You style of beekeeping reminds me of C.C. Miller. If you haven't read his book 50 years among the bees, you definitely should. It's such an inspiration to see his words playing into action with your strategies, regardless if you've read the book or not. Really enjoy your videos!
My name is Jim and I just wanna thank you for all your good videos I watch as much as I can and try to also do my bees the way you do things thanks again
Thanks Ian for all the videos. I have become accustomed to checking for them regularly. The stuff you share is just not available anywhere else. I've read a lot of bee books and gotten less from them than what you've shared. Please keep up the good stuff. Lots of us appreciate them.
If you ask questions or state why you think he’s clueless everyone who follows him will be happy to help you out. Remember that his strategy is very affective for his area. You may not like it because you do things differently. But your way doesn’t make his way clueless just because you disagree
Chalkbrood is also a possibility and shows a broodpattern like in this colony, but easy to diagnose by looking at the bottomboard. So I guess you checked that as well :-)
Interesting strategy! No faffing with caging queens and no losses due to failed queen acceptance. I like that! What do you do with the rest of the frames, the ones that didn't go into the nuc? You need to be pretty sure that you are right in blaming the queen for the weakness of the hive you cull, and not some disease. Otherwise you risk spreading disease. I'm re-watching some of your videos now during winter as I'm trying to dial in my strategy for next season. I'm expanding my operation and I still have a lot to learn in terms of being more efficient. Your videos are very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to make them!
What percentage of colonies do you dedicate for each subsection of your farm? (If its ok to ask) How much do you use for core performing hives, nuc rejuvenation hives, resource/brood factories, mating yard hives, and queen rearing hives?
Do you keep all the extra wax that is produced like he bur comb and litle problems like that one hive had? Not sure if its worth the effort but that would add up wouldnt it?
New beekeeper question... when you take one frame of brood to put in a weeker hive, does every bee have to be off it? You seemed to do that very quickly. I thought if I left any bees on it at all that they would fight the bees/Queen in the new hive.
Very few original bees were left on the frame, he shook most of them off immediately. Plus don't forget that his colonies are related and selected for docility. He can now get away with stunts you couldn't with random salvaged bees.
This guy does things that I have never seen any other bee keepers do. He clears of a small area on top of a frame and adds a pad of something in there. All of the many bee keepers I have watched never ever did this thing. Another thing that he does is remove a frame then just shakes the bees of from this frame and doesn’t even look to see if the queen is on that frame or not. He has somewhat very strange way of treating his bees. Good luck and Always Be Safe.
he always tell why he is doing it. what he sees when, he looking at a frame of bees. was the queen xcluder on? if it was he knows where the queen not. when taking some of the brood. the older bees fly back to there nest. younger bees stay in the new nest. I like this man.
Jordan, his success in maintaining his apiaries and his success on a seasonal level is proof that he knows a lot more than you think. How about you state what you disagree with and let everyone help you out. I won’t degrade you in the manner that you tried to degrade him. I’ll explain how things work differently for different people.
I guess so. It’s fine to disagree but one doesn’t need to be nasty about it. My beekeeping is very different from yours. I like the concepts you have and will attempt some. However my area has a nectar flow from mid April to mid June. It’s not terribly long so all that building up and moving things around would be tough on production. However you techniques are giving me some different ideas to blend in with my operation (which is small anymore). Keep up the great work. It’s fun watching you go through your season and how you do things.
