The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Beekeeping Q&A Episode 283 stable hives and stable honey extraction...

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

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So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, November the 22nd, and this is Backyard Beekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 283. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here. I'm sorry for those of you who were looking for me last Friday, but I was down in Austin, Texas at the annual Texas Beekeepers Association Conference. Fantastic time, lots of good stuff. I did post a video this past week. A few of the people that are interviewed down there. There were a lot of vendors and a lot of people down there that I already knew.

And I will be talking to those people at the North American Honeybee Expo in January. So that's why if you were a vendor down there and I passed you up, it's because I'm going to see you again sometime. So I hope if you haven't seen it, you'll go back and look at that. If you want to know what we're going to talk about today, please go down in the video description. and you'll see all the topics in order. And there are some links today that I think you're going to find valuable.

So please go down in the video description to find that out. There's also a link if you have a question right now while you're watching this and you need to interact with real people that can give you answers on the fly. Go to the Facebook page, the group titled The Way to Be Fellowship. And there you can get your questions answered. It's miserable outside, as I'm sure you saw in the opening sequences. it's raining. We had some pretty heavy winds come through, but it wasn't as bad as they forecast it to be. It was going to be in the 50 mile per hour range, but it didn't get to that point.

But today, right now, it's 38 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 3 degrees Celsius, 5 mile per hour winds pretty constant while it's raining. That's 8 kilometers per hour. 99% relative humidity. Since it's actually raining, it's probably closer to 100% relative. of humidity. The UV index, here's a good news. For those of you who like to go outside and tan, it's at zero. You will not need sunscreen today. So that's fantastic. And I even checked on the air quality because of all the fires that we've been having, East Coast, West Coast, all over the place. AirNow.gov is a good app for your phone. If you want to find out what the air quality is in your area. Right now, state of Pennsylvania, northwestern part of the state, the air quality is

fantastic, probably, because it's being scrubbed by rain. So that's good news. The fire is suppressed. Everything is great. We are good to go. If you want to know how to submit your own topic for a future consideration for a future Q&A, please go to the way to be.org and click on the page marked The Way to Be. And there's a form for you to fill out and you might make it. We might cover it one day. So we're going to kick it off today with a longtime viewer, frequent comments. which is Brad, let's see, Brad Goliphant, okay. And Brad, I believe is in New York, says, Question for you, found a new home for my hives for next year. Yet, the plot of land they're sitting on

is covered with asphalt. I'm not able to get ground anchors in the ground, nor use my ratchet straps to secure my hives. Any ideas on how to secure my hives? I understand I could put weights on top of the hives. It has still had hives tumble over during heavy storms here using weights. Not sure what to do. I have good ideas for that. And although it's unfortunate, I think, that you have to put your hives on asphalt, which people might also know as bitumen, if you're an engineer, civil engineering type. Anyway, you can actually drive anchors into asphalt, but since it's not yours, probably not a great idea. So what I was thinking about you look at hive stands and the way they're made.

A lot of the hive stands that I see have vertical legs, and then the hives sits straight over that. So those are borderline unstable to begin with because they haven't made a larger footprint to keep themselves more stable in a heavy wind event and things like that. Even with livestock, some people have their bees, although some people don't like the idea. I agree.

But some people have a lot of pasture lands, so their livestock bumps up against hives and things like that. There's one hive stand that just comes to mind right off the bat because it's already heavy to begin with. It's made out of metal. The legs are angled. And you run two-by-fours through them. They're the lison hive stands. They're fantastic for uneven ground. This is probably not what you're dealing with. Brad has even ground. But it's those angles, right? And they have a metal crossbar that's welded. So these things have an 1100 pound capacity.

I'm sure they're sold in a lot of places, but you can get yours if you want to at betterb.com. I get nothing for saying that. You can tell them I sent you and just pay the exact same price as everyone else. So you run two by fours through them so they go any length and they have holes in the feet, the metal feet, which looks like 10 pound plate. For those of you may not know what 10 pound plate is, that's quarter inch carbon steel. So a square foot of it weighs 10 pounds. 10 pound plate. So they have holes in it so you could actually drill them into things, you know, maybe put anchor bolts in if you're doing concrete and stuff like that,

but Brad's situation is different because he's going to set it on asphalt. Two things. Get the license stands. One, they're going to outlive you. Number two, you set them as low as you can. So on asphalt, the skunk threat is actually pretty low because skunks like to eat your bees when there's lots of grass around and when the ground is soft. We did this kind of fooling around with that by putting brick pavers in front of beehives where skunks were feeding to see if they chose to go to areas where there was grass instead of the pavers, and they do show a preference for that. But I'd like you to keep your entrance height at about 16 inches or a little better. So that 16 inch height is what we established years ago after lots of observation.

watching skunks feed. But the concern here is not skunks, it's wind, but I thought we'd kill all these birds with one stone. So with those legs and then the weight of a hive, now let's say it's a Langstroth hive and you're stacking everything up, you're going to strap that together. And because two by fours run through the lice and hives,

you have something to run your straps too. So keep it low, you have a heavy stand, angled out feet. Let's say for some reason that's not enough. Think about the prevailing wind direction where you are. So you don't want the broad side of a large hive like a long Langstroth or any other horizontal hive format. You don't want the broad side facing the prevailing winds because that just presents now more force for the wind, more surface area or sail area for the wind to act upon and potentially topple it over.

But I will say this, we have lots of hive stands in our apiary. So just so we can test them. The only ones that have fallen over are the B-smart Designs black plastic hive stands. And the reason is they have these straight side walls. They're also lightweight. They're recycled plastic. They last a very long time. They hold up to weed whacking and all this other stuff.

But you're going to want to secure those. Those need to be anchored down. They're just not heavy enough. So we also have iron tea posts that we drive in the ground for others. We even have some old well pipe that's driven in the ground more than three feet. Those are not going anywhere in a wind and they give you something to really tie down to. I'm only mentioning that because other people may be thinking about high winds but yet have the ability to make holes in the ground. Okay.

So now we're back on the pavement. And we've got the license stands, which I think are going to hold up to heavy winds. I'm talking 60 miles per hour plus. How do I know that? We have that here. It's happened. I've never had one of the license stands go. over. Obviously the stands that we're driving into the ground, they don't go anywhere.

They can hold up to all the wind so the key then is to make a system where you can strap your hive to those anchored posts and pipes and things that you've driven in the ground. So the secondary part, let's say you get plenty of advance warning, you know that cyclone bomb or whatever they're calling it is headed your way. Let's say you're going to get highway speeds, 70 mile an hour winds. Now you can go step further and you can put eye bolts in concrete blocks. Now that's probably the most extreme case but you know concrete blocks have hollow cells in them. You can pour those you set them on a trash bag, plastic trash bag, set your concrete blocks up, mix up a bunch of

Portland cement and you pour it in there and you have anchor bolts sticking up. So you can do that with an eye bolt and put a nut on it and then have flanges in there. You can also have instead of a flange you can have just a big washer and once that iBolt goes in the concrete sets you have a really good tie down plus you have a way to lift and transport the blocks because they're going to be heavy so i would set those in the middle and run those up and run your straps over your hive and down to those concrete blocks they're heavy they're not going anywhere another thing you can do is use straps and run them to sandbags now sandbags let you fill them up and dump them out when they get wet, they're heavier.

So there are lots of options, but the angle of the legs. So if you're going to build them yourself, build a hive stand yourself. Don't use wooden screws would be my recommendation. I would definitely use bolts, right? So you can drill holes, 3 eighths inch diameter bolts, run them through all your 2x4 struts and everything else, that way you can cinch them up and bolt them up. And the shear load, the sheer capability of those,

which means the bolt length, the shear is acting on it, this way instead of tensile load, which would be pulling it apart. They're going to be more than enough to handle all the weight from your beehive. Now, why am I telling you that? Because back in the day, right around 2007, 2008, I just took two by fours and ran four inch wood screws into them that were supposed to be really, really good. And eventually, the wood screws just tore out of the wood. And, you know, because they had three hives on one rack, the whole rack fell down. So that was not a good way to go.

So lag bolts, if you're putting together your wood or actually bolts with nuts and flanges and definitely that lets you cinch them up later if they loosen up. And the good news about using bolts and nuts and washers is that if you ever have to take your stuff apart and put it into storage or transport it, now you can unbolt everything. And away you go. So those are my recommendations. And if anybody else has better ideas or some other way to help Brad along worried about the windstorms and stuff that are ahead. Those are the things that come to mind for me.

Keep in mind that going into fall, our hives should hopefully weigh over 100 pounds when we're talking about the brood bogs and the honey that you've saved in a super medium super. Those are pretty darn heavy to begin with that adds a lot to the static load and the mass when you're facing the wind like that. So that's pretty decent. Moving on to question number two comes from Aaron Miller. Do you have a photo of your extractor on the base you built? I'm looking to do this myself, but it's a Hilco 18 frame. I don't know if that's too big.

So this is the kind of thing that the extractor base that I built while I'm talking right now, hopefully I didn't forget to do it. I hope you're watching a short video of it. So what you should be seeing if I did this right is you've got the wooden frame that I built and they're all screwed, clamped and glued together. from underneath. So if you don't see the screws and bolts going into this thing, it's because it's underneath. Also my frame that supports my extractor. In this case it's an eight frame extractor. Yeah. So what that does is it's on industrial

wheels. So when you're looking up your wheels, look up the weight capacity of those. And whatever you think the max weight you're going to use get the next size up. Some of those big wheels, by the way, can run $35, $40, $45, $45. each. Good news is not only does it take the load off your extractor legs because it absorbs this lateral movement when you have an unbalanced load. I actually spoke with Hilko about this, the owner, and they don't have any plans to build a rack like that with wheels on it. He also reminded me that all of their extractors are balanced when they come from the factory. That's true of almost every extractor you're going to buy. It's when we put in these half.

full frames partially full frames and we have a full frame of honey all on different sides we get some some dynamic load going there and by having it on rollers it absorbs that and off it goes so it takes some of the structural stress off the support system for your extractor and you're just going to have to calculate how much is that going to weigh how much weight how much honey is going to be in that extractor the extractor that are used in that video you're supposed to leave the honey gate open all the time there's reasons for the that. One of the reasons you want to leave your honey gate open so it's actively draining while

you're extracting is because we don't want too much honey to build up in there. You might think, well it can handle the load and you might think that let the honey come right up until it interacts with the basket and slows it down that way. Bad idea because often there's a bearing down there. We don't want the honey to interact with the bearing of the bearing grease. The bearing grease should be food-grade silicone. So there are reasons why you don't want to let it build up and you want your honey to drain out. So also putting it on a frame and a support system like that, it makes room for in my case seven pounds or seven gallons, sorry, seven-gallon size buckets, food-grade buckets that it drains into. So there's a lot of benefits. And the other thing is the extraction space

that I use is not always being used for extraction. So being able to wheel that thing around on that stand is a huge advantage. And because sometimes we want to take it outside and we want to wash it out and dry it and things like that too. So again, just wheel it right out. You'll notice that the legs on extractors have holes already in them. So why not just put the wheel directly on each individual leg?

And they usually have three legs, which is good news. That adapts to uneven ground. The reason I don't like that is because we want to stabilize the legs. If you grab those things and if you can bend legs a little bit yourself you want to put a base that has struts on it that has a firm position for your legs to bolt to and I bolt the legs so that's what I do hopefully you saw the video that's the kind of thing I make you just it's very

basic it's just a triangle with struts and bolts and accommodates the bucket and it is bolted to the legs so I don't take it off and in my case I use red oak you can use whatever you want I just happen to have that around and so that's it very simple triangle question number three this comes from sort of a beekeeper and it says thanks for the information I have used hive alive for a few years now and it's a great product I do have a question about it when bees are fed sugar water they store it for later how about the hive alive fondant do they just consume it through the winter or while they store it as well as eating it. The reason I ask is normally I run single

deeps through the winter with a feeder shim and hive alive a few hives were light on honey so I left a super on but they're not full supers. So I will have to add fondant patty at some point. I just didn't want them storing the hive alive super so now I'm concerned with leaving a super on. I have a dilemma. Well here's the good news. First of all my instinct was fondant, you know, the way it is, the bees are using it as an emergency resource. They tend not to store it in the cells, but I reached out to the people that make high-valive fondant. So if you're one of the people, one of two people left that has never heard of it, because every beekeeper I know now in my area uses it. This is high-life fondant. That's what a

fondant pack looks like. And when you put it on, I reached out to the company. So I sent them an email and I asked him if they had any reports or any evidence that the bees would take this and transfer the resources from a fondant pack and maybe not just his fondant but any fondant and would they store it and the answer is no there's no evidence of that one I'm sure that if I were setting up a test for that to find out if they would do it for so for those of you who want to do backyard testing maybe have homeschool people I've run into a lot of people that have homeschool so what a great opportunity for in-house science. Get a fondant pack, food color it. See if the bees are putting that in your honey

supers, but I tend to agree with the people that made it because it also follows what I was thinking, and that's that they won't move it into that. In the wintertime, they're just consuming it. So that should fix that. Your hive-alive fondant will not be stored in your frames like honey. so if you've got a superon that you plan to extract and use later, you don't have to worry about that. According to the people that made it. So question number four comes from, hey, U, N5X. Bee water.

Bees need water all the time for everything. It says, I no longer use a shallow water dish. I use a deep bucket or a barrel. With the top cut out, and I take a plant out of the aquarium called water lettuce. I place it in the barrel. The water lettuce soon spreads over the water and gets thick, so you will have to pull some out from time to time, but the bees seem to enjoy crawling around the plants and collecting water. So this is an interesting thing. I'm really glad that this was sent to me, because often, you know, I don't think about things like this, and these are good tips. I have a shout-out

associated with this today. Because I have a natural earth pond nearby that I had dug more than 20 years ago. It's 14 feet deep. I have all kinds of aquatic plants. We have moss, algae, everything that's around that the bees tend to love so they're automatically going to it. But if you're setting up your own and you're in an area that may not have a water resource like that, you might just have drainage ditches and things going on. So setting up something with aquatic plant lights that your bees can on and feed through. I think he's a fantastic idea so I check some things out today. And what did I do? I found three and there's some things I want you to think about though. So don't just jump online and start buying a bunch of floating aquatic plants for your aquarium

and then tossing them out in your ponds because we don't want invasive plant life in our fresh waterways and you might think well my pond is isolated so what's it matter? or it's not connected to a creek, it doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, but we have to watch out for things like waterfowl that will land on your pond, swim around, maybe even eat it, and then fly away to another pond, and it's stuck on their webbed feet and stuff and their feathers, and even in their waste material.

And next thing you know, we're spreading a potentially invasive species. So some of the things I like to think about, so here in the northeastern United States, if I didn't mention them in the state of Pennsylvania, Agriculture Zone 4. And I've even looked at this at our garden center in the past. They always have water features. They've got water plants.

Hyacinth, they've got all kinds of stuff. And it always says summer only on it, which actually, in my opinion, is very good news. Because if we're going to put water plants in our barrels or whatever as described here, if we're going to put it in a little pond or you've got some kind of garden, pond or something like that. I want those to die out over winter and that's because I don't want them spread around. I don't want it to become an invasive plant. We have enough invasive water plants as it is. The other thing is be very careful about where you source your plants that you're going to float on your

water. You could be collecting things even from fish stores. Get a fish store that's got really a really good reputation for not transferring things like snares nails with it. We don't want to introduce other aquatic species also into our natural waterways. So really do your homework on that. But I have three plants that I liked based on just the short research that you did. One is water lettuce. Okay, good news. There is water hyacinth, which I already mentioned, and our garden center carries that. And there's something called Amazon Frog Bit. Now that's not something you buy on Amazon. It's from the Amazon. So it's called Amazon Frogbit. And they're consider tropical plants, they die when exposed to freezing temperatures, and they should be treated as annual, so I'm perfectly fine with that.

So I think that's a good idea. The other thing that you can drop in that barrel, you know, if you get one of those big plastic barrels, here where I live, we have the Welch's factory, so they, you know, make Welch's juice. And they actually have a problem getting rid of their 55-gallon barrels, which are food-grade barrels, and they go for about 50 cents a piece. So if you look up something and it's called a water barrel get ready to spend a lot of money However if you live anywhere near a food processing center You can probably get a hold of one of their food grade barrels let the manager know That you want those and you'll wash them out and you'll keep them clean and you'll take them with you and that'll save them from shipping them off to a recyclary somewhere So you can cut those down and 50 cents for maybe even free

So those are great. Those are the three plants I chose, but here's my shout-up. If you want to get into it, you want to know more about aquatic plants. I found a website. It's not a YouTube channel, though, so I can't do that. It's called Angie the Freckled Rose.com. So best floating plants for freshwater, ponds, and aquariums. I was just doing a search on different aquatic plants that were good. And of course, she's not a beekeeper. She's just, you know, an enthrum. enthusiast with aquatic plants. So it would be a good site to read and if you want to sign up for her email lists and things like that

Tell her that I sent you. She'll be totally surprised. She's never heard of me And but that's where you can read up on the different Plants that you see because one of the things I want you to look at is look at the load bearing capability of the leaves on the surface Some of these plants have really long root systems on them and that's fine too another thing you might end up doing in this barrel that you set up is get a couple feeder goldfish and drop those in there. Why would you do that? Well, we don't want to also culture mosquitoes. So if you could put a few feeder fish in there, and feeder fish, it makes you feel good. You know why? They're sold as feeder fish. And that means they're usually 10 or 20 cents a piece, they're tiny goldfish, and they're giving them to people

that have things like Oscars that eat other fish or lionfish and things like that. So if you buy them, you're saving them and then you're putting them in your bucket so that they can eat mosquito larvae. Win, win, win for the fish. The dilemma comes along when the year ends and things turn cold and now you've got goldfish. Goldfish can handle really cold water. So again, I have to be responsible and tell you don't you take those goldfish and chuck them out in the local lake because they're now an invasive species too. They're just carp.

Don't put goldfish in local lakes. enough of that. So when I go and visit angie the freckled rose.com and look at all the different plant varieties and see which ones can support the weight of many bees that are trying to drink. I like that idea. I think it's just really cool. It'll look good. You'll keep your bees away from your neighbors swimming pool and you'll look like you care like you're green. Some of those things even flower. Those are pretty cool looking. So maybe make a really cool water feature for your bees. So I really do like that question. I also like the idea that they die out when cold weather, which is happening right now, comes your way. Question number five.

Roo is now, 5989. That's a YouTube channel name. What about wheels or skids on the horizontal hives like chicken tractors? The Heroes to Hives program here only offers online classes and is four hours away, no mentoring. Okay, so listen to that. Heroes to Hives. If you look down in the comment section of my videos going back years, I always promote Hives to Heroes.

These are just flip names and they're often confused. So Hives for Heroes actually hooks you up with a local mentor if you want one. So if you're looking to support an organization, that's one. If you're a veteran looking to kind of break things up a little bit, get out of your head some, and get engaged with bees and beekeeping, check it out, join Hives for Heroes, and see if there isn't a mentor available in your area, and see if they can't help you get some traction with your understanding of beekeeping. And there's no official coursework that I know of,

but they certainly can do as much or as little as any veteran feels like they need when they're trying to get started with beekeeping. So please find that link down to the video description or just Google search, Hives for Heroes, and you'll find out that you might have a mentor in your area. Now, the flip side of that, if you're listening to this and you're a competent beekeeper and you've been doing this a long time, and you can actually put up with people, then please try to register and let them know what you're also willing to do. It's not like you got to get in there and donate all your hive equipment and support a bunch of people

and end up with 10 mentees and things like that. Because me personally, I have my maximum number of mentees already. But once you log in and let them know what your skills are, what you're willing to do, what you're willing to offer, then you can fill a niche for somebody like this who's looking for a mentor just to get started. A lot of people, remember when you were just getting started, if someone could show you the ropes, if they can take a class, I think that's really important. You also, if you're thinking about,

because this is a time of year when people sit down and get quiet and Thanksgiving's coming and there's kind of a slow period here, it's a great time to learn to take classes and to find out if there are local beginner beekeeping courses. Bekeeping courses that are set up in your area. So you check in with your county library system. You reach out to your agricultural extension office. A lot of those have education.

programs that are already built into your agricultural department. So you can find out what's going on course-wise and beginner beekeeping class-wise and maybe go and take one of those. But I do understand that some people don't like to go to those because there's likely to be people there. So that's where something like Hives for Heroes, you can reach out and get a one-on-one with somebody. And then you're not overly stimulated by having just too much going on,

too many people, lots of yelling and 50-50s and stuff like that, so you can quiet down and just find out what it is, what the path is that you want to take with beekeeping. And then maybe you can shadow somebody, visit some local apiaries. This is hard to get going, and that's why an organization like that gives you a starting point. And there's no commitment. You don't have to do it. So the other part is about putting your hives on something like a chicken tractor. If you want to see what a chicken tractor is, you're sitting there scratching your head. What the heck is a chicken tractor? If you go to my YouTube page, which is Frederick Dunn, F-R-E-D-E-R-I-C-K, done,

and you go up in the little search panel there. So a little magnifying glass up there and just type in chicken tractor. I show you all the features of a chicken tractor. What it is, it's clearly for chickens. Here where I live, it's not for keeping your chickens year. it's just for summertime or for breeding chickens and things like that and it has wheels sticking out at one end and so you grab it at the other end like a wheelbarrel and you lift it up the wheels engage the ground and off you go so now the thing is though

and this was my response already because I didn't know if this person needed to know right away or if they could wait I said I personally don't you know I don't like the idea of moving your beehives around on wheels you know so my question is why do we need to move them at all? So maybe if you live in an area where the winter gets so bad that you have to move your hives into a building or something like that, this has not worked great for the people that I know of that move their hives in and out of buildings.

Now, let me clear that up a little bit. If you can put your hives inside, you know, you bought property or something, maybe it's an old farm and you've got barns and outbuildings that aren't being used. and they happen to be set up pretty darn well to handle prevailing winds, and they have a broad south-facing wall in the northern part of the United States where we want that southern wall warmth in the wintertime. You can keep your hives inside all the time

and just have their entrances going through the wall. Why do I say that? Because that's actually my future plan, is to have, of course, I'll still have hives outside. But if I'm worried about it, if I were in an area where the, weather was going to get so bad that my bees can't handle, my hives can't handle being outside, I would probably build some kind of structure around them. There is something called A-Z hives, and I frequently get asked about that. I'm personally not a huge fan of those. And the reason being that when I look at them, there's 10 hives on the bottom row. There's 10 hives in the middle

row. There's 10 hives on the top, and these hives are all shoulder to shoulder with one another. I do understand that that's because they live in an area, these beekeepers where that came from, where there's heavy wind and weather and long winters and things like that, and it also provides a space for the beekeeper to get in out of the weather and work with the hives. If that doesn't sound awesome, the idea of being in a building that's warmed by 30 beehives, right? That would be a cool place to be. and you've got utility sinks behind you a workbench behind you you can repair equipment and guess what inside of space what kind of preservation do you have to do to those beehives how about none because the

preservation system is the structure itself so i actually do like that idea i don't like the idea of a hive stand that already has wheels on it that's ready to roll because i don't think that's necessary But with, you know, horizontal hives can be big and heavy. And I understand why when it comes to movement, if you're working by yourself, you're going to need some kind of system that can lift and roll and move. And that's where I'm thinking this comes from, the idea that you need wheels so that you can work it by yourself. But there again, I go back to, why are we moving it? Horizontal hives also would work very well inside a structure. So that's what I'm thinking of for my future.

you know because one day i'm going to be you know old and frail and only want to sit inside and you can bet my system is going to have my building for the bees is going to have a cappuccino machine in there it's going to have really comfortable chairs and it's going to have south facing windows and i'm going to sit out there on a 38 degree day when the sun comes up it'll actually be 58 or 60 inside that building your emotional health and well-being will be incredibly boosted by such a space so i hope that you're thinking about that and just think I get all of this out of someone asking about wheels or skids on horizontal hives like chicken tractors. So I hope you watch my chicken tractor video, by the way. It's old. That doesn't mean the information isn't good. It is. It's way above average information.

Look at all my chicken stuff. If you're thinking about chickens, by the way, while we're talking about that, I have a three-hour YouTube video that takes you through everything that you need to know about taking care of chickens from egg to adult. Broody hens, incubators, buying your chicks, all that is covered. You go to my same YouTube channel that you're watching right now. Question number six. Okay, here we go. This was a really long one from James Ruin.

Is this the second one from that? No, that's somebody different. Okay. So they absolutely concur with you on beekeepers, making unwanted beekeepers and your encouragement to have your audience plant pollinator plants. Okay, because that was the thing that I said that I don't think we need to, there seems to be a goal, whether you're in a bee club or not, to make more beekeepers. In other words, I want you to be successful as a beekeeper.

I want you to get started. Here's where you get your stuff. I want you to have bees. I want everybody around me to have bees. My thinking on that is not everyone should keep bees, so I just want to reiterate that. some people you can tell when you're talking with them that they're not going to engage fully, that they're not going to completely understand, that they're not going to take responsibility for their bees. We've probably all known the beekeeper who got bees, got a package, got a hive, put it in their yard,

and never touched it again. And then later contacted you because they all died. They don't know why. And I'm not saying that that's guaranteed that that's the path, that that's what will happen. But if someone's not going to be a meaningful beekeeper and be alert and aware, and understand what's going on with their bees. And maybe they should just plant a pollinator garden. So we're gonna move on. Says here regarding the pollinator garden, some plants, I'd like to go further

and ask the seed companies to lower their prices. Now this person is not in the United States because all the prices that are listed here are in pounds. So instead I'm gonna skip over all of that. I wanna talk to you wherever you are about how to save money on seeds for flowers that are gonna be good for all pollinators, not just the honeypeas.

So here in the United States is a really good book called Top 100 Pollinator Plants, and it's by the Xerxes Society. And I hope that you get that book. It's really good at helping you pick things out, but there's power in numbers, and by that I mean, if you belong to a bee association, which I do, you could, if you look at the seed packets, it is a little nutty when you see what the prices are for seeds.

You can buy 100 seeds for like $10 or something. That's a pile of money. for just 100 seeds. So it leads me to believe that there's a lot of money in cleaning and selling seeds. So I always send people there are two primary places that I send people to for their seeds. So I'll name those now, Ernst Seeds, E-R-N-S-T. So if you Google them and you go to Ernst Seas, you're going to find a whole bunch of native seeds there. You're also going to find out that some of the quantities that they sell them in aren't very practical. because they're geared towards big growers, right?

But if you've got a group of people, and you can buy five pounds of clover seed, right? You don't need five pounds, I don't need five pounds, but when you break it all down and we each get six ounces, which, by the way, is a lot of seed, then we can save a pile of money. It drives the price way down. The other thing is this time of year,

a lot of seed companies are clearing their inventory. They're reducing it, so they're offering sales. I can't remember the name of the seed company, but I just got a notice through email, everything with all seeds were 25% off. So doesn't that make you mad if you bought them in August, thinking your stockpiling your seeds, as I do for the next season? So now everything's going on sale. That's the time to get them.

Always read reviews and see what the percentage is of germination for these seeds. So that's one of the top things that people write about. Also, I find out when I'm reading reviews, that some people have almost no idea that they actually got seeds. One person wrote a whole dossier on the fact that they only got dust and no seeds. And it was for moss. The seeds for moss look like dust. So they actually had the seeds and threw them away and gave this company a one-star review.

If you think you got dust, plant that stuff and water it and see what happens. So anyway, group purchase. Get a bunch of people together, buy your seeds by the pound, split them up in Ziploc baggies. And this is where bee clubs, bee organizations and stuff can really work things out. Have everybody pay ahead of time. We already know what the prices are going to be. Everybody that wants to sign up for this and everybody contributes $3. And we're going to give you a percentage of these seed bags that we're going to get.

So things that you have to plant every year. Sunflowers, we all plant sunflowers every year for our bees. year for our bees. Cosmos is another one that I buy every single year. I'm going to be planning more borage, although I'm told that Borage does a very good job of self-seating. I don't trust that. I don't want to be let down. I don't want to be without Borage next year. So I bought packets of Borage are already. And the sources are, of course, Amazon is the third one. So Ernst's Eden Brothers and Amazon. And the good news about Amazon is probably I want to talk about them a little bit. I don't trust Amazon for everything.

I was recently asked to look at a book and somebody wanted me to interview them about their book. And when I got to Amazon and I looked at this book that I won't name, but it was a five-star reviews across the board for a book that was just published. And this doesn't have anything to do at a time with any of the books I'm going to mention today. So I'm not even going to mention the book or the author.

I just want to teach you how to look at Amazon reviews. So when I saw those glowing reviews, I click on the reviewer. Because the way that's set up, you can see what other stuff these people review. Are they all five-star reviews from these people always? Or do they give some ones and twos? Are they critical in their thinking? And what I found was a lot of these reviews only had one or two items in their entire history on Amazon of writing a review.

When I see that, I think, ah, that must be the friend of whoever's trying to sell, whatever they're trying to sell. And then I don't trust the reviews anymore. Now, if I see a really good review, maybe it's a name that you and I recognize, somebody that actually knows the area. And then you click on their name, and you'll see 400 reviews have been written by this person, and that this person belongs to different groups and things like that. Or maybe designated as an area expert. it away with their classifying their reviewers by, you know, top 1,000 reviewer, top 10,000 reviewer, top 500 reviewer. Because what was happening was that they were forming organizations

that were each giving each other a thumbs up on each other's reviews and pushing each other to the top so they could become Amazon's top reviewer. Now that that's all gone, that incentive is gone. But there's still monkey business going on. So the reason I say that, when you're you're looking at seeds the same thing, although it rarely happens. It's usually when it's a seed company that's new that pops up and, you know, they put out some seeds. There's one review and it's a five-star review and there's no write-up. Don't trust that for a second unless you just want to toss some money and you want to be the person to check it out and the one that validates it.

So the way the review system works is these seed companies, they rise to the top. There are seeds out there, 600, 700, $700,000. know 4.5 out of five star reviews that looks pretty darn good to me so look them over and very easy on Amazon to work that out but I just wanted you to understand that don't take it for face value don't just look at the stars and think that's a great product always take a moment to look at the reviews and see who's reviewing it and do some spot checking see what's going on so those are I think that's all I have to say about that and how to get plants that we're not going to be able to contact growers and sellers and say, hey, man, drop those prices or we're not buying your stuff.

Do you know why their prices are that high? Because people are buying their stuff at those prices. The things that make me, you know, just drive me nuts as I look at the price of corn on, you know, the seeds. A seed pack, like 50 kernels of corn in there for $6. What is that about? And they give them really cool names like, you know, bread and butter, you know, corn, whatever. Okay, that's enough of that. Question six, we're done. And now, oh, this is the fluff.

So that was the last part of today's Q&A. Now we're just in the fluff section. So we're talking about, and there's lots of scuttlebutt going on. I was talking with my wife about presentations that I give and places that I go. I was very impressed by Texas, and I want to thank them, of course, for hosting me there. and there's a lot of stress associated with the fact that people might be driving for hours just to hear what you have to say. So I try to make that worth their while. So the other thing is you may already know if you've never heard of it. The North American Honeybee Expo is going to be in Louisville,

Kentucky in January. I'm going to be there. I'm a presenter there. There are a bunch of presenters. So this is an area where there's something for everyone. The other thing is, people seem surprised they don't know where I'm going to show up so I am starting a page on my website which is the way to be dot org and it will just be titled presentations and if you want to see where I'm going to be what organization I'm going to be with because there are a lot of people thank goodness that are inviting me to come and talk about bees and the best part of that whole thing is hanging out and visiting with people and getting to know new people One of the best things that could ever happen for me personally.

You walk into a lecture hall and you ask those people in the audience. You know, how many of you have heard of me before or how many of you have seen me before or watch a YouTube? When I went down to Texas, the fun part of that was three quarters of that room put their hands up. They had never heard of me and never watched my videos or anything. In fact, I think a lot of those people don't watch any YouTube's. And so that was a lot of fun because that was a blank slate. They had no idea what to expect for me. So that made it really special.

And I don't know if you've ever done this, but I got up on stage and do you know those people laughed at me? They laughed at me. So, I mean, I was actually telling jokes. So that was a good thing. So I don't know if you've ever been laughed at on stage. But if you were trying to be funny, it's kind of a good thing. And the other thing is when a speaker comes to a place, like if you, like we have our Northwest Pennsylvania Beekeepers Association,

you know what I don't like is when the speaker gives a talk and then while we're doing club business or something, that speaker scoots out the back door and doesn't stick around to visit with anybody. So one of the things I really like, and this is why the North American Honeybee Expo is fantastic, it lasts for days. you're wandering around and you get to meet people and talk to people and you start seeing the same people over and over people have a chance to talk with you and to you get to learn about what they appreciate

and in some cases some very rare cases what they don't appreciate so maybe you could occupy then the largest room in the world which is the room for improvement so always listen i do you know to people and see what they have to say but uh texasas was not what I liked. None of those people talked like Yosemite Sam. Like they were, there weren't any accents for a lot of the people at that state organization. The other thing is, very humbling. If you're talking to somebody they have 20,000 beehives, that's real. 20,000 beehives. You are, well, you know, I have 40, so I'm sure they wanted to hear from me, right? So that's enough of that fluff, but I do like in-person presentations.

I do not like to zoom. So I get it. If you're way far away, zooming might be the only thing, but the personal interaction you get, once the presentation is over, is extremely valuable to me, and I hope also valuable to the people

that are attending the conference. You don't want your presenter to just throw a bunch of information out. Oh, time's up, and run to the private room where they have special coffee just for them. I'm not saying that a private room like that exists. It was in the Honey in the Hills, West Virginia Beekeepers Conference. They had what they called a decompression room where all the presenters could go and just be in there.

Guess who was in there? Nobody. All right, moving on. Flow Hive is going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo for the first time. So if you don't like that hive, don't go and yell at those people. is going to be their premiere all the usual stuff go to the north american honeybee expo look at the vendor list it is ridiculous here's what i don't like about it i have no chance of getting to see and even talk to half of the vendors that are going to be there and i know i'm going to miss something that i want to see that i want to learn more about that's why i go you know truth be told camman reynolds invites me and

that's fantastic and i go year after year i'm super thankful to be on the list of presenters is such a big gathering of beekeepers? But I'm scooting all the time. I just want to learn and see all the new stuff. And there are things that are brand new coming out. I've seen, I do pay attention to the comments that people are making about the Honeybee Expo. I also see the people that think it's expensive that can't afford tickets, maybe can't travel.

So here's the other thing I always do. Of course, you get then just my lens, right? So if you watch my North American Honeybee Expo video, you're going to see the people I speak with. You're going to hear the questions I ask them. I grill people pretty good. I'm friendly about it. But I have a pile of questions, and the only way I can get these answered is to talk to the people that are the innovators, the people that are actually producing these products.

So I have a whole list of things I have to know about. Good news for you, if you don't go, or if you're one of those people that doesn't like people, you don't want to be in a big crowd, then I'll get you in close to all of those things. So if you're not a subscriber, you don't want to miss that stuff. You probably want to subscribe to me like right this minute. And then, of course, click the little alert bell that lets you know when things are happening when a new video posts. So the other thing is the premiere guys.

They were there last time. If you weren't there, they had a huge display. All of the presenters got, you know, Beehive boxes. and stuff. But Premiere, let me know that they have a discount. So Premiere, they're the ones that did the propylase. They have that propolis interior surface. My bees are propolizing those. I'm withholding, making my video until I've had those in-service occupied by bees for over a year. So you'll be seeing my results because I didn't get mine until the beginning of this year. So the beginning of 2025 is when you're going to see inside the hive results from me.

I don't like, hey, look what I just got. Let me make a video about it and tell you what I think it's going to do. I'd rather show you what it has done, how well it worked. But they have a discount called Fred 10. A lot of companies have this, so all caps, F-R-E-D and the number 10. So that gets you 10% off all their stuff. What does Fred get for that discount? Nothing.

Zero. So it's just a discount. Hive Alive, if you're buying the fondant packs, of the hive live syrup and stuff like that. Also, Fred, 10, just the same. You get 10% off. I think you have to go to these companies' sites to get that discount,

because I do know they sell through other resellers. I think if you go to the resellers, you probably can't get the discount, but you could ask for it. Doesn't hurt. Never hurts to ask. And then Hive Butler, Fred, five. Once again, I get nothing from them for that 5% off.

So hive-bubber great Christmas present. You can get a hive-bubler toad, put all your other bee-related presents in for your favorite beekeeper in the tote, and then it keeps them all in one spot, and then you give it to your people. So, other thing, plan of the week here for those of you who are in the northern United States, remember that where you live might be different. So check with your local beekeepers and see what's going on. Entrance cleaners, ready to go. These are entrance cleaners.

Those that went to the North American Honey Bee Expo last year got these at the door. These are made by B-smart designs. They're dirt cheap, four or five bucks, whatever they are. They don't break or anything. You can scrape stuff out with them. You hand them to your grandchildren and you send them out there in the wintertime with a veil

and they scoop out the entrances and they clear out dead bees. It's a great activity for the kids. Gets them outside. Maybe Thanksgiving, they're underfoot. You need to send them out and make them clean stuff with ease. in these with this end and that end and you can measure spaghetti with that if you're if you're a very small eater so anyway clean hive entrances have something to do it you can also use chopsticks i have these kebab sticks that i just notice sitting up here and you stick those for the hole

and you bring them together and you drag out your bees right do it often it doesn't hurt that way your bees can make cleansing flights they don't get stuck What else? The northeastern, oh yeah, your brood is getting to the smallest size brood here in the northeastern United States and it will be for most of the year. So, what's that mean? If you're one of the people that treats your bees, treats for mites, and I hope you do and I hope you are. When the brood is at its smallest, like right now, you have a chance to knock out the dispersal phase mites that are in there. So while they're exposed, let them have it with exhalic acid vaporization.

Some people use dribble. Vaporization is my personal choice. It's quick, goes everywhere, gets on all of them, kills mites. Clean your bottom boards, pull out your trays, clean those out. One of the things that was at the Texas Expo that I hadn't seen before, they were inserts like sticky boards for bottom boards. These sticky boards had a screen on top of them. And the screen was on the top so that, because if you have a solid bottom board,

you don't have the opportunity to put a sticky board down there. But I see some challenges with it, but I'm just going to tell you that this thing exists. It is the same kind of removable board that you would put, you know, Vaseline or something on so the veromites would stick to it. But in this case, it has a screen that sits on top so your honeybeats don't stick to it. if you put it on top of, you know, slide it into your solid bottom board, but you'd have to remove your entrance reducers to do that. So I wasn't completely sold on it, but it was an interesting thing.

I also wondered if the bees wouldn't step between the screen and get their little feet stuck on it. I was told by the seller that they don't. Company B, Company B-E, is the group that was selling that. So, and that's one of the guys that I interviewed there because I don't think he's going to be at North American Honeybee Expo. So clean out if you've got removable trays, and I hope you do. Screens, removable trays, great passive control for Roe Distractor Mites. Frequently, you know, pull those out, clean them out, have double sets of trays.

So you're bringing a clean one out, pull the dirty one, put the clean one in, close it up, one visit, one stop. Then you can take those trays and I hope they're marked for the hive that they came from. Get inside, turn on all your lights, put your magnifying glasses on, and get through it. Look at all the detritus in there and see how many mice you see just passively collected in the trays. It's pretty cool stuff. We also in this way will be removing moisture from your hives, right? If they're not already doing this, if you have solid bottom boards, please tip your hive towards the entrance slightly. It just shouldn't be level and it shouldn't be

tipped backwards into the hive. We're trying to avoid the condensation that forms on the inside of your hive on the interior side walls on warm-up days. When it drips down the side walls, it can pool inside your hive and then you get mold and stuff like that. If you tip it lightly towards the entrance, then any water buildup in there will run out to the front. So that's the next thing. Don't forget to keep a log. Please write down your stuff. You might be bringing your cell phone with you.

You can set up your cell phone for voice activation. You can have a digital voice recorder. This is another thing that would be fantastic as a gift for a beekeeper. One of those little pocket digital voice activated things. They work really well and they don't cost very much. So you can keep track of all the things. you're doing because you're going out there in wintertime you're probably have gloves and everything on your dressing warm you can talk to your digital voice

recorder and then once you get inside nice and warm by the fire with your hot chocolate or whatever it is you drink your chai tea tai chi one of the guys do he does kung fu and I always ask him how his chai tea was and it gets very offended by that I know it's actually kung fu but I like to make fun of anyway moving on when you're inside it's warm then you just transfer information from your log and you make you document stuff you write things down your cell phone is great because you take pictures of stuff go out there at sunrise right now in the cold see what kind of discharge and what they're discarding from the hives and see what kind of drones are being pulled

and things like that very common to see it don't have to worry about it but it lets you know which hives are actively cleaning out their larvae and stuff like that so that's it new book for reference oh yeah yeah yeah have two books that were in the cover shot today this one now this was fun okay this is b vocabulary right the book is called bcabular essential and it's by andrew connor the funny part was uh wikwaz press which uh you will see again at the north american honeybee expo um i walked up to that stand and of course i asked the usual questions what's your best-selling book what's everybody looking at? What are we interested in?

But I recently had been talking to the owner of Blue Sky Bee Supply, and she was recommending this book, and I thought, yeah, that seems logical. You want to have the vocabulary. You want to understand everything about bees, and then if you've been around bees for a long time, you probably think, I know all the words, I know what bee toes are called.

I know what the suction cup on the bottom of a bee's foot is called, right? I know all these things. Now you don't. You don't know those things. So here's the deal. Essentials. This vocabulary book is full of really good pictures and stuff.

And so I was talking to the guy at Wickwas Press not knowing he's the author of the book. So Andrew Connor is the author of this book. So it was fantastic to meet him because he wasn't even looking at me. He acted like he didn't care if I talked to him or not.

And I was shocked to find out he actually knew who I was and he didn't hate me. So he was more than happy to talk about his book, which I purchased with my hard-earned money. And this is a great book. If I were teaching a class, and I haven't done that yet, it doesn't mean I won't in the future because I'm thinking about it. If I taught beginner beekeeping or intermediate beekeeping or beekeeping on any level, If my students did not have this book already, we would write this into the curriculum and make sure they each get a copy. Knowledge is power. Words are only good if you know which words to use to describe what you're seeing.

How many times have you looked at something at a beehive or heard somebody say something about bees, and these are turns that you absolutely had no idea about. Get rid of that roadblock to understanding what they're talking about, and get Becabular Essentials by Andrew Connor forward by Dewey M. Karen. So this is a book that every beekeeper should have on their shelf. Another one that I put on here, which was really interesting too. Another person that had no idea who I am or anything, Tara Don Chapman. And this book is called For the Bees, a handbook for Happy Beekeeping.

happy beekeeping sounds like a good combination. We don't want unhappy or grouchy beekeeping. But another thing is this is a book. If you've got somebody brand new who's loading you up with questions and you like to send them to learn a little bit more, often when you take a beekeeping class, they hand you out a handout a book on beginner beekeeping and it covers everything from A to Z with Beets. This is that book. So why am I mentioning to you? Because it's only been out for two weeks. And I got to talk with the author and I was impressed. So it has everything in it that a beginning beekeeper should know. Does it replace the beginning beekeeper instructor? No, because just like any other textbook, you want to get information,

and then you should have a beekeeper friend or leader or instructor that can expand on that information and apply it to your neck of the woods where you plan to keep bees. Talk about what we're going to do here. Challenges you may face where you live. So that's two books. that should be on your Christmas shopping list for beekeepers. For the Beasts, Terry Chapman, that's only been out for two weeks, so you probably heard it here first. There's that. And all I want you to write in the comments section today,

if you have the time, if you can take a minute, please write down to the comment section, what book you found to be most helpful in your beginning beekeeping? Or a book that you find yourself frequently referencing on the shelf? because I did a survey, posted it through my community tab on my YouTube channel. I asked people, you know, how many of you have bought a book in a year or the last two years? So 58% of my viewers buy books. And that's, I don't know why that is, I think there's some stigma or we see these t-shirts walking around.

Bees don't read books. So the implication is then you shouldn't either. Don't read books. Well, when I first got it to be keeping that, exactly what I did. I read lots of books. I didn't have a beekeeper around that would talk to me, so I was stuck reading books. The books I found valuable then, I found them valuable now. So, these are good books. I recommend them. And I'm going to be doing an interview coming up with Tara Don. Do you think she gave me this book for free because I said, hey, give me this book,

I'll do an interview with you? No, I paid full price for this at that Texas B Association annual gathering. So I bought that about another book which is a field guide to native wasps of the northeastern United States kind of like a field guide. Knowledge is power. I want you to be powerful. So write down what your best book, most useful beekeeping book was for a beginner and then give me another title and I hope it's one I already have because I don't want to spend my money but and give me another title that you find very useful as a reference. Back here behind me, Somebody recently wrote and asked what the date is on that book, ABC and XYZ of beekeeping.

That book is from 1929. Why do I have that? Because that's a year that my grandfather graduated from Ann Hurst, Amherst, University of Massachusetts. 1929, and you'll find out when you read these really old books, we think some things are brand new and they aren't. They've been out for a long time. So we're coming up on 100 years. on that book so that's it for today i hope you found something useful in today's uh question and answer

and i hope that you'll look down in the video description and post your own questions go to the way to be.org and submit your own topic for consideration thanks for watching i hope you have a fantastic and safe weekend with the heavy weather we have coming in