Nice hive stands and apimaye boxes, I think they are, Brian. My platforms for the first 5 to 10 colonies I had weren't so nice when I started out with 16"- 2" x 2" treated green bottom wall mudsill as wooden legs and with 4 - 4" wide raps of 3/4" plywood with a flat on top free all from my job site. Just wanted to put tuna cans of soapy water or vegetable oil for ants I was taught as a newbie from a bee club I had just joined. But any beginner with just 2 to 3 hives this is a great configuration of simple 2" x 4"s of yours and would be easy to make if you don't already sell some at your place. I graduated to 4 way 10 frame double deep pallets with a different kind of bottom board with all the hives individually on their own to lift one at a time or as 4 on the whole wooden pallet together with a forklift. You said it's busy this week and the next on stream team the other night. Glad you are getting the recently shot videos out for us to see. Thanks and work hard. :) 🐝 GP
Nice job Brian. Enjoyed it. Hope you have good success with the single brood management. The eclipse footage was really cool as well. What a cool event.
First! Hey Brian, looking forward to watching the video, put a super on my biggest hive 1 week ago and they already filled it up with nectar! Privet is blooming like crazy right now! Take care Brian 😎👍😀😁
Doing great Brian. One tip though if I may. Those medium supers are just going to keep getting in your way. You wont be able to make splits from them and they will always have some brood. Just rip it off like a band aid. Put the queen down below in the brood box and put a queen excluder on all of them and let the brood hatch out. Then you can just leave the medium on for a honey super. If you need extra frames for making splits now is a perfect time to put a deep box on top, let them draw it out and fill those with brood. Makes the splits really easy.
I do need to pull the band aid. Appreciate the tips. The supers that are on, i'll never harvest. It'll be winter stores. Once I make my splits here soon, I'll watch and when they start bringing nectar in, the excluders will go on and i'll focus on SBCM. We'll see how it all pans out. I hope it is smooth, but we know how that goes with beekeeping.
There sure is a lot of work in managing bees Brian and from an outsider point of view, I think your doing a great job. Thanks for sharing and hope you have a blessed week my friend.
That's really weird about that Apitablet dripping like that , especially in your climate. I use them in all my hives here in Louisiana and haven't had any leak like that, I have had the hive alive foundant drip down and melt , you sure it wasn't fondant. Just asking just alittle weird being that its pretty solid.
Every tab I had did this. It was so darn odd. The ones I slid in the bottom like mehmet said to do if they wouldn't go up top made like a goop pile mess. I removed them part way through the winter because of them causing issues.
@@JamesLeesBees 100% honesty. Not sure if I got a bad batch, but they only made a mess. I've never had any of the Hive Alive fondant drip like this. When I first put the tabs on, the fondant was not on.
Hive alive tells you what's in it. Apitab don't. But we do know that it's 13g of thymol and whatever else is in there. So combine the oil composition with sugar and the heat of a wintering colony and you're gonna get the same results each time. I would suggest you treat it like Apiguard and not place it in the winter and mind your dosing in the spring/temperatures. It's bad stuff. I don't understand the infatuation on the internet.. Not even a little. Apiguard is leaps cheaper.
@@JamesLeesBees I figured to try it. What results I had, not worth buying it again. I had a few people question me as far as directions and how I used it. It is on video so not sure what there is to question. Also, when I spoke to Mehmet, he said "Just use, you see." Not very clear you know. Like you said also, who knows what is in it. Hive Alive is very clear what is in it. Also, they have independent studies that show results.
The few that did this was from the tablet. They turned soft and ran down. The ones I had on my bottom boards made a goopy mess also. Not sure if i had a bad batch, but I scraped my bottom boards and tossed what was left in the tops out.
Nice. . I'll split a few to increase numbers and tinker with the others. I want 14 or 15 colonies max and then i'll really focus on controlling them. Appreciate you watching.
@CastleHives * two of 6 winter survivors are still small... 10 packages are 6 frame brood... trying 1 deep brood, then excluder, then deep for Honey, then deep for the extra capped brood used for equalizeing and maby raise queens (Hillbilly's idea)
Some of the frames appeared to be capped/spotty - you didn't pull much for capped in the vid - did you observe much that was in a consistent pattern? I'd be worried for my queens or putting them on notice...