A tip for when you use escape boards. When restacking the supers above the escape boards, put every other super back on 180 degrees from its original position. This way if the bees had Burr comb with honey stored in it between the supers, the honey will be exposed and the bees left in the supers will clean it up and store it away in the frame. This way when you come back to remove the supers, you won't have the mess of 'spilled' honey. It keeps you, your truck and your honey house cleaner. Less bees trying to rob the spilled honey too.
Thanks Devan, we use escape boards AND fume boards . That's the way my equipment building left me to operate, and have to say they both work very well with the fume board being much faster. {Tennessee}
Devan YOU AND YOUR CHANNEL ARE AWESOME !!!! I have subscribed and liked everyone from the beginning. I want to get into beekeeping in fact am looking for a mentor in Shreveport Louisiana. I know I'm starting late but that's ok. I devour each of your videos up and watch them over and over. You are a wealth of knowledge and a Great Teacher. Please keep up the Great work.
Excellent ! Did you purchase or make the passive bee escape? I’ve looked through bee company catalogues here in U.S. but cannot find said piece of equipment.
Wow! Thank you for being so thorough and logical with your explanations. I'm a beekeeping newbie and really appreciate the added thought process and rationale you provide each step of the way.
Not sure if I said that already, but I really wished you were still creating content on youtube. You are really awesome at explaining stuff and it shows you love what you do. I guess it was taking too much time for you. I hope you are still doing well and have successful season this year!
Nice video. Never seen that type of escape. Q1: Can/will a queen escape down through it? I ask because I discovered queen cells in my excluded super while harvesting last week. Seems like emergency queen replacement going on. I didn't note the queen cells until end of harvesting and bees were pretty pissy so didn't go looking in bottom brood. Therefore I removed the excluder and now pondering what to do. Q2: Will new queens move down on their own or start laying in top super where they birth? jim in Oregon
How are you able to winter your bees? How do they have enough food for the winter? Do you feed throughout the winter to be able to only use one brood box?
Great video! I learned a lot from this video. I have some research to do regarding moisture control. I like how your hives are organized. It makes sense in to me. Thank you!
You are awesome, Man. I love watching you work. YOu are definitely the BEE WHISPERER. I am wondering why you duck tape your supers after placing your bee escape. It doesn't look like there would be enough space for robber bees to get it, but you tape anyway. Enlightem me, Bro. I am wondering if I should be doing the same thing.
Glad I stumbled upon you Devan as I keep bees the same as you, well almost. I have kept our in single deeps for going on 3 winters now as we increased our #'s. Now, next season, we will be putting 10 above excluders and will have 75 +/- kept in singles. My question is, "all the bees above the excluder. What do you do with them for winter and how do you winter your colonies. TIA
Some areas must not have much propolis. I have to fight to separate my boxes. Plus if I set a box on the ground the propolis will pick up dirt and grass on the edge of the box.
Hi there! I'm new to beekeeping too. I was told by a beekeeper that if you place the empty super on top the bees don't use it as they find the old full super first and think "oh, we have heaps of honey, no need to store so much" and productivity slows down. Whereas if you place the empty super under the full one they must travel through the empty one and think they still have lots of collecting to do to fill it. Make sence?
How do you find new bee yards? Also i noticed electric fencing, could you talk about what yiu use. I kee 4 hive in my suburban back yard but was thinking of exspanding to more hives with mean finding someone with property in the country that would be willing to loan or rent me a small area to hive colonies, any thoughts?
I realize that some people add the newest super to the bottom instead of to the top, but I really don't understand the need to do it that way. Why would you want to lift off all those heavy supers of honey every time just to add a new super? I have always top supered, and the bees cross over all those full boxes to reach the new box with no issues. I regularly have six, seven, or eight supers on top of the excluder by the end of the summer. Top supering does not encourage backfilling of the broodnest, swarming, or cause any other negative issue from my experience.
Can you put the brood chamber on top and have the bees work down? - would make managing a tall hive with a single brood box pretty easy (though taking honey st the end would be less Ray I guess)
Hi, thanks for putting up these videos. Really like your approach. This will be my 3rd season and am still learning how to keep them alive and trying to increase some, so haven't really focused on honey production but hope to this summer. One question: How do you know whether to add a deep or shallow(medium?) to the stack? Is it just whatever you had handly or based on how strong the flow is and if so, how do you determine that? Thanks again - Gordon
There's no real rhyme or reason to what's on the hives in this video. Get to know your local honey flows and add space accordingly. If i have a bunch of mediums that I'm using, I often add 2 at a time, especially in late may-early July.
When you finally take off all the supers, how do you manage all those bees in the one brood chamber. Aren't there too many bees for the one chamber? I also use the single brood chamber but I'm worried that when I remove the supers the bees will all be jammed in the brood box.
I'm not sure what part of the world you keep bees, but for where I live it works just fine. The last honey supers are removed in the early fall as the colony population is starting to decrease anyway. Yes, it's crowded for a while, but the bees don't mind. They are not in a condition to swarm, they know it's fall, the queens are slowing down their egg-laying and the bees are preparing for winter. If your climate is drastically different, you'll have to consider managing your bees another way.
I know nothing about beekeeping other than it seems very interesting. What is the purpose of gathering the pollen? I have so much pine tree pollen here in GA I could sweep it up and sell come spring.
How about small hive beetles? How long do you leave them with the escape board? I'm in Florida and I'd be afraid to leave boxes without bees in them for any length of time.
In my part of Ontario, Canada we don't have small hive beetles... yet. I have actually spent quite a lot of time working in colonies with small hive beetle. I expect if I can get them off the hive in one or two days, then extracted within another two days there wouldn't be much of an issue. Otherwise the commercial guys I've worked with that have small hive beetle are generally just using a blower to take off supers and extracting ASAP.
Did you get an answer to this? My mentor advises 9 I think so that there is just that little bit of extra room when checking frames. I think it also allows just a wee bit more room for fat honey frames. You have to be careful to spread that space. If you leave it all on the sides you’ll get wonky burr comb. I M trying a couple of boxes with 10 now. It does make for tight fits, which can be problematic when reinserting that last frame, especially if you’ve moved things around.
Enjoying some of your videos and thank you for making them. Only hassle for me is that the music is often too loud in comparison to your voice. I have the remote in hand ready to hit mute as soon as it comes on!
Hey, just interested to know what are the bees doing going up and down on the front side of brood box and does anybody know why? I didnt find it anywhere in literature..
Nah, we don't really have problematic ants around here. They sometimes live on the inner cover, and can be a bit annoying to me, bu they don't bother the bees.
Some people run 9 frames in a 10 frame box for their honey supers. The bees will draw the wax out further which can make uncapping a little easier. I've also heard some people say you get more honey per box because you have less wood in the box and one less space between frames.
@@chrisroth7390 Are there tools to space them, or do you just eyeball the frames? Also, do you need to have the frames drawn out before using them this way ?
No, you don't need the frames all drawn out to do this. Yes they make tools to space them but I don't use either. You can get frame rest that have notches to space them but they are difficult to scrape the propolis out then, www.mannlakeltd.com/9-frame-spacers. They also make a hand tool which I've tried but you almost need two of them one at each end because if you just slide it back and forth to frames will shift around on the other end www.mannlakeltd.com/shop-all-categories/hive-colony-maintenance/tools-and-hardware/hand-tools/spacing-tool-plastic-10-fr-to-9-fr
I think you're referring to my pollen trap bottom boards, I did a video on pollen and explain these bottom board traps in that. Not all my colonies have these, and the regular bottom boards I use are extremely simple and standard.
Apis mellifera. The European Honey Bee. We all keep the same species of bee, unless you're in east asia where you may find people managing the Asian Honey Bee. If you're asking about subspecies or "race" of honey bee, then my answer is none in particular. I keep bees and breed bees that do well in my environment. I make no claims about their ancestry.
Basically our bees are mongrels. They've mixed and matched for so long it's hard to find a 'pure' honeybee, such as Italian, Carniolan, etc. Some breeders claim they're got them, but I'm not too sure they are truly pure. Maybe if you import Queens from Hawaii or some isolated location. I'm more concerned about mites and agricultural chemicals killing my colonies.
