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Heinz Cayman Reynolds it's May 6th and it is honey flowing like crazy nectar coming out of the Combs let's go into some honey production colonies and check them out and talk about a few other things we're doing here in the bee yard I think you're going to find this video really interesting and we have a nice honey production County right here so this is a super I added recently and most of it is wooden frames but this plastic one this is a little medium that they're starting to draw they've done a really good job I just put this box on three days ago I believe maybe four at the most and wow they are doing excellent on that this Frame comes from motherload though and it's a USA company and you can see how much wax they put down onto these frames and there's even some down into the cells they put a good heavy coat and that's that's why I got them because really that's that's the most important thing you can you can shape them special but if the wax coat's not good well you can forget about it so this is the top box oh good goodness gracious they've got a little bit of weight in that so not not a whole lot of weight but I'd say that's maybe already 15 full for just a few days being on let's go down here and check some more frames so we are going to pull this Center one out oh look at that it's crazy it's just like magic it turns on every year you go through winter and try to keep the bees from swarming and all that kind of stuff and and then some years it works out and some years it doesn't that's what makes it so special and wow I've got some the thing of it is we just moved 20 colonies out of here a little over a week ago and those were our best honey production colonies this isn't my best honey production yard and I had too many hives here so I wanted to move them to a different location so that they could you know spread the well around a little bit that's got more weight that one right there I feel like is at least 60 percent full and this one right here is another a new box mostly a motherload Foundation again keep in mind these aren't our Prime honey production colonies but they're starting to draw down here as well so I'm just going to throw this back and oh let's check this real quick and you can see it's a single brood management so this isn't really as big as I like it to be I'm going to show you a couple more counties that are larger and give you an idea of what's going on a lot of nectar shakes but the way things are going hopefully the flow will continue we have a crazy thing that I've only seen maybe happen one other time but not to this extreme we have a great tulip poplar set we have black Locus going at the first week of May which is way late and then we have Blackberry Blossom hitting its prime all at the same time and there's Dutch Clover coming up in the yard crazy private starting to bloom a little bit as well so hopefully the bees can handle it all it's going to be fast and furious so let's come over and check these two here and then we're going to go in and look at the single brood and see if they're making any swarm cells so we're going to smoke that down a little bit and a lot of people have been asking me why I've been wearing Jean suits so much lately and part of it is because we have so much B work to do we need to be able to move fast and it's it's better if you're able to move slower and it's just better for the bees better for you but when you have hundreds of hives to get through then there's not much you can do I just put this on maybe two days ago that's already got some weight in it but they are bringing in nectar like crazy right now this box right here that's a uh 30 percent this one's not so hot either huh well I thought they were a little further along than this so I'm just going to lead you guys on until I find whichever Colony that I want to see let's just go on to this one obviously this one's got four boxes that's got some weight in it right there oh yeah that's that's what they should be looking like if they're a prime honey production Colony right now you can see a lot more white wax down in there and let's pull out one of those babies oh yeah so we have a good bit of new white wax on top and they're starting to even cap them a little bit over here and for those of you who are new this is worker size sales over here and this is drone size cells and the foundation started off as all worker sized and you know they've eventually converted some over that doesn't matter at all in the honey supers and this box is well on its way to getting full let's dig down let's go into this one and see how the Queens do and in that single Bridge chamber because we have super super super super that's pretty super um terrible it's been a long day um and then there's the the Deep Brew chamber at the bottom with 10 frames in it and an excluder above it oh yeah baby that one has got to be at least 80 percent that's got some weight to it that one uh you know 15 20 maybe okay we got a little bit more in this one whoa what is going on up here did the queen slip up or is this old from like last year look there's um that is weird I know the queen hasn't been up in here but it looks like maybe a lane worker situation or something I don't know I wonder if sometimes that you get a lane worker that lays like far away enough from the queen that's really strange really strange but we're feeling weight in this Frame I definitely don't want any of that action going on there's no eggs they're starting to fill this up with honey right there and that's a nice comb this is a comb in its second year and that's actually better the first year Combs are so thin and fresh they have a hard time going through an automatic uncapper like I have so it's actually going to be really nice after the second year it'll cut a lot better and it'll it'll cut instead of sometimes tearing that box has got good weight to it if this flow can continue we might be able to get four supers off of this Colony this year hard to tell and this is the newest box typically if you have the time it's it's best to put a box on the bottom that's of Comb it's called under supering versus putting them on top however if you if your backs you know not the greatest or you don't have time putting on top will still work too it's just a little bit more efficient now if you're putting on a box of foundation which I highly recommend and I'm going to be doing a very soon I just placed an order with hilco for some uh mediums I'm out of medium frames so I'm going to put a box of medium foundation and Frames down on the excluder of every single one of them because it makes a massive difference having that Foundation close down here what we'll often do is take a frame on the edge of one of these boxes that has just a little bit of nectar in it and we'll put that right in the center of those foundations and it really lures the bees up into that Foundation right here on that excluder and if we can get every single honey production Hive to draw out one box well another thousand to two thousand more uh medium Combs is not going to break my heart no sir let's get down into this single brood chamber there's not a whole lot of bees down in here there's so many out in the field seams and let's see what this pattern is looking like so as you can see we have 10 frames and that is plenty enough for the queen to lay on even if she's an amazing queen as long as they don't backfill it with nectar or B bread so we have bee bread down into here and we have quite a bit of nectar over into here and these are some nice grayish bees they they have a mostly Carnage genetics but a lot of people ask me this you know we say we like to breed for carnies when we do but everyone else raises Italians around here and so it's really what we have is mutts um kind of like we are here in the United States all right just a mix of everything all right let's go on to the next frame and this is very light and oh this is fantastic I don't know if you can see that but there is eggs in young larvae down in there maybe Laurel can get that angle I don't know how's the luck Laurel not too good well here's what we want to be looking for though is Queen cells down at the bottom and here's one right here and there's an egg in it that doesn't mean they were going to capitalize on that for sure but it's best to occasionally go through these things and the best thing about a single brood chamber is now I only have 10 frames to go through as opposed to 20. and maybe come over on this side Laurel I don't know if you can see it let me let me do this sorry bees and maybe you can get that angle of that bread right there this is important that the queen has plenty of room to lay that's one of the main causes of swarming is a lack of room for her to lay all right sorry if the lighting's not the best but the best we can do for this time of the day so let's get into a couple more frames and see how that's going and we're primarily looking to see if they're doing anything with the Swarm cells now we cut this Colony back down to four frames of brood the first week of April and then gave them some calms to fill in the rest of the spot so she's laying larvae all up into here that's really nice gorgeous looking young stuff and oh my goodness there is a cell right here I was just in this the other day yep that that's a young Queen right there oh my goodness maybe this is the one that swarmed out Laurel I'm seeing eggs though down into here let's see if we can find the queen I was just in this hive and that's really strange the Queen's laying very hard I see a bunch of eggs let's continue to look never a dull moment in Maine and Tennessee beekeeping look at that pattern right there basically all the misses are where there's bee bread so I'm looking for more sales now and also looking for the queen and down in here we have a cup just because there's one does not mean they're wine to swarm they usually keep several around so that one is empty and that is a good frame of brood right there I think one of the issues that is not talked about a lot in swarming in Tennessee is a massive amount of early pollens and sometimes that can block up The Brood nest look at that pattern right there look at that bee it's just it must have hit a big patch of pollen and uh that's oftentimes we talk about honey but our little bees are going out there and helping so many plants be successful in reproduction which is just good for all of us and over here we have just more good brood and we have a couple more cups I need to be looking for the queen I'm thinking about other things and yep that one's empty that one's empty we have drone brewed down into here and it's really not wise to leave this other Hive open it's best to shut it don't always do everything that I do in my videos please uh absolutely not but it'll be okay this one time just this once well I was hoping to show you the next Colony over this might end up being a long video all right so we're over into here and this is a dark oh there she is there she is so you can see she has a little bit of a yellow Dot left I'm going to bring it up to you there you go and a gorgeous Kearney Queen right there she's walking a little slow she is she's doing a good job for us I've been seeing some cells many times that I come into this colony and I really think that um I think it's more of a super seizure thing I don't know why but she's doing a pretty good job but I I think this colony is going to need to get a new Queen when this flow is over there's been a couple warning flags the pattern hasn't always been perfect she's just slightly below a prime Queen and uh and they they keep trying to raise cells and that in of itself is enough reason to get out of the gene pool around here is I don't like colonies that are swarm happy so over here we have a drone cell and it so at first if you see that it might scare you a little bit and I know you're probably looking at this pattern going oh my goodness there's nothing wrong with that Queen but uh I I don't know I've just I've seen several things that make me think this Queen's gonna run out of uh steam sometime in the middle of summer and I'd rather not find out with it going queenless at a bad time of the year so likely what we'll do is we'll split this colony in half and we can we can leave her but then the new split's gonna get a new Queen and we'll probably go ahead and make another queen and if this one doesn't do a good job we'll just re-queen her with another so I'm not seeing any types of cap cells if it was swarming a colony this strong in this type of flow if there's swarming going on there should be at least two cups that have jelly in them or there should be cells so I don't know maybe somebody with a lot more experience can chime in look at that diverse beautiful pollen down in there making just those wonderful healthy bees and that greenish brownish pollen I believe comes from blackberries and it looks almost dark brown black when they have it on their baskets kind of gray it's an interesting color but when they pack it in it kind of gives it a gray green uh this colony is in good shape I'm gonna keep an eye on it if it swarms because that one cell um we don't want those genetics anyways I'm pretty sure that's more Super seizure than anything I don't know exactly what was going on there and I'm just going to scoot that together we are going to put this food frame back towards the edge the bees are doing a wonderful job if you'll notice with that single Bridge chamber very little honey down in here hardly any at all and that is because we have combs that we put in before the honey flow but when it was just starting to trickle they were already getting these boxes ready for that and as long as they can keep that clear and we pull them back to where they feel like they've kind of already swarmed we're just it's all about keeping that stimuli down let's get into this Colony right here and see what they're up to but I want to put this one back together before we get three hives up open at once all right so now let's get into this Hive right here and they're a little bit behind our Prime yards our Prime yards have a lot more privet and Autumn Olive and uh honestly we have more bees up in this area the soil's not as good but still in the good year we'll do well and wow look at this beautiful bunch of combs down in here I'll just love that white wax and I love those smells I wish we could pipe that through the uh the video look at that and and check this out you got some darker Hues over here and he has some lighter Hues of cells down in here and you just get a mix of well wildflowers I I'm fairly confident this darker stuff over in here is Poplar and some of this lighter stuff is the uh maybe black locust or the Blackberry it's hard to know for sure there's several other smaller contributors that that really do add up and matter so one of the things that I would like to say is okay so I came in this is all great but you have several Combs I only have maybe one box of drawn comb per Hive or two boxes and I really need more for our flow well what you could do is pull this off get a refractometer go okay this is 20 moisture content and it really needs to be in my opinion a little bit below 18. it can be a little higher than 18 but in my opinion get in the 17 range I think it'll tastes better and it's also just better to play safe in my opinion so but you can get a box fan blow that through those over a day and have a dehumidifier and within a short period of time dry that honey out extract that and then put it back on the bees a couple days later and they can fill that right back on up so that is an option right there I want to just check one or two more of these just got to do it already starting to cap this up in here ah these are just going to be some wonderful Combs to sling and okay we're just we're just gonna keep on going we just got to keep going gotta keep going a little bit of wind today oh yeah just another beautiful frame as dark as this is I'm just gonna go that's gotta be tulip poplar it's good honey um some years it contributes more than others wow that is oh yeah that's that's gotta be to look popular right there sorry bees I know that was you had a perfect frame going and uh hey I'm gonna point something else out real quick so it's hard to tell with this but this nice white caffeine wax that's called dry capping sometimes you'll look into a hive and you'll see there's honey but it's capped differently so if you see this nice uh dry looking cap that that just means that there's a little bit more space between it um and the Honey quality is the same and then you have I think this is a good cell right here you can look at and you can see where this is nice and dry capped over here on the right I just made an indention with my hive tool and over here that one is kind of a wet cap and again it doesn't really matter the honey is still good you can see a little bit more right here where it's nice and dry and then you have a you can see some wet cap right there Honey's still the same but it looks a lot prettier when you have that dry cap and back before varroa and small Hive beetles a lot of these nuanced uh things that we have that has come over lately some of them not so nuanced um they used to breed for bees that would give you better cappings you know back when they uh that would have been a great problem to have uh if you've never read a book by Eugene Killian I call it a honey in the comb and you want to learn about comb honey production check that one out it's an old book but a great book great weight in that box beautiful and yeah that would not be good so we are going to drop down into this next box and great weight again this box has got to be almost as full as that one yeah baby getting two supers of Honey off of this Colony unless something crazy happens now I just threw this one in like the other ones just a couple days ago and let's see what they're doing with it wow this flow is amazing I need to get another box on here I really need to get a foundation box and then another box of Comb if I if I have another one to spare I think I got another one to spare but uh get those foundations on and and maybe even stick one up on top it's kind of a relief if they fill it up and it's just a phenomenal flow they can go up there and start working on those foundations and hey if you have a box of Foundations and they only draw it out maybe 20 percent of the way but they they've started still that's great what you can do after the honey flows over pull all your honey off and leave that comb honey super on there and just feed feed very thin syrup it doesn't even have to be one to one one to one will work though and you can get them to draw that out obviously don't Harvest that and give it to people and well at least don't sell too much honey but that right there is a way that you can get more drawn comes for the next year and a lot of times on a strong Colony after the flow you can get that one drawn and when it's about 70 percent drawn take some of those foundations put them in another box of foundation and keep feeding and maybe get two mediums drawn a good strong Colony after the flow if you're quick and prompt and the bees are healthy with a good Queen we'll draw those out and if you did it on 10 counties and could get a box and a half on average well that's 15 more comes per Hive times 10 that's 150 more comes for next year and a good honeycomb can last a decade I've seen some long older than that because you don't let the bees lay any brood in them so let's just check a frame or two down in here then we're going to cut the video and Laurel you thought I wasn't going to have enough energy to do this video but that Mellow Yellow has kicked in and I'm running at 110 efficiency all right so this is not very heavy it's got a lot of young stuff look at that larvae down in there not a lot of Honey down in here the bees have done a great job pushing that up just like they're supposed to in this single brood managed Colony now this is a little bit of a tricky method I don't recommend anyone to do it without doing the research up there's the queen right there what a gorgeous uh Bonnie Joseph I was talking to her the other day she calls those like that that have that kind of stripe raccoon tail that's kind of what that one looks like is a rat raccoon-tailed uh Queen what a good girl she's doing a great job for us we're going to be very careful and we're just going to stick her like that we're only going to peek into a few more frames no reason to stir them too much on this wonderful honey flow day and oh yeah lots of deep red in there that's what I'm saying maybe I didn't finish earlier but pollen trapping might be a trick to help keep those early swarms down because that stuff can build up in there and if we could just eliminate maybe one frame of bee bread by collecting it in pollen trapping it's another source so we could sell something or just eat it ourselves super healthy for you and it also keep our colonies from backfilling The Brood nest and and give that Queen a little bit more room to lay so when we get done with this Colony I'm going to shake a frame and and show you just how significant this flow is today all right she's laying some good patterns right here and all this nectar that's down in these cells they will have that moved up into the honey supers by tomorrow A lot of times the bees are in a hurry they'll deposit and an empty cell down below and that's not too bad as long as they can move it up by the next day and that's all looking good look at that pattern right there on that adjacent frame looks good all right we are going to put that Queen back in oh she's laying ah she's laying okay 21 years came and act like you've seen it before awesome never gets old I'm I'm anxious to see this next day oh she's she's looking at that one nope oh There She Goes ah up to 1500 a day this time of the year aren't we blessed to be able to observe and and get to interact with this wonderful creature oh There She Goes Again we just might need to make some daughters off of this one we'll have to see about that see how gentle these bees are not all of our bees are quite this good but this is one that we would consider breeding from because the bees are not runny they're not running all over the Combs they don't have an aggressive tendency that's overboard they're just good disposition good healthy bees and that Queen right there I mean what more could you ask for she's the sun's beating on her back and it doesn't matter she's just going about her business even though we've Disturbed them let's gently put her back in the dark and we are going to shake this next cone all right excuse me bees excuse me excuse me yeah yeah let's see how much nectar we get come out of here oh look at that I got most of it on that side those beads are like that darn beekeeper just dripping all out of those cells that's how you know it came in uh today is just how easy it is let me shake this one more time here we go well we are not going to do that anymore to the bees that's that was a lot of work right there now we've made him have to do double work but it's pretty delicious all right so thanks for watching this video it's just go time we are slammed busy missing a swarm or two if you lose some swarms just remember that if you have a a great honey flow and you know you're probably busy trying to keep up like we are you're going to lose some swarms it's not always fun and it kind of drives me nuts losing my own swarms but it happens and we've lost some I talked to Bob Benny he's lost some if Bob Benny can lose forms well I guess we all can lose swarms so thanks for watching this video and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee's Bees

Views: 67,345

Keywords: beekeeping, beekeeper, honeybees, bees, Kamon Reynolds, honey, How to install a package of bees, How to install a nuc, package vs nuc challenge, how to make honey, beehive, provap 110, Tennessee beekeeping, Tennessee beekeepers, Package of bees, swarming, swarm, swarm control, queen cell, queen cup, swarmtrap, swarm trapping, how to make a swarm trap, swarm trap, bee cast, honey processing, honey production, swarm traps for honey bees, swarm trap build, beekeeping for beginners

Id: kkX7nFATYIo

Length: 28min 46sec (1726 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023