Hi Mr Fred Thank you for your great videos 1) it is not happening in your area only it is all over the world in Egypt winter is getting colder every year and summer is getting more hot than usual and you in USA have harder forest fires and so does Australia 2) Thank you for telling us about Matthias Wandel he is absolutely AWESOME and please recommend more youtube channel for people like him if you know someone for metal working and blacksmith it wold be great too ;). 3) Thank you very much for the reminder with the flow hive configuration this was a great addition
Good day Mohammad!!! So good to see you! A fun blacksmith channel that I enjoy is a young man out of Great Britain that has now moved to Montana. His name is Alec Steele. Look him up on RU-vid he’s entertaining and instructional. ru-vid.com
@@LarryLeesBees Good Day Mr Larry Thank you very much I will make sure to subscribe to his channel and now I can open two work shops a carpenter and a blacksmith :):):):):):):)
Y'all should check these out, they hold a gallon and now they have clear lids. No drilling, you just set them on top of your inner cover. glorybee.com/plastic-inside-hive-top-feeder
I wish my bees would watch Fred's videos. I had a honey roof or honey layer, aka a second super box that the queen was not suppose to cross. Sure enough she was up there trying to lay.
When and if the lower brood frames get loaded with brood, nectar and pollen... she tends to go and lay eggs far and wide. That's one thing certain about what Queens will and won't do, it's always a risk that apiary owners have to take. If there aren't enough empty cells for her to lay in, the will drop her eggs into any available cell.
@@FrederickDunn That's the main reason I don't use queen excluders and we all know that if the queen runs out of a place to lay in/near the brood chamber, they tend to swarm due to becoming honey bound. All I have are deep boxes, if she wants to lay in the honey super, which is a deep, that's fine with me, I can move that frame anywhere.
My batteries died on my lav microphone and I had continued talking for another 25 minutes which I did not discover until I was at the editing station. So, I dropped in another video that answered the questions about using or not using queen excluders :) I almost didn't post anything out of frustration... but, made a cup of coffee and did that compilation. :)
Glad you had your coffee and posted this video. It would have taken a lot more than coffee to get over the abandonment issues had you chose not to post. LoL!!! JK...
Hi mr Fred Thank you so much for answering my question and mentioning my name in a whole dedicated video. Looking forward for more great stuff from you. Have a great weekend:)
Got some 4” synthetic car waxing sponge on Amazon for my rapid feeders. They came 12 in a pack. There nice because they have a small cloth hem around the outside. I cut a round hole in the middle, leaving about 1/2-5/8” of sponge. They work great. Thanks for the tips.
(moved from Ep. 45) Thanks Fred for answering my question about lawn care. We never spray pesticides or herbicides. I have a new question: If you were to make up your own sugar water with essential oils would you have a recommendation for a recipe in regards to how much essential oils to use and which ones? Trying to keep the cost low and the pre-mix can be pricey. Thanks! My new favourite channel.
Great step by step informative video for manipulating your hive setup throughout the year and the use of honey bridge reduces possible damage from excluded .Great job Mr. Dunn
Hi Frederick thanks for your reply ... the thought has occurred to me that post the fires here Down Under our Bees are going to be in trouble from the destruction of Flowers for them to collect pollen ... never lone the killing of Bees themselves especially Wild Bees we don’t know about in hives in those Forests burnt out 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
That is something we are all waiting to see. The Flow Headquarters has begun a restoration and funding project for those who've lost their apiaries. It's going to be a challenge for a while, that's for certain.
Great instructional video Fred!!! When you put the round feeder up in the 7 frame flow I was freaking out because mine doesn’t fit... Then you explained that it doesn’t fit in the 6 frame flow... Well, that explains it... LoL!!! We are having our first real snowfall today. Expecting 10 inches... We are almost there and it is not letting up... Winter has arrived in the PNW! LoL!!!
@@FrederickDunn I just think it is funny you are posing the question. Since your hives have everything. Sun/rain roof. Super secret metal rotating entrances, special stands, a back patio. side mirrors to see things behind the hives. LOL
@@weasleoop I believe Mr. Dunn answered the question because it was from a viewer who asked him a question. All questions are good questions when you are new!
Thanks Fred Great Demo I am From Down Under the funny thing is my dad used to have to travel weekly to Sydney from Newcastle for his Work when I was little he used to have to take me with him I always thought it was funny that on the way home he called into his Cousin and she had a Bee Farm in Beecroft Sydney ... he used to get honey and Honeycomb to take home for us ... My Dad would’ve been 124 last Monday 6th January ... lol I am about to turn 77 in April ... but have always been interested in Bees ... bit too old to start beekeeping re the cost of setting up the FlowHive System ... but my son in law is a greenie so I have been researching info that he might be interested in ... ad is it possible to have smaller setups like your Quadruple hives I have been watching Ewe on You Tube ??? Thanks for all Ewe do for bees 💜💜💜💜💜
Frederick Dunn yes I did I am the Youngest of 11(9 surviving) kids there being only a sister 5 yrs older than me who celebrated their 60th Diamond wedding anniversary last yr ... who were raised mainly by my dad people ask me why my parents had such a big family and I answer ... My Dad Strive for Perfection and gave up in Utter Satisfaction when he got Me ... lol ... the rest of the family said he gave up in utter disgust ... but I don’t believe them as I was My Father’s Pet ... lol ... that backs My Theory ... lol ...
You mentioned in one video that this spring you planning on treating your new package bees for mites as soon as you get them. Would you want to do that before you remove them from the package, or would they be too stressed and want to wait a week or so before treatment? If you did it before removing from the package you would get 100% coverage with one treatment.
Fred that vaporizer is called a gas vap I saw it on u tube sold in Britain same principle as provap but heats with small propane torch made out of copper fittings
Oops it’s a case of mistaken identity ... it is ... Phil Chandler ... not Ewe Federick ... lol about the Quadratic bee hives and only uses water with peppermint oil not a smoker anymore ... lol ... Sorry for the Confusion I must of caused Ewe ... lol ...
Hi Fred, 70 degrees here today in Delaware. I checked the sugar bricks on my 3 colonies and they have like 2/3 sugar cakes still left. They are looking good and healthy. For the first time this year they are visiting my Ultrabee pollen feeders I made out of PVC. I hope your weekend is going well. Are you planning a chat tomorrow if your connection is good? - Joe ------- By the way great presentation on the FlowHives to bad they are so expensive I'd love to try one on my 10 frame setup.
I hope the internet speeds are adequate tomorrow also... I have the modem on the backup system vitals also, just in case since we are in for heavy weather with power outtages. I am solar powered with very limited battery resources. 60 mph wind gusts that are doing some remarkable damage.
I wish you luck in the storm Fred, I'm guessing the hives are strapped down well and everything look secure in your yard inspection today. Is you whole house on solar with no other utilities?
I could not agree more... he reminds me of a brilliant friend I had in 3rd grade... surround yourself with creative/smart people and some of it is bound to rub off (';')( ';')...
Oh! I put my inner cover between my Ceracell feeder & the Brood box below...I guess that worked in my favor for overwintering as I was able to take the top cover off the Ceracell to check on feed this late winter without letting any cold air in. Can you think of any reason why I should not have that inner cover below my Ceracell feeder?
It just adds another joint, but if done early enough, they will glue that up for you and them. Don't forget to paint the edges of your inner cover if you do that as it's then exposed to weather.
If you use your recommended wax coated plastic frames to start your colony, won't that also prevent the bees from creating the extra holes in the comb for ventilation, or is it just a trade-off to start the colony quicker?
You can clip the corners of the plastic foundation and also notch a "V" at the top center of each piece, the bees then have the option to use those openings or close them up. They most often close them with drone comb, BUT once in a while they leave them as passages. :)
I remember that one of the issues mentioned was in winter the bees would move up into the honey super as they consumed the honey in the bottom box and if there was a queen excluder, she got left behind to die. Not sure if this was from a video of Freds or somewhere else. Also I only know what I have learned from RU-vid and Freds video’s in particular so take what I say with a grain of salt!
Fred - Q- are bees who are swarming at a feeding station, more or less apt to sting than those defending hive? lt looks like a feeding frenzy -- different from calm demeanor of a swarm. BTW really enjoy your videos - bees, flowers, skunks, mice, chickens ...:)
Hi Barbara, honey bees at a feeding station are completely non-defensive and you can sit very close to them and observe without protective equipment. At the hive, it's a completely different story as that's where they have something to lose. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ktkKdLoj000.html
Hello Fred! And here I was thinking that my bees were expanding the holes in the entrance reducers, Lol. I have a good frequently asked question. In your observation hive, have you happened to observe nurse bees defecating? Do the brand new bees do it in the hive, do they make a defecation/orientation flight? When going through my hives, some of the bees that fall off of the frames act as though they've never been outside of the hive.
Great Question Dan! I have answers for you that I will share on Friday... their waste materials are removed just the way the Queen's waste is. They don't fly out. You are the second person to mention this :) I really wish I could get this activity on camera, but they move so fast that they escape my lens. I'll share about that and more :) Thanks Dan!
Do you know about/have an opinion about Purdue Ankle Biter bees, or Mite Maulers? I'm interested in trying survivor stock strains. The BeeWeaver strain is intriguing, but there is somebody a lot closer to me(Wisconsin) than Texas selling the aforementioned queens. Thanks!
Hi Robert, I can't vouch for any of the "ankle biter" lines... I only have direct experience with the BeeWeaver line. Several beekeepers in my association have tried the ankle biters with variable levels of success.
At about 1:07 you show a brood box with viewing windows. Is this a special purchase? I don’t see this item for sale on the Flow Hive web site. I think it’s a fabulous Idea.
Those were produced as part of a development study and were not available to the public. I should have mentioned that. I think they were available for a month and then were no longer offered.
I don't have a complete opinion about them yet, as we're still in winter, but I can share that they are extraordinary honey producers! Gentle to work with and they filled Flow-Hive Frames like no others I've worked with. Fantastic foragers. Outperformed my established colonies in their first year which began with packages. Impressive, BUT, they require varroa treatment as they seemed to be varroa magnets. That's my only criticism. In spring we'll knwo more about how they managed our winter. I'm optimistic about them so far.
Yes for eggs, after that, they just die of old age. I haven't eaten one of my chickens since 2002 :) had a very aggressive rooster that I thought wanted to visit the grill.
Have you ever tried not using the vapor for mite control? You always say that your bees are resistant. If you stop them from resisting , do they maintain their resistance?
They do maintain their mite-munching resistance even when treated with OAV... I would have lost my Saskatraz bees this winter due to excessive mite loads. This also stresses my BeeWeaver resistant bees, so I had to treat them all in order to get those numbers down.
Fred, where do you purchase that round disk on your home made feeder level? And thank you for all your hard work doing these videos... I'm a newbie here in Mass. And thru your direction and great presentation.. I feel I will be confident enough to start my own colony...
@@FrederickDunn Fred... You spoke about it in FAQ#4... I started from the beginning.. and have been binge watching your videos and I never imagined the information needed to raise bee's.. but because you present the information in such away.. I'm not discouraged...
Ah .. not really helpful .. I was trying to see where a cut would happen if I cut a deep down to a medium .. if the cut off would be enough for a shim and where abouts the cut would layout on the finger joints, as flow doesn't currently offer medium boxes....
We occasionally get pallets of laboratory rodent pellets irradiated. (Suitable for a longer term storage in a suitable area - months, not years). Costs quite a bit and not something a homeowner could do but the service could be sourced through medical/lab supply companies. I wonder if flo-hive might think of changing the design to make it easier to pull apart the cell mechanisms and clean them. I bet that ss wire would be difficult to remove/replace as it is, there doesn’t seem to be reusable join that I can see on the video.
I have taken them apart and put them together again, it's just a pain :) That's interesting about the irradiation process on pallets. Thanks for sharing!
I caught a glimpse. I know nothing about Flow Hive but it looked like A safety wire lash up. The stuff you see going thru bolts and critical mechanicals you don't want to loosen up and blow off. The special pliers and SS wire are readily available.
@@FrederickDunn it depends on what type of vaporiser it is.Somme mix the Acid with glicerine but otther just vaporise the acid exactly the same as your electric devices. I build 2 devices with gas that work exactly as your last expensive vaporiser but il incorporate better materials,design and it will be ,,wireless,,. Heat is heat and doesnt matter if it comes from electric resistance or gas. Personally i would have chosen a vaporiser that works on wood instead of that expensive toy because of portability( i dont have such long electric cables to reach my beehives).
I was cleaning out bee corpses from my hive this morning and I noticed that there was a good deal of drones in the mix. I was under the impression that the drones were kicked out in fall. Is this a sign that I have a hive that doesn't know enough to kick out the dead weight or a sign that they feel they have a lot of resources? I'm in Wisconsin, and I scrape out the bottom board occasionally, so these drones aren't from months ago.
Hi Timothy, what time of year are you talking about? Do you mean going into winter? The second box on each of my hives is wall to wall capped honey going into winter. A medium super has about 47-52 lbs of honey. This adds to the honey stored in the Brood Box, which averages 35 lbs to 75 lbs. It's a wide range. I show the winter honey stores in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N_j2JQ4ZYtc.html
I Frederick Me again Nellie Chappell from Down Under ... I just came Across two ideas and wanted to know what Ewe think about ... Hogg Half Cones ... and ... Ross Rounds ... are they a viable idea ????
Hi Nellie, I can see where ross rounds and Hogg Half have a place in the comb honey market. If you have a strong productive colony, they will certainly work fine. They are for honey sellers and you see them on the shelves at whole foods stores in my neck of the woods. If you have a surplus of honey and the bees are going gangbusters, AND if you want to have the bees package your comb honey for you... do it :) I do know that the bees will use them :)
Nellie - Hope to answer this question this year... I purchased the Hogg Half Comb system and will attempt to see how that works out this coming year. I will keep everyone posted as things progress. This year I will have two flow hives, and two standard Langstroth Hives, an 8 Frame Langstroth that I will add the Half comb system to and a 10 frame with medium deeps. The 10 frame, just because I want to see the difference... I’ll keep you posted. Hope you are safe from all the fires down there.
Larry Lee thanks Laurie yes I am not in the path of the Fires I live in Wyong on the Central Coast approximately 90 Kim’s from a Sydney Harbour what I am Angry about is our State Premier Okayed the go ahead for the Harbour Fireworks which Cost $6.5 million and she boasted that they raised $2 million for the Fire victims 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 we already have the air quality as 35 cigs a day so I am finding breathing hard and I don’t have Asthma or other lung illnesses so I really feel sorry for those poor buggas and the poor cats and dogs affected by the Phucking Fireworks and the people who escaped with only the clothes on their backs ... I look fwd to seeing your update of the Hogg Half Cones ... the thought has come into my mind that our poor bees are going to be in trouble post the fires as there will be hardly any flowers for them to collect pollen from and god knows how many bees have been killed from the fires especially the wild hives in those Forrest etc.
The USDA-ARS runs a honey bee disease diagnostic service in Beltsville, MD that can test for AFB, EFB, and other diseases. You should submit a sample from any hive where AFB is suspected. Even if your field tests indicate a negative result, it is still useful to send a sample. The lab can track antibiotic resistance and it is useful data for them to see where infections are occurring. In the spring of 2017 the honey bee laboratory experienced a staffing crisis and was not accepting samples, and has similarly been closed during government shut downs. Check their website before shipping samples. www.ars.usda.gov/northeast-area/beltsville-md/beltsville-agricultural-research-center/bee-research-laboratory/docs/how-to-submit-samples/ I would never ever recommend that a backyard beekeeper who suspects EFB or AFB in a hive, attempt to dissinfect that hive without the supervision and approval of their Dept. of Ag Extension Office or State Bee Inspector. Get it tested to be sure! I would remove and destroy any hive equipment I suspected to have AFB. I would destroy all of my hive equipment and the bees. That's beyond the bleach phase. Hive tools and smokers etc can be sanitized with 1.5% bleach. I would not try to recycle any hive equipment that has housed a colony infected by AFB.
@@FrederickDunn Sorry, that was for me, to remind me to check on that episod again. Never ment to send it to you. I will gladly ask you a relevant question later, if I may…Thank you for all your fantastic videos! Ingrid ( with a flow hive in Italy).
@@FrederickDunn I'm disabled with chronic spinal and leg pain. It has been bearable for about a year but now has increased significantly. But life goes on. My brother in-law helps with the bees with heavy lifting and I'm the brains lol.
Drone comb used for pest management its not the cure to varroa and the colony will fail without a treatment. You need to isolate the drone comb with a queen excluder to prevent the queen from going there.
Mihai Ilie In a typical healthy queenright colony, only the queen is laying and she is laying fertilised (workers) and unfertilised (drones) as required by the colony . When a colony queen is not performing as expected i.e. aging, infertile or has died then the workers may start laying eggs (which will be drones because workers have never mated). Workers usually only lay in the absence of a healthy fertile queen.
Hi Mihai, The Queen produces infertile drone eggs and she is the source of all eggs in the hive unless she becomes defective, or leaves the colony without a queen, then a worker may take up laying drone eggs (considered infertile) in an attempt to continue their genetics. When there are full frames of drones, those have been produced by the queen.
@@FrederickDunn your right,i was induced in error by a grate used to separate the drone frame. Its a grate but not that small to be a queen excluder. But theworker bees also lay drones as they wish .You can find them laying in the supper if you use a queen excluder( not in the flow hive thogh because those have smallee cells not suites for drones).
