Hey everyone, I just wanted to make it abundantly clear that I meant no disrespect to Frederick Dunn when I was describing my package install issues. I love Fred! I consider him a RU-vid friend. I just thought it was funny that I messed Fred's technique up so badly. I think I just hung the queen cage too high in the box, and the added insulation probably combined to block the queen pheromone making the bees in the packages not want to go inside. If you haven't, (what?) please go subscribe to Frederick Dunn! He's awesome. ru-vid.com
I'm laughing with joy for your success, the comments about the new hive and the post credit scene with the frame full of brood! Congrats!! That's the way to bounce back bud!! Nice.
Dunn is awesome... I did notice that you didn't remove your end boards to allow that extra space to pull the long frames... just watched the barn hive video so it was fresh in my noggin...
5:27 Oh Man! That's too bad, I did video the method and I had a very different result. I also like that you put a small piece of wood on the package to darken it. I did it with Bee-Bus packages, but that shouldn't have made that much of a difference. The next time you have the chance to play around with a package, you can do the same with the queen cage, then put a ramp in front to the entrance and dump your bees on that ramp, they will go in and leave the dead behind. Thanks for mentioning me :) some of my viewers shared that I should come and "watch now". Glad I did and that new hive design is VERY interesting! All the best to you this year!
Thanks, Fred. I think my problem was a highly insulated hive and the queen hanging too high inside. Not much pheromone scent getting to the entrance. It DID work eventually, but it took a while. Thanks for stopping by!
Bees are like people you never know what they're going to do and my for heated hives they're all at 95 degrees doing fantastic 2 I made some super deep like you did kind of hard to hold onto once they're full of brood nevertheless fantastic
Kudos to those Bob & Mike who gifted the bees and are helping get you and this channel back on track! If the world was filled with more kind people like the three of you, it would be a better place. Fred is also amazing. I love the RU-vid beekeeping community. I cant wait to one day have hives of my own and pay forward all of the knowledge that has been shared to the next generation of beekeepers.
Well, we love you. We're so proud of you. We love all your videos. We're finally back in bees this spring! Little Benjamin is 5.5 years old and helps in the garden, too. We moved to Texas, left the PNW behind! We're learning so much!
Hello, I love your videos and the information you share along with them. I'm planning on getting into beekeeping myself and your experiences and knowledge make me feel more confident in what I want to accomplish. So I just want to say. Thank you so much for your content. Please don't stop and keep up the fantastic work. You are doing great 👍
I watched all your videos and never commented until today. I just wanted to say. I love your new idea. I am also truly thankful for your teachings and this new barn hive is the best hive design I have ever seen. I hope all works out brother.
Wow! Jim! This is truly incredible! I‘m mostly a quiet watcher, have been around since season 2016 all the way back... And i got to say, i‘m very impressed by your entire journey of beekeeping. I remember the first time you got your bees and on one of the first hive inspections you shook the frame a bit to hard and the entire comb just fell in to the hive. 😂 Man, you‘ve learned sooo much and this gets me even more excited for this season with the bee barn! Keep up the great work and stay healthy out there! Greetings from Switzerland! 🇨🇭
Been watching you tube bee videos for the past few years. I'm in upstate New York and I'm hooked on YOUR Hives. Most of what I've been seeing on RU-vid is from more southern states. 2022 I will be buying 3 packages and over this winter I will be attempting to copy your hive design. I want to thank you for your videos and your time making them.
Hey, I think why it took the oak hive so long to get in was because of the insulation it’s a few inches deep and the queen feromones take a hell of a long time to get through those few inches of insulation. Anyway I think this is a great way to adapt to your climate and I’ll pray that your bees will do really well. God bless, Erik roskam
I love these hives you’ve made and I’m really excited to watch your journey with them this year. You’ve taken a bad situation and turned it into a positive new start and that’s truly inspiring 😊
It's possible there may have been a queen that was shaken into the package before the caged queen was added, especially if the unmarked queen seems to be a lot different, girth- and length-wise than the one you saw in the cage. I've had that happen a couple of times, and each time, the marked queen was 86ed by the hive. The bees are looking good already. Can't wait to see how they do through the season and into the winter.
Thanks for your time on this video, they all look to have taken to there hives very well! Keep in mind its seems to be a very cool and wet year so far lots of rain and cold temps don't help at all except getting them to stay in the hive, thanks again for the great videos friend
Loving these videos and how the new bee-barns are going def inspiring me a lot. I am waiting to see how Adrian has taken to the Bee-Barn. Thanks for the vid! Excited to see more!
...so smart...I have seven hives and about to do splits...I wish it were fall so I could build by your example...you are solving the problems...not blaming the bees...it's not them or their nature...it's us trying to mimic it and challenge their evolution...I think you are on the right path...keep at it.
Looked over your design and it looks like a great idea but more work than it should be. I like the top bar hives. I build them out of 1.5” pine, insulate the base and the top. Water holes that take hard insulation plugs in Winter and entrances that can be changed up. Dividers inside for queen rearing and splitting. A 48” horizontal top bar hive just does everything I need for our similar climate. Thanks for a great video! I appreciate you experience and challenging ideas.
I’m going to simplify my design for version 2.0, but I’ve come to believe these are the basic features a beehive should provide for the bees: 1. A deep + medium brood cavity. (Vertically oriented, NOT horizontal in our climate) 2. Deep + medium frames with uninterrupted comb. 3. Complete, airtight insulation year round. (The more, the better.) 4. No upper entrances or vents at all. Only a single lower entrance. All of these things mimic the cavity the bees would have in a hollow tree. That’s the entire concept… a hive based on a tree. As of today, I have 100% colony survival in my boxes. I’ve given them no supplemental winter feed, no heat, no moving to indoor rooms, no stress at all. They’re just perfect. It’s the most hands-off I’ve ever been as a beekeeper during a winter.
Putting your ideas to work, has made this video more exciting and rewarding for us and you! Kudos for your efforts and I can't wait for the next round!
Love your videos. I’ve only been doing bees for 2 years. Both times I just took the queen and put her on a frame then put the package box in the hive. Within a few hours all bees were out. Find it rude to shake them. So nice you got help with bee packages. So sweet guys. Good luck all of you
I'm kinda liking the Bee Barn (TM) design. A big, insulated box that can handle being out year round and extra large frames that don't need to be disturbed much. The problem with you using Frederick Dunn's technique could have multiple reasons. There's always too many variables to make a stable christmas tree stand. With you design, the airflow is likely to go up, sort of like a Dakota fire hole. A Dakota fire hole is two holes dug into the ground and then connect them with a tunnel at the bottom. A fire is built in one hole. The warm air rises out of the hole, drawing in air from the only place it can, the other hole. So, it acts like a syringe drawing in air and makes a self-stoking fire. So, it's possible that the air flow in your bee barns go in the bottom entrance and out the top as any warm air in the hive rises. A possible solution is to have the colony march into the hive via the upper entrance as the pheromone are likely going up and out there. This would mean making the upper entrance expandable for installing packages. It is a vector to consider.
EXCELLENT video... I am stoked to see how the "Large Frame" colony forms using the massive real estate. The design is great!! It is also clear that this is also about the lifting, lifting and more lifting- being eliminated- and you solved that with an amazing solutions. Plans Please!! Please do a walk-through of the build and plans. The "Bee Barn" is a genuine game-changer! Thank you for continued amazing content!!
I'm pleasantly surprised they are mostly filling that space with worker comb. I'm pretty impressed with the buckfast bees cleaning the marks off. I'm a little alarmed for the "queen issue" but it's good to see you've developed enough of a feel for the bees to know when something doesn't feel right.
Thanks, Brent! Something was off from the start. They did not like the queen they were given. Spoiler alert: they replaced her in 20 days. Bang. Waiting for the new queen to mate and start laying. She looks very eager. This year is off to an amazing start.
Re-watching this video about a year later just for relaxation, and I realized I could see the maple queen shortly after Jim pulled out her frame. She's near the gap between the two frames, and crosses over to the other side.
I am a HUGE fan of this!! AND your videos!! I am honestly emotionally invested in this experience! Talk about perseverance and not to mention your resiliency. Can't wait to see how the season plays out.
Like you I lost 4 of my 7 hives during that cold spell. So I've been setting and studying on what to do. After seeing your videos I think your on the right track. And I would love to give that a try. I love my bees. And I've gather up 5 large swarms already this year. Thanks to the good lord. God bless.
Hay I put 2 swarm traps in my wife car she was p.o. at me but my truck was in the shop at that time I had to get them to their hives. Good video and job thank you 👍🏽🇺🇸🐝
Thanks Jim! Nice to see you happy and smiling!! Love the yard and all the changes you've made. Hard to wait for the next instalment, but I guess I'll have too. 😉
Found it very painful to see the hate you got after you lost your hives & made your own diy hivedesignes. This video cheered me up. Mike and Bob really showed how much your audience appreciates you and your beekeeping. Im very interested in seeing how the new hives work out for you. Nice to see the long frames already show potential! Keep up de good work 🥳
Love it. So great to see your enthusiasm back and those beautiful new hives filled with bees. Keen to see how how your modified langstroth/layens style frames go.
your doing what i been saying, PUT YOUR QUEEN IN THE HIVE, THEN LET THE OTHER BEES WALK IN!! i feel that if you shake them it upsets them and makes them want to leave,,, just the thoughts of a "WILD" hive raider,,,, great video!!
Hopes of me actually seeing the queen when he says 'there she is' - zero. Oh you are funny Mr Vino Farm haha, but a great big arrow pointing at her please :)
Go back to the first vids, and learn how to spot right along with him. XD It's tough to spot them, but it becomes easier as you learn to look at the bees around her... It's tough to explain, but usually the other workers kind of make a pattern around her, but it is tough to see on camera.
I'll second that request. In the past, I had gotten pretty good at spotting a queen on one of Jim's frames. . . not this time. Never could find any of them, even when Jim said "There she is!". :-( Really liked the arrow thing; but do realize that probably putting an arrow in on a video is probably a bit of a pain, so I guess I'll just do without. I am not a beekeeper (never have been, never will be - I'm allergic) and I don't like honey very much, but I have been enjoying Jim's videos for the last several years now. Very fun and entertaining! I love these videos, they are educating on a topic I never knew I could be interested in. I, too, am also looking forward to seeing how things go with the new "Bee Barn" design. Thanks, Jim! :-)
A different way to install those packages is to just get a razor and slice off the screen on one side. All the bees can be easily dumped or walked out much faster than the hole on top.
Interesting to see the bees on the extra deep frames compared to 'regular' deeps. With the hints at the next video, these frames might produce much fuller hives that the regular hives. Looking forward to seeing how these hives work.
Brilliant system my friend. I am using the Lyson polystyrene10 frame here in the Montana Rockies and liking it, but was considering the (also insulated) Layens route for the future. The deep unbroken brood frame is just something I want to get behind. Now there is a modification coming for my Lyson boxes for sure! Best of both worlds, Deep permanent-ish brood chamber that rarely gets disturbed, and medium frame supering. Blessings.
It looks like the new frame design is working really well and the queens are taking full advantage of the size and shape. I have had to split the hives already because my surviving hives have started making Queen cells like crazy. Thanks for sharing my friend.
Next time put the queen in the hive, put the box in upside down and put an empty deep in top and the inner and outer cover on and the next day all of the bees will be in the frames. Remove the empty package and the empty deep box. All good
Always so fulfilling to see your amazing videos. Looks like both bees and beekeeper are “slamming”.👍 Super excited to see how you do this season with so many new things in the bee yard. ✌️😎
Congrats on the very successful launch and I can't wait to see how these hives progress! I guess you can always add one more box on top if you have a very prolific queen.
VinoFarm, I’m super excited for your bees and your new hive design! It looks awesome and am eagerly awaiting the results of your experiment and your over all review of the bee barn!
I wish I lived some place where i could raise bees, such a wonderful hobby/past-time. I do not think the other residents in my complex would appreciate hives on my patio.I have no idea what the rest of the bee keeping community will say about your "upgrades' but they seem to be so intuitive.
What would be interesting is if there were some type of extension arms that could attach to the top of the hive and also attach to the frame so it would suspend the frame and allow or rotation hands free.
The point is that I DON'T want to get attached to them. Naming the box is naming the COLONY. The goal is strong, healthy colonies. If the queen isn't performing and the colony is suffering, I don't want to waste time propping them up because I'm attached to the queen. Too many wasted days doing that over the past 5 years. Queens can be replaced a lot easier than entire colonies. Every queen is in a perpetual audition. If they don't cut it, they will be replaced. I do not want to lose a colony again.
My retirement plan to the Philippines includes bee keeping. I like your deep frames. I think that I will try this type in a long hive. Honey is mostly faked in the islands. Also every thing has growing plants there. It all about the AG in the provinces. I read that having kept or domestic bees on sight increases harvest by as much as 40%. Thanks for the input.
Jim, one thing to do also is set on a super with no frames. Hang the Queen and then set the package inside of the empty super with opening facing down. After just a few hours they are typically all out and in the hive. I think we may have been on the same wavelength , i inspected 5 days after install and found eggs also in mine. What a wonder drawn comb does. I bet it feels good to inspect hives again. . Thanks for sharing.
I tried three saskatraz queens this year. One hive offed her right away, one let the queen lay a round and then killed her to make their own queen, and the last one allowed her to live. So hopefully two skratz and then the other got a frame of eggs from my nicest colony. Problem is I think I’m going to make a few of your hives this winter for next year. Dang it for giving me thoughts and ideas!!!!
The one thing about your videos which I love is your hives. They've always been insanely well insulated! I love it! Just for kicks, I made (need to finish it) one nuc with about 6" of sawdust 'insulation' on each side. I'm real curious as to how that will work in both heat and cold. Generally, in Austin, TX we don't get too much cold (although, last year we sure did), but for sure we get plenty of awful heat....the insulation should work well for both scenarios!
Your design ( that works for you ) seems to Be working fantastic if you think about it down south if the are in a home wall the will make the comb the length of the wall in some instances. Very cool looking forward to see how this works over the season 👍🏻
