trees and all kinds of other tree varieties early in the year. So those warm days in spring, and the reason I'm saying this is, I'll preface it by saying I don't like to artificially boost my bees. So I'm not in the buy a bunch of pollen and feed it to your bees line of thought. right. But if you have lethargic colonies of bees that cannot take advantage of forage because they just don't have the energy to get out there, then the very fundamental thing that you can feed them is sucrose. So that is what they're getting from plants when they're producing

nectar. So that's what you're making when you mix up sugar syrup as described here. So mixed with sugar, I wouldn't do it. I personally would mix my sugar syrup separate by itself and make that available to the bees. And we're going to talk about that later today too because it's part of the fluff section. Very important and on people's minds this time of year because what happens? The weather turns, the landscape goes to sleep, the trees drop their leaves and the flowers drop their flowers, you know, so that flowering plants are all shutting down. Your bees have nothing. So you know what my bees were doing, sitting quiet inside their hives. It was pretty interesting.

So when they lack energy to go out, what do they need to get now? What do bees naturally on their own need to go out and forage for this time of year? Water. It's pretty much it. I did find honeybees chewing dry leaves, which I thought was really interesting. And then I was told by an entomologist that those are micronutrients that they gleaned from the surface of the leaves. And, of course, being a curious-minded person, I said, well, what kind of micronutrients are those? So then we find out that they're getting things like, listen to this,

there could be some not mold but mossy growth on some of these decaying leaves. There can be mossy growth at the edge of water this time of year. So your bees that are going to these mossy areas are actually getting a plant protein. So they are still getting something even though it's not pollen. Now for those that really have to give some of those. to their bees. These are the people that also like to give their dog's treats and all these milk bones and things that maybe your dog just doesn't need nutritionally, but it's a feel-good thing on the part of the owner. So as a backyard beekeeper, maybe you just want to give them

something that you can watch them take in and it'll make you feel good. So I prefer that you keep your sucrose separate. So your sugar syrups and stuff, if you want to put them out, you can. And that's okay because it draws away your sugar syrup. your bees. We're also going to talk about this at the end of today because I have a question about something I recommended and I want to validate when I'm telling people. So if I wanted to put something out to just sustain some of the brood maybe that your bees already have, you would put out a dry pollen substitute. So on a nice warm day when the bees are foraging, these are bees out there scratching leaves and chewing on bark and things like that. If they're doing that,

they probably would jump on dry pollen substitute that you can put out. Would that kick on a meaningful brood buildup in your hives on the one or two decent days that you have for them to go out and do that no it really wouldn't what it can do though is if they have brood already and a lot of colonies do but it's small right now it adds to the nutrition that gets fed to those developing brood it doesn't mean that all of a sudden the queen goes wow the nerves bees are feeding me something rich with pollen substitute I better kick in and produce a whole bunch more eggs and start ramping up my brood right now. No, it's just not enough to make that happen. So all it does is kind of sustain what's already going on in your hive

and maybe improve some of that that they're being fed right now. And it makes you feel good because you get to see your bees dust around, your pollen sub, and you might wonder what pollen sub would I recommend? So again, these nutritional studies have been done and they've been published. AP 23 performed the best. And Mega Bee was number two and almost everyone is familiar with Manlake's Ultra Bee. And I can tell you this, if you put all three of those out and the bees have never encountered it before, the Ultra Bee, which is the lowest of the three performance-wise, actually draws more bees. So there's something in it. It's the way it smells. They fly through that

pheromone of the air passing over the Ultra Bee and they go for that first. even though it's not the most nutritious. But there again, we're really not as backyard beekeepers boosting a bunch of bees because we've got some kind of pollination contract coming up in February or March or something like that. We're just giving them something to do right now. Same reason we put out sugar syrup this time of year

on a nice warm day. It just gives them something to do other than trying to find a way into the neighboring colonies backdoor so they can rob them of their honey. So it's kind of a feel-good thing. Read the studies and you'll find out. Kind of a waste of money, though. So I'm just letting you know.

It's good stuff. But don't mix it with sugar syrup, and here's why. Even the bees themselves, keep in mind, they keep these resources separate inside the hive. And somebody may say, well, Fred, don't we tell raw honey by the pollen that's also in suspension in the honey? Yes, as part of a pollen,

the pollen that's in your honey is how it gets identified as real honey and hopefully it's pollen from a flower that would have produced nectar for your bees to then produce honey from, right? There's a lot of funny honey out there. But the thing of it is your bees themselves, they put their pollen in cells, and then they put their honey, their nectar gets stored, and they make honey, and they do that in other cells, right? So they're keeping it separate. Their needs are separate. And if they're not producing a lot of brood, they won't consume a lot of the pollen, therefore becomes wasted, and there's even pollen left in your hive sometimes that never gets consumed by the bees.

So here's where you consult your notes that I know you took this year when you're inspecting your hives. You know how much pollen was in these frames. And you can, it's remarkable how fast they can consume an entire frame of pollen, because a face frame of pollen fully loaded gets consumed to create a face frame of brood. so they can go through it really fast. Hopefully your bees have a lot of nectar out there. Again, we're going to talk about that more. But to answer this question,

I would not force feed my bees any proteins, right? So the pollen, I would not put into my sugar syrup because now we know the bees need the sugar syrup. They need it. They have to have it. They have to have the energy source. It's to carbohydrate. They don't have to have the protein.

because by this time of year they've made their fat-bodied winter bees, they've already got protein in the hive. And as winter kicks in, as the days get shorter and colder and all that other stuff, you'll find that nurse bees all have kind of pollen stored in their bodies too. How do I know that? Because I watched a presentation by Randy Oliver that showed who was smashing all the bee guts and found that all the nurse bees had pollen in their bee gut. So they're consuming it too. They don't need it when what they really need is energy to survive.

That's at the core. So that's it. Question number four, moving on. This comes from Miss Arabella. I have a question. So this was about, again, a robbing video that I've done. So if you want to know, by the way, there's more than 1100 videos to choose from. I know it's hard to find what you're looking for on my YouTube channel.

So if you're listening to this as a podcast, then you can also go to my YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn, F-R-E-D-E-R-I-C-K, done, and you go up to the search bar on the right of the homepage, and you just type in robbing bees or nutrition or splitting bees, marking queens, all that stuff, you'll find it that way.

So anyway, this was about a robbing video that I did a while ago. So are these bees from my own hives or is it from another apiary? And that's a fantastic, question. I don't know that it changes what your approach is going to be, but these are things I like to do because I'm curious about bees. What would you do? You're looking at a colony being robbed, and it's in your own apiary. And if you only have three or four hives, pretty easy to tell

because the hives is doing the robbing also has massive activity on the landing board. Lots of coming and going. They're moving really fast. The robbers are coming out and they're adjusting their load before they leave, their abdomens are twirling all around. They're doing that twerking thing, as my grandson likes to say. And they're adjusting the load that they just took on from this colony before they leave, and they're leaving a mess behind. But they're also be lining it right over to the other hive. Now let's say you have more going on than that.

More colonies. How can we find out if they're even leaving your area? I bring out a big cup of powdered sugar. Now, I even got a little sifter just for this purpose. because I like to sift piles of powdered sugar onto the landing board where the robbing is happening. First of all, it breaks up robbing right away. So for some reason, they just don't like to be dusted all up with powdered sugar. But here's the thing, it makes them so conspicuous now.

So these powdered up bees that fly to nearby plants and things like that because they're just getting out of the way of whatever happened to them, they want to be cleaned up, but they can't clean themselves completely because even the most, you know, flexible worker bee cannot clean that strip right down the center of their thorax. That's why you see a light colored pollen strip right through there. They can't clean it off on their own. And off they go. And if you see them bee lining it over the woods to your neighbor's apiary,

then now it's time to call your neighbor and say, your bees are robbing my bees and you owe me for however much honey they took. But you'll at least know that they're not going to your own apiary. So this is something that I did, which is why I shut down open feeding overall. Because I realized that putting out these robbing stations, if I'm open feeding, I need to know where these bees are going. They need to be coming from my own. I only have two designated apiary yards right here on my property,

so it's very easy for me to know that direction. Same thing. Dust them up with a bunch of powdered sugar, see where they're going. Wow, they just went northeast through the woods. You know who you are. I shut it down. No more feeding. I'm not feeding my neighbor's bees. I am absolutely not going to do that. And the thing of it was, I was trying to see how long it takes bees to get through a capped frame of honey.

Now, if I accept that risk on my own, because keep in mind that diseases can be passed on through honey. So I wanted to see them line up, see how they did it, how long it took, because, for example, I was just trying to timeline once bees decide that a colony is worth robbing, if they even had full access to it, how long would it take them to clean out all the honey resources? Right? So it actually takes much longer than I thought. And so when I dusted them up, sure enough, didn't they go right through the woods?

So now, irresponsible beekeeper, do not feed your neighbor's bees your honey. Now, it's nothing you could do about it if there are a bunch of robbers and they're breaking into your hides and stealing all your stuff. That's a whole different scenario. But if you're intentionally feeding in the open,

You also have a responsibility to find out where those bees are going and coming from. Don't waste your resources feeding bees from another apiary. So that's it. So you figured out if they're from your hives or not, it's up to you, I guess. But it does give you a chance to shut down the hive that's doing the robbing. So if you've got a colony that you know is actively robbing a smaller colony, and it's very distinctive. All those little sugar-coated bees are going to the landing board that you suspected was bad.

you can shut them down. I'd put the robbing screen on them and close up their business for the rest of the day because they're the ones that are exploiting the weaker colony. Then the other part of that is, now what are you going to do about the weaker colony? Because once robbing has started, stopping it can be a real chore. So you got your work cut out for you, but you can put on robbing screens and close them up. You don't have to allow access either from the resident colony or the bees that are robbing them. Keep in mind that your bees that are robbing them. Keep in mind that your bees. are closed up often for days at a time when you get heavy weather like today it's too cold for them maybe it's raining so you can just pretend oh a rainstorm came for three days let's close them up keep them all inside and hopefully some of these foragers are at the end of their lives anyway

because foragers live about two weeks at the end of the year they're losing interest in forage so they're not going out exploring for new things they're not looking for new resources they're going to old known resources first that's why feeding stations should always be in the same location over and over because they have good memories and they fly out even when it's cold if they know a really good resources there. I've had them fly out in the 40s degrees Fahrenheit to get to a site that they knew had a high sucrose reward, right? That's how you find out what you do about it is up to you. Question number five comes from Latour, L-A-T-O-U-R. I think you mentioned using the reflect tags under your Appomat.

Lids, are you using it above the feeders, or maybe you're using it under the feeders cut out for feeder access all the way to the edge forming a gasket the box in the lid? Okay, so here's one of the cool things about going to conventions and conferences and things like that. You get to talk to the people that design this stuff. So the Appamehives, I don't know if you've ever met Corahan, he's a fantastic guy. He sells them. This is a company that's very interested in.

beekeeper feedback and things like that. And so I spoke with him about the fact that they have all these vents in their feeder shim. And it's actually the way it's set up, the cover is set up. And they have independent feeders that have little vents in them, even through the center of the feeder up into that space. And then their outer cover, which is insulated, also has vents on the front and the back. Now, someone else said that they're working on you being able to close those up.

Some people use RTV. and weather sealer and stuff like that, I don't. So I left it the way it was for the first year because I wanted to see what the bees would do. But talking to him, you can just put even like a trash bag in there, anything that prevents airflow, particularly if you hived up some bees later in the year and they did not have time to propelize it.

Because I'll tell you this, all the other colonies that started out in spring in my apiary that are from Apameh. The bees sealed up every single accessible vent, slat, hole, crease that was in the top of that hive. So I would not break the seal and lift up the feeders because they're designed to nest perfectly into that top box. Plus we need access to those to feed in winter if for some reason they use up all the honey that's stored inside that hive. I like to have access to feed and a method of feeding the colony that does not require me to pull

off a box, pull off the inner cover. And so it goes over the top of the feeders and then it buckles down. So Apamahe hives, a lot of people don't like them because they're plastic, they're recycled plastic, but let me tell you, it's a very well-appointed hive. Not only that, I don't know if you looked at the wind gusts that we had coming through here, but that's just a beginning. We're going to have stronger winds, rougher weather, going in a winter. I have 100% confidence. These apame hives, I'll bet you that thing could be knocked off by a bear. And a bear's not going to have a very easy task in getting in there to access what's inside an happen a hive. They go together so well, the clasps are so definite. You can strap them beyond that

if you want to, but if that thing blew over sideways in a winter storm, I would have no problem going out there and put in it right back up without a bee suit on. My other hives, when they blow over, they fall apart. You run out there in a snowstorm and you get assaulted by the bees, even though you're out there to save their lives. But anyway, it's a very well-appointed hive. I just put it over the top and double bubble reflect text whatever you want by the way this is technically single bubble see how thin it is double bubble means that there's two layers of bubble between this illuminated face so this thin stuff goes right over the whole thing and then you clip down the top and now you sealed it so if it's a brand new one that you wanted to make sure airflow didn't go through plus you benefit from that

extra r value there which does not exist where the vents are front and back so you could even break it down and just just put one of these in the back, one in the front, and shut down all ventilation passage through that outer cover. Easy to do. I'm looking forward to talking to everybody again, by the way. And if you don't know when or where, let me share that with you right now. January, 2025, down in Louisville, Kentucky at the Convention Center, North American Honeybee Expo. So many people have new things that they're going to unveil there. If you like to be one of the first beekeepers in your organization or your club that gets to see new stuff, as it comes out, you want to go to that.

So this answered Latour's question. Moving down to question number six. Christy Ann says, I finally broke down and started OAV with a thin copper-colored wand. O-A-V, for you that don't know, it's the oxalic acid vaporization method, which is used. to kill Varroa destructor mites, which I hope on the first day of November, most of you have already, if you're a treatment beekeeper, if you're going to take care of your livestock, and you're going to help them with the worst pest that they've ever dealt with, we're talking about, baro-destructor mites, exhalic acid vaporization, gets them. Okay, I have one hive where I cannot

insert this thin copper wand. The bees have built something about three inches inside that stops it. I have slatted wrecks. Slatted rex, by the way, goes on a bottom board, it's a two inch spacer, has slats that align with the frames in your standard length troth box. And those are what I used to cut quarter inch holes so that I can do OAV from the back. I don't even do it from the entrance. So moving on, it says, and close the screen bottom board. So I tried going under the screen. I just ended up with OA crystals in a on the front tray afterwards. Is it impossible to do OAV under a screen? Would you talk a little more about your method, particularly how you would keep the thin pipe clean? I read that it clogs up. Okay, so first of all, the delivery system for exhalic acid vaporization. There are thin pans. That is the first

reason that these little wands that you'll find, they have little clips on them, so you can clip it right into a battery, heats up, and then you run it for a minute and five seconds or whatever it takes to get your one or two gram dose of exhalic acid crystals to sublimate, and then you take it off and turn it off before that glow plug actually melts that copper pan. In some cases, it's an aluminum pan, which has an even lower melting temperature. Be very careful not to overheat those. So anyway, I've long since given that up, and I use now the ones that have a container on them. First it was the ProVAP 110. So use that. You had to plug it into an extension cord so you needed 110 power. Wherever you went, huge pain to do

that. La Ravis, L-O-R-R-B-E-E-E-E-S, produced their own wand also that had a controlling sensor, temperature control in the back, a little heated bowl, and also it has a long, skinny copper tube and a lot of the people that I work with had problems with that tube getting plugged up with acylac acid crystal and that's because it's copper and it's long and it's narrow in diameter and so they frequently had it cooling down too soon now this is a problem that happens when you're gonna put that tube in contact with something else that draws heat away from the tube because remember the tube itself is not heated and it was copper and then the bowl itself

is the source of the heat, which gets your exhalic acid crystals up to the sublimation temperature. And then you deliver it, and of course you create a pressure vessel of types because you're going to put a cap on it. And then as it expands, it has nowhere to go except for out through that tube. And if that tube gets plugged with exhalic acid crystal, you risk blowback. In other words, that little silicone lid that went on there would pop off. And the ProVab 110 had a ceramic, not ceramic. It had a Teflon lid that was much tougher. In fact, you couldn't get that lid off once it cooled down. So you had to take it off while it was still hot. Those Teflon lids held up really well. So then I advanced beyond that. So I did not have problems with the ProVap 110. The Lorabi one

one did crystallize and fill up. So you had to be aware. So you had to clean it out. We're going to get to that in a minute. And then the next one that came out was the instant vape. Instant vape has a battery pack on it, which made this super versatile. You don't have to drag extension cords around. You don't need a generator. You don't need an inverter on your truck that you can plug into to run it. It is easy-peasy. Now, and it has a copper, not copper, has a brass, rigid tube coming out of it, a little larger in diameter. I have never had that one plug up at all. So now that we've said that, sometimes there are metal discs on the entrance of a hive, people put their little metal tube that delivers the acylac acid vaporization right up against that.

Anything that draws heat off of that, you risk now lowering the temperature from sublimation and out recrystilizes in that tube and then again potential blowback. So screens are much the same. We want to remove the barriers between the brood area and your delivery system as much as possible. So I would not try to do it up through a screen. definitely make an access hole into my wooden wear, probably just off center in the back of the hive, so again, you don't have to be right in the flyway to introduce it. The other part of this you should know is you need a cotton cloth or something like that dampened with water so it has some weight and so it'll

stay put. You lay that over the entrance and you block traffic in and out. We also want to reduce the amount of airflow in and out of the hive while you deliver your dose of exhalic acid. because it needs to vaporize and then the bees fan it through the entire hive and then it gets on everything. That's the goal to get it to physically land all these little micro particles. We want them to land all over your nurse bees because we want this varroa destructor mites to have to come in contact with it with their little feet so then they can't climb on anything anymore and they fall in the bottom and then they just die there. That's the goal.

Maybe on their way down, depending on the bees that you have, they get their feet chewed or their legs chewed off. I just saw a video of the bees that chewed off their legs. My bees are not that aggressive. They chew the little feet off of them, the little tips of their feet, which I thought was enough. But I saw one where, you know,

that first segment beyond that central area of your varroa mite, they were completely chewed off for the whole half of them. So they have eight legs, right? So anyway, because they're mites. And so that's really interesting. Now the second part of this is, how do we prevent them from clogged? logging up, right? So the good news is they're all non-corrosive. So like the instant

vape, it's got, you know, it's got, of course, the brass part, it's got aluminum block inside there, which by the way keeps everything nice and hot, which is why I can deliver so quick and which is why it doesn't drop down for very long when it's sublimating. That to me, in my opinion, is the best exhalic acid delivery system on the market today. instant vape, I-N-S-T-A-N-T-V-A-P. That is the best ever. Now you're done with it. How do we clean it out? Here's the good news about exhalic acid. It's water soluble.

In other words, it dissolves readily in water. I've used it actually to get rust out of things before. That was pretty interesting too. So anyway, you turn the system off, you let it cool down, and then you put a teaspoon. Some people like to get a little syringe, those plastic syringes full of distilled water and you squirt that down in through where you would normally drop your exhalic acid into it and then you turn the unit on and let it heat up and it'll

turn it all the vapor and it blows everything out right so then that just cleans any residue that's in there but i've never had one um plug up so i never had the probat plug up but i have had the laurabi version with that long narrow copper tube that one did plug up so same principle just put some distilled water in there, put the cap on, bring it up to temp, it'll blow it out for you, and keep everything clean. So I didn't have to do any scrubbing or anything like that. And you can do that just as a general routine after you finish your treatment cycle. You can do your entire apiary in a day in an afternoon, even if you have a lot of hives. That battery-powered unit just, boom, boop, boop, off you go.

So anyway, that's my method. So that's pretty much it. you know there are pipe cleaners and things like that there are tiny brushes and things that you push through i do highly recommend that um sometimes uh again i don't know what the inside diameter is of the skinniest one which is the larabi version um but there are tiny brushes that you can push through there just to make sure it's clear last thing you want is a poof of exhalic acid blowing up in your face and i hope that you're wearing full eye protection and respiratory protection it's a big deal If you don't feel like you can be trusted to take those safety measures, consider the dribble method. It's more of a pain to take your hive apart to get into it.

Because that's the advantage to delivering exhalic acid vaporization, we're not opening the hive. If it's a day that you hit over 60 and the bees are freely moving around inside, it's going to get all over everything, which is the target. And you can do a treatment quick and easy without actually getting in and disrupting your bees. And for those of you think that the bees go through a huge amount of stress, happening I actually produced a video about that that shows you inside the hive what their reaction is to exhalic acid vapor the initial puff in they all rush away from it and then as that cycle continues and they're fanning it through

they move right back to business as usual even with that dusting of axelic acid particulates moving all through the hive so it's not as stressful on the bees as you might think So that's it for that. Moving on to question number seven. This is from Nancy. It says Fred, I hope you can add some insights.

I did a search regarding brood cappings. And the findings were that brood cells were capped with wax. I was surprised to see this as the cells are definitely not sealed with the same kind of wax cappings the bees used to cap honey. So my question is, what material are brood cells capped with? The material seems more felted and more like a cocoon than honey wax cappings. And certain is porous in nature. So here's the thing. They are definitely different.

So when you look at this is part of when you're teaching people, there's so many videos out there how to read frames. We look at the you know the capped honey. So the cap wax on honey always looks shiny. It's a little bit concave. It settles in. It's right up against the honey. Sometimes there's there's little air pockets in there and stuff like that. But the bees' purpose for that is very different. So one of the things bees are doing, what are they done? When they've finished their honey and they've dehydrated it down and they know it's not going to ferment and they glom onto that with wax cappings,

which by the way are highly desirable for beekeepers because honey cap wax is thought to be the newest wax in the hive. We want it. We want to make candles with it and everything else. So uncapping, saving that stuff and making candles out of that, you get the most wholesome best wax ever. So the newest, it comes from the wax glands of the bees abdomen, the worker bees, and this is a job that they cycle through as they get older. And so they have wax glands that produce it, wax shingles come up, and those little wax shingles are really pure-looking. There, Hillary Kearney had a picture that she posted that had translucent brand-new wax shingles on her,

fingertip and it looked almost like thin-shaved bits of sugar crystals. It was really pure. So bees wax by itself is really white, really clean, and they use that most on-capped food, which is their long-term stores of honey. So, and that is by design to seal that honey so it doesn't take on more moisture. And so that it doesn't then ruin their long-term stores that are the carbohydrates and they're going to get them through winter now let's move down below further down in the hive it's very distinctive now it's a lot of fun when you see brand new brood frames because the cappings on that brood is very light in color sandy tan and just light and golden looks fantastic but there are physical differences when you look at it it's concaid

it's convex for example so it's bumping out instead of sinking in The other thing is, if you shine a light over it, you're not going to get any shine back. When you shine your light onto the honey wax caps, then they're shiny, right? Very smooth, very slick. Almost 100% honey. Not honey, but beeswax. So as the colony ages and as they move through more and more cycles, this light sandy color, and of course that light colored white beeswax gets darker and darker because the cells get used for other things.

So for a lot of beekeepers, the frames that we don't like when it comes time to cut out old frames, I don't like to keep a frame of comb more than five years. It gets so dark, it's almost black, right? The brood frames are the worst. And keep in mind, we've packed down for winter. So I've got a brood box and I've got a medium super. The medium super gets used for beeswax, cappings on honey stores as well as brood. So you see each cycle they move up and down as the season goes and they'll darken their wax

over and over because they do reuse the wax. But what makes it darker? So the wax color comes into play really in even the honey store areas because of propolis and stuff that they're mixing through it. And the bees are walking on everything and their feet have stuff on it. Now when it comes time in the brood area which they cycle over and over again, the older brood frames also have older darker wax cappings on them and it's not so much it's made out a different material the bees are still using their wax glands or produce those wax cappings but you know what else

they're doing they're amending the edges because keep in mind that they cycle several rounds of new bees through the brood frames every season so in fact you'll see a new bee emerge as the wax cap gets removed and as soon as it emerges you can go back and see that they're all kind of emerging from that area around the same time because keep in mind that your your queen bee is laying her eggs in some cases 30 seconds apart 40 seconds apart so under identical conditions you should be seeing several bees emerging at the same time from the same area is because their eggs were laid in very close proximity and time with one another So as they move out, then other bees.

Now, some people will say that, well, that new bee comes out. Her first job is to turn around and clean her own cell. I have never once seen an emerging new bee come out, turn around, and go right back in and clean her own cell. I've seen other nurse bees dive bomb in there straight away, cleaning up the cell, making sure everything is copacetic, right? Sometimes that newly emerged worker comes out and gets a grooming bath. like all these other bees go after her and start grooming her like crazy. They want to make sure she didn't come out of there with some varomites on her. And if they did, they're going to bite their feet.

So the reason I bring this up as far as the cappings go is because that cell is basically still warm and doesn't the queen come through and start laying eggs in these cells that have just recently been vacated by brand new bees. So then when they're capping over and they don't cap right away. Obviously the egg has to hatch in three days and then it goes to recycle. as open larva, right? And then it's going to enter the pupa state. And when it does that,

these developing bees spin a cocoon. Now, the way they spin the cocoon is where we get these fibers that most beekeepers do not like at all. And that's because they're kind of embedding their little fibers into the interior surface of the wax of that existing bees wax cell that originally was made with nothing but beeswax.

But with each continuing cycle of emerging pupa that come out as an adult bee, they've also embedded more fiber until it can't be removed. So those bees that are going in to clean out the cell to prepare it for the next egg to go in to repeat the cycle, they're not able to clean out all of the fibers that are left over from the previously developing pupa. So now it gets darker, it gets tougher, and those fibers are embedded in the bees' wet. and if you look at the cappings, look at the area where it was chewed off. I'm sure you've all seen videos or looked very close. I like to see them macro-micro close.

And it does look like really dense, almost woollen. And it's not that there's no beeswax in it, there is, but they're not getting rid of 100% of the fibers that are left from that previous cocoon. And so it actually gets drawn in because they're reusing beeswax as well as adding new beeswax. And that's why these caps get darker and darker and darker and darker. And they're very fibrous. But here's the thing. They're not as gas permeable as you might think.

In other words, they're kind of hermetically sealed during the pupa phase. So while they're in their cocoon, if you were to pull it all apart, and sometimes people will post a picture of a queen cell. And everybody's alarmed. Oh my gosh, what is going on with a queen cell? Because they think it's all beeswags. but it's not. It looks like there's a little felt pellet in there, like a little felt piece, because that's the cocoon that's in there, which later, of course, would be torn out so that the queen can emerge so she can get out of there.

And so you don't normally see it still intact, and that's why it's alarming to people that are expecting to see nothing but beeswax. So if you get into brood frames, especially if you're doing autopsies on deadouts and things like that, go to the brood. look at the cappings, get out your magnifying glasses, and see how fibrous they are. And that's why. So now, can you still get beeswax out of that? Sure, you can. You get a whole bunch of what's called slum gum when you try to harvest and clean all that up, and you can still get it because Quinn, my grandson and I, we did it just to see how much beeswax can we get, and can we get it clean, and yes, we can. But you end up with a bunch of slum gum left over, and that's because it's so fibers it doesn't render as beeswax and it won't pass through a filter so that you get nice

clean beeswax but I don't throw it away so now these caps are somewhat gas permeable and how do we know that they are first of all there's a living organism inside of it is developing it needs to respirate to some levels so it needs to get rid of CO2 it needs to get some oxygen and but it's at a very low gas exchange rate. This is one of the reasons why exhalic acid vaporization when you're treating for varodistructur mites that might be reproducing inside worker cells, it doesn't get to them. So it's a fine enough capping that some gas passes through it, but particulates don't, right? So this is also why but the gases work, and this is why things like Formic Pro do impact the varroa destructor mite that's under that capping. So some of it does get in there and it is enough

not to distress the developing worker bee that's in there, but it kills the varroa destructor mite, which of course gets cleaned out later when that adult worker emerges from that cell. So this is why it's very fibrous, right? So gas exchange a little bit, very distinctive in appearance, and I highly recommend that you dissect them. Sometimes the bees will chew off that cap when the new bee has emerged and the cap is just there and a little hinge just like a little hatch on a ship and they'll chew that off and then they'll just drop it to the bottom and sometimes you see those being cast out so in other words they don't even recycle it there's not enough bees wax alone in it to make it worth their while so often they're still

tossing those so you can see pupa caps are brand new emerged drones and workers you can see the caps from their cells often on landing boards early in the morning very distinctive, great opportunity to pick it up with some forcips or little tweezers and look at it under magnification and see how fibrous it really is because it's very impressive. So that's the first time I've had a question like that, which I think is really interesting. Question number eight, last question of the day. This is from Minnesota Beekeeper. That's the YouTube channel. Longtime viewer and commenter, by the way, I appreciate that. It says, Mr. Fred, I'd be concerned. And this is because, I recently just a couple of days ago put out robbing bags.

In other words, there were Ziploc baggies with one-to-one and lighter sugar syrup. And the reason that I did that is for reasons I described earlier that I want to lower the sucrose content because I want to make sure that the bees that are coming to it are not willing to fly long distances to it. So I don't, as I described before, I don't want to feed my neighbor's bees. My neighbor may not want to see sugar syrup being fed to them. They may be a purest and they only want their bees to get stuff from the environment and that's it. So by leaning it out thinner than a one-to-one, right? Which was in this video, we only get my own bees. So then this is where this question comes from. With the colder weather coming in here in Minnesota, one would think the hives would not have as much time to dry it to an acceptable overwintering

level thoughts. Okay so and that's exactly right. If the bees were bringing it in just like nectar from plants because even that is often leaner than what we're putting out for feed. So what's going on today outside? No foraging. What are the bees doing? Inside they're still keeping whatever brood they have in there and I hope it's a small amount of brood, which it is in my observation hives if that's an indicator. So because they have small brood, they still have to keep that brewed warm. They still have to burn calories. Now remember long-term storage is honey and capsules. So the concern here is if they're bringing in high water content, nectar basically. And so we're calling it that because sucrose is what we're giving them when we make sugar

and water. That's actually what the flowers are giving them to. They invert that and becomes fructose and glucose because the bees have within their honey crop invertase, which is a an enzyme that breaks that down and inverts the sugar. So the reason I do it and why I'm giving this lengthy explanation is because I want these foragers, these scouts have something to do other than rob each other. I don't want to feed my neighbor's bees, so it's a very high water, low sucrose provision, right? Now they're going to bring them back to the hive. What's the first thing that's going to happen? The bees that are inside the hive. We're just going to consume it through trophlaxis. That's when you'll see the tongues come out.

they'll feed one another. Now, if they were interested in storing it, they would take it straight to cells and they would start putting it in cells. And then they, of course, would start fanning and trying to dry it down, which is really not the case. What they start doing this time of year is they make it for ready consumption. It's fast food. So they pass it B to B to B to B to B. It gets consumed. And then they go back out and get as much as they can. Now, the other thing is it's a slow release. This is not a 50, gallon barrel of one to one or two to one sugar syrup that's being fed to the bees. That's a massive amount that your bees can take in high quantity and then they do bring it back and there's so many of them bringing it back that they end up getting all these empty cells filled with high water content resources. That is not what's going on here. We have one gallon Ziploc baggies which have literally pin holes in them, holes made by straight pins. The only bees that can get in there to get it are honey bees because they have the proboscis. I didn't even see any bumblebees trying to do it because my other thought was bumblebees will show up with their massive

mandibles and they'll start tearing into the Ziploc baggie and they'll make them even more open. That did not happen. We did have yellow jackets on just a smattering of yellow jackets and they're waiting for the bees to be pulling their tongues out and then they're trying to lick the sucrose off the tongues of the bees while they're retracting them before they fly away. So the beggars in this scenario would be your hornets and your wasps. So the only hornet we have here right now is the European hornet and we have lots of wasp species. So yellow jackets are everywhere. But again, as I mentioned early today, the yellow jackets are not as plentiful as we thought they would be this year. And so I'm even cutting them back further because only the honeybees

were able to get their tongues, their gloss up, all the way down in there to get this light sugar syrup. So it's a metered dose. It takes them, I originally set up time-lapse cameras because I wanted to see, first of all, the leakage that happens when I take a one gallon freezer bag full of sugar syrup and how it leaks when it's filled to capacity, and it does. It oozes right away, and that gets bees feeding on it right away. If I take a gallon freezer bag and fill it which is a half gallon of sugar syrup, which is less than one-to-one, I think I said in the video, we're putting three pounds of dry sugar in a half a gallon of water. And then that's what goes into each one gallon capacity freezer bag.

And that's because now it doesn't leak. There's also no airlock in it, which means that as it warms up during the day, it doesn't expand and push syrup out. And we also don't end up with it blowing up like a balloon. It doesn't. It stays right on the syrup. And then, of course, the foraging bees can get their proboscis in there, get their tongues in there and they get the resource and they fly back so it's a lower sucrose than what bees are willing to fly a mile for and it provides them something to do and it's instant

energy that gets consumed and metabolized by the bees right away so today they can't access them so what are they doing inside the hive they're consuming open nectar cells first and this is also alarming to some people most people do not look into their beehives this time of year and you should be. Your job should be done. This should be packed down for winter. But I have the advantage of multiple observation hives. So we look into those hives and it gives me insight to how are they provisioned. Do they have a lot of capped honey? And they do. Do they also have some wet open cells? And they do. So today when I go out there and look in there, we will see that the wet open cells and here's one of the advantage of observation hives also. You can take dry erase,

markers and circle things that you're noting that are interesting that you hope to teach about. And then you log that. We have a dry erase board in there too, and then we write down information about what we're seeing. Now we come back to check and those cells look like that, absolutely nothing in them. So what they did is they're consuming already, all uncapped sucrose inside the hive, even if it's partially inverted. So if it has had invertase in it and it is starting to turn into glucose and fructose. Still, at a high wetting level, they'll consume that first. And I don't have concerns about that becoming a fermentation problem inside the hive

when they had exactly the conditions that I thought were going to happen, which is too cold for flying. And now they have this energy resource inside the hive, which keeps them from prematurely uncapping honey and getting into their long-term stores. So I hope that helps answer that question. They're not storing it. So this is it.

We're in the fluff section now. So I have noticed, by the way, for those of you have the ability to shoot thermals on your hives. And again, the more insulated hives you have, the less effective your thermals are going to be. So it's very hard to gauge if it's insulated on the side walls, how big the breed area is or what the temperatures are. So one of your kind of options there is to support. put a temp and humidity sensor inside the hive. And you have to find a way to do that that your bees don't propylize up.

So brood minder is a company that provides stuff like that. I have a bunch of them. I'm guilty of not using them. So another thing you can do is get a stethoscope, a cheap one, and listen to the side of the hive. And you can find wherever it's noisous, your brood is there. But you know what they were doing yesterday?

They were dead quiet inside. They weren't fanning, they weren't vibrating, they weren't doing anything. They were just milling about doing nothing inside the observation high is dead quiet. You did not hear them. So thermals can let you know kind of where they are heightwise. You know, are they still below their stores? Hopefully they are. And so low brood, very small heat signature, which means what?

Normally we would wait until the end of November, beginning of December, where we would think they would have the smallest brood area. and therefore any varroa destructor mites are inside that hive would then be in their dispersal phase, which used to be called the ferretic phase, they're exposed. Oxalic acid vaporization can be up to 96% effective in taking them out. I don't have high hopes for a lot of the members of my beekeeping club because I asked them who's counting their mites and like no hands go up, maybe two. And some people are just treating without even knowing the mite counts.

I don't know what to say, but you have to know your might levels to know if what you're doing is effective, and I'll move on from that. Okay, as I mentioned earlier, 3 eighths inch high entrances will prevent mice, wolves. Even the pygmy shrew cannot get in your hive if it's a three-eighths inch opening. Their skull size is too big. They can't get in. So do that. Here's the other thing. These are questions that everybody asks this time of year. Last minute, they're like, What's better? Fondent, dry sugar, sugar brick, mountain camp method. Should I just pour a whole thing of dry sugar in my hive? No, don't do that.

I highly encourage people to have an inner cover that's insulated and that you can use to feed without opening up the hive down below. Keep in mind where we live. You're going to hit times of the year where it may not come above freezing for weeks at a time. right you need to be able to check those resources and know where your bees are you know and what's above them and be able to take care of it dry sugar which by the way i recommended for years i used it for years i had the inner cover on i put a wrap it around feeder on the inner cover i filled each wrap it around feeder with four pounds of dry sugar whatever was left over in spring i liquefied fed it back

to the bees it seemed to be the perfect method right until I started doing direct observations of how efficiently your bees can use these resources and you hear it frequently dry sugar will have a desiccant effect on your bees look that up sometime find out what the moisture holding capacity is of dry cane sugar it's very small what it does do though is turns your sugar let's say you put on your sheet of newspaper on the top of those frames which I don't do anymore and you pour it on there then moisture comes up condensation forms in the sugar turns it into a sugar brick or candy or whatever you want to call it and then your bees consume that through the year the problem

with that was it was underneath the inner cover so the next step was well let's do that on top of the inner cover and let the bees come up through the middle and they have access to that too right and then you have condensation up there which then gets used by the bees to metabolize dry sugar or candy. So when bees encounter dry sugar, whether it's a block, it's a candy chunk, it's a candy board, it's a pile of sugar, they need a lot of moisture to metabolize it, right? Now, I was never a fan of fondant, only because I didn't know how to make it. I don't do fondant. It was worried about creating HMF and overheating it and boiling the water and caramel.

normalizing sugar and I just not interested in all of that stuff so I was always failing safe. So you could feed winter patties winter patties can be pretty expensive too but that again is primarily a carbohydrate if you're talking about winter pollen patties in the northeastern United States going into winter I don't personally recommend that and I'll refer you right on back to the studies that have been done at the university level to see what bees need in winter. And pollen would not significantly increase what the bees are doing come spring. Sugar does.

So the next thing is how to get the sugar into your bees. So that led me to a lot of backyard studies. The reason backyard studies are so good is they're very basic, repeatable. So in other words, you know, I have to take my word for it. I always tell people to question everything, challenge everything. and then things start to make sense right so we have we have hive alive we have honeybee healthy we have pro sweet we have bee keepers choice we have a bunch of different materials that are being offered to help read what it says it's going to do stimulate the

bees appetite so if you've got a colony that's not taking in the sucrose that you need them to so that they can be healthy and vigorous rate and do all the jobs they need to do, then these additives like Honeybee Healthy are supposed to boost that. That's an easy backyard test. That means it would get their attention and it would increase consumption. So I put out sugar syrup in different jars and this is searchable and you can see all of these tests. And I put HoneyBe Healthy at the recommended doses and then those without Honeybee Healthy. And the control, of course, was the same amount of sugar syrup.

in each with the same water source in each and the only difference would be the added feed stimulant, right? The bees were ignoring that. So they were taking sugar syrup but had nothing in it first. Okay. So that means if we're trying to get them a carbohydrate, get them to consume it and metabolize it, then that would be it. Now we know going into winter that the sugar syrup, right, isn't something we can put on because it has a high moisture content. It's going to very cold for starters too and it also we need to keep it from spoiling going through winter so honey be healthy pro sweet beekeepers choice all of those equally and hive alive extended the life of your sugar syrup and prevented fermentation because it has a high moisture content so that's good to

know but that's if you're mixing stuff up during your non-freezing time of year when your bees can go out and they can do cleansing flights. So now we're into the more solid materials that are proven to help your bees gut, right? Gut health in wintertime is critical for your bees. So now we get down the list. What studies have been done? What are the benefits of the different additives? If you're going to put anything in there? Well, sugar syrup by itself puts the least amount of particulates in the bee gut, which means that if there's second side, the hive for long periods of time that this is not going to cause them to have to defecate. They don't have to fly out or the minute they do fly out, they're not pooping all over the

front of your hive and everything else, right? Or your neighbor's cars, which I heard about happened to somebody too, which was really interesting to me. But so the solids that are in there, really dark honey does the same thing. So if you've got buckwheat honey, the dark of the honey that means there's more particulates in it. That's why it's dark. And the that's hard on your bees in the wintertime if they can't do cleansing flights. People in the south don't have this problem. You can almost feed whatever down there. I think beekeeping must be easier in the south, except you have small high beables and stuff like that. So, but up here, we need to think about was your bees are holding on board, how they, you know, they just ate three

brand muffins and they drank four cups of coffee, and then there's a traffic jam and they can't make an exit. You don't want to be that bee, right? So we think about what can help. their bee gut and also not out a pile of water. Well fondant because now it comes from a company called High of a Life who also makes this syrup and they actually published studies that prove that it benefits your bees gut health. They're the only ones that I know of that have a published reviewed paper that's scientific that demonstrated that. So it was a no-brainer for me and almost everybody else that I know to put fondant packs on your hives in winter. So what happened to dry sugar?

Why isn't that so good? It is good, but it takes them... I was talking to somebody else that produces bee products, and he said, and I won't name him, but he said, 45% more energy is used up by the bees to convert sugar to a usable carbohydrate in their body. And I said, well, where did you get that? Where did you find out that information?

Like, who does that? Who finds out 45%? And I wanted to know about it because I wanted to see if that was true. So then I did my own, again, backyard tests. How would we figure out if we're providing them with a sugar brick, let's say? And how would we find out how long it takes a B to get all the resources it needs from a sugar brick compared to fondant? So this is, the fondant is a bridge between full-on liquid. So now it's fondant.

We're not going to have the same issues with high water content. And that we have some more palatibility and quick. consumption therefore metabolizing those resources to get them through winter so it's actually more than 10 to 1 how do I know because of the amount of time a worker bee spent on solid sugar sugar crystals sugar breaks right how long does it spend there getting the resources it needs before it actually departs and heads back to its hive with the resource and then compare that to the bees that were coming and feeding on the faunate same time same day same temperature, same everything. Dry sugar, fondant. How fast were they getting the fondant

and loading up and leaving? 10 to 1. When they spend one minute gathering from the fondant and then flying away, I assume that be reached its capacity of what it needed. And then I see 10 minutes working their tongues as hard as they can through these little holes in the sugar breaks or it could be a candy board or something like that. So they're spending a lot more time. They need liquid to do it. I don't know what they do. They don't bring water with them

because the bees that are getting nectar are not water bees. So there needs to be water adjacent to that or there needs to be condensation near that because they need to liquefy what is now a solid. And instead we've got fondant that is a semi-solid that has some liquid in it which means that they could metabolize it,

get it in, and leave with it, right? And the dry sugars, the solid sugar, the solid sugars were a huge chore for the bees. So for me, of course, dry sugar's cheaper. Absolutely. There's no question. That's the cheapest route. If you want to make a candy board, that's cheaper too,

because that's just water and sugar and you created a candy board. Some people put lemon and stuff like that in it. There's a lot of recipes for candy boards. For me, the fondant is going to prevail as far as a resource that is a happy medium. And then of course, this particular fondant that I'm using comes from Hive Live, which again has a track record for approving the microbiome of the bee. And particularly nosema, there are some other benefits to that, but knocking down nozema spores in wintertime, which is when they generally concentrate and grow inside your bee gut. These are organisms that are

living inside your bee gut, consuming that, and something that you would not see in your bees. they have a sub-lethal impact on your bees, longevity, productivity, and ability to do what they're supposed to be doing inside the hive in wintertime. So that's where I've arrived on the fondant end of things. No syrup. I don't use the same company. Hive Alive does pollen patties. I don't use those because I have to get in the hive to use them.

The pollen, I'm not sold, really will boost my bees that much where I am. Keep in mind, back-air beekeeping. keeping our bees alive and healthy so that when spring comes, we're not cleaning up a deadout, right? A dead out that occurred because we did not put adequate feed and resources on for them to make it through winter. If it's in your control, then you should feel a little bit of bad about it in spring. Now, you're going to have some losses probably, even though you do everything perfect. But there are definite tells when you see a colony that starved to death and knowing that you're, could have given them a resource that sustained them. And the other thing is, when you have these days,

we'll go back to Minnesota beekeepers question here. If we're looking at, you know, we're in January or mid-January and all of a sudden out of the blue, we get this weird, warm day, right? It's going to be 65 or something. And you know that your bees are going to fly out. Could you feed a light sugar syrup open feed on that day, like in the little packs like I did? and you sure can because you know what they're doing inside the hive they're starving so they would take that again as a ready resource now would you put three pounds of dry sugar to half a gallon of water create a pack put that inside your hive in winter no never not here's why because they would be trying to access that even when it's cold even when they can't fly when they can do cleansing flights

that has a high water content and then we do risk having bees then of course the other thing is they're getting chilled by the water that they're drinking the sugar syrup and they're actually in chill I wanted to say chill torpor but it's chill coma that they get into that they're just frozen in place they took it cold they're cold it's not good so I don't put that inside the hive at all so the only things I put inside the hive would be dry sugar a sugar brick a candy board or fond it. That's it. In a perfect world, you've left your bees with enough honey to get them through winter. I'm hoping you have insulated inner covers because that keeps condensation from

forming directly over your cluster of bees. We already know they need water really badly inside the hive in winter. If they have to go outside to get that on a snow melt day, that's hard on them. you want to see some bees that are desperate for water, see a warm up in midwinter and see all the bees on the landing board licking the dripping, melting snow as quick as they can get it. These bees have been needing water for a long time, and you can provide that inside the hive by not venting your hive, having an insulated inner cover, letting the condensation form inside the hive on the side walls where water bees can leave the mantle, get that water, and pass it from tongue to tongue inside the hive through trophlaxis and fortify them with water. They can have all the sugar in the world, and if they can't get water to metabolize it,

it is worthless to the bees. So on a higher note, let's see, uh-huh, winter patties. Oh, yeah, I wanted to mention, for those you who are absolutely sold on winter patties, you absolutely have to use them no matter what I recommend. well winter patties are good I wouldn't spend the extra for the pollen patties don't forget now this is these are shrivits these are sold by better bee these are like four dollars I'm showing it to you not so that you'll buy one although if you bought them it makes it easy but your entrance is right here you put the patty on here the bees come up they can walk under

it they can get to all sides it can get on the top of it I don't have small high beetle issues where I live. The small high beetles need access to your paddies. That's where pollen patties really. If your bees can't get to all parts of the pollen paddies sometimes small high beetles get into it. If your bees have access to all edges in the top of your pollen patty, full access to the space that they're in because keep in mind it's too cold for them to be building honeycomb up in there in the wintertime. So instead it's just a food resource, hopefully an insulated, you know, feed or shim there that they're in, and they'll have access to it all the way. So something like that, something that you can make yourself even just to get those pollen

patties off the ground and feed them. Now, the other thing is I'm going to talk about High of Alive because the cover shot for today. I just got these in the mail today. So I've wanted for a while I went to order them as soon as they came out and they were sold out which happens a lot for some reason at hive live but this little standoff right here this is a two pound pack of hive live fondant so whatever you're fondant whatever you're feeding this you're supposed to cut a little circle out with your knife peel it back put the opening on the hole leave this side facing up because you want to be able to look in and see how much of it they've consumed. So this goes in, puffs it up, keeps it open, so your bees have

full access inside. Two pound pack, smaller hives, and they have the five pound pack for your larger colonies. So for those of you who use this last year, you know that the five pound packs were really good if you had a large colony, you want to make sure that it didn't run out or maybe your B yard is somewhere where you can't get back to check on them before spring and you're trying to put a load on here because let's be honest you can't stack these so if you have the two pound patch you just can't stack one on top of the other because how do they get through this one to get into this one they can't the other thing is so this thing works really well for that I was using smoothie straws and sticking them in to keep these

puffed up and we did have these clean 100% of the hive-lifelike fondant patties so these are what I'm using this year that's what I used last year is what I used the year before the year before I did it on maybe 10 of my hives and then when we noticed that they were doing so much better then I went ahead and now put these on almost all of my hives my long langstrot does not get them because they have enough honey on their own I haven't put anything on there the layens hives are not getting them some of my new resource hives are not getting them because they don't have feeder shims to accommodate them.

So I like having a feeder shim. I don't want to push this down on frames and those bees that did not have it made it. So it wasn't like not feeding killed them, but the ones that were fed definitely did markedly better. So it did provide a significant improvement for the bees. So put them on there. I do not recommend storing a bunch of these. This one just came of course today. and it's good until 8, 2026. So I have this winner and next winter to use them up. And we probably will.

Now the other thing is, if you've got feeders like the Apamate feeders, or you've got lice and hives, which have those hive top feeders that you can pull the inserts out so they have access just like a, for dry feed, right? You can cut these for the Apamase, I just cut these in half. and I leave it so the only opening is the seam from the cut and I put one in one side and one of the other and they cleaned them up complete there was nothing left in there but the plastic so that turned out to be a good move too and so I recommend those and now if they have these these things come in a pack of ten I think it was 20 bucks so two dollars a piece and I'll use them to see how they go this is my first year with them

they do have that little notch here in the bottom so when this sits on your board the bees actually pass through this little opening here and get up into the whole thing so we'll see how they go but I can tell just by looking at them the ones I saw online were blue and they showed up and they're this burgundy color so that's interesting function is the same so I think that's just about it and if you want to do something to make yourself feel good remember you can put out dry pollen substitute I recommend that if you do that you put it out on those paper egg cartons your bees can get their footing really easily there and gives you chance to see them I don't recommend leaving any pollen substitutes out overnight the heavy dew rain weather all that stuff will degrade your pollen sub so pull it in during the day put it out during peak flying hours so 10 to 2 11 to 2 stuff like that and see how that goes and I recommend that and remember that the lowest performing of the the three dry pollen subs which was ultra bee dry pollen sub drew the bees attention first

then you can pull a switcheroo on them and start to feed them 8b 23 so you can force them to eat the healthier stuff if you want to so i want to thank you for watching today please give your comments down below and again if you have a question for me to consider for a future episode please go to the way to be.org and fill out the form on the page marked the way to be have a as I think we can.