I don't. 95% of the time, one or more are in there. I just inspect after a week or two to make sure there is evidence of a queen. If not, I grab eggs from another colony, or a queen cell and let them make their own.

What it says is I lose my place a lot and don't pay attention...

I do that now. At first I was following what I had seen other people do, but thought it was a waste to do four nails when you can do two, and it is alot faster. It is a little more difficult to get the string tight sometimes, but not enough to double the work. Agree with the tip.

What you don't see in a all of the harvest videos we have done over the year (maybe not the first few) is that we do wait most of the time. All of the air gets on the top, so we drain the bucket until we get to the foam, then combine the foamy bucket with other foamy buckets, wait for them to settle and try to get as much out without air as possible. Funny, when we get to the end of the honey supply and we tell people we only have bottles with foam at the top, they never care. They always want the honey, but agree that it looks nicer without the bubbles.

Mellifera

I am entering my 7th year of beekeeping now - I don't recall how many years ago I made that video. I have never had an issue with either the fishing line holding the frames in, or the bees chewing through them. Occasionally, the bees will not build comb over the lines, but not very often. I use the fishing line for every frame in my supers, otherwise, the comb will spin right out in the extractor. I use fishing line for most of my deeps, although if you are careful (when you inspect the frames and how you handle and turn them) you would probably be fine without it. I find the line helps with starting the foundation straight at the beginning, so I either go foundation with fishing line, or no foundation frames. No foundation can give the bees the opportunity to make wonky or even perpendicular comb. They are creative :) Lots of people use wax foundation. I have found that sometimes the bees don't like it and won't build on it. These days I sell most of my swarms to a commercial beekeeper and he provides plastic foundation for me to use. Several times a year, one of my swarms just won't build on a plastic foundation (I catch 10-20 a year).

@@BrookHillHoneyMrGsHoneybees hey thanks for your info , I’ve tried fishing lines last month and now I have good developed comb on it , it’s easy to put inside the frame and looks clean. Recently I’ve used half foundation sheet with fishing line and that too turns out very different. Conclusion is I can replace steel wire with fishing line anytime of the day.

I have ordered from Brushy Mountain (gone) Kelley's (merged into Mann Lake), Mann Lake, and Dadant. There is also a local Kelley's retailer in my local area that I try to support, because sometimes it is easier and quicker to get something I need.

So far, we haven't done anything and we have five year's worth of wax. I purchased a lip gloss prep set (plan to do that this winter) and I am going to buy some candle making supplies to make candles. Probably this winter too.

Yes. When you look at the hive, there are two "deeps" on the bottom - about 10" height. The honey supers, what are harvested on the top, is the extra. The deeps have plenty of honey for the bees to last through the winter. Winter is variable, so I usually add some sugar mush every winter in case they need it.

@@BrookHillHoneyMrGsHoneybees good to know, thank you for explaining! I hope you are having a good weekend

Sometimes I get them from the local bee retailer. Sometimes I order them from the large beekeeping suppliers, but have to pay for shipping for those.

@@BrookHillHoneyMrGsHoneybees ok thank you🙏

The keys to a 1st year harvest are getting a nuc, instead of a package, good weather, getting the nuc early, and being really diligent to add the 2nd deep and the supers at the right time. I find the most difficult thing about getting honey is that when the frames in the super are new (which they are the first year) the bees are in no rush to get started on them (going through a queen excluder) but if you don't get a queen excluder, the queen will go up there and lay eggs. Lots of learning in this process...

Yes. A couple of ways to do that. You can either put it out in the yard like in this video (bees rob and clean off all of the honey) or you can put it back on the box, above the innercover and the bees will clean it out. Sometimes though they will start storing stuff up there too. Kind of a pain. I wish I could put the boxes several hundred yards away rather than 50 ft. The bees get a little more aggressive when they rob.

I purchased it at a local beekeeping store. Since that time, I have found the excluders with the wood frames just don't work very well. I exclusively use the single thin layer metal or plastic excluders now.

@@BrookHillHoneyMrGsHoneybees Thank you.

Some people harvest multiple times. Our first several years, where we borrowed someone else's equipment, we harvested only once per year. Now that we have our own equipment, we are doing twice per year.

I only have girls. Its a personality thing. Some are clean, some aren't. Bees - clean up always...

It is fun. We just started our 6th season. For the first time we decided to do two harvests instead of one (End of May and Early August). Still bottling, but it looks like we got around 150 lbs. Our friends can't get enough of it...

The honey mostly drains over a couple of days. Then you take all of the wax and rinse it with water several times (I fill up a bucket, put the wax in, stir it, then collect the wax with a colander (leaving nothing but dirty water), repeat a few times and then the wax is mostly clean, at which time I heat it and separate through a filter to remove the impurities. You can also just take all of the wax clippings and leave them out for the bees to clean (see my first year honey harvest video for that example).

Typically in the spring, honeybees get a signal, either a strong nectar flow (lots of flowers) or overcrowding, and worker bees (females) feed eggs differently, making queen cells. When the new queen cell is about to hatch, the old queen leaves the colony, as you see on this video, with lots of other bees. Typically they land on a nearby branch, as they do here, then the scout bees go out and look for a new home. The scout bees return, communicate the new location, and then all those bees swarm again to the new home. This is how bees reproduce. It is really amazing to stand in the middle of a bee swarm (and totally safe)

@@BrookHillHoneyMrGsHoneybees Cool! Thanks for answering 😊

Yeah - hard to believe that this video was six years ago. If people don't see our mistakes and our learnings, I don't think the videos are as helpful, nor as interesting...We have learned a lot over the last six years.

Some day I hope to read the Quran in an attempt to contribute, in my small way, to bridging the typically wide gap between people of faith. Thanks for sharing.

I know right? Any chance you are married? I shake my head - this video was our first year and we are now in our 6th, and my wife...she still cuts up. She insists it is her preference...Similarly, I am in my 31st year of marriage and there are other things too, that I just don't understand...and like cutting up, will probably never understand.

When you work the non honey sections of the colony, you use smoke. When you are working with honey or honey frames, you don't want to use smoke as the honey and wax will absorb the smoke. You can actually taste it if you use it.

The top smaller boxes are the honey supers. The lower boxes are where the bees grow their young and store food for the winter. Going into winter, you need about 60 lbs of honey. You can tell how much they have by lifting it. If they don't have enough (e.g., the fall nectar flow is light) you can supplement them late in the fall with sugar. I always give my bees sugar mush through the winter just in case they need more food than what they have stored. Very seldom have they needed it, but during some warm winters, they go through more food.

@@BrookHillHoneyMrGsHoneybees Oh so its super symbiotic then! Thats awesome and so sweet, pun intended.

You can use it to make lip gloss, hand balm, or candles. I have stored my wax for five years now (this video was year 1). Some day soon I will stop procrastinating and make some lip gloss and candles, and make a video about it.

I currently live in the St Louis Metro Area.

@@BrookHillHoneyMrGsHoneybees Fascinating.

We sell our honey for $15 in a 2 lb bottle. Others sell for more or less. Each frame makes about 3 lbs of honey.

This was our first video five years ago. We had two colonies we started that year. Our most recent harvest video from Summer 2020 we has seven colonies and collected 250 lbs of honey. Each year we usually have at least one established colony that makes close to 100 lbs of honey

Yes, there is no need to use a hot knife, just use a sharp knife and the honey will not lose its valuable nutrients.

This video was my first year's video. I really dislike the hot knife. I don't think it really changes the honey as the heat isn't significant enough to really change the honey's temperature in a significant way, but now I just use a serrated knife. Works a lot better IMO.

If I recall, it is either 60 or 80. I am in no way an expert on this - this is the only thing I have ever used that for. When I started, I just tested it until it was about the right pressure - enough to go in, but not too strong. I purchased the least expensive staple gun at Harbor Freight.