The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - BeeKeeping Q&A Episode #292 Keep Deer away from your pollinator plants and more

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/W84kcs2KirY

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, February the 7th, and this is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 292. I'm Frederick Dunn. This is the way to be. So I'm really glad that you're here that you can join me today. If you want to know what we're going to talk about, please look down in the video description below and all the topics. We'll be there, including some links and further information for your convenience. So, how do you submit your own topic? You may be wondering.

You go to the website, the way to be.org, click on the page mark the way to be, fill out the form, and it can be a topic that you just are curious about, or it can be a question that you have related to where you are. Speaking of where you are, I'm located in the northeastern United States, northwest, part of the state of Pennsylvania. And we have terrible weather, right along with the rest of the people that are in the northeastern United States, northwest, northwest, part of the state of Pennsylvania. Northeast and the South is even getting hit pretty hard right now in the United States. Interesting weather dynamics there. What's going on right outside my own window? Which could differ from what's going on where you are. 18 degrees Fahrenheit. That's right. Minus 8 degrees Celsius. Partner that with a wind. 10 mile per hour wind, which is 16 kilometers per hour, which gives us something called

wind chill. So wind chill 6 degrees, which is minus 14 Celsius. Relative, relative humidity, 76%. And guess what? The best weather day is going to be ahead. Tomorrow, Saturday. It's going to be the best of the whole week. 31 degrees Fahrenheit is what they say.

Although we can count on some warm-ups when the sun hits us. So even a cooler day, 28, 29 degrees Fahrenheit when the sun hits if your beehives face south in the northern hemisphere. And of course, you're going to get warmed up entrances and some of that ice might clear off because that's what we have right now is ice everywhere when the wind is blowing the trees are crackling that's what it's doing so

also uh we've got bluebirds still here normally i would think they would move to warmer areas they're eating the holly berries but there's competition right now so we're putting out black soldier fly larvae so that they don't starve through winter i think they've already claimed their boxes. There's also squirrel wars going on. The fox squirrels, the gray squirrels, and the little rascally red squirrels are running through tunnels in the hard pack snow, and they're stealing each other's nuts. It's a war. So there's a lot of stuff going on out there. It's really rough. What else can I talk about? I think that's just about it. So we're going to get right into it. The other thing is, this is available as a podcast. So if you don't have time to look at it,

you might be working or driving, just Google the way to be podcast. And you'll find it. It's carried by a whole bunch of different ones. It's hosted by Podbean. So I'm going to get right into it. The very first question today comes from David from Laola PA. Says I'm fascinated by the Keepers Hive. And says to minimize expenses, I was wondering if you see problems with imitating a two queen system by setting up two 10 frame deep boxes side by side and putting a queen excluder over the center part of the combined 20 frames and stacking other boxes on top of that. Okay, I'm going to cut this short because a lot of people are writing about the keeper's hive. And you should know what my experience is with that hive design,

is that I only have the single brood box Keepers Hive. So single queen system, I have the dual queen system that I purchased, but I haven't had it out in the B yard yet. So my experience is limited. So what I want to do is I want to start off today right off the bat with a shout-out. The Keepers Hive has a YouTube channel. I highly recommend you go to their YouTube channel and see what configurations they've used. And they demonstrate how the Keepers Hive is set up, where your queen-excluded goes,

and there's lots of options there. I understand that what we're talking about right here, I get what's being asked, but I don't feel qualified to answer it because I haven't fiddled with it yet. I am going to be using the two-queen system, but I want to send you to the people that originated it. They're doing really well.

So I hope I'm going to run into them, in fact, tomorrow at the Western Pennsylvania conference. So we'll see what's going on. If they're there, we're going to talk to talk because so many questions come in. If you have questions about the Keepers Hive setup and equipment that's associated with it and how to use it, please go to their YouTube channel and it's the Keepers Hive. So I'm going to move on from that.

It's going to be a fun year. We have a lot of new things going on. I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew, but I've backed off on my professional photography this year. Why? Just so I can spend more time with bees and producing bee videos. and then of course testing out new equipment, moving in new directions. The next question comes from Mark Todd.

And it's the same thing. It says I got one of the keepers' hives, single queen setups, which is, by the way, the most popular. I'm interested in getting a double queen setup to hopefully increase honey production. One question I have is that since the double queen setup uses 10 frame supers instead of five frame, heavy when full, if the bees go gangbusters and start filling up multiple supers, is there any good way to store capped honey frames for extraction later?

I wouldn't want to let the supers get too high, but at the same time, I don't want to have to extract more frequently. And this is in Salem, Virginia. So Salem, Virginia doesn't have the advantages and disadvantages that we have in the northeastern parts of the United States. So storing honey and you're going to hear things like the hive butler, for example, some of the early versions of the hive butler, which is a 10 frame tote that has a cover on it and that I use, by the way, I have a pile of them.

And you can store honey frames in it for extraction. So pulling frames, this is what I recommend. Instead of pulling whole boxes, pull individual full. fully capped frames and then from the middle or wherever they happen to be but generally your B is fill and capped the center frames first. So I would take my hive butler tote out there, pull those center frames and replace them by pushing the outer frames towards the middle or leave those outer frames that are partially full and then install new frames in the center or checkerboard them. So in other words, pull out the most fully processed frames, the completed frames, sweep the bees off of them one by one,

and take the full frames, put them in your hive butler tote or in another deep box that has a cover with you. So bring a migratory cover, something like that, so you can cover it. We don't want other bees going after that. And then you can move them into storage now. If you're in the south, see, I worry about the heat. Because remember that honeybees can keep the interior of their hive somewhat controlled, right?

really focus on the brood particularly I mean we're talking about the nectar flow season right so they'll be fanning things keeping it cool in some parts of the country your unattended frames can get overheated and the wax can get soft and you can end up with a mess so where you're going to store these things is kind of important commercial beekeepers have hot houses or honey warming rooms that hover right in the 90s so you might think that sounds hot like a 97 degree warming room So I was talking with Michael Palmer up in Vermont. His warming room is in the high 90s. So it would keep it at that temperature, which is okay.

That's in high of temperature while we're talking. What we don't want to happen is in storage for either for them to get too warm or get warm and then cool down. Because look what happens in the Northeast. We get warm during the day, cold at night. And then in the following morning, you could have condensation. on your frames. So what you're putting your honey in for storage should protect them from temperature extremes, mostly the higher extremes are the concern. Condensation. So I also put dryer packs in. This is backyard beekeeping, so it is not something you were doing a commercial scale,

but I just happen to have these right here. These are by wise dry. These are reusable desiccant packs. Okay, so they dry things out and you recharge them. in your microwave. So on top of the frames, in storage, if you wrapped them in plastic bags or whatever, keeps condensation off of them because we don't want, and we know that they're capped with wax. So you want to also, while I'm thinking about this, if you have some open cells, make sure that's not going to ferment. So you want to understand what the water percentage is. We'd like to get those below 18% if we can. So once you pull them off, what would you do to even dry them down a little bit, a fan? So you can just bluish.

low air on them. That's what the bees do inside the hive and in a low humidity environment if you can do it. So maybe you've got a basement. I don't know if you have a basement there in Virginia. So you have to think of a space that's got kind of an ambient temperature and sheds and things like that. Like I said, get hot. You're going to have to make sure look at storage sheds. They can hit 120, 130 degrees. That's hot. Remember that beeswax melts when you get up into the 150 range. 145, 150, and remember the melting parameters the extreme, that's melting it. It can also get soft and just it's full of honey so we just fall off, for example, if you don't have foundation.

So there are a lot of variables and all I'm saying is try to find a cool place, a utility room or something where you can stack them up. We don't want pests to get into them either, so I use industrial trash bags. Now the industrial trash bags, you don't have to put them in the trash bag. bag. Although I did notice a company that was selling a beehive bags, they were clear, and they were supposed to cover an entire hive, and they were for storage. So if you're watching or listening right now, and you know what company that is that actually sells storage bags for your supers, then let us know what that is by putting the link down in the video description or

down in the comment section. And if you put a link in the comment section, automatically gets suspended or held until I individually release it. That's how we avoid getting spam in our comment section. So anyway, once you close it off, we want to keep pests out of it. So in the summertime, when it's warm, we do not want wax worms in there. So plastic bags would cover that and then some kind of desiccant to keep it dry so there's no condensation. Those are my best recommendations. Hive Butler. Historically, some people have stored full-size deep frames of honey in them and found that the middle section of the hive butler bowed out a little bit and some of them actually fell down in the hive butler and i had to

talk with them at the last expo that i spoke with them at and the sides are now improved so they don't spread like that but that's something you want to keep an eye on if you've got an older unit or if you bought a used one or something like that maybe you would put a shipping strap around it or something to keep the sides from bowing out so we don't want that to happen don't want your frames to fall it's not that they fall down but then if they interact with the other frames you know what I mean we have a mess with honey so that's it if other people have other suggestions always share what your thoughts are one of the advantages of having a group of people watching a Q&A is that you might have answers you might have better solutions and systems

I love to hear those I like to see discussion down in the comment section so we could do Question number three comes from ruse now, RU-E-S-N-O-W, and that's a YouTube channel name. Heater bees heat six adjoining cells. If they are in natural comb, would they heat some cells on the opposite side too? So what we're talking about is sometimes you see frames of brood and there'll be empty cells and then they'll be pupating or developing larvae in the adjacent cells. So honeybee comb has hexagonal cells. It's very efficient for what's called,

we refer to them as heater bees because they go head first into those cells and they warm the adjacent cells. So that's six, right? So now we're asking about on the other side of that, does the heat transfer to the other side so are they heating more than six cells? And Randy Oliver did a really interesting presentation that I watched where he talked about how they overheat their heads.

So the thorax is what we think about because that's where all the musculature is in your bee. So when they vibrate and it's kind of like shivering. They're not fanned their wings. They're just shivering their muscles, activating them, and generating warmth. Heater bees do that for a very limited amount of time. And they're actually burning themselves out as well as using a bunch of carbohydrates to do it. So it's very efficient for them to heat those side walls,

inefficient for them to heat the bottom of the cell or anything on the other side. So the only way to figure it out is to look at them with thermal scans, and this is foundationless comb. Obviously, the heavy waxed plastic foundation would limit or impede the transfer of warmth from heater bees, so it wouldn't be very efficient. So only the center cell, remember that the cells are not directly opposite each other. If they were, you know, we'd be heating one cell, but what they are is their offset. So one cell divides the two on the other side.

So now we have partial warmth going, just to the bottom of the opposite cells. And it's not enough to make a significant contribution. So there is some heat, but remember, they're really focusing on the adjacent cells. And there again, this is what always puzzles me about that. You know, the heater bees are in the cells, warming adjacent cells, but it doesn't radiate very far from that.

So for that to be really meaningful, you would have to have heater bees every couple of cells all over the brood, for that to be the real, the best way that they're going to pass on that warmth and maintain 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of what's going on outside to keep the brood alive. So covering it with their bodies on the surface rather than being in the cells is what mostly happens for your breed. So it's an interesting question, and it's just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, because there's nothing we can do about that other than it may be a vote for using foundationless if that,

that really was the case that they're trying to warm cells on the other side, but it's the bees on the other side that are warming those rather than trying to get that to radiate through the cone. Question number four, this is a question about flow frame because it says, I'm curious why you do one half or one-third of the depth into the frame. The reason is if you're harvesting flow supers, flow frames, for those you don't know what that is, I have a whole page on my website, which again is the way to be.org and it's called the flow hive experience. I talked to you about the whole thing.

The good and the bad problems that I've seen and things that worked really well, why I like it, and things that might challenge you a little bit if you're not paying attention. So one of the things is with a flow frame, they don't have one handy, but the flow frames, there leaves that shift. When you activate the key on the top, they form hexagonal cells. Every other leaf drops. When they do that, you have a leak path that goes down into a trough in the bottom of the frame. And then the hive, this is something I see people forgetting to do, that super has to be tilted back to degrees towards the back of the hive, which is where they drain into tubes, into jars, and so it goes.

Now, what happens is we're not looking at all the frames inside that super. So what we're doing is we're seeing the cells at the ends and on the outside. frames and then we're seeing if they're capped on the outside that we make an assumption that then all the cells are likely capped all the honey cells are capped and then we look at the end and we see that those are capped and so ready for harvest kind of thing so what happens is and in my experimentation because I was testing it I was giving it a shakedown if you don't know what a shakedown is that means you push all the limits whatever its design

limitations are then we're going to do everything to see if we can make it mess up. So that's what I did. So in my initial testing of the flow frames, I shove the keys in there and I open the entire frame all at once and maxed out the flow. So a couple of things were wrong with that. So again, we can learn from problems caused by us, right? So they have a three-quarter inch tube that comes out. And I've learned since then that when it is half full or three quarters full as the honey's coming out, you always activate it and wait a little bit because it takes the honey a little while to start coming down.

And so as it starts to come out, if it stays at three quarters the height of that tube, that's perfect. If it's filling the tube, so three-quarter inch tube, they're transparent, so you see through, you see exactly what the honey's doing. If it's full all the way through that tube to the top, slow down, don't activate all of those leaves as I did. because when I did that, the entire frame at once, it overwhelmed the tube, which means there was backup.

Now, backup is not a problem if every single cell in that flow frame is capped with beeswax. If some of those cells are not capped, just as they are when we're pulling a frame of not, even if it's not a flow super, if we're pulling a frame of capped honey, often we see the peripheries, some of those cells are not completely capped. So imagine if the honey were running down through the cells and there's no cap there, now the honey can back pressure and come out through those cells and then where does it go? It drips down into the hive. Now you might think, well, that's no big deal because we're just feeding then the honey right back to the bees. But in the case with a flow frame that holds over a half a gallon of honey,

if it's not all making it out the tube and some of it is backing up and coming out of those, uncapped cells inside the hive, what's directly under that? Your brood. You know, nothing will kill your bees quicker and take out your brood quicker than getting honey all over them. So it's interesting, and this is something that would not happen inside the hive unless there were damage or unless it got really hot. And your wax melted, the caps melted, or some of the comb was damaged and broken. So we've created a system where if we overwhelm it, we also overwhelm the bees. And in the video where I show what happens here, you get a mass evacuation of worker bees from the hive and they all collect on the front. 100% user error.

So that's where this question comes from. Now I just put the keys in, about a third of the way, crack those cells open, those leaves. See what the honey flow is coming out into the jar. And then as it starts to drop down below about half the diameter of that, then I'll stick them in a little farther. I also use two keys at once. You're supposed to use one. It comes with one.

And I move it so that they support the shoulders of those leaves. They are a food-grade plastic. But I'm always worried that they could break. So I use two at once to lift them together instead of one in the middle, bowing it up and pulling it up. And so then as you get through, then it's halfway, then ultimately you do the whole thing. Now, and that prevents this leaking,

either prevents or greatly reduces it to where you're not going to force all your bees outside of the hive and potentially drowning your brood, which is highly likely. So that's why I do that. One third one half. The other thing is some people just have troubles because remember they are propylized and depending on how warm it is. That's why I always recommend doing this on a nice hot day. The honey flows quicker. It activates easier and your bees are more active. Right. So that's just it. Works really well. Warm days.

And you can also screen it. The other fun thing to do while the honey is coming out through those tubes, you can sit right there and with your refractometer find out what the water content is. And you'll know right then. And I like to write the water content of each one on the jars as I go, just for kicks. We're averaging 16 to 17% water content. in that honey so it's been really good. We have a lot more coming up with low highs and stuff.

Anyway, question number five. This comes from Jerry O'Brien, which is the YouTube channel name. I think you have a couple of dead outs and I had five pound hive alive fondant patties on to use the fondant for one to one sugar water, how much water would you use per pound of fondant? So what we're talking about is, and this works with any It happens to be hive alive fondant in this case.

What would you do? So in spring sometimes we like to feed light sugar syrup one to one. So that's four pounds of dry sugar to to half a gallon of water. That's one to one. So if we're making a gallon, you would have eight pounds of dry sugar and then one gallon of water. That's one to one sugar syrup, which actually is pretty darn thick.

So here's what I would do. These packets, whatever's left over, and it does rinse out easily when I'm making up my one-to-one sugar syrup I would just amend that right to it so worst-case scenario you get something thicker than one-to-one and it's fortified with the ingredients from a high-v-v-live-live fondant pack so that's what I do I don't think it's critical we don't want to go much lighter than that and there's no advertised formula by the company for if you've got a pound of this left over how much water should you mix it with so I would

start with sugar syrup, water and sugar, and then add it to that. And I think that way we're going to recover and not have those losses. The other thing I want to remind you about is there are temperature limitations when you're mixing this stuff in. And that includes the syrup, the high-of-live syrup that people often use. You want to watch your temperature parameters. We like to heat up the water to make sure the sugar dissolves quicker and it's easier to work with. But you want to drop that below 110 degrees Fahrenheit. which is 43 degrees Celsius if you're going to mix in the hive live if you're trying to maintain the sensitive ingredients to go with it so we want to preserve that.

Moving on to question number six. And by the way, you can put that all in a Ziploc baggy, a freezer bag, and put it right inside the hive on top. You could, if you've got the insulated inner cover and if you put a freezer bag in there, it's going to cover that hole and then the bees aren't going to get it. get up there. So I'm going to mention this plastic trivet. Anything that you can find that will keep that space open and be space so the bees can come up through the hole, move out from under it and get on top of that feeder bag because I recommend feeding it right back inside the hive. Try not to do open feeding unless you're trying to help control some robbing elsewhere or something else.

But that's just another way to feed it back to them. So question number six comes from Ross Wagner, that's the YouTube channel name. It says, learning about comb honey. I've learned that you need a strong hive and a strong flow. People talk about how swarms are great, and crowding bees helps to make comb honey. Making me wonder, are you ready for this again? If the double queen system keepers hive.

So here we are again, back on the keeper's hive, and the answer is going to be really obvious, but making me wonder if the double queen keepers hive would be great for comb honey. I can tell you right up front. I haven't used it, but I'm going to forecast it. Yes, absolutely. And here's why I haven't used it. I'm going to talk to George, I'm telling you.

I'm sure he's going to be there at the Western Pennsylvania conference that starts today, starts tonight. And we're going to talk about that, but I already know it's, they produce a lot of honey just based on what I've been told and it's not just the inventors of the Keepers Hive or the innovators it's the people that they've used for test groups that have very positive feedback on that and that you could even do it if you're doing comb honey you could do that in your standard single queen five frame nuke risers too because those are great honey producers I've used them for Ross rounds and foundationless comb honey too so anybody that's trying to target

get high honey production or honey and comb related products so beeswax products I would think that these two queen systems are going to be tough to keep up with just based on what I've seen I think that you're going to want to either you're going to have to keep stacking hive so for me let me tell you what I'm doing so the comb honey I think it's going to work by the way Ross rounds if you look them up. They have rost rounds were made by an American company. First of all, they started right after World War II because plastics came into use right after World War II. And if you look at those segments, they kind of look like cut off sections of plastic pipe, to be honest. And that's where they began. So we've got this plastic material and it's put in frames, but you had to buy

the Ross Round wooden box, which has spring clips in it. And and wooden spacers, which actually was really cool because the bees move up. It affected the way the bees move and access the comb, and you need foundation for that. And the foundation is a thinner, 100% beeswax foundation because later it's going to be consumed. So one of the companies that sells that stuff is Better Bee. Then I was talking to a company out of New Zealand,

and they made end brackets for it. These end brackets meant that the Ross Round inserts now would fit where a standard Langstroth 10 Langstroth deep frame would fit. And so now we didn't need the Ross Round Specialty Box, which kind of look like a shallow super. So now we're in normal frames and we tested that out, myself and the supervisor. So we got good results out of it. What I wish I had done, if we're doing comb honey, is that we have. filled the whole five frame box with them so we were using it in nukes and I should have done

all five as those double deep ross round packs and then it would have been great because what happened is I had standard frames on the outside and then so every other ross round was drawn out really deep and really long and it also interacted so we had some burr comb there and some brace combs and then when we took them out we damaged them if you really want to know I made a video about it If you want to see any of the videos that I've made, you can go to my YouTube channel, which is Frederick Dunn. And at the top right corner, you'll see the little search, the little magnifying glass, and a line next to it, just type in comb honey or type in Ross rounds, and those videos will come up, and you can see them. We don't hold back. If we mess it up, it's messed up.

But, so any hive configuration that you have, and two queen systems are known for maximum honey production, but also maximum bee production, those things go hand in hand. You need more bees to make more honey. You need more foragers. And here we have two combined what would be independent colonies. And instead, they've all come together for a common central riser. So this is very interesting. I'm going to share about that this year because it's going to be a lot of fun.

I also understand that the number of bees can become overwhelming. So you may actually be trying to hold them back rather than accelerate them. And I also want to encourage you to keep the hive covers insulated and not vented through the top. And somebody just asked me if I wanted help getting citizen science going on in the back, you know, with the backyard beekeepers. And I think here's an area.

There are enough people writing about this to where I get a question every day, every day about the keeper's hive. I think that if we had one top vented, because remember we have queen excluders in on these because we have two, colonies and we don't want the queens to mix up and we don't want the nurse bees to mix up. We just want the foragers and the storekeeper bees up in there.

So I'm thinking about this. We have the queen excluders. So we could have, let's do a comparison. So if you're looking for parameters, you want to participate in this and give me feedback, I think I'm going to write about it. And we'll get people to use vented and not vented. so for the tops and then we'll set the parameters because we want everything to be the same right so we want them mine are going to have the landing boards facing the same direction why because what i'm doing is i'm putting flow supers on

and where do you stand to draw the honey out of the flow super you're on the back side of it so i want the front hives so there's questions about whether or not that's enough separation because remember those who have designed the keepers hive and if we do a two queen system they want you to flip the bottom board so there's an entrance on one side 180 degrees out from the entrance on the other side but for me that means i have one entrance facing south which are my most productive entrances and then i would have another one facing north right where i like to stand to check on the flow supers so mine are both going to be facing south and i don't think that's a big problem if you look at the a z hive configurations these are these buildings that have 40 colonies of b

shoulder to shoulder with all of them and they're still finding their way into their individual boxes so I told George I am making a partition between my two entrances and we will have the entrances there I thought about moving them out farther than one another but I think we're going to keep them pretty central and then we're going to have a distinctive configuration on one side over the other because bees the foragers when they're coming back to the hive they key more on the physical appearance of their entrance so geometry and things like that even more so than color a lot of people

People like to paint different colors. I used to paint eyeballs on the hives and mouths and everything else back in 2007, 2008. But also a lot of my hives were serrillion blue back then. Now I'm much more natural looking as far as the hives go. But if you can create like a gabled roof to go over one side, and then on the other one maybe you've just got a flat or a radius or something or a triangle, a 3D triangle that sticks on the face of it right there. these help the bees orient and i did tests on this and i and it was a lot of fun to see what the bees are

memorizing so is it the pheromone that's drawing them into the entrance or is it the physical appearance of the entrance so what i did was i took those queen excluder entrances that i cannot get better bee to carry by the way so i had to buy them from daydunt and they have a queen excluder and it's a wooden frame so it's nice and heavy sits right on the landing board so if you've installed this worm and you need to make sure that they don't take off and reject the hive that you've put them in. You can put a queen excluder on the front, and it will keep them in. And then I recommend removing that within three days, because if there were a virgin queen, she needs to fly out and get mated,

but we're just trying to get those bees to commit to that space. So I had that on a hive, and they were committed. And so then I, middle of the day, you know, noon, 1 o'clock in the afternoon, I took that same wooden-framed entrance with the queen-excluder going through the middle of it. I moved it up about four or five inches so well off that entrance reducer and I just clamped it to the front of the hive. And then it's really interesting because you see the bees come in. So a couple of things. First of all, they didn't spatially orient very well. They visually oriented. So this is a landmark of sorts. Because the foragers came back and they went straight to, you guessed it, the queen

excluter that was clamped on the front of the hive up above the entrance and they went through the queen excluder bars then they went down the face then they went into the entrance of the hive even though that entrance is wide open so you talk about a backyard experiment that's a lot of fun to see how bees pick and memorize things the physical dimensions and the physical traits of the hive front that they go to directing them to the entrance is far more valuable than any pheromone that might be spreading out through that entrance. So those are things that you can do yourself, you can try it out. It's a lot of fun. I highly recommend that kind of experimentation, but this is my logic. That's why I'm telling that whole story is because when I do the two queen

system with the Keepers Hive this year, 2025, I'm going to have physical traits that distinguish each entrance, which is going to take advantage of the foragers' propensity. to follow visual cues over pheromone cues. So, I bet you's going to work. Tell me what you think. No holds barred. You can criticize me. I don't care.

I'm rubber, ear glue. Okay. So that's for Ross Wagner. We're going to see what's going on. A lot of cool people working with these highs. It's going to be fun. We can almost start a group of nothing but keepers hive people. It would be fun.

So the next question number seven comes from Sagar Hussein, S-A-G-O-R-H-U-S-S-A-I-N, that's the YouTube channel. Says I have a serious bee problem. The few hives I started here were all ruined by ants. The ants would kill the bees and all were dead in just two to three days. Let me just say here, I am very happy not to have whatever species of ant that is attacking my bee hives. Moving on. There was nothing we could do to prevent it. We tried placing the hive on four stands, kept inside a big bin filled with water, but the ants would make a bridge by themselves and cross over. I feel this would be the same if I used axle grease and stuff like that. DE might work, but I'm still not sure. I'm going to pause there.

DE stands for diatomaceous earth. I see people. recommending diatomaceous earth for too many applications. Okay. Diatomaceous Earth, these are diatoms. There's food grade DE, which I highly recommend you get if you're going to use it. I'll tell you where I do use it. I dust up my chickens with it. I dust up their nest boxes. So if I have pine shavings in the nest box, we want to keep feather mites and things like that away from your chickens. So that stuff does it. Because guess, guess, guess, what? It's inside, it's out of the rain. There's no heavy humidity that goes on it, for example. Diatomaceous Earth has to be dry to function. Diatomaceous Earth has to be in direct physical

contact with the exoskeleton, enough so that it defeats the cuticle that protects that insect. So adult insects actually don't succumb very well to diatomaceous Earth. It's very effective if they track it in and their larvae are exposed to it because it's a desiccant. It dries them out. So by defeating the cuticle, even honeybees have a waxy cuticle all over their exoskeleton on the outside. It protects them from dehydration, right? Now, if that is compromised, then they can dehydrate and they can die, and that's what diatomaceous Earth is supposed to do. So I will share with you, my people, my viewers, please don't waste your time with diatomacean Earth on the ground around your hives and things like that.

If it rains, it's going to be defeated. You'll have to start it over again. You can dump that stuff all over a yellow jacket nest in the ground. If you don't believe me, you just want to see if it can work. You can literally, you can bury that nest with it, and then we'll be making holes through it and flying out, and it won't kill them. So it acts on soft-bodied insects, right? So it needs to be able to get in and do its work.

So let's skip the DE. Once these annoying ants even made a hanging, chain from the ceiling of our shed just to access the hive. So that must have been the ceiling of the shed directly over the hive for the chain can come down. Ants, man, they're very creative. I don't like that story. But I do know how to fix it. It says, please let me know if you know any solution. I do. A solution specific, right? So if you're doing these moats, which by the way are very effective, you can set, you know, some people, I've seen them set them in coffee can, tink cans you know they just are set them in these little plastic trays they put the legs in

and then the ants as described here guess what they're doing they're moving across the surface tension of that water and then they form an ant bridge and off they go and they attack the hive now I would like to know more about the species of ants here but how do we defeat the surface tension hmm think about it we have now I'm recommending Don ultra free and clear pure essentials. Why? Because it's biodegradable that doesn't interact with the environment. I live on a well. I'm aware of anything I'm putting on my grass, my ground in the earth. But what this does, because I've tested it many times on yellow jacket traps and things like that, if you add a little Don dish soap to the water in those troughs, it increases what's called

the wetting ability. So it's compounded impact. on these ants. First of all, it will suffocate the ants. Ants breathe through their abdomens just like bees do. And the heightened wetting ability, which means reduced surface tension, they can't walk on the water anymore. They'll sink right in. When they sink in, the increased wetting ability of the soap allows it to go right into their little spiracles and will drown them. And the word will get out really fast. This is not the place to go. So I already answered this because I felt like this was kind of an emergency situation, so I already made this suggestion. But anything that breaks the surface tension of the water makes it a much more effective aquatic trap, and you are going to get them. It does it. It works. It's fantastic. Okay. Question number eight comes from Kevin, from Noblesville, Indiana.

what is a great deer deterrent for our flowers? It says we plant them for our bees and the deer eat the plants. You know what? Between the deer and the rabbits and the woodchucks where I live, it is a huge challenge and I'm very frustrated about it. And I was a little slow to learn because I tried a lot of stuff. Okay, so let's first go down the list of things that don't work. I know, isn't that a waste of time to talk about what does not work?

Well, I have these solar alarms that I talk about. These are my bare deterrence and 129 decibels and they work really well. Guess what they don't work on? It scares rabbits though. I have a rabbit every night that comes out and tries to eat the seed underneath our bird feeder. So I have this great test plot for alarms and systems like that and I have four cameras out there to make sure I get all the behavior and interactions. Those alarms work great on rabbits. They scare feral cats, pretty good too.

The deer are a problem. Someone made a comment on one of the videos because I showed the deer behavior at the end. Maybe I'll add a bunch of them today. I'll show you videos, night videos of these alarms going off. But the deer came up and sure, it scared away eight out of ten deer. But now eight out of ten, that's two deer that ignore it, that walk right up. it doesn't take very many deer to ruin your day when it comes to all the sunflowers that you've planted and all the hyssop that you've planted although they're supposed to ignore hyssop

just like the guy that told me deer won't touch service berries and then they came through and ate them all right down to nothing so but in in defense of that a mature service berry medium-sized tree or bush or whatever they're called gets ignored by the deer but it's the new things that deer tend to sample and young deer have to be taught that these things are bad and off it goes so older deer know what's up they avoid things that are bad for them young deer munch away so and it holds true these are the younger deer that walk up that alarm is right in their face going off and they're sniffing it so somebody wrote oh that deer is just reading the serial number on your alarm so that did not work so uh i might as well run down the list of the things i'm planting i plant cosmos the

don't pay much attention to those. It's an annual, no problem. Don't even worry about it. So that was my backup plant that I planted, you know, and I'm talking rows that are 900 feet long, right? So this isn't a small investment in seed. The other thing is the expensive plantings are the sunflowers, and I planted mammoth sunflowers and all the intermediate ones just in case. And you know, when you go through, it looks like you see them all growing and you're all excited because we go by and I show the grandkids and you know they're all germinated and it's very distinctive which ones are sunflowers are fantastic you get down there and then after a couple of weeks of thinking your life is great everything's going to be perfect and in your mind you're seeing this

field of sunflowers at the end of summer and now you go through and hundreds of them their tops are just bitten off hundreds of them and the ones that really frustrate me are the ones that these are the woodchucks, I think, because if you don't know what a woodchuck is, it's a ground squirrel, whistle pig, marmot, whatever you want to call them, they're unpleasant, they dig giant holes. 700 pounds of dirt on average gets moved when a woodchuck makes a tunnel system. So, anyway, the woodchucks go through and they just bite them off. They're not even eating them. Your sunflower little stocks are there. Your investment is there and the top is laying right next to it. Bunies chew them too. I don't know why. So what's the point? Fred, get to the

point I will I have a solution and gonna have to make a stink so this is the stuff by the way no holds barred I bought all the different chemical repellents and I'm telling you right now this is the one cautionary tail however by the way this is called deer and rabbit repellent liquid fence you know what it says at the very top of this label and I'm glad it's there 100% money back guarantee if it doesn't work turn in the unused portion get your money back how do you deliver it so that's the other part I got this pump sprayer I was using the little swerty hand sprayer but I got this pump sprayer let's see what is the capacity of this thing it says 48 ounces it's got a top I'm not going to pump this by the way

fair warning this is the worst stuff you have ever smelled I'm telling you you that you haven't smelled worse smells if you're a Navy Hull technician that has to fix the head on ships I'm telling you this stuff is stinky if you read the ingredients it's really bad but this nozzle on this thing I'll put a link it's by Chapin you get these at any big box store Home Depot Lowe's whatever you pump it up and you can adjust the nozzle so you can actually squirt this like 30 feet so you can make a stream so you can hit all your branches do you know what this did for me last here. It saved my linden trees. So my linden trees, which are also known as basswood,

the deer just came in every year and ate the leaves that they could reach and the larger deer or even munching them. So all the way up to just above my head, all the leaves are being munched. And considering that some of those trees were young, that was two-thirds of the leaf development on the tree. So I could squirt that with this stinky stuff. By the way, you're going to want to wear disposable gloves because if you go out there bare hand and thinking that afterwards, you're just going to wash your hands with soap and water and you're not going to smell that stink anymore. When you go to sleep and you put your hand up by your pillow, nobody's going to want to be near you and you're not even going to want to be near you. It's that bad. Nitrial gloves must have

when you use that stuff. So what happened? What was the result? I would just squirt, broadcast it over whole areas. If I had favorite plants, I would hit them. The linen trees untouched. I have been through a lot of different game plans with the linen trees. I even put a beehive right at the foot of one, thinking, well, the bees will be right there.

The deer will come up, they'll hear the bees, and there's no way they're gonna eat those linen tree leaves. Yep, they walk right up right next to the beehive and munch away. But what deer don't like, much like goats. They don't like the smell. if it's off a little bit. So, and I tried that even also underneath of my bird feeders where the deer were coming at night

because the deer had started to even eat right out of the bird feeder. So what I do, I got that stink. I sprayed it on the snow. And they smelled it before they got within like 15 feet and their noses are turning up and then they just walk away. Effective. How long does it last? You can get a week out of it.

So it stinks. It stays there. Their sense of smell is much better than ours. I 100% recommend that stuff. I don't care where you get it. If you're trying to save your plants, it's harmless to plants and animals, rappels, deer, and rabbits.

Here's what it doesn't repel, what it didn't save. Voles. Foles don't seem to care. I gotta figure that out, but I got a couple feral cats around that I'm thinking might help me with my vol problem. They took out 54 hyssop plants last year. The voles did, and anything I sprayed on it did not keep voles.

away so I'm still work in progress. If you've got a solution for vols, I'm all ears. I want to know what that is because I'm going again. I'm going to plant stuff again and I want to see if I can keep those under control. Other than killing them, I mean I'm thinking of the cats. The cats could be good. So that's it to answer Kevin. Long answer, short question. That stuff works. I'm sharing it with you. It is, that is it. It saved my service berries, too, by the way, after I realized they were being munched by the deer. So, now we're on to the fluff section. Coming up this weekend, starting tonight, by the way.

Tonight, Western Pennsylvania Conference, I'll be there talking about Honeybee Anatomy. Have some cool stuff. Stuff that I have recently learned and I have great photos of. I wish I could show it to here, but then why would people invite me to come and talk in person if they could just see everything I do right here on YouTube. No. When I come in person, I show you stuff I don't show you here on my channel. So that's going to be fun. If you're there and you're watching this, come and say hi.

It'd be great. So inspect your fondant, you've got to keep up with that stuff. So the hive live fondant, whatever you've put on, dry sugar, whatever, you know, if you've got winter patties, it's time to check them when you get these warmups. Remember, they're on an insulated undercover, so better to check them than have them. and if you're buying if you're restocking your hive alive fondant you're going to their website hive alive use this code fred 10 fredd 10 get 10% off of that purchase now coming up on mond this is the fun part something we've been working on for a very long time and it's a piece of

equipment that you're going to use on your beehives. It's going to help you. It's going to make your working of the beehives more efficient. It's going to improve your ability to inspect your brood frames even when your honey supers are on. We're not talking about the keeper's hive. The keeper's hive does that too. How does the keepers hive do that? Well, you sit down next to it and you pull the frame sideways out from under your honey supers and you look at them one by one. And so it's pretty darn convenient. But I'm going to help you out if you don't have a Keepers Hive. And when am I going to show it to you? I'm going to show you this piece of gear Monday, this coming Monday. You want to be in the know for something that's brand new that no one else has yet. Check back Monday. If you're not a

subscriber and you don't want to miss it, you want to be in the know, you want to be one of those people that's up to speed on the latest and greatest things. You need to subscribe right now because it's going to be that cool. I'm telling you. Tell you. Tell you. It's going to be something different, something you have probably thought of but haven't seen implemented correctly. It's going to work so good. All right. Don't forget, by the way, to submit your own topics. If you've got a question or a concern or something's going on or you're seeing something and it doesn't seem right,

please write that down in the video description. Or, once again, go to my website, the wayto be.org. Click on the page mark the way to be. Fill out the form. You can stay anonymous. you can just write what you want. Let me know what's going on. I'm going to give you a fair warning a week from today.

What's happening next Friday? This is something that gets a lot of people in trouble with their spouses. I'm telling you right now, it's Valentine's Day. Don't be one of those last-minute types that runs out on Valentine's Day and runs to a florist that's jammed with a bunch of other people that forgot. Get something for your significant other and make sure that Valentine's Day is celebrated. and recognized and don't get yourself in trouble by realizing at supper time why your supper's cold and why things don't seem very happy around your residence because you seem to have forgotten.

And we have a double whammy in our family because our son's Valentine's Day is his birthday. So not that I would mention it to anybody else or in a public forum, but he ignores his wife on Valentine's Day because he thinks it's his day because that's his birthday. Don't do that. Be generous, care. And I want to tell you that I hope we've had, you know, we've had a heck of a winner. And some of you are experiencing cold weather, ice storms, wind, cold temps, and everything else like you've never had before. And the extremes can swing completely in the other direction. No rain, high heat, all these other challenges that come along. So I hope that everything is going well and that you're doing the best that you can possibly do for the bees under your care. and I hope that you found something useful in today's Q&A, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend. So thanks a lot for watching and spending your time here today.