Great information. I have been doing a single brood chamber for the first few years, But I always left a deep full of honey for them for the winter. From the last 3 videos that I have watched this morning, (from 3 different beekeepers) I have been doing it incorrectly and loosing 10 frames of honey. Thanks for the info.
Hi. Not necessarily “doing it wrong” as plenty of people overwinter with a super on a deep. But yes, of course they will consume that honey if they need it. I prefer to take the honey and replace with sugar syrup down in the deep box closer to the cluster. Either way is fine, it’s up to the beekeeper’s discretion. Thanks!
I enjoy the video and thank you for sharing. I start my bee keeping this year with exact same thoughts and reasons as you do. I don't care about the honey production, wax, etc. Helping nature populate with more bees pollinators in Lexington area is my goal. Yes I do have challenges, but I enjoy my new hobby a lot. Thanks again!
Awesome! Glad you enjoyed the video. I did experience a large amount of swarming this season but so did my friends that use double deeps. 🤷🏼♂️ I still say the juice is worth the squeeze to run singles. Just my opinion! Happy beekeeping!
A 10 frame box would have 62400 cells. Queen lats avg 1500 to 2000 eggs per day times 21 days for a brood cycle equals 42,000 eggs so you have enough cells.
Another disadvantage with those huge hives is that the more bees in a hive, the more room there is for gaurd bees. the huge hives are more likely to be aggressive.
Good video, I completely agree. This is my third season of beekeeping and I started from the beginning with single brood boxes. The swarming for me is the only issue, but that's how I have grown. Now with 14 colonies, not sure what I will do in the spring? I still have to go to my day job. I guess I have to look into selling some nucs.
I guess I'm in the trial and error stage as I've always wanted to end up keeping a few bees. I just didn't think it would happen so unexpectedly and abruptly. I was so unprepared.
The best book you can get to provide you with a good intro into beekeeping is Beekeeping for Dummies. It’s an excellent resource that will answer a lot of your questions. Cheers!
I am looking forward to trying single brood management next season, it is too late to start for my are IMO. This gives me enough time to get more frames and foundation drawn out this year in preparation! I'm excited!
Great info! I was wondering what percentage of the brood box is typically stored honey in say September? Have you ever inspected the bottom (brood box) in September? Please keep these videos coming!!
Yes. Typically you will see a much smaller amount of brood in my area (Kentucky) when we are in Fall heading into Winter. Therefore you will see more honey in the brood chamber as they prepare to overwinter. Glad you are enjoying the videos!! Thanks for watching!!
It can although it’s not ideal in my opinion as that’s even less room for the queen to lay in. The down side would be even more swarming tendency, especially those April and May months in the spring.
There’s just the one mite. The varroa mite. Google all the options for treatment as there are many and they are temperature dependent and honey supers on/off dependent. Lots of options.
Which type of frames/ wax do you recommend? I saw a video that recommended/ said the plastic hives will just kill off your bees and I'm wondering if this is another reason mine are dying amongst other reasons of course.
I just stumbled upon your channel, under recommended. Single hives, got my attention. You have kinda, mostly the information down and some information wrong. Are you going to go to the Hive Life Conference in January? If so I'd love to share 3 generations of information with you and help you become more successful. Commercial beekeepers also do single management and you don't have to increase swarming. There are couple of ways to manage your bees to stop the swarming or try to should I say.
Hi Malcolm. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend Hive Life as my work and kids keep me very busy right now. I appreciate the feedback and are glad to have you here on the channel. Yes, there are many methods to preventing swarming but I choose not to use them at this time. Perhaps if I grow weary and tired of the swarms I may change it up but for now passively managing swarms works well for me. Thanks for watching and happy beekeeping!
Hi Please share your ways to manage swarms & any other valuable generational info. I’m older & I would be greatly challenged to lift a deep full of honey. I’m currently using 10 frame mediums, but I think it might be better to switch the bottom ones to a deep, Thank You!
Hi, I really enjoy your videos but it would help if you had cc. Your voice is very audible but being hearing impaired I still miss important points and need to rewind for clarification! Thank you! 🐝
Oh I’m so sorry. I will look into this more. I thought there was an option in RU-vid for you to turn CC on and RU-vid auto translate? I will see what I can find out. Thanks for watching!
Hi Robert. I looked into it and every one of my videos has CC capability. Whenever watching a video, pause the video and you will see options for “like” “dislike” etc. One of the options is “CC”. Turn this on and RU-vid auto dictates my videos. If you are still unclear how to turn it on, try YouTubing “how to turn on CC for videos”. Hope this helps!
I wish people would reconsider this idea that letting bees swarm is somehow helpful to anything. You are most definitely wrong. To anyone who is not a beekeeper swarms are a public nuisance and potential safety hazard. they often move into people’s homes or buildings, block business and restrict public spaces. They are unmanned colonies that can become ‘mite bombs’ or develop other brood diseases which are also unmanned. I wish people cared less about the money or in your case the Hobby and care more about the public option on keeping bees as a whole. Giving the bees a bad reputation by unleashing swarms on the public should be frowned upon. You should be a bit upset when you lose swarms and hope your bees don’t cause harm or damage to others. If you ever wonder why cities or towns have made keeping bees illegal it’s primarily because people in the past caused public nuisance aka swarms. Don’t be that beekeeper who makes it illegal to keep them in your area!
Respectfully, I disagree. And no beekeeper can prevent 100% of their swarms. There are also feral colonies that throw off swarms every year. I just rescued one from a gentlemen’s property the other day. By your logic, no one should keep bees unless they can guarantee to prevent every swarm. Also, feral colonies should be eliminated since no one is preventing the swarms. Honeybees rarely harm anyone. Compare them to Wasps, Yellowjackets, or other stinging insects. Unless they’re AHB, I disagree with the safety hazard/nuisance argument. They’re critical to our agricultural scene and extremely important for our food supply. I fail to see how more honeybee colonies in the environment is a bad thing. Their benefit far outweighs any possible negatives. My $0.02
@@beesintheweeds it’s not my opinion legally they are a public nuisance. You are free to hold opinions contrary. There are feral pigs as well. Do you support people letting them free? If someone tells you they set them free to help the population would you support that? Or would you tell them they are not native and cause problems? Honey bees outcompete other native pollinators so if someone truly cared about native pollinators they wouldn’t keep bees sorry but it’s true. I’m not talking about my logic versus yours. Your logic is from a confused hobbyist beekeeper. My statements are based on actual laws. You are legally responsible for your livestock. You are legally responsible for damages they cause. It’s not a matter of opinion you are legally liable for them. Encouraging or promoting letting your livestock run free is not the action of a reasonable person. It’s the ‘logic’ of a silly hobbyist like yourself, likely full of nonsense. There are managed colonies and their are unmanaged colonies. This idea of using the term ‘feral’ to describe bees comes from ideology not scientific definitions. It’s the same bees. When you have a swarm leave you have no ownership after they leave your property. you remain legally responsible for them. That’s a fact. It’s not my feelings, it’s not my opinion, it’s not from some fairytale or silly ideology. It’s just factual information. You can be upset with facts all day long.
@@beesintheweeds I still can’t figure out how you could possibly be ‘saving them’ are you saving them from being feral? Lol or are you saving them from his yard? Because if you were saving them from his yard because they were not welcome that most definitely means they were a nuisance and your comment became self defeating.
@@beesintheweeds if you are saying them from being feral, I guess they are not so feral needing to be saved. Feral means they wouldn’t need to be saved
@@user-wf8gu7mt7d I guess if you watch my channel you will see in a future video. The bees were just starting to build comb on the limb so they were planning to make it their permanent residence. The nice gentlemen is very passionate about helping bees so he wanted to make sure they were rehomed to a better location than out in the elements where they would surely die here this winter. I consider that “saving”. They were not bothering him at all as they were quite far from his house and not showing any defensive behavior. And I disagree, even feral colonies die. Without intervention, it is almost certain this swarm-turned-colony would have died on that limb. Whether that be from later this winter or a natural predator that would enjoy the easy pickens.
