The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Beekeeping Questions and Answers Episode 284 recorded as a LIVE CHAT

Episode Date: November 30, 2024

How to get bees back down in spring. Make a split that will produce honey the first year! And much more... This is the audio track from the YouTube Video:  https://youtube.com/live/2EXJ70RYkmU?feature=share See the greatest Mouse Trap Ever Designed:  https://youtu.be/bB9VjS8OPAI  

Aha. I'm live. I'm glad to see everybody here. I actually created a waiting room and it worked. This is the first time ever. So I already say that there's people already here. Thank you so much for being here. Let's get started. First of all, today is Friday, November the 29th. This is Backyard Bekeeping Questions and Answers episode number 284. I'm Frederick Donne and this is The Way to Be. So anyway, I'm glad you're here for the live session, and it worked, a bunch of people showed up. Keith Spillman is here. He is my bouncer, so don't act up because things could go bad. And I'm really sorry for some of you that are looking for the supervisor. He was supposed to be here today. That's my nine-year-old grandson, and he talks constantly about all the great things that he has to share.

But guess what? We have so much snow, as you might have seen in the reel that I put as a placeholder. I guess it's called a premiere. We have over 20 inches of snow, and the snow started falling at midnight last night. So the streets are covered in snow and nobody can go anywhere. So unfortunately, I'm really sad about it, too. He's stuck at home. He can't come.

So he's not here today. So if you're here to see Quinn, that's a bummer. You might be wondering what exactly are the conditions outside? I know you are, aside from the video that you've probably already watched. It's 25 degrees Fahrenheit. And Celsius, that's minus 4. 6.5 mile per hour winds pretty consistent. So it's snowing and blowing.

That's 10.4 kilometers per hour. I also know you want to know about the humidity. 99% relative humidity. And here's the good news, too. For those of you who want to go out in sunbathe without any protective lotions on your skin, zero UV index today. So your chances of a sunburn are none.

So get out there and just have a good time. Anyway, as I said, and I plot everything, today's going really bad for me, by the way. I know you're not here to hear about my personal life or my day, but my snowblower broke, had to fix it. There was something in the driveway that I ran over. Then the garage door wouldn't close. I had to fix that.

Anyway, let's get on with it. We will start with questions that were submitted during the past week, the normal route. You may be wondering, how do I submit my own topic? Well, the good news is today it's live. So if you're here, go ahead and write your question right down on the right the way Christine Hatchez just did. All caps. Now, in this case, you're not yelling. We know that caps are a way of yelling when you're texting someone.

But in this live chat, your all caps means that it's something for me to pitch you just saying hello to one another. and being cool, you know, in the fellowship of beekeepers. So since Christine already typed in all caps, it says, I love this channel. Thanks for that. And a question about hive alive versus honeybee healthy. Oh my gosh. What if I just happen to have those two things right here side by side? Hive alive and honey be healthy.

Okay. Are they interchangeable for spray to calm the bees? Okay, so here's the thing. for calming bees. Sugar syrup by itself would even work because it's not so much calming them as it is occupying the bees. It's a feel-good thing for beekeepers like me. I'm one of them. I'd rather hit them with sugar syrup one-to-one. So the light sugar syrup, you can add some honey-be-healthy with it. There is some evidence that honey-be-healthy helps you when you're introducing a new queen, for example. So that's when you would mix it with

your sugar syrup because it kind of masks the overall scent that's around there, you've got some competing pheromones. And so there's some evidence that that'll accept the queen. Plus, they're all happy. And, you know, bees that are drinking sugar syrup are not defensive. So that's part of the thinking. I would caution you not to spray the edges of the boxes when you open it up because the game is to move the bees to the center and away from the edges. Because when you close your boxes back up, you don't want to smash your peas.

You don't want to have a B flat unless you're a musician. So they're pretty. pretty equal. Now here's the thing. I would not actually use honeybee healthy. I'm sorry, I would not use hive alive as that. And the reason is way more expensive than this. This is considered a treatment. This is an essential oil that's supposed to be an appetite stimulant. Both of them help extend sugar syrup and keep it from spoiling. But if you were using it just as a method in place of smoke to give the bees something to do or maybe to look forward to your visit to the hive, I would do the hive alive, or I would do the honeybee healthy, not the hive alive just for that.

Hive live, mix it up, and it's actually good for a treatment, especially this time of year. It helps with nozema and things like that. So here's another one from Sarah's happy hives. The sun is always shining somewhere. That's not a question. That's true, though, because anyone who's ever been in a jet airplane, as it recently was, you get above the clouds, sun's shining even on a cloudy day. So it's a matter of your personal vantage point often. So Gigi says, wanted to ask how your single Keepers Hive is doing.

So the Keepers Hive, for those you don't know, invented by George and others, I have a single brood box Keepers Hive. So it's actually the size of the brood box is 10 frames, but there's only eight frames in it. And Keepers Hive is designed to keep bees from your seat. So you get to sit down next to it, pull your bees to the side. So if you want to Google it, you can find that. You go to my website. You can see it. My Keepers Hive is fully loaded, and they're doing really well.

They had a rough start this year. But now we've got two boxes, so two nucleus hives, five over five, directly above that brood box. and they did a really good job of loading up resources, and of course we did feed that hive. Now, the other good news is for those who might have contributed to the Indiegogo campaign for the Keepers Hive, they showed a recent update that they're about to ship out their hives. So for the coming year, 2025, I'm putting together a double queen system, so two brood boxes with a central super for honey between two hives.

So I'm going to be playing with that and using the FlowSuper because that's a huge box. It's a deep box. We're going to see that work. So they say they're about to ship. So they've checked their stuff. And those that did that Indiegogo campaign with them, as I did, I spent my hard-earned money on it. We get a plaque. That's right, an etched brass plaque to show that we were there at the very beginning.

But mine's doing really well. So Mark Bidwell says, Fred, do you have leaf cutter bees where you live? we sure do, for those of you don't know what we're talking about, leaf cutter bees are solitary bees. And if you set up native bee houses, and I highly recommend if you don't have one that just set them up. And that's because we're also going to help out our native pollinators. Many of you may not know that your honeybees are not native pollinators. So this improves our standing with people that maybe don't like non-native bees when at the same time we support other pollinators like the leaf cutters.

And the cool thing, too, on them is when you go out and you look at the cosmos flowers and things like that, you'll see some of the leaves cut funny. They're like long little pieces cut out of the petals. And leaf cutter bees do that. And they stuff those right inside the little tubes where they raise their young. So, yeah, we have them. And they don't spread out very far. So you have to preserve habitat for them and continue to offer that because they have a very short,

window of reproduction and pollination. And a lot of these solitary bees are species specific. And by that, I mean plant species specific. So they emerge at the right time when these plants are being pollinated. So it's really interesting stuff. And yes, we have them. So there's another one from autumn hillbillies. I know your standard winter configuration is a deep and a medium. As you come out of winter and all the bees have moved to the top medium box, how do you get the bees to move back down to the deep box? I love that question, because

it's a slow process. So here's the thing. If you have multiple entrances and venting, then your bees will be inclined to stay up there. So we know that through the winter, right now, most of the bees should be still in that bottom box or transitioning slightly between the deep and the medium.

And then we have an insulated inner cover, no vent. So when spring comes, they're up there in that top box and they very slowly start to move back down. I'm doing something different this year, so I'm going to share it with you because you're on my live chat. So you deserve to hear about it. I don't use queen excluders, but I'm going to in this case. So here's my plan. Tell me if I'm wrong. The bees are up in the medium super.

And we've got a little brew down in the deep box too. So we fast forwarded. Let's say it's end of March, 1st of April. We want to head up swarming, and we want to get those bees down in that bottom box. What do you think I'm going to do? We open it up. I don't like rotating boxes. First of all, we have a medium over a deep. So what I'm going to do is get in there and I'm going to find the queen. I'm going to catch the queen. I'm going to put the queen down in the bottom box where all the brood frame is from the previous year. And I'm going to leave her down there. and I'm going to put a queen excluder directly over the deep box and under the medium,

which is now mostly brewed early in spring. Now, what they will do is they'll continue. I love it when people say what they will do, as if we know exactly what they're going to do and they're going to follow this plan to the letter. But I just know ahead of time it's going to happen. So the deal is, I'm going to have the queen's. underneath and a bunch of nurse bees are going to move down. They're going to tend to the queen and she's going to start laying in those old brood frames down below.

And then as the upper box bees start to emerge, they will just of course do their normal thing. And they will also migrate down into lower boxes while the queen lays up those nice deep frames. And then once they're committed again to four or more of those deep frames in the bottom box, then I'll remove the queen excluder again. and we'll have that start up deep and medium, and off we go with no more queen excluders for the rest of the year for the hive. So that's what I'm doing this year coming up just because it struck me while I was sitting and watching someone else talk about expanding hives and things like that.

And I thought, you know what, I can move the queen around. And where the queen goes, so go the nurse bees. So what do you think of that? Does that sound good? I think it's going to work great. Someone says they have problems with the sound. Does anyone else have problems with the sound? If I sound really good, just click the little money donation button and send me a dollar and a thumbs up.

If you can't hear me at all, don't send any money. Okay. What else? I think that's it. Nobody else typed in all caps. If you have a question for me, it's all caps. So Autumn Hillbilly says it's an awesome idea. I know, it's above average, like bees.

By the way, this coffee cup that I'm drinking from, support your local beekeepers, that comes from Dirt Rooster, Randy McCaffrey. So I'm just giving a shout out to them. Autumn Hillbilly says, I am choppy. Huh, it should not be that way. We have good internet. Let me see.

my sound, maybe it's sound for the wrong thing. Better be using the right sound source. Pardon me for a minute while I try to figure out what this thing is using. It says, won't the drones get stuck above the queen? Yes, that's for Maureen. The thing of it is, if the drones are above the queen excluder, they will be stuck above and won't be able to get out. But here's the thing.

We're doing this early in the year, where drones are just getting started maybe. And let's say they are stuck up there. Once the queen starts laying, we can still let them out. And then, I'm sorry, I'm distracted because we're still talking about sound. I hope it sounds good. So anyway. So here's the thing. Yeah, if there are drones up above drones early in the year,

it can be stuck above the queen excluder because it can't pass through. You could. I mean, I don't want to, but because remember, we've got a queen excluter there, so you could temporarily open an upper entrance to let those drones out and then close it right back up. The thing of it is, they won't, of course, move brood up into that upper box because we have the queen excluter down below. So if you want to just let drones out, you could, or even just open it, you know, every couple of days and let the drones fly out. So that's about it. And what else? It sounds fun here in Texas. So people are saying

sound good some upset don't sound good as like okay and that's it no more cap questions so far so let's go on to one of the first questions here i'm working on building a base like yours after you mentioned it uh the other week so thanks for the videos of it and this is from p y e h l1 that's the youtube name so i bought three inch wheels so we're talking about a base that i put underneath my extractor If you've got an electric extractor or even a hand crank extractor, it really doesn't matter. I build a carriage for it out of wood, and I put industrial wheels under that. I say industrial because they have to handle the full weight of your extractor plus all of the honey that you're going to be putting in it. And of course, your deep frames of capped honey after you uncap and then you're going to run it through the extraction process.

The wheels that we put under it are, first of all, to get it up off the ground, higher so I can put a bigger bucket underneath and drain the honey into the bucket. Now, keep in mind, small scale, backyard beekeeping. Having it on wheels means that while it's oscillating, instead of you, I don't know how many of you have ever done a hand crank like I did when I first started out, but you end up holding it while it like rattles a lot and you try to keep it from walking off the table or whatever you've got it on. And so having it on wheels, I realized took away the strain and the load on the legs. So now the thing just oscillates around on its own and moves when the load is unbalanced.

Why is your load unbalanced in the first place? Because some of your frames are not completely full. Some are deeper. Some are shallower. And so you can end up with an unbalanced system. And that just takes the train out of it. So the other thing is having wheels underneath your extractor means that when you're not using it, you can roll it outside to hose it out, for example.

or you can wheel it over into a corner to get it out of the way and put a 55-gallon trash bag over the top of it or one of those food grade bags if you're being super careful about it. So once you clean it up, you cover it up and you wheel it out of the way. So having it on wheels is a huge advantage. So there was another thing that said, why in the video did you show a big block in the middle when first shown without? Why was it added? Well, the big block is a six inch by six.

inch block of wood. And what I have that for is I put it behind or under the back wheel. So I tip it up, put the block underneath, and that's to get every last bit of honey out of it. So it's just a freestanding block. And I found out when I used that, it tips forward and doesn't move. So the block is a placeholder because the wheel goes over the back of it and so on. So it's just a tipping tipping mechanism. That's about it. And autumn hillbillies again. Have you ever seen bees beard in winter months? I live in Los Angeles area and did an inspection a couple days ago and noticed a bunch of bees that were covering the entire face or front of the hive.

Okay, here where I live, absolutely not no bearding in winter. But I understand that winter's different in a lot of places like L.A., of course. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to make sure that you haven't actually got a swarm going to. If you have more than one hive, you'll be able to see if other hives are also bringing in nectar and if they are and they're trying to dry things out, or if somebody's put a really high water content sugar syrup out late in the year, they might still be fanning. So that's the other thing. Listen to see if they're fanning. If they're collected on the front of your hive and they're massing there, look to see if any of the bees that are on the surface of that bearding cluster are actually doing waggle dances.

If they're doing waggle dances, you might actually have a swarm on your hands at a bad time of year. So that's kind of the cut. The other thing is, if you want to see if they're really just bearding or if something else is going on, go out there in the middle of the night when it's nice and cool. That's right. 2 a.m. If you're into ghost hunting, you would want to go out there at 3 a.m. or 3.15. They call that dead time when you're most likely to interact with ghosts.

and then see if a bunch of the bees have gone in or if the size of the cluster is remaining the same. If they're going in and stuff, then it is bearding because of moisture content inside. If there's waggle dances going on, they're on their way out. Time for you to set up a nuke or something and harvest those bees and transfer them into that.

So that's about, that's the most I can think of on that particular thing. Autumn says, So whether it was 65 Fahrenheit have Apamee hives. That is very unusual for them to beard. I find that the Apame hives that I have, for those, you don't know what those are, those are very well insulated hives, they have lots of venting options, really rugged hives. If you've got heavy weather coming, Appame is it.

So my Apame hives are my least bearding hives of all. So now I'm going to go back to my first concern. watch for dancing bees on the surface of the cluster and see if you don't actually have a swarm. They may be on their way out. So check them out and get back with us and let us know what's happening. So because 65, they can be doing anything they want in that weather.

That's pretty darn good. So here's another one called beekeeping. Fred, question, what your bee ideas for 2025? Anything you would like to do or achieve. Cheers from Scotland. Man, I can't believe. We're talking to people all the way from Scotland. I'm trying to keep that a secret because it's one of the things I talk about.

I want to give live presentations. But one of the things I'm going to do, I already mentioned, we're going to create super colonies, super splits. Watch for that in springtime. But since you're here live, I guess I'll share with you a little bit. Normally in spring, when you find out that your colonies are, you know, they're on the rise. They're building in numbers.

and that's when you have a super to get ahead of them. And we know that supering your hives doesn't always work to stop us warm. We also know that if you look inside your hives and find that they have queen cells in production. Queen cells means there's eggs in them, larvae developing, and they're on their way. They're not complete yet. If they are, you're too late. So we have to kind of control those. Now, the normal way to create splits and double your hives, which is something I do not want to do.

I don't want a bunch of new beehives. I just don't. So then I'm thinking when people do splits, you know, you cut your brood frames, whatever breed resources are in the hive, the parent hive, the big hive that's building up really fast, we pull the brood frames out and maybe 50% of them we take away. So now what we did is we have a colony that's going to reconstitute itself

and replenish its numbers. We also establish a new colony. And I like walkaway, splits, which means one of those two hives is going to produce a new queen. If we already had queen cells there, that's going to take place in a very short amount of time. But here's my thinking. I don't like doing that. So let's talk about super splits, super colonies.

So what I'm doing this coming spring, I'm going to go, let's look at a bank of hives. And since I have 43 colonies to play with, I can do whatever I want. So what I'm going to do is early on. So as soon as the weather breaks, as soon as I can get in there, this is even before I see adequate drones for mating of new queens and things like that. So I can even do this before I see queen cells, right? I'm going to go to six strong colonies. I'm going to pull full frames of brood from six colonies.

How many frames would I pull from each parent colony? one. I will make sure that I don't take the queen out of the parent colony. I'm going to take that deep brood frame with brood capped on both sides, super loaded, bring the nurse bees with it that just happen to be on the frame. I'm not going to do any shaking. I'm going to bring the 10 frame deep brood box with me on a cart and I'm going to take a frame of brood and bees from this side and I'm put it in there. I'm going to go to the next hive that I know is really strong. I'm going to pull one of the strongest and most loaded frames of brood from that one. Without the queen, I'm going to put it in there. So I will have a deep brood box with six deep frames of brood from six different

contributing colonies. So now what I've done is I've removed and I've replaced the frame. Now, I don't put an empty frame in the middle of the brood area where I just withdraw. the other one. I push all those together and then I add the new frames outboard of that. So now what I have is a 10 frame box with six full frames of bees. So what I did there is I have not weakened the honey production capability or the pollination capability of the parent colony. I also didn't create a weak nucleus hive from that. That will require weeks to get going and numbers dwindling to the point where it's not going to produce a huge surplus. So these are super splits.

As we know, each frame, capped brood deep Langstroth frame, we're looking at over 6,000 bees per frame. If we have six of those, we have a 36,000 B, conservatively, brood box that we're starting in spring. Now, I have a choice. I can bring in a queen that I know about, so I can buy in a queen if I'm trying to beef up my genetics or something, or I can make sure that there's a couple of queen cells in there with that super split. That's one of the things I'm going to do this coming year. So that'll be that deep box and we'll have a medium box right on it.

It'll be ready to go and it can go anywhere I want in my apiary. Now, I haven't done it before, but I'm 99.99% sure if this is going to work, great. And the reason I know that this works well, years ago, and I populated my first observation hive, which required eight deep frames, Langstroth frames. It was in pairs and four high. I took frames from a bunch of different hives. I put them all together. They're incredibly calm. There was no conflict. And I made sure that there were eggs and resources there so that they could produce their own queen. And the reason I did that is because it's an observation hive. And we wanted to see them build up. So all these years later, that same principle is going to work in a deep

brood box on a standard bottom board and everything else. And now we've taken some congestion out. So we've relieved some of that. At the same time, we're going to super that high because they're strong, remember. But we've relieved them of some brood. We've removed some of the stimulus for swarming. You might be opening your entrance reducer a little bit at that time of year. And I'll have Nothing but strong colonies, no baby colonies, no little startups. I'm only going to do super splits. Now, we also mentioned that I'm going to use the Keepers Hive, two Queen system. So that's two 10-frame size boxes, but if you look at the Keepers Hive, those 10-frame boxes only hold 8 frames. So now what do you think I'm going to do? Super splits.

So I'm going to load both of those from many parent colonies, and I'm going to kick off my my Keepers Hive with a really strong workforce. And then that central column will be, haven't decided what size is it going to be yet. But I think those are 10 frames or 8 frames. I haven't looked at it, but when I get the kit from them because they're shipping, I'll know what I'm going to do.

But that will be super super super, super split, super super, super hives, super awesome, above average, beekeeping. So that's coming up. Those are the two big things that I'm going to do. So let's move on. What are your thoughts on native packages versus fancy packages from California? This is from Jose. I should probably let you know that don't buy bees. They don't buy any packages or anything.

So packages from California, if you're buying package bees, like if you buy from Better Bee or you buy from Man Lake and all of that, chances are it's coming from olivaris, California. You're getting your packages. You're picking your queen. So the package, the bees that are in the package are not as critical as the queen, of course, that comes with it. But if you've got the bees to work with,

I'm going to suggest that you use local bees that are adapted to your region that have done really well. And this is one of the things that I tell my mentees here is to do all this reproduction early in the year. because here in the state of Pennsylvania, I'm sorry I didn't mention that yet. We're in the northeast and part of the United States, state of Pennsylvania, thus the snow.

I'm in the middle of this big snowstorm that's coming through. We like to produce new queens and get our bees going before packages ship in from other states. So usually around here, that's the end of April or into May before those packages are coming up here. So we can get our own bees. And the reason I do that is because our queens are going to be flying out to drone congregation areas in this neck of the woods. I want them mating with drones.

I don't care what the background of the drone is. I don't care where they went to school. I don't care who their parents are. I only care that they survived winter and that they're coming out of a colony that's strong enough in spring to produce surplus stock, including drones. Because you're weaker colonies that are dwindling, that are dying out, they don't make these strong drones. So early spring, this is when, if you live in the northern parts of the country, you want to be creating your splits, however you do it, walkaway split. If you're picking queen cells, things like that, whatever the method is, do it before packages are coming up from the south and from the west. Because now we know that we've got stock and the drones they made it with are all winter hardy stock that made it.

So now you're way ahead. And then I realize that some people are just starting out and they feel like they have to buy packages, I'm going to suggest that if you are a new beekeeper watching this right now and you're thinking, man, I really want to start out and I want to buy packages, I want to know what's going on, I'm going to suggest that you rather register with a website that's called, get your pen ready, be swarmed.org, B-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E-E-S-W-A-R-M-E. If you're not confident collecting a swarm because what you'll do is you get alerts when the general public sees a swarm somewhere in your vicinity. You set up how far you're willing to travel.

I'll go five miles. I'll go 10 miles because I'm new and I need beats. Whatever your parameter is, set yourself up with a mentor who can go with you and help you collect that swarm because that's what I do with my mentees. When I get a call about swarms, I'm not bringing those things back to my perfect apiare. I don't need new stuff there. But I'll meet them out at the site of the swarm. We'll put them in a Colorado be vac or something, and we'll get them going and send them home right from that site with their new bees,

and they're totally free. So we're doing the public a favor when we collect the swarm. Some beekeepers actually charge people when they alert them about a swarm and they go to collect it. It's dangling on a tree branch, and they charge them money. I'm much more like the beekeepers that will go out, collect the swarm, it's an education opportunity, or they'll even do a reward system. If you report a swarm and if I go get it,

I'll give you a quart of honey, that kind of thing. So it's a great way for new beekeepers to get free bees starting out. Plus, they're already in your area. So that's what I'm saying. Maureen, what's this say here? Six full friends with different genetics, Keith Lthian recommends mixing frames for faking as if the queen made it with more than more drones. Okay, that's interesting.

I will tell you this because I've mixed all these frames in the past. If you pull from just two colonies, sometimes there's a little conflict there. But when you pull from a whole series of colonies, I realize you have to have a decent-sized backyard apiary to do this. But it is fantastic. So I spilled the beans on what I'm going to do. so I haven't even made a video about it. Somebody's going to now jump ahead of me and have that great idea

and they're going to do good stuff. So if you have a question for me, just a friendly reminder, type it in all caps, and then I will know that it's for me. So, this one is from Nassine, N-E-S-E-I-N. It says we have a small building

with vendor windows. My husband wanted to move my five hives, into. I didn't think we can move the bees that distance because it's probably 30 feet away from my hives. Could we really possibly move them without messing them up? And when they take a cleansing flight, will they find their way back to their hives? I'm in Ohio, zone six. I'm actually very interested in building something with a bee bed. That's a old other thing. If you guys have ever heard of bee beds, look at Leo Shirashkin. Several hives form a big bed. You, you lay on it, it's all enclosed.

And he actually calls it a bee sauna. All right. So the other thing is, wintertime, if you don't have deep snow, it's a perfect time to move hives around and manipulate your gear. Because they are coming out doing cleansing flights. A lot of them are doing cleansing flights and just not returning to the hive anyway. So they're self-evicting bees. A lot of new beekeepers panic about it.

So I think it's a good time to talk about that because if you go out in the snow and you get a nice warm up. Obviously today is too cold for that. Bees will fly out and land right in the snow and melt a little hole into the snow. And then some people collect them all up and run them back to the hive and put them on the landing board

and try to get them to go back in. It is a natural attrition for your bees in winter. So often they are just evicting themselves and they're going out and they don't plan to come back. So if you want to move your hives around, wintertime is a perfect time to do it, and you will not lose a lot of bees. Why? It's because the bees that are really missing the location that are going back to the old spot are your foragers.

How long are your bees foragers? A couple of weeks. So we're already more than two weeks into cold weather here to where there's not a lot of foraging going on, therefore they have not oriented themselves very well outside of the hive. So the new bees that are coming out that are transitioning to becoming foraging bees, which in the wintertime would be most likely after water. So it actually is a very good time to reorient and reorganize where your hives are, and there's no problem with moving them 30 feet. You're going to get those bees set.

They're going to come out and they're going to orient and they're going to find themselves right back in there. So I think very easy time. I highly recommend it. What else? Let's see. Remember if you have a comment for me or a question for me, all caps. It's not considered shouting when it's a live chat. It just saves me from having a scan what everybody might be saying.

This next question comes from Nigel Moore, 9657, says when the bees enter the hive through the opening, is there a space under the frames for them to go into, or do the frames come down to the hive floor? It says, I'm not a beekeeper, so I do not know. Okay, so this is something that I actually wanted to answer because I have a lot of variation in the hive configurations that I keep here and where the entrances are located, and I have dropped it down to single entrances regardless of the hive configuration.

So horizontal hives, lands hive. By the way, you guys should know, I have a top bar hive now, so I'm going to do that in spring. The ivory bee hive, all of these hives have a single entrance. Now, with my long length roth hive, for those who are unfamiliar with the plans or the hive that I use, you can go to the way to be.org, and there is a page marked prints and plans. The PDFs there are free to download, so you can use them. It shows you what I'm doing, how I configure it. Now, there is an option to have a shim underneath,

so there are two by 12s for the side walls, and you can add a two by four underneath of that. And what it does, it creates a space under those standard Langstroth frames that's open. When you see configurations or cavities that bees move into on their own, they very often leave a deep airspace underneath their frames. So also that space is kept pretty darn clean. Now, if we use, because here's one of the discussion points between Layans hive users and long Langstroth hive users.

One is depth of frames. So we can allow the bees to create deeper frames if we have that 2x4 shim underneath the 2x2x10 standard long Langstroth hive. Bees will most likely build drone cone there. I also want to offer you a solution for that. So drone comb is a great way to control pests without treatment. So for the people that are trying very hard to do treatment-free, they're also actively learning about integrated pest management systems. So that includes a screen bottom board that's enclosed. It's not just open to the ground. It includes more space for drone comb because we

Once they lay eggs in the drone, comb, and they're producing drone, most of the Varroa destructor mites go into those cells. And then you can solve two things. One is people often want to collect beeswax. They want to make things. They want to make products with beeswax, which, by the way, are super popular. Lip-bomb, everything. So this gets you fresh comb.

It's been used for drones, right? So the wax is still good. So you get the drones out of there, plus you're harvesting wax. It's a double gain. The colony that can't afford to produce more drones will not produce a bunch of comb under there. So this leads back to the question here from Nigel.

The entrance opposite, so it's on the long face, and for me, it's the side that faces south, south to southeast. When you're on the other side of that, then you open up the lid, now you're not standing in the entrance, way to attend to your frames. So the long hive configurations, lay-ins, Langstroth, top bar,

whatever it is, it's very easy on the bees, very easy on the beekeeper because you're pulling frame by frame and you can move things around. And extra frames that you need to use are also in that same big coffin-shaped beehive. So by having the shim underneath, the entrance is also underneath. I prefer that. So I like the bees to come in under the comb and then rise up into it. I've had highs, of course, where they go straight into the end of the comb or into the face of the comb if you put your entrances on the end of the hive. And I kind of don't like it because what the bees end up doing is not utilizing 100% of that comb for stores. So they don't use it for pollen. They don't use it for honey storage and they don't use it for production. They just

draw it out and it's there. So it seems to be a waste of space. So if your entrance comes in under your frames, and that's what slatted racks do, for example, if you're not familiar with that, that's a two-inch shim that goes underneath your deep box, and it creates a space that gives bees that are unemployed, bees that might be bearding, would be collecting in there. And for those of you who do exhalic acid vaporization, it provides a shim that lets you vaporize without vaporizing directly into your brood frames. So there's a lot of advantages to having a shim like that. And so I do prefer to have the entrance come in at the bottom of the hive under your

brood frames. So that's for Nigel. And this one is from beekeeping. Fred, question. Have you tried the French warre hive yet? They work well for those who can't lift heavy box type hives, elder or disabled. The Worry Hive, I thought the Worry Hive was a square hive that you add your supers underneath as you go. So I might be confused if somebody else is watching this and you want to

make a comment about the Worry Hive. I think worries are almost square. So I don't really think that's a long hive. So I'm not sure. I guess they would have to look more into the worrying hive to answer that. The thing is, I don't have any, so I'm not keeping them. And I would have to look that up. So, but I think because it's for the elder, disabled, beaks can do these. So for me, your lay-ins, your long-laying, and your top bar hives would be my top three choices for those who can't lift boxes, for those that are handicapped. Horizontalbees.com,

Ricky Rort, is working with handicapped beekeepers to have a long Langstroth hive that tilts on an axle system and allows people even in wheelchairs to attend to that. So I'm going to have to personally look into the Worry Hive. I must misunderstand what that configuration really is. But we're well on our way with other configurations is it already exists. And I would take the Long Lang over the Layans.

And I know that people that are committed to Layans don't want to hear that. The Layans frames are pretty darn big and can be actually heavy even for people because you're worth thinking about people with arthritis, people with weak fingers, people that have difficulty managing and lifting things. And the other part of that is the Langstroth frame-based hives. So the Long Langs mean that there's a lot. more diversity as far as equipment goes, frames, foundations, and things like that, than there are right now with the Layans hive. So, but the Worry Hive, if somebody is there and, you know, they

want to comment about the Worry Hive for beekeeping, please feel free to do that. So Tim says, happy belated Thanksgiving. Oh, that's right. Same to you too. Today is Black Friday. If you don't already know that, but of course, some of you are in other parts of the world, so you don't care about Thanksgiving here. But that's what we had yesterday. And I did make it to Cleveland for Thanksgiving. And they got home just ahead of the storm. So now we can't go anywhere.

So here, beekeeping says, yes, square. Can oversuper them too. Yeah. So the way that works is as they build their comb down from the top, you're supering underneath and you keep building it up that way, which does require lifting. So you want to be just aware of that. so I think okay all right what else we have I have Ray Schmidt 6032

YouTube channel name have some extra two to one syrup with hive live in it is it okay to freeze this and feed in spring so once again hive alive is this stuff it is recommended by the inventors of hive live that you not freeze it so the The other thing is the reason you'd be freezing it is to preserve the syrup. So here's where I want you to understand. Whether you're using Honeybee Healthy, which is this stuff, whether you're using Hive Alive, whether you're using Beekeeper's Choice, whether you're using pro-health, any of these essential oil-based liquids that are added to your sugar syrup, they extend the life of the sugar

syrup, which means you're not going to get that yucky black mold that starts to develop in your sugar syrup. And I've done this. I put it on the shelf and I've added a teaspoon of all of these, not all to one, but each different one, to see how long it took before it started to degrade and it started to see black mold in it. And I got seven months out of a one-to-one sugar syrup sprayer with these things added at the recommended rate. So like these are two teaspoons per gallon. But, you know, I'll go back to the beginning of this. the hive alive is much more expensive and I want you to think of it as a treatment where honeybee healthy is more of a pheromone masker that's why it's been used you know an introduction of queens

it's also used to extend your sugar syrup and it has a very distinctive smell that your bees remember so in the past when I've used honeybee healthy and my sugar spray when I'm not using smoke when I'm attending to beehives the second that they smell the hunting be healthy, they're up and their tongues are out. So not only are you not dealing with the guard bees, little sprits is the lightest sprits, occupy them, they get a reward system, and they respond expecting that reward. So it is an identifiable smell. Now that's when your bees are fat and happy.

If you try to do that at the end of the year, even though you get this really hot weather, but now we've got a dearth at the end of the year. That is not the time to be squirting out sugar syrup with honeybee healthy in it, because they recognize the smell and the colony that you're working gets mobbed. So be careful. Go back to smoke at the end of the year when you're in high robbing periods of the time there.

But the other thing is, don't bother freezing it. The sugar syrup will extend it plenty and then you can just feed it back to them. In spring, when before your honey supers are on because you do not want hive alive, honey be healthy, pro-health, beekeepers choice, none of that. should show up in your honey supers that are designed for human consumption, sale, and things like that.

So what's the question here? Mark Bidwell. My question is way up there. Okay, Mark Bidwell. Let me try to find Mark's question. I have used the crown board. Is it in all caps, Mark? Let's go. Wow, there's a lot of people in this comment thread. Mark, I don't, audio is good. I don't know what the question is. Would you mind typing it again? So, by the way, it's about bearings.

I just apologize here. I'm going to try to find it. I've used crowd war. I'm trying to think how this is going to come out at the end here when I'm not. talking fred do you have leaf cutter bees i don't know how far back this goes i do not see it if you can just copy it and cut and paste it again i will do my best to answer you as soon as possible i hear it's my question about extractor bb and food grade grease okay so the extractor that's what

i use food grade uh silicon grease inside the extractor for the bearings and that's center column that goes up there. And the second part of that is most of the way these extractors are built in everyone, Maxent, Hilko, Man Lake, all these different powered extractors, you'll notice that there's a rise in the center and where the bearing is is above where your honey line should be. So even though we're using food grade grease there, this is important to keep your honey gate open while you're extracting honey so that it is pouring out into your receiving container, whether that's a big drum or a five-gallon bucket or something like that, we don't want the honey to get up to that bearing.

Now, let's say it did. Food grade grease, and it's on Amazon. It's really widely available, and it will not, of course, taint the honey, but I don't want anything in my honey but honey. So don't let it get up to those bearings. but you'll see it. When you look in the bottom, in fact, look through the honey gate at the bottom

and you'll see how high up the bearing is. And you might want to go ahead and mark a safety marker. Use an etcher because they're all stainless steel drums. So use an etcher to mark what your high level should be. In other words, don't exceed it and don't interact with those bearings with your honey. That's just what I personally would do. So here's one shoe. Hi, Fred.

I'm getting the two queen keepers hive coming soon. Any recommendations on a. hive stand to be put on a roof. Wow, so we're going on a roof. My question is whether or not they're even coming with bottom boards. I don't know yet. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to configure it as it gets here. I think most people know that I like the Lison metal stance. I know they're expensive. They're running right now about $135 for the pair. But here's the thing. This This is a double super hive. You can run two by sixes.

You can run a longer span with them. And if you have a double queen system, two big hives, big central thing, you also leave yourself plenty of space to set gear. I don't like putting equipment, frames and things like that on the grass, leaning on hives. And you're on a roof, though, so you're not worried about skunks and things like that. So you can really get away with a lot of different things. you could put, you know, four by fours on center blocks up there. So one of the things I would think about on a roof, though,

is how hot it's going to get an air movement, free flow air underneath the hive and things like that. But the two-queen keepers hive is exactly the one I picked. So obviously, good choice there. And I'm just going to see how mine go, but you have a lot more options than the rest of us do. I assume that that roof is going to be flat and that, But yeah, I don't know what to say.

You can put it up at the height that's comfortable for you to work it. So you can set four by fours off of two, you know, cinder blocks. They're eight inches tall each. That's a 16 inch height that's pretty comfortable. So you work from your seat. Let us know what you, one shoe says, no bottom boards. It's right. So I have to build my own bottom boards.

But that's okay because I'm ready to do it. I'm going to make mine out a red oak. So this is from Amy. It says, could you address the difference between putting fondant on now and letting the bees save honey for later or waiting and adding fondant until later in the season? I found it just shifted my bees into the top box early. So Amy, what I want to know is what part of the country you're in. I try to get the people around here because we're talking about

high-blime fondet or any fondant that you make. So in my bee club, they've been swapping fondant recipes, but this is the stuff. I don't put it on until it starts freezing at night. And once they do that, because my bees, I ended up with many colonies

that were almost honeybound going into winter. They are clustered over their brood. So the larger clusters of bees inside the hives, many of them can, of course, stay over the brood and keep it warm, 94 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit, even in the middle of winter. And then others can migrate up and access emergency resources. But when you put this fondant all the way on top, those that, and that's where I recommend, you put it on top of your insulated inner cover, that center hole, those who threw them on early while it was still warm, while bees were still foraging, while honey was still being produced inside the hive.

The bees did migrate up to the intercovers and up under that intercover early, and they kind of stayed there. So what happened is they migrated their route up too soon. That's a problem when you have a resource that they prefer over their own honey stores. So depending on where you are, when you're at the point where you hit your winter dearth, Now, here's, there's two things I want to explain about that. One is if you made that mistake and you put it on too early, and the bees didn't migrate up early. That just means that you have to keep this stuff going.

In other words, once they're, you know, two-thirds of the way through consuming it, you have to get another one right on there. This is a two-pound packet. They make a five-pound because now they're up there. This is the frustrating, one of the frustrating things, about honeybees is they won't go back down into their honey once their brood is up there as the season continues. So once you start feeding a fondant or an emergency feed like that on top of your hive, you have to continue that until the environment kicks back in and those nectar and pollen

resources start coming in again. So if you did that too soon, you're kind of committed. And that's because once they start brooding in that area, they won't leave their brood, no matter what happens. So even with all the honey down below, if they abandon that early, capped honey, this is a frustration in an area that a lot of new beekeepers don't really understand. Why did my bees starve?

When two frames over, there's full frames of capped honey. Well, they're above it and in the center of it, and what is their priority to stay on the brood? If the colony does not have enough bees in it, They don't have the surplus bees to migrate out and access the surplus honey while they keep that brood retained and warm and attended to. So that's why we have a problem with small colonies in large spaces and with food spread out too much for the number of bees in it. So yes, wait on fondin until you're at a point where it's freezing at night and nothing is coming in for the environment.

it doesn't really help you if you've got a colony that you discover too late in the year that that colony is really light. You go to tip it, you want to find out if there's a bunch of honey in there, and you find out it's just a light colony, you're an emergency ration territory, and other people will say, let them die out, you don't want those bees anyway. I say, because I like underdog bees, and it also is a way of testing whether or not a fondant can, get your bees through winter in survivor mode. This is not going to be your champion colony of bees. First of all, remember, they failed to save all the resources that they needed. But we're talking about a light colony, remember, not the ones that were full and you just

happen to feed them too soon, and they prefer it, so they moved up. So if you start to feed them, you kind of have to keep it on. And I highly recommend the five pound packs. The reason I recommend those is last winter with the two-pound packs because I did both. The five-pound packs were never completely consumed. So what I had was a hands-off colony. Once I put the five-pound pack down, they were good all the way through until spring. Even the big colonies were like that.

So the thin packs, the two-pound packs, were those here in the state of Pennsylvania. Again, it's going to vary depending on your region and when resources become available to your bees. once those early spring pollen and nectar sources kick in, they won't starve out. If they've got the workforce to go out and forage for that, once again, this is about the number of bees in the colony. If they're a tiny colony, they can't even afford to forage. And this is why a lot of people say, take your losses at the end of the year, don't even take care of them. And that's why I just use it as a test colony to see, can I resuscitate this colony and

get it through till spring? And then, of course, in spring, you have to boost them too. and you'll be wanting to probably re-queen those colonies. But anyway, feeding too soon does in fact draw them up. But if it's a really big colony, that won't matter. So I hope we did not muddy the waters. Here's from Zach. Let's see.

I saw that they are not coming with Vodaboard. I saw you know where George. Okay. Fred, I live in Middle Tennessee and wonder if a poly hive is necessary to insulate my hives from the summer heat and cold. or can I accomplish the same thing with insulation under my outer cover? So for Zach, I say insulation under your inner cover. Forget the, don't insulate.

You could insulate the outer cover if it's a migratory cover, for example. With the migratory covers, if that's what we're talking about, I would put a single layer of double bubble on there. I would say down in Tennessee, you do not need a fully wrapped holly hive. The reason I say that is because I'm testing all of those levels of insulation right here. So I have colonies that are out there with just three-quarter inch lumber just like everyone else has on their hives. And the key is that the lumber needs to be in good shape. It needs to be well preserved and the joints need to fit together well.

Then the insulated inner cover and an insulated outer cover. So insulated inner cover, feeder sham, and then an outer cover. And I use the BMAX outer cover sometimes. They're polycyrene, and just the covers are insulated. I also have the Apamahe hives, which are insulated through the sides and everything else. And I have the land size, which are insulated with lambs wool, sheep's wool. And I have the lice and hives that are poly hives that are insulated on all sides. And there is not a significant difference in their wintering population, survival, and numbers.

in spring. So being that I'm here in AgZone 4 and you're down in Tennessee, I would say that you do not need the polyhives down there. You just don't. That insulated inner cover when we started doing that was key. That thing worked really well. But you did hit on something else that I want people to kind of give thought to now that we're in wintertime. Once you have an insulated hive and things are all, because insulating, it's not bad. It just may not be necessary. That's my point. So for those who have put all this insulation on their hives,

they get a big top, the two-inch rigid foam board, they make an extra top that slides on over that, and they put double bubble under that. It uses it as a placeholder to snug it up and things like that. And then here comes summer and they pull it all off. Why would you pull it off? If you could see, I know a lot of people don't have thermal scans, but if you could see what the temperatures are

on the outside of your hives in summer, if you had insulation, all insulation does is interrupt the transfer of heat, right? That's what you're trying to do is give as much of the climate control inside that hive to your bees as possible. So when I took thermal scans at the top of standard telescoping, metal clad hive tops and got 135 degrees Fahrenheit,

I was thinking, how did my bees even survive all the years that I did that configuration, which is the way hives used to come, telescoping, outer cover, very thin, almost luan thin, with metal cladding on the top. Then you had an airspace, you had that inner cover, which also was really thin, Luan, that had the little feeder hole in the middle. See, that's the other thing a lot of people think that that hole in the middle of your inner cover is for venting. That was designed there as a feeder hole, and there was an insert that went in there. So it was also a ready-made bee escape.

So you took your inner cover and you put that underneath your super, and the bees would go through this little plastic bee escape and migrate down, and then you could harvest. So it was supposed to be kind of an all-purpose thing. But now what we know about insulation and how venting would be no longer necessary if we insulate that inner cover because we're not venting condensation or prevent it from dripping down on the bees

because the dew point doesn't happen over the bees anymore when that cover is insulated. So you get a chance to just now close all that out because there are other things at play. I hope for those of you who are going to the North American Honeybee Expo, I hope that you attend presentations

of people like Etchen Tardif, because we're talking about things that build up inside a non-vented hive and the secondary benefit of that. Now, I don't keep bees in the Klondike region or wherever he is where it's super, super cold. I imagine insulation on everything is really important. The key is the discussion about ventilation. The buildup of CO2 inside your hive in wintertime,

like right now we have all the snow on the hives and it's building up. don't clear the snow off your hives either because that's an insulator. But what happens is the CO2 builds up in there and there's also high humidity. Now these things benefit the bees. The CO2, it's not that it benefits them so much as they don't mind it. The CO2 levels would kill us because the oxygen levels are low. But what animal inside the hive is in charge of that, the bees themselves? There's still an entrance so they can pull air,

in as they need it and this high CO2 level and this humidity level combination reduces reproduction in varroa destructor mites. So for those of you who are thinking about I really want to be treatment free or minimal treatment or organic only, pay attention to studies from people like at Gentartif and see what the impact has been on varroa stricter mites. And if you're reducing their reproduction in wintertime to less than 1%, you are doing a lot. So it also means that the bees use up less energy to keep themselves warm. That heat capsule is maintained. Condensation at the cluster inside the hive and slightly below.

That condensation is critical to their survival also. It's inside the hive. It's ready for them. So I probably went off on a tangent for that. So anyway, let's keep going. Added fondant in October already on the second patty. Yeah, see, if it wasn't freezing yet, adding fondant early is, can get them going. But the good news is, by the way, if you're going to buy that fondant, get a discount.

Fred 10. You get 10% off. Use my name. Fred 10, F-R-E-D, 10. If you buy direct from HiveLive, they'll probably have sales and stuff now, and that probably won't work on sales. It says here, cause says, Hey, Frederick, I'm in Maryland.

I don't use any insulation at all. Just a inner cover and then a telescoping cover. I have a question about using fondant patties. Should I put them below the inner cover? So here's the thing. I put them on top of the intercover. The most effective way to feed fondant, of course, is directly on the frames of brood.

These fondant packs are pretty thick. I put them on the intercover. for two reasons. One, the bees access it really easily, and I can see immediately what the consumption rate is. I don't have to pull the intercover to look at it. The bees' activity over their own frames is not interrupted or blocked. So that works.

The other thing is if I have to replace the fondant pack in the wintertime, I'm just exposing that one little hole in that inner cover and pull the other one up, put the new one on, and we're back in business just by pulling the telescoping outer cover. I don't have to pull the inner cover at all. Remember that when we have our inner covers on your hives, they have propylized that near the end of the year. And a lot of beekeepers reconfigure their hives right at wintertime

and break all the propolis seals, all the work the bees have done. And now it's not warm enough for them to restore those seals that they make themselves. So that's the other part of it. we're not disrupting the sealant that the bees do themselves on your inner cover, whether you use insulation or not. So that's why I do that. Let's see. Direct line top of frames causes the bees less access to the top of the frames and the bees.

Next to them place of the hive, beetles died out. Now, that's good. And it's from Terry. A lot of people put reflect text or double bubble directly on the frames when they have migratory covers. and they also propylized it, which is really interesting. I noticed that Ian Stepler also uses that. So you're going to have to make a decision about that. Sometimes, like my inner covers, there's room over the top of those frames

for the bees to move. I don't put anything on to frames themselves. Keep in mind, though, in an actual space or a cavity that your bees are moving into and building their comb on, the bees do not have access over the top of their own. own comb. What they do is they make access holes through it. So if you've got plastic foundation in your frames, I highly recommend cutting corners. So cut the corners or cut little vs in the middle of your foundation just under the top bar of your frame. And that way it's up to the bees.

When they fill that with comb, they'll still leave these passages through there, which allow them to migrate frame to frame to frame. Because there's a lot of discussion. among people that either support or don't support horizontal hive configurations. And one of the common discussions is bees have a difficult time moving sideways through the frames. I have not seen any difficulty in my bees moving through the frames sideways. But I do cut corners also. So if you're putting plastic foundation in your frames, you're forcing the bees up over and around your frames, rather than allowing them to make their own travel spaces through.

So cut your foundation and give them space. If they don't want it, they'll fill it with beeswax. If they want it, they can chew through the beeswax. They can't chew through the plastic. So my horizontal hives do just as well as my vertical hives. Insulation for me, I'm reading that some people are not using insulation at all. For me, insulation vastly improved wintering with my long length. Stroth Hive in particular. I basically made a quilt out of double bubble. And also it became a

gasket when I brought the top down, the edges of the double bubble completely covered the two by four material and took care of any air gaps that were there between the cover and the bottom box. And there was a significant difference in how much honey those bees needed to get through winter. And then, of course, the population of the bees when spring arrives. So it's something that's worked really well. Let's see what else is going on here. Oh, we've actually been on for an hour. Blocking that feed hole with the patty, would that help or hurt condensation with no insulation? Now, that's the thing. With no insulation you have to vent. So the problem is, when I talk about my configurations. You have to vent. If you've got no insulation on your hive, if you've just got the

telescoping cover that is not insulated, and you've got your inner cover, not insulated, without ventilation, you will have condensation directly over your bees. Putting the fondant pack in there will not change the fact that that's all cold surface and the due point will be achieved on those surfaces, and you will have freezing condensation directly over bees. So that's not good, in my opinion. I wish I could convince people, no matter what climate you're in, to use at the very least insulated inner covers and insulated outer covers. It would benefit you whether you are in cold climates, warm climates, makes no difference.

that hive top control is very good for them. Mark Bedwell says, Fred, do beetles lay larvae in hive alive and do they eat it? I have had, now here's the thing. That's a great question. No one has reported that the small hive beetles eat the hive alive. Now, here's one of the things we want to think about. This is completely in a closed-up plastic, right?

So for the hive beetles, because if this were a patty, because there are winter patties where all the edges are exposed, and it's kind of like wax paper on it, and then there's little holes in that so that your bees can eat into your winter patty. Because these are completely enclosed, small hive beetles do not chew into these, right? There's only a hole right here in the center, directly over the hole going down into the hive. So for a small hive beetle to get into that, it has to push up underneath this, get all the way into the middle where the bees are. So small high beetles have conflicts with the bees. And then the bees, of course, are in this area here.

Small high beetles, if you, by the way, have these fondant patties in these packets and you've had issues with small high beetles getting into them, let us know. But I don't think there are, when you have pollen patties and things like that, even pollen substitute patties or protein patties. Small high peatles are really attracted to that.

This is not a protein patty. This is seaweed, seaweed extracts. This is just the things that are in it are not, in my opinion. There's crude protein less than 0.5%. So really what this is, this is your sucrose. This is instead of a candy board, a sugar brick, a pile of dry sugar poured up there on a piece of paper, the Mountain Camp method, right?

So it's in place of that. So it's dried seaweed meal, water, time. So time is an essential oil, lemon grass oil. The things that are in here, in my opinion, I don't have small high beetle, so I can't test it. So I'm relying on other people to tell me so. but the ingredients of this are fortifying for your bees,

not so much an attractant for the small high beetles as some other winter protein pollen resources would be. So, yeah, they don't use that. Now, if you added proteins, even if you did something like where you mixed up, if you're trying to make some kind of candy board or some kind of protein board for your bees, you use AP 23 or these even pollen substitutes in there, you provided a protein source that is now

attractive to small high beetles. But I also don't know that they would reproduce in a candy board. So there again, the structure of it is much different than a pollen paddy. Pollin patties are just magnets for it. And real pollen, of course, are magnets for small high beetles. And again, I'm not a small high beetle expert because they just don't have any. I get companies that want me to test small-high beetle traps and baits and lures and pheromones and all this other stuff. It won't work because they don't have any.

Not one small-high beetle here. So, Codoo-D-D-do-do. So Codos says sounds like three-quarter-inch shim is necessary for me then to keep that feed hole open. Yes. All right. Does anyone else have a question? We're kind of at the end of it here. and if I see a question in all caps, I will still answer that. I just want to go through the fluff section here just to give people reminders.

The last question was about the putting sugar syrup with hive alive in it. Is it okay to freeze it? They recommend not freezing hive alive at all. So keeping in cool storage in the 50s, like your basement, something like that, is much better for longevity. So the other thing I want to remind people, and of course, this is the Northeast, but keep your entrances clear. Some people say it's a total waste of time. Why are you telling people to clean entrances? Bees like to plug their entrances with dead bees.

It's how they add insulation. Okay, whatever you think, by clearing an entrance of dead bees, I have not done any harm to the hive. There have been instances in the past where I've been late to clean out an entrance of a hive. and as soon as I cleaned it out, bees were streaming out of it. So they could not get their own dead bees out of the way of the entrance. So this is up to you. The beekeeper, if you choose not to do it, totally up to you. I do it.

It's what my grandson just loves to do. They give him a clean-out tool. He runs out there, and he cleans out all the entrances for me. The Appameehives have entrances that don't facilitate that. They have little holes instead. And so he gets a dowel, a wooden dowel, and he just pokes it in there. So he's actually pushing dead bees to the back. The Apamehives have removable bottom boards.

So you can just pull those out and dump them and put them right back in. So you can easily clean them that way. And watch for mice in your stored equipment. People are putting their foundation in their hive boxes. They're doing all the right things to protect their extracted honey. comb from pests, right? We don't want wax moths to go in there, but here where I live, the wax moths don't survive anywhere because all the outbuildings are freezing. So what does move around in there are mice. So be aware of mice getting into your entrances. I have another

YouTube channel that goes absolutely nowhere. It's been up for years. I think I have 500 subscribers. But on that, it's called Fred's Fine Product Reviews. And if you'd like to go look at it, the reason I'm mentioning it is I put up a video of the most expensive and ridiculously over-designed mousetrap I've ever seen. It's a robotic mousetrap. And the reason I bring it up is because when you set out mousetraps and I have lots of mousetrap videos, I'm a strong proponent of not using sticky. boards, don't fill a bucket with water and let mice tread water until they drowned.

Don't, I don't like toxins, poisons, right? Because now that mouse dies in a wall or enters the food chain outside and gets eaten by something else. And so the mouse that they're eating has now, you know, you get the picture, they're toxic. So this is an electronic mouse trap that the mouse goes on it and gets pancakeed. like right away. Then after it holds it there, it has a mechanical iron

that takes the mouse and drops it into a tray. So it is a touchless mouse killing machine. This is something that you would put in where you're storing your hive equipment. And the reason I say that if you could see as I have

the way deer mice, the way they can leap, goes straight up a wall, the way they can access everything, Here's what I want you to visualize. They're on your comb and mice just as it cruise around, whether it's a house mouse, a deer mouse, whatever the species is. They are producing mouse turds everywhere they go,

and they are dropping that all over your frames. They're also urinating, and you can't see where they've urinated. So once again, they just do that wherever they happen to be, and this could be on your honeycomb. So when you you need to pay attention to that, the rodents can chew in because some people bought these big bags that go over your whole stack of, you know, B boxes and that looks good, sounds good, great, because I mean the wax moth is not going to fly over and be able to lay its eggs on those frames inside that plastic bag. But a mouse will chew right in there. And mice chew through feed bags, plastic bags, chicken feed, everything that you have that store that can provide any nourishable. for the mice, they'll chew through that stuff.

So I would like it if you're bored because everybody's out shopping and you have nothing to do, if you would go to Fred's Fine Product Reviews, that's a YouTube channel, and look at that mouset, tell me what you think. It's not even available in the open market, the designer of it. He's got to be some kind of electronics guy with a mechanical engineering background. And if you look at it, it will take out every mouse that visits that in a single, night and you can even set it up on a table where it drops the dead mice into a trash bag if you want to. So, and the batteries last a long time. I've had this thing in operation for more than a year,

and it's fantastic. So don't torture your mice. If you've got mice that need to be killed, kill them clean and without suffering. And that system is just great. It's a repeater mousetrap. So watch for mice in your storage areas. Leave snow in your hives because it's an insulator. I already said that. Everything's on sale right now. All the companies are selling stuff. If you are, I mean, everybody is selling things. Blythe would be company, better be, Man Lake. Everyone has Black Friday sales. I think there's a Cyber Monday thing. Also, everyone is posting that's going to be, I think every vendor I've ever heard of is going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo. Someone told me that all the tickets were sold out and there's a waiting list already, but I checked the website.

site right before I came on today and they're still selling tickets. So I don't know what the truth is on that. But this is the time of year. If you've got the money, this is the time of year to take advantage of equipment that you would otherwise already buy and get a discount on it. So what I'd like to know in the comments section after this is done, what's on your beekeeper list? What would you want?

What is a gift that you wish someone would give you? Something you want, but you don't need it. That's the point of getting a gift. something you want but you don't need it, what would it be what do you need in your backyard that would just be a nice to have item? And what kind of hive do you wish you had? In other words, is there a stumbling block because of the cost of the hive? Is there a hive design that you're interested in, but you just haven't checked it out yet? I'd like to see what that is too. What hives do you wish we had that were more available in the United States and currently aren't? So that's pretty much it too. And I have

one question here from H.E. double hockey stick. It says Sweden and cannot feed any more syrup. Can they give them fondant? Or what can I do to save them? Yes, fondin. If you can't feed syrup because it's too cold, end of the year, too cold for it, because it can't do cleansing flights. We don't want to fill their gut with a whole bunch of liquids.

Fondin is it. It is the intermediate between. This is why, now I used to feed dry sugar. used to do sugar bricks. I used to tell people, put a rapid round in your hive, fill it with sugar, and turn them loose for winter until I realize how much effort it takes the bees to get minimal resources from sugar bricks, candy, fun, and not fondant, but dry sugar, all the ways that we were presenting sugar to them, because we were also told that dry sugar, if you put a bunch of it in there, it will solidify because it'll also serve as a desiccant.

I was very disappointed when I found out how little the sugar will actually draw moisture out of the air. It does solidify. It does become a little sugar block, but your bees spend a huge amount of time getting sucrose from it. Fondin is the intermediate between actual capped honey and dry sugar. So fondant is something that will help them survive. Remember, if they have the proper number of bees to make use of it while doing the other jobs they need to do inside the hive. So I want to thank everyone for being here today and taking part in the live stream.

I think it went really well. And I hope that you'll subscribe if you're not already a subscriber. 65% of my viewers are not subscribers according to my analytics. So if you're not already and if you like this kind of thing, please let me know. You can also submit your own question or topic for a future Q&A by going to the way to be.org and clicking on the page marked the way to be. And there's a form for you to fill out.

You can stay anonymous. You don't have to put in your email or anything like that. I'm happy to research things or to share. And I have access to people that are doing research so I can get up to the moment information on things that are actively being studied. and then I just share that with you 100% free. So I want to thank you and good luck shopping if you're doing that this weekend. And we'll see you next Friday for the next Q&A. Thanks a lot.