2020 Spring REWIND - Early Spring Nest Management, a cold Canadian Spring- part 1

so what we're doing is we're tipping back the qualities yeah where's the boss that's the old man bear go say hi there can't be making videos when the boss is around out this morning clearing out some yards to be able to set my bees down into i have a little bit of an optimistic forecast coming at us so i pulled out the tractor from the farm and this is one of the yards out of five i have i'm going to set bees down into this is an old farm yard very long escarpment so a little bit of a heat sink down here so hopefully i can set down uh i'm counting at least two truckloads here so hopefully a full truckload here and then another truckload over there and if i have to i've cleared out two little spaces here just to be able to fit a third if i needed to so i'm preparing to move my hives out i'm just seeing if i can move these bees and the shed has just come alive here i'd rather move these hives out through the day just because moving hives out at night is so much bloody work so the trick is to cool this shed down to be able to stick the bees in the boxes and for the longest time i've always had trouble with an overheated shed but since i've been able to increase the ventilation through the shed to be able to keep the temperature down in here i've been able to uh sneak these hives out during the day i've been able to you know drop the temperature of the shed through the night to cool off this shed so then when i opened up the door uh the hives were all stuck to their boxes and they weren't flying out kind of like this so right now the sheds at five it's about three degrees outside right now so this is a little bit too much activity i can't can't move on this so what i'm going to do is tonight i'm going to start moving the hives i'm going to load up a load and well it's supposed to be windy so i probably won't move tonight but i'll get a load loaded up i'll back the truck in here and then first thing tomorrow morning i'll start moving and hopefully i'll uh drop the temperature down in the shed i'll crank the fans on and i'll try to pull this temperature down as much as i can to be able to cool off these hives to stick them into the boxes and then maybe just maybe with the cooler type weather tomorrow i might be able to maintain a cooler shed and not have this type of flight not sure if you can see that but the bees are these are taking flight just too much activity i mean there's no point i keep them in the shed all winter under very specific temperature and management and then there's no use you know losing bees just to casual drift like this for no reason whatsoever [Music] [Music] first load out to the yard and it's minus eight right now at a good freeze last night things are firmed right up but this is one of the reasons why i'm moving on the frost because even with the frozen ground that sun over the last couple days you know driving that frost out of the ground it did a great job clearing the yard like look at that it's going to be an amazing heat thing for the bees once they get it flying but the fact remains i'm gonna have trouble if i don't watch it getting stuck [Music] [Music] so working on my third load of bees now and the bees are staying nice and tight in their boxes it's quite nice it's about minus five sun's just come out and there isn't a whole lot of activity and i'm kind of i'm impressed how this is working now i think i've got finally got it figured out i've always had trouble with an overheated shed and every time i'd open the door to try to do work on days like today to move these out through the day and have a cloud of ease flying out the door could never could never make it work but right now i'm maintaining the shed at zero degrees and holding these bees in their box is quite nice there is virtually no b flight in the shed right now so the difference between then and now is the air exchange for the longest time i what i do is i pull my air in through these vents across the room with the ceiling fans to mix up the air and it gets pulled out of the shed through those two other vents and those fans are controlled on two mole modules here as i was initially had this place set up i had my air intake vents their two by two openings and what i had is on the outside in my baffle i had a series of light baffles in there and what that was doing is restricting the light from coming in but also it was restricting the airflow so i wasn't getting near the airflow coming into the building as i wanted so finally figured that out and i took those air baffles out or the light baffles out and it allowed much more air to come into the building on my high airflow and because of that the ambient air temperature inside is basically the same as the air temperature outside because i i'm able to exchange air so much quicker and more fluidly and in turn what that has allowed me to do is cool this shed down after a warm day like yesterday was a warm day i could never have moved bees yesterday because it's too warm but i had a cold night so i was able to exchange i had these fans going constant i didn't allow them to idle down i had them going full so as -8 outside it was probably about -5 or so whatever inside here and i cooled the shed down sucked those bees into the boxes and then when i opened up the door and this ray of light comes in they recognize that obviously but they they are nice and tight in their boxes they're not going anywhere so this has allowed me to move these bees out onto the truck through the daylight down the road and down into their yards taking advantage of a nice cold day a few cold days before some real warm days it has allowed me to you know walk in the frost allowed me to work through the day not have to focus all my work at night [Music] [Music] so there so there's two truckloads out and it just got too warm i'm gonna have to call it until this evening it's 5 30 in the afternoon and it's about 5 degrees and the bees are just getting up and taking a bit of a flight not a lot just real light flight you can see the tops of the lids are being spotted with bee poop so there's they're getting opportunity to get out and do a bit of a cleansing flight here sounds really nice so this is a good start carrie's back on staff now i can tell she's been in the yard because she the entrance reducers and i notice she's been calling out the dead which that means out of this truckload there's only one dead so that's promising well that's how this flight sounds so good so this is a good start i can't wait until we have these warm days come this weekend these bees are gonna be flying this nicely set out my fives this yard's not as big as the rest but holy crap they're loving that sun making a cleansing flight jacket's getting dirty [Music] no doubt so this is nice looks like we got our timing just perfectly glad i'm glad we set him up when we started here because this is a beautiful day listen to that sound not just my fives these guys are coming to life oh this is exciting this is what i wait for my bees this afternoon is supposed to be warmer i bet you we're going to take a look this afternoon it's plus 12 right now i have about 450 hives in this yard and they have taken flight oh it just feels so good the energy in the air is just terrific those bees are up and flying it's a beautiful cleansing day this is the uh just this energy in the air this is what i wait for every year that's what it's all about so there you have it fans are off the shed is empty the building is quiet 10 degrees on a saturday afternoon this yard is just electric there is energy in the air we're going through doing our initial uh hive assessment so we're going through basically what i'm doing is i'm tipping back the colony just the heft for weight and then i'm also doing a strength assessment at the same time and there isn't a whole lot like as i was going through i didn't notice a lot of light hives so we're not too worried about starvation but we just want to make sure we can target those ones that are a little bit hungry and drop some honey into them right away we have some honey back in storage we kept over winter and any hive that's a little bit light we will just drop a honey frame in but we got going here and i just want to show you what we are seeing basically we're just tipping the colony back and we have about four frames in that nuke has a little bit of honey on the side and i'll get you to tip uh right down the line the mark this one is a strong this is a box of bees looks good we have enough honey stores in there another box of these another box of bees [Music] a box of these which one did i say needed for this one needs food you know this one's a bit late so carrie's going to dig in to actually take the lid off from this one it's going to be fun digging down into these guys they're just a little bit light so we're going to drop a honey frame on the side somewhere so we'll see how that goes kerry gets the fun of doing that i forget this one i think needed food too this one has enough in there and i tipped this one back i think this one needed food also is that light yeah this one needs another box of these so we're gonna target these nukes over the next uh over the next day day and a half get through all these nukes make sure they have the food they need and then we'll get into the singles and make sure that everything is satisfactory with them and that feels really good tipping back colonies like that that sure puts a beekeeper in a good one how many nukes did you say i have around 340 450 i got 300 and 340 or 400 nukes they're going to be needing space so which is good these hives look absolutely brilliant i'll just give you a sneak peek here 421 boxes of bees tipping back boxes all day long i'm feeding uh roughly we have to drop honey frames and roughly 10 of them but uh i'm gonna have to get feet out to these guys right away just to wetting up the frames a little bit [Music] and i will probably do that with open feed bigger off piece unless it gets cold then we'll have to bring the pails out we'll do that with the nukes anyways so it's minus one and we've worked our way through another yard this morning a little bit cooler so the bees aren't you know spread out so they look a little bit smaller i haven't marked too many boxes of bees in this yard but it makes a lot of sense it looked like this truckload was pretty much a load of singles or a load of um nukes that we'd made up last year that i put into singles so a little bit of a smaller cluster in a bigger box uh makes the appearance of a smaller hive but these guys the clusters the integrity held themselves and i think they're going to be just fine working my way through the rest of the yard and got into some of more of my mature hives and i'll show you pretty much what i'm seeing so what we're doing on this round is we're tipping back all our colonies because we want to see how heavy they are this way we can target the hives that are in starvation mode and we can quickly drop some frames of honey into them i'm not finding a lot of hungry hives throughout the april uh so far everything seems to have an adequate amount of honey in it in this yard anyways we're seeing a little bit smaller clusters you know size of a basketball or whatever it is minus one so they're a little bit tighter but that shows a true size of the colony cluster when it's a little bit cooler they're not as active and you can really see a well-defined cluster so i'm seeing a lot and this is these are more nukes so once we get into the other yards we'll be able to see what the general mature hives are the in the apri so what we're doing is we're tipping back the qualities yeah where's the boss that's the old man bear go say hi there can't be making videos when the boss is around so anyways we're what we're doing is we're tipping back the colonies and i'm assessing the cluster i'm identifying all the uh the boxes of bees all the seven eight nine ten frames of bees and i'm marking them with a blue tag and uh like this here and that way uh and then we're marking the small ones with a gray tag and every all the mediums don't get any tag so this way when we come back around in three weeks i can assess the colony condition again and see if they advanced or fell back and just helps me call out those queens that failed through the spring this one is a medium has no tag so it's about four frames of bees nice little cluster these guys are gonna make me some money got about three four frames of these i'm gonna mark them as a medium too so this one i didn't mark anything i'm looking at roughly three to four frames of bees down below so they get no attention this one i marked as a blue there's a box of bees it's a definite blue on these guys so it's important i find these big ones and they have lots of weight to them too it's just nice it's important i find these big ones and mark them because they're going to need a little bit more attention uh further down the road for space another box of these about eight frames i'd say and we're looking at about four four and a half frames of bees on this one so this is basically what i'm seeing throughout the april you know a good basketball sized cluster maybe a little bit bigger finding a few blue tagged ones which is good i'll be able to target those for splits i'll also show you what i'm doing i'm also assessing we're already looking for a breeder queens so as we're going through and i'm assessing the big ones the boxes of bees blue tagged these guys are nice and heavy and there's about eight frames of bees in here nice and gentle i'm looking at my tag here this hive was set up in 2007 and last spring i had a blue tag on there which said that it was a really good come out of spring a box of bees and i've just marked them with another blue tag which is telling me that this hive has performed excellent through two springs now last spring and this spring it's a 2017 queen so she's probably not the original queen but this hive is has maintained its succession once maybe twice now successfully so whatever is going on within this colony i like so this automatically tells me this is a a candidate for a queen rearing operation for a breeder queen so as i send carrie around she automatically looks for the double blue tags then she looks to see how long it's been in successive development and also i'll show you what else we do when we go around and we find these colonies with any types of traits that we like what we do is we mark them with a big tack like this and this doesn't tell us anything other than whatever is going on at that particular time at that moment we really liked so there's a trade here that we like these guys have been going since 2016 and they've been able to hold them their integrity of this colony throughout all those years and pretty much uh you know not only make me money on surplus bees but they there's some kind of a trade going on here that we like probably honey production i bet you these guys were you know ranked a little bit higher as we're pulling honey and they've been going on since 2016. so this is what i want to propagate within my colony within my operation i want that continued succession i want productiveness i want hives that are gentle that brewed up produced being lots of bees you know just thrifty and by doing this we don't have to keep records we don't need a notepad in our pocket and numbering hives and just keeping track of records that we actually never get around to updating or using it just gives us an in-field way of assessing our colony stock and then being able to pull that brilliance out when we need to use it later on as we start grafting and breeding for our queens any rate this yard is done carrie has done her work now and it's getting a little bit warmer now i bet she is above freezing we are going to head to the next yard and hopefully get through another yard before lunch something odd kind of happened i'm not sure what it was but it certainly is odd so we come to this yard this afternoon we got done one truckload of bees here working through everything's going pretty well we're not pulling out too many dead uh we're seeing lots of good sized clusters uh lost integrity to these hives lots of feed uh these queens are starting to lay they have little a lot of them have little patches of brood about the size of your fist right so they would have done that in the shed and now that queen just stretched out her egg laying around that all the way around so she's she's ramped right up she's laying eggs and she's just started that so the bees are this close and bringing those eggs to larvae and developing out these nests so i'm working through you know we find the occasional queenless hive so then we uh merge it with a smaller hive just to make use of the bees and stuff like that is just what i do and we're working through everything's good yeah yeah yay and we come across a part in the yard where also we're seeing um queenless hives queenless queenless queenless queenless queenless queenless now six in a row there obviously all part of one yard that i'm experiencing some losses here so i said what the hell so we uh like as we work through here i'm tipping them back i'm assessing for strength i'm assessing for weight and we're not digging down in the colonies too much um not oh you blew a bugger not uh nonetheless we have to we you know we'll shift the frames into the center just to center that cluster but for the most part we are not going downland nest a whole lot um so i come upon these hives and i open it up tip it back and just they just sounded different so i dug down into it and then working through i heard it again and i heard it again so then i had carrie i was like what the hell so i had carrie work through all the colonies checking for eggs backwards see how far back until we got out of the losses and then i worked this way from the yard until we got all the losses and we worked our way out of them so i'm not sure what the hell happened there just also just a sporadic 50 uh queen loss just in a section of the yard really weird no correlation to uh age of queen or size of the colony you know the big ones i have some big ones here i've gone queenless and i have some medium size here gone queenless so kerry's gone to get some of the fives that we worked through yesterday some of the smaller fives and we're going to merge those smaller fives into these queenless units and just try to salvage the bees inside and you know well that's what we got these fives for is just to help fill in all the mistakes and all the problems in the apri without any concern so that's what we're going to do we're going to drop these fives into a single box we're gonna transfer the fives into a single box and then merge them into these uh queenless units and hopefully we'll come back in a week and a half and hopefully the bees have all gone up around the queen started developing out a nest and i'll just put that little bit of an episode behind me hear that hopefully queenless so the idea here is we bring our nuke with a fresh little queen in there and merge it we're gonna drop that nuke into the single box over top of the queenless unit and then that little wii unit should receive all the bees from the bottom and the two will merge all nicely and then we'll be able to salvage that space salvage of these there she is and give these nukes just a little bit of a boost we'll come back in about a week week and a half to see if it was successful these bees i set out some dry supplements for the bees to forage on to bring back it's a little bit of a protein source this is one of those times in the year that's absolutely fascinating just clouds of bees while they forage actively forage on this supplement it's one of those spectacles i just love it you'll notice they'll come in here and they will you know kind of dance around and dust around in here and try to gather as much of this supplement as they can on their bodies and on their legs just as if it was pulling and they'll bring it back to the colony but after they do that they kind of dust around in here they get all covered up and then they will fly up and out and they land in the grass and when they sit in their grass that's outside here they uh they kind of groom themselves they groom it off their bodies onto their legs holy this is a lot of bees and i think they're also grooming it off their eyes because i'm wondering if this might you know blind them as this dust gets all covered on their bodies and over their face i bet you they can't see so i wonder if part of that landing on the grass to groom has to do with them kind of wiping their eyes so they can actually see where they're going super cool so well it's five o'clock and the bees are telling me it too that and my smoker ran out halfway through this yard so that didn't help but we got through this yard today what's in here there's about 400 and 430 hives in this yard and this is the losses we've pulled out so far i don't know why we brought the halftone well i know why we brought the halftime because of all that don't want to get stuck one of the reasons why i was so anxious to pull out on the frost because i knew i wasn't going to get an opportunity to get back into these yards with the truck it is wet but it doesn't matter because the bees are out here and they're flying so i'm not sure how many what percentage of loss would we have got 10 maybe yeah well to do a count on the losses but whatever it is the losses fit in the back of this ton out of this yard of 430 which is pretty good uh i was getting kind of excited a little earlier when i went through the nukes that the nukes were so big and vigorous as i was thinking oh this is going to be absolutely fantastic what i'm going to do with all these bees but then i actually get through the rest most of the other april i've gone through eight or 900 hives now over the last couple days and there's big ones and there's small ones and there's heavy ones in there light ones there's drone layers and just problems and and my notion about not having to feed patties i think i tossed that out the window we have some snow and cold coming over the next few days hopefully it's just the next few days and doesn't linger on into a couple weeks so we're gonna have to get some resources onto these colonies i have some open feed for these guys and they've accessed that for a day day and a half now uh tomorrow i hope they can get back into it but if we're shut down for another week like these colonies they there's a lot of have honey in there but the combs are dry we got to get we got to get these combs wet we have to spark up this queen and to do that we need to put syrup in we have to put patties on if they can't fly we gotta give it to them inside the colonies so looks like as soon as we get around this first round which is an important one this is kind of you know pull out all the poor and the weak and anything that you want to we don't want to spend time and money on we call out so then we can focus on everything else with that i'm going to help carrie finish up this yard it's got a few hives to center a few hives to drop frames of feed into and then call it a day i anticipated this snow coming through watching the forecast and such but it looks like we're in for some cold weather uh some very heavy snow over the next couple days next couple of nights 15s so we have definitely swung into a shutdown for all type of bee work as soon as we get around as soon as we get a chance to get around we're going to start dropping patties on these colonies just to make sure that they have the resource they need to build to build and develop out their colonies i didn't have time to drop patties on our first time around we had to get through quick to assess for colony weight and emergency feed and we just got that done before this cold weather come through so at least everything has enough honey on i had to at least drop honey frames into 10 15 of my colonies which desperately needed it especially the big ones so that was a very important job to be done we didn't have time to draw patties anyway so this next round as soon as we get back into these hives which looks like it's going to be about a week or so um we're going to drop patties we're going to drop strips and we're going to feed if we don't have the feed pails on by then already so a little bit of a shutdown at least i was able to get my colonies out and i was able to allow them flight for three or four days i was able to emergency feed and assess my stock to see where our boats i was at i think i'll try my best not to worry too much about this cold snowy weather coming through because all the colonies are in a nice sheltered yard tucked away we didn't really open up too many of them so they're nice and sealed up they have the whole food they need and the clusters are are adequate so we'll just spend this next week mixing and cutting patties scraping up equipment cleaning up equipment and just trying our best not to fuss about this weather so how are you making out our stack of boxes that need to be repaired those are boxes to be repaired frames scraped up and boxes to scrape and clean up from these are the losses here from this year those are this year's losses and this is last fall's call out and then we sort are you sorting them here that's honey those are empties and those are pollen and then we know what we have so we can sort into the boxes and make up splits kerry's having lots of fun today but she could be outside in that well we've drank the pails down syrup feeders are done so many bees the bees are up and they are in full flight does this feel so good it's only plus five right now these bees are just ready to get going i guess so as a rule on the honey farm any time any moment that we're able to work with bees we're out working with bees so definitely a be working day today they are heavy into the feeders looks like they've been flying for a little while so far today [Music] these bees are going absolute bonkers over this oh i just love the sound of this activity they're also the bees are also in the serp feeder this is working quite nice we have wood floats in here and a bit of straw so they so they don't drown they're all nicely lined up they're sucking out all the syrup so there isn't a whole lot of traffic here uh which means that there won't be a whole lot of fighting so we're only putting one or two open feeders per yard just to provide them that inflow of syrup some years i put pails on in the spring just depends how hungry these hives are for the most part these hives are heavy enough they have enough stores inside they don't really need that emergency feed of syrup up on top so anyways we're going to be going through and carries out dropping some more syrup into these open totes and i'm going to start putting patties on these colonies and putting app of our strips in so now is the time to get this job done i'm gonna poke down to a few colonies just to see how they're maintaining their brood their nest last time i was here before the snow they were she laid frames full of eggs so i just want to see if they hung onto all those eggs and moved those eggs into larvae just to step that develop into the nest forward or i want to see if she laid the eggs i want to see if the workers you know cannibalize some of those eggs pulled back the nest just because of the cold because it got down to minus 18 uh two nights ago and then minus 15 three nights ago so it's pretty cold so i just want to see if that weather kind of shocked them back tipped these guys back in there yeah these are a box of bees i'm also looking at food stores not well the honey on hand for sure but i want to see whether or not they've been getting that opportunity to go out to the syrup feeder and bring that fresh syrup back into the colony and they have you can see this frame here is being stored full of syrup and that's really important when these colonies like we're always focusing on protein protein protein protein but it's that sugar sources it's extremely important that's that other part of the equation so you got to get that fresh sugar coming into the colony otherwise they won't be excited enough to to start rooting up so i'm just going to go down i'm going to dig down into the center of the nest and that's basically where the activity is going to be where i want to see ah so there's some capped brood surrounded by eggs and i'm looking on this side of the frame again capped brood a little patch of cap root surrounded by eggs so those eggs have just been relayed recently what i want to look for is larvae that's developing out here's another frame of brood capped brood surrounded by eggs again cat brood surrounded by eggs and here's we're starting to get into uh larvae that's mature that's hatched in the and the bees are starting to take it on into the larval stage so there's there's a little bit of ambition there i'm also seeing this nest rimmed with syrup which is extremely exciting that means the bees are apple getting the opportunity to go out to the syrup feeder bring back this fresh syrup when i was first going through the nests right after i put them outside just those spot checks i was doing the nest was really dry [Music] there's cat brood there's the queen cat food surrounded by eggs i want to see more mature larvae again cat fruit surrounded by eggs there we go so we got a frame that has more mature larvae on it rimmed with eggs and we have all stages of larvae on this frame capped brood mature larvae eggs a whole bit and then we're gonna get back in the feed frames here oh no we're still into brood here so this is this is what i want to see i want to see this uh brood i just want to see the egg stage because what i'm looking for is the advancement from the egg stage which is telling me and i'm seeing here a nice pattern like nice and uniform so what i'm seeing is these bees have held enough girth to build to on this side too this side is full of mature brood like mature larvae so that cold weather didn't seem to hold these guys back at all i was afraid that this cold weather snapped that colony back a little bit and you know they had cannibalized those eggs or maybe because there isn't that inflow of syrup and protein that they would be pessimistic and they wouldn't take those eggs to advance them to that next stage of development which is the larval stage because it's the worker bees that decide that so i'm treating my colonies with apovar this is a mite treatment i'm using my chemical resistant gloves i hate these things they're still cumbersome but you use one strip for every five frames of bees this is a box of bees so they're getting two strips and this one nice thing about singles is it's nice and tight the bees are tight kind of confined in this box and they develop out this nest and those uh mites can't get away from these strips so it's a very effective way of treating it's what i call a targeted treatment and i'm putting a protein patty on long overdue it looks like they're managing the development of their nest all the same anyways holy crap this yard's alive carrie just got stuck over there found wet spot so we're just attempting to pull her out but this yard i just can't help to walk through it this yard is absolutely terrific in activity the open feeder is just going bonkers this is a supplement feeder just going crazy holy crap so many bees and they're in the syrup which is really nice to see so this is saving me from having to put the tails out onto the colonies and they're just you know they're feeding just perfectly all nice and orderly very little fighting they just all kind of line up like they're drinking at a trough and they are busy [Music] it's really interesting you know i just about got stung there and by the serp feeder they're a lot more aggressive when taking down syrup than they are feeding on protein supplement and i don't know why i guess maybe i maybe it's more of a robbing spirit when they're after the sugar and maybe it feels like it's more of a forging spirit when they're after the supplement i have i have no idea but you know i can hold my face in front of this thing [Music] without a problem i mean you can even stir them up a little bit get more up in the air they could give a damn that i'm here but i can't do the same with the sugar over here these guys are feeding here i'll go to the other one feeding and i'm getting dive bombed right here by the sugar look at these guys isn't that cool all lined up but these guys are after my face here [Music] so it's probably more of a robbing kind of frenzy where they're more aggressive and more of a foraging frenzy where they're more focused on flying i don't know holy crap man i mean what the hell it's my minus 13 and we had a at least a couple inches of snow last night might as well be using this damn thing i haven't put it away yet it's middle of april at least the sun's shining and at least the forecast is optimistic holy talk about testing your patience so what i'm going to do is in that 10 loss or in those empty spots that we have in the yards right now i'm going to go through i'm going to follow through with my whole um program of rejuvenating this apron continual rejuvenation and one of those things is filling in those dead spots and i like filling them in as quickly as i can so when i'm going through with my work i'm not obsessed over those empty spots within the yards so i'm going to do today is i'm going to pick up these nukes that shown some promise and i marked them with the blue tag that means they're full of bees and it's a good day to move because there isn't a whole lot of activity and my movement is going to be fairly stress free so i'm going to pick these girls up i'm going to take them out to the yards and i'm just going to drop that nuke into that spot just to hold that spot as a place taker until we can come around when it warms up and we can transfer that nuke into an empty single shell working through the yards working through tough conditions like this where it's cold and there isn't a lot of resource coming in these bees really have to manage themselves to you know that certain balance that equilibrium which they are capable of sustaining throughout this variable condition these conditions are very variable in the sense that it's warm it's cold there's intermittent inflow of resource coming in so these hives really have to be able to truly define the progress that they're moving forward otherwise they simply will collapse so as we're going through these colonies and we're working them through these tough conditions you can really see that well-defined nest and you can really tune in to exactly that size of colony and the vigor expressed within it because they're not going to provide abundance over what they can actually sustain themselves so i'm going through and counting these frames of bees and you go down and you take a look at the amount of brood that they're established that they have established and what you're maintaining and it really tells you it's true reflection on the condition of that colony and you'll notice that these these hives will be nice cluster b's in there and you look down into the brood nest you can see exactly what had gone on that week week and a half before that just by the staging of the brood and the development that queen's laying eggs like crazy she'll lay eggs as hard and as fast as she can this time of year it's a matter of those worker bees which then take those eggs and it depends on how optimistic they are at that particular time on taking that egg as it hatches into development so if you see a nest that has all stages from eggs right up to mature brood all stages of larvae you know all stages of cat brood then you can tell that that nest is feeling good it's robust the conditions warranted it just to progress nice and smoothly through all those variable conditions but as you're going through and kind of what i'm seeing in my nests right now you're seeing stagey brood um well defined obviously but just stagey where certain days they pull back a little bit more certain days they ramp ahead a little bit more just as they're trying to find that equilibrium of that balance within that nest to build progress this this hive their colony throughout into spring right now is the extremely critical time for these nests and their development as they take that winter nest and they move it forward into you know spring bees they're in effect taking those old winter bees and they're flipping it out into a young youthful nest and they can only do that with resources and they can only do that with optimism and if they don't have the inflow coming in they're all they're relying on building out that nest with what they have internally within that nest and within themselves so it just depends on how much resource they have on hand to build to develop these bees and flip them into that spring nest unfortunately there isn't a lot of inflow right now so it's kind of staggered the development of these hives so it really it really pressures these small ones like the big ones they got all this resource on hand they got pollen they got all this body fat within them they developed both like two or three frames of brood which you know can flip them nice and comfortably into a spring nest when you get these small ones these small hives that are only two frames of bees three frames of bees and they're trying to muster as much resource and as much you know colony girth as they can if if they can't rear enough brood to build to flip themselves over to build to sustain the size of that nest then they just start falling backwards and through cold weather like this this is what i'm going to start seeing those small ones i've i've tagged that showed a little bit of optimism when they first come out they've staggered through this cold weather and i'm expecting that they're going to fall back a little bit well it's three degrees and there's bees in the air i am this close i'm getting some pale feeders on every single colony in this operation if we don't get nice weather to bring some liquid feed into the colony tell you these colonies need liquid so i'm this close i'm pulling the pin on these pails so i better get some syrup into the colonies tomorrow and if the weather stutters just even once even just a little bit just a little bit of a stagger we're dropping pails and everything this is ridiculous this weather is absolutely stupid just walking up to the yard here that smell of bee poop in the air it's almost like they've been inside all winter there's just a fresh smell of bee poop wafting through the air as these hives are getting a chance to fly you know they haven't flown for a good week we finally got the opportunity to get back into these hives we're planning on working through about 300 hives this afternoon uh to do the same thing we're doing before that cold snap come through we're dropping patties or dropping strips maybe doing a little bit of housekeeping in the hives just trying to you know assist their development ahead so up and at it and early to work this morning and i'm finding myself walking in circles of all this work that needs to be done and all this work is just sitting here to be done and i'm not able to get any of it done because i'm so fixated on the work that really needs to be done so we got chased out of the bee yard yesterday because of the wind [Music] so half the work done that we wanted to get done maybe we should have pushed it a little a little bit longer because i have made that decision on the anticipated forecast ahead of us which has now slipped back into that cold rain and they've mentioned snow again [Music] so typically when uh [Music] when i'm working through the spring and i'm making my plans according to the forecast typically when the forecast starts disappointing me that's when i start shifting towards uh different strategies today we're going to head out and start feeding these hives with pails this may be something i should have done right off the start but digging down into the nest yesterday i found what i was kind of expecting is dry nests they have lots of honey lots of honey in these nests but uh the actual brood area it's dry like there isn't a lot of storage syrup around that act of brood nest and that's not good you need i mean the resources are there for them to draw on but to develop you know to really excite that queen to get that nest progressing moving forward you need to have that fresh sugar that fresh syrup or fresh nectar around that nest so we're heading out to pales this afternoon to get some syrup on these colonies and then endure a few more days of cold according to the forecast and then it looks like the promise is nice weather kerry is just killing the smokers right now and some lingering snow banks i know you're probably going to complain about the wind in this video but believe you me i've been complaining about the wind all bloody day eight degrees and 60k wins doesn't slow these guys down motivated to work that's our pale setup we just have we just do everything gravity fed to simplifies everything requires a little more work but you know whatever going through i'm just popping out these lids these caps and i'm not having to make so much space with the patties that are on these colonies they've been on for about a week they're nicely consuming things by the time we get back around to these girls we're going to have to bring a second patio for him making use of that protein certainly not happy hi i guess i'm dressed like a bear so i gotta kind of expect that so that's good to see the uh these hives consuming patties optimism on the horizon oh and the sun just come out look at that uh having fun yet um so we've been dodging snow squalls all day long now the sun's come back out and these bees are flying again it's just been a crazy day feels good when the bees are flying but when those snow squalls come through you're just wondering what the hell are we doing out here but it's good we're able to we haven't done it we weren't doing any bee work we're just feeding so that's one nice thing about these pails is it allows us to it's kind of a love-hate relationship with these bloody pales it allows me to you know feed these bees when it's cold and not actually have to break open the nest to be able to get at them and it's quick but i hate these pale while i hit them take so long you got to fill them up and take them all out to the hives and put them onto the hives and some drip and oh and then the wind when the wind will start blowing them off and the skunks will come and knock them off and and it's just a sticky syrup mess but any right there is a much rather rather of fed through those open feeders but if we're just not getting the days from to be able to fly out to bring back that syrup then i gotta take the syrup to them and provide it for them and just come to that point where i have to make sure there's syrup on these colonies so that's two yards done there's 420 or so here in this yard i have another three yards to do so we'll chip away that tomorrow hopefully get some bee work done on wednesday we're just out feeding this yard with pails and this is what i want these bees are hungry they're hungry for the syrup this colony might be a little bit light because we have a pail on it already but they've consumed this pail this is empty and just the smell of syrup in there has kept them on the screen so that's our intention with putting these pails out just to provide that source of sugar for these colonies which they can access throughout these cold non-foraging days i'm looking at the forecast and again they just keep pushing out they give us little bits and pieces of warmth but we can't use bits and pieces we need like prolonged periods of warmth i had somebody ask me to show them what these pails are all about they're nothing fancy they're nothing special or new but uh all they are is a pail and i just have a plug this plug just has a stainless steel fine mesh screen forget how many microns that is but you guys can figure that out and at the plug you just put it into a bung it's kind of kind of smart and it pops into the hole and it holds itself in there and i tip it upside down the syrup will come out and actually it'll hold the plug in so we just have to be gentle we don't put the pail down too hard and the idea is the syrup will drain from the uh the pale gonna drip until it forms a suction in the pail and hold the syrup within so then the bees will come up to that screen and just can consume that sugar syrup off the screen and just continually drain that pail down into their nest it's kind of slick because it allows us to do work on a cold day like today or whenever you know put it out on top of the colony without disturbing the nest just pop the plug tip this pail up over top and then they can access the syrup anytime they want one thing about these small gallon pails i exclusively use them in the spring unlike the two and a half gallon pail they use in the fall and the reason being is um we're not trying to get a whole lot of syrup into the colonies we're just trying to provide them with a little bit of sugar just to be able to keep their brew drying going so we're not looking at large volumes at a time just small volumes smaller pails they won't drip as bad as the larger pail does larger pail has more area inside so you get the daytime nighttime temperature difference and it'll siphon the syrup out of the pail a lot more a lot easier than the small ones the small ones will still do that to a certain extent but very slowly and the bees can clean up the syrup if that does happen also when we're feeding the small pails and we're measuring out we're only filling these up to about half full so we're not putting full pails on these colonies because they don't need a full pail we just we just want to give them just enough syrup to build to surround that nest just to kind of spark things up a little bit just buy some time until these bees can get out and either get that natural stuff that's just about to come out or into the open feeders more natural method bringing sugars in but uh these smaller pails if you misjudge you know if you're filling it up half full and you actually fill it three quarters full it's just a fraction of that pail or a fraction amount of syrup that you made a mistake on whereas if you're filling a bigger pail and you want to put a gallon in there or half a gallon it's a lot harder to measure that exact amount of syrup into the the pail so so this way it just helps us measure out the amount of syrup we want almost exactly to every colony that we have within the operation first thing in the morning what else do i want absolutely beautiful i'm going to show you this again this is just spectacular i'm looking at the trees right now and see they're very close to you know coming out in bloom so i don't think we have much opportunity to witness a spectacle anymore but this is just one of my favorite things this spring i'm going to show you this every time i get the chance because it just makes me so excited pure utter hunger organized chaos they're foraging on the ultra bee i have in here obviously there's no trees out right now otherwise they wouldn't be so hot and horny holy i took in about 10 bees into my mouth there got stung in the tongue oh yeah yeah he's just as that wave you know there's a wave of bees in front of the barrel here and the wave just kind of punched my face and 10 must have been 10 bees i spit it on my mouth never been stung in the tongue before that is quite the feeling that is a bag of supplement in that barrel they'll be done that today so hopefully these trees hurry the hell up and come out and bloom you know this nice weather we have now maybe they can be a little bit optimistic and spring into bloom so we get a little bit of natural nectar and some pollen coming into these colonies because we are just about out of groceries i'm not going to be putting out any more supplements out like this for the bees we're putting some in the colonies right now but this is it for dry feed as soon as those trees come out these bees are going to absolutely ignore this barrel this is how hungry they are this is how desperate they are right now for any type of protein because this is a really good sign of the activity within the hives right now for the development of their nest there is a demand for protein right now these bees are taking those eggs the queen has just laid and they're taking those eggs and they're moving them on into their larval stage so there's optimism obviously in the nest right now as they try to develop these eggs into larvae into mature brood they need a ton of protein to do that and this is their only source right now other than what's inside the colonies within reserves and within themselves so they are scavenging the countryside for any type of protein and using it all up so these trees are becoming fuzzy up on top they are looking like they are close so i am hoping that the goodwill of mother nature brings us the bounty of that natural poland right now because this is we can use it anytime colonies aren't looking too bad it's nice and warm they really stretch out so the cluster expands but that's really going to help if this nice weather continues this is really going to help this nest expand where it needs to be so three weeks from now we're gonna see response from this these little guys are actively on we put these pails out two days ago and they are on the pails quite nicely not all of them there's a few on there but uh they're taking the syrup down so they're using everything we're giving to them those guys are so that's good to see it's good to see they're actually using the effort we're putting into them so the yard has gone from you know this busy busy flight to more flying up and out and we're seeing little glimpses of poland coming into the colonies and i can't it's not regular enough to build to take a video of showing the poland but it's just little blitz coming in great big balls of this white tan looking stuff and then some smaller yellow stuff so that's quite encouraging and instantly the the feeders have quietened right down still busy but not like this morning so that's telling me that there's something going on up there so this could be the start of the pull and flow this yard this yard needs time going through and they look really good they're really busy they're working some of these smaller nests the bigger ones are like they're in the clear they got brewed in all stages and they're going they're going on to their second round of brood already these smaller ones have been staggered they've been like they're brood nest they had it hadn't started and going and then it stopped and now they're trying to get it going again and there's nothing wrong with these bees just we need to give them some time pretty rough spring so far so the best medicine for a struggling aperi is sunshine and food and looks like that's what we got these are my nukes i haven't been back to this yard when have we been back here it was probably a month not including the pales but they haven't skipped a beat they look absolutely absolutely fantastic those are the ones i want to sell i don't know if i want to sell these sell my best bees [Music] i might not be able to part with these so the yard is nice and alive it's first thing in the morning and you know we're getting some decent flight are you seeing any pollen coming in carrie we're not seeing we're not seeing any pulling coming into the hives yet it's not obvious enough so there isn't a heavy pull and float so far but the open feeders aren't really being paid attention to so i imagine imagine these girls are up in the trees gathering that natural bounty which now whips the next job that i have to get done as we have to get these colonies moved out into their summertime locations just to be able to spread out and be able to collect that huge bounty of natural stuff we haven't seen too much robbing issue yet these are pretty big yards like two three four hundred hives per yard it's a pretty dense bee population so we have to be very mindful that these big ones when they get hungry they're going to start picking on small ones especially when the resources are scarce so we have to consider on getting this getting these hives moved out into their summertime locations right now but we can't do that until we actually get through like one thing at a time right we got to get through and we got to get these this medication done so we're this is the nukes here and there's another nuke yard back there we'll see how long we last working through the day so we'll get done today or tomorrow just getting these mite strips in just to make sure that i mean the most important job right now is might control above all else so we got to get that done to make sure that our treatment is uh on time and within this little narrow window that we have in the spring to build to treat these mites and with that natural poland coming into the colonies or shall i say pollen my open feeder has become extremely quiet so i don't risk getting stung in the face at all right now because there's virtually no bees here so that fresh stuff comes out up in the trees well we can't replace that we can't replace that with any type of supplement provided to them and they will go to the best food source available so these guys are just cleaning up scraps i guess i don't know what they're doing there but all my supplements feeders here have quietened down even then the sugar we have set out for them oh it's because it's empty well maybe we should get some more syrup out so they took that down pretty fast the pails on the colony still have a little bit of sugar in them so i don't have to i won't worry too much about it and now that these trees are out we're going to be getting some poplar nectar coming in also so i feel like a kid on christmas morning is just so excited seeing that fresh pollen coming into the colonies this is where we're actually gonna start developing this well-defined brood nest so so so that's a big one that's what she said the bees have started work well before we got here this morning just feels real good there's streams of poland coming into these colonies so that is a positive sign so we are moving forward this is great what we're doing in this yard this morning and probably for most of the day is transferring these five frame nukes i brought over so what the idea is we're targeting the strong hives and we're using that surplus strength to boost these smaller nukes so these smaller nukes are looking at like two frames of bees maybe three frames of bees patch of brood and these little nukes need a boost and we're using these strong colonies to do that there's a lot of certain conditions that might result in the fact of that colony being small mostly because it's in a bloody five so we're going through and we're giving a tough call we're assessing the brood pattern it's tough to assess capped brood right now because we haven't had any pollen coming from to develop that the older brood they've been using supplement and other resources within their hive to be able to do that so what we're doing is we're primarily focusing on the newly established brood the egg laying pattern and the the young larvae we're looking for a nice tight little nest we're looking at for lots of vigor lots of laying uh well grouped together just all positive efforts so with a strong eight to ten frame colony underneath we use a paper towel because i like to chew through that and it just slows down the merger a little bit we have an excluder in then the empty shell up top which we're transferring this nuke up into the top box these guys will go up they'll mingle they'll work together this nest will get a boost of bees this queen will be able to you know stretch outer egg laying create a great big nest up on top here in about three weeks we'll come through and just simply strip off those top boxes and take them out ready for the flow this is beautiful looking queen we have some old brood bees are hatching out and it is filled with mature larvae packed with full material larvae this is rimmed with uh younger larvae rimmed with eggs so this frame is just screaming ambition is screaming bigger so we're going to promote that what do we have in there a few graftable larvae we're not quite yeah i can't pick up any of that that's beautiful we're going to be grafting soon enough right full of eggs see all the spotty brood older brood but it is right full of eggs right how far down does it go they're pretty much standing right on the line third in the line there so that is what we want to promote a bit of a staggered development because of that cold weather and now off to the races finished up the yard and things looked alright things aren't as neat and tidy and uniform anymore my ocd is kicked in just looking at the irregularity to the yard now and it's kind of caused a little bit of confusion this yard's too big it's a truckload and laid out in straight rows you know the only way i could set them out of the winter shed so when i change up the hive arrangement from all single boxes looking all nice and pretty to doubling some up and taking some away causes a little bit of confusion in the yard so there's a little bit of drifting you'll figure their way out there's a lot of pollen coming in right now just streams of it so nice to see and the brood nest it is lush i'm telling you there's nothing like looking at a brood nest after poland first starts flowing that's the way it's that's this is high time this is when the nest starts to really develop but the yard you know you run into good part of the yard and then you run into a bad part of the yard we're not very forgiving when it comes to um you know the condition of the queen this time of year sure if she looks at you sideways we get rid of her and we'll fill those in those places in with nukes and refreshing it with something that is brand new but you know give it two weeks and this this yard will be absolutely booming i gotta get i can't even get out to my summer yards yet because it's too wet otherwise i'd be moving some of these hives out but it'll just be an adventure for me to go get stuck so i think i'll just leave things the way it is and just deal with a little bit of drift that's going on once they get used to the way we've changed the yard things will settle down but you know what can i do yes wow [Music] one [Music] [Music] i pulled into the first yard and it was dry it got in there no problem whatsoever and i thought oh man maybe i uh underestimated how dry the yards were so then i proceeded to the next one i had passed by two yards that are way too wet i never i didn't even attempt to get into it and i hardly got into this yard left a little bit of rut down the road but they are in and i guess that's just what i'm gonna have to do i'm just gonna have to drive to the yard and see if it's dry enough to get in and if if i can't get in if i get stuck i guess i'll just call the tractor we just got a good shot of rain rain for most of the day now i swear i see blue sky out there on the horizon almost tempted to move bees tonight oh destined to get stuck right maybe i'll just cool my jets and wait for things to truly dry up before i try to move any more hives looks like we're cutting patties [Music] [Music] [Music] wow [Music] wow come on wow of course i forgot my smoker left it in the other truck so it i like smoking these highs before i load them just because you don't get as many bees in the face but they seem somewhat cooperative so i'll just have to battle through it the briskness of the morning this morning is keeping the bees in the box which is quite nice the bees are just waking up they're just heading up to the syrup pale so i just have to just kind of tap a few of the bees off dump the water off the top of the pail see they're just starting to come up to the pail so i'm not really disturbing the hive a whole much good morning girls whoever i leave behind will fly back to another hive one we are kind of living the lingering effect from last year's very wet fall so our countryside is like a sponge very wet you can certainly see it like here is a dry yard and this is sod right and every time we drive through with a truck it just leaves little indents right because the ground's so wet we're walking on the sod which uh holds the truck up but it just leaves a little indents and then every once in a while those little indents break through you know and then when you keep following the same path you just start driving ruts down and it just is so hard on the yards we got to get this work done so we have to travel the yards and we have to go out and work the bees and get these trucks out like i live on 4x4 but it leaves these ruts that we have to deal with for the rest of the year and it certainly is a pain something we'll just have to deal with and i'll have to put a little bit of time to freshen things up after the countryside dries up it's just i'm running out of patience i'm pretty much at the end of my patients for the spring already so i just got to push things a little bit now just to make sure that i get these hives out where they're supposed to be able to collect all that pollen that's just upon us we're just at the start of it so i'll get these girls out i'm going to chip away every morning just get two loads out as i can like forecast is good so certainly we will be getting some drying weather like we're we're approaching may here we haven't turned a wheel on the farm yet it is so wet but it's just something we're gonna have to deal with and you know this moisture is is not a bad thing we're gonna use this later on in summer when it's hot these plants are growing we'll be able to use all this moisture all through the summer so it's almost like this moisture it's a locked in honey crop so i just got to quit my bitching and just put up with it just get the work done and make the best of it like what else can i do other than be a little bit strategic in my work and just kind of appreciate some of those silver linings that's there one of those ideal bee working days today just feels so good the bees are up in flight they're bringing in poland just keep adding these days up right so what i'm doing right now is i'm going through this is our third round and i'm making a tough call so basically what i'm just doing is tipping back these colonies giving them another assessment and kind of gauging on the you know the caliber of that cluster whether or not um they meet the grade or not so anything that doesn't have a tag is a medium size so that's between the you know four or five to six frames of bees anything with the blue tag i had measured at like a seven eight nine ten frames of bees and anything with a grade tag shows three frames and less they automatically get a an inspection so i'm going to go back through and i just tip these colonies back and just do another great assessment to see if they've maintained or advanced and i want to see at least to maintain the cluster to maintain itself and if i see advancement then i'm going to promote that i'm also going through and these guys have gobbled up their patties already it's quite ridiculous so we're going through and we're adding our second pound now it seems like when that fresh pollen comes in and then you really start to spark up that nest and there's a lot of brood production going on and that second round of brood you have lots of nurse bees seems like that's when these patties really shine they just devour the patties i guess there's lots of nurse bees to devour that protein bring it down and that huge demand on protein within that nest just require so much resource and then you get like weather comes through where it interrupts their foraging interrupts that uh food inflow so then they turn directly up top to where those supplements are so i'm sure noticed the patties they've stepped up on them so we've gotta you know quicken up our pace a little bit get more patties out for them um the forecast looks good but like i've been complaining about all spring our weather has been so irregular and this is where the patties are important just to maintain that diet they've also consumed their syrup they're just finishing up the pails which is good we'll provide a more of that later on this hive i'm counting one two three four five this is counted this is measured as a medium and it's maintained itself so this is good i'm not going to go down into them they look quite content the second thing i'm looking for is the amount of supplement they've eaten and they've practically consumed the entire pound so that's a good sign that means there's a well-developing nest inside here so i'm going to give them a pound and we're just going to leave these guys alone until our next round when we actually go down into the nest and physically inspect the brood and the condition of the queen and either um take from them because they're too big or boost them because they need a little bit of a little bit of a jolt a little bit of boost or call them out because the queen's failing and pull this hive back into the mating yard oh thank goodness for rock and roll and early morning coffee one of those two things that help motivate and keep a guy going yesterday was the first time that i felt that that delicate spring nature of these colonies had disappeared and i felt as if these colonies were actually progressing and moving forward well i think it's a combination of a few things it's the warmth it's the pollen and they've finally gone through that first hatch so they're just full of young bees i'm seeing an instant response i'm seeing that ambition that move forward i'm seeing that queen you know stretching out i'm seeing those bees it's one thing for the queen to stretch out as far as she wants but it's another thing for those bees to take all that and then move it into the larval stage and they're doing that they're doing that with absolutely every egg that that queen lays so there's ambition and optimism and right now is the time that we're going to capitalize on it so the forecast is good it's clear these bees they're advancing it looks absolutely fantastic i'm moving these hives out to their summer yards as long as i'm not getting stuck and i mean it's off to the races now wow wow and if i'm going to get stuck make sure it's worth pulling me out so there we go uh there's this yard i got in i just couldn't get out and i'm off to another yard that's wet and then i don't know i'm running out of yards to put bees so i guess i'll just have to wait for the sun to dry i think my ambitions of moving bees out is slowly coming to an end i mean this is what i'm looking at the access of all my yards just places where it's just absolutely saturated we'll need sun and time to be able to clear that up i'm not sure how i'm supposed to get back there to like i dropped a yard back in there so i guess we'll just have to get back at him when when the laneway clears up so i'll have to fix this roadway for my neighbor or he'll be pissed they're very forgiving they'll understand especially after a fall last year they're battling ruts every bloody day too so they they understand what this what's going on and we'll just clean up the mess after we're done so i have one more load one more yard i mean to to move and we're gonna poke into a yard that might need the tractor again but i i'm counting my bets that we'll be able to poke in drop off and get out without getting stuck so it was -1 last night and extremely cold i had to put my wool vest on with my jacket along my bee suit to stay warm this morning as i move some hives out super cold but they changed the forecast on us that nice promise of warmth has kind of slipped away and i'm not sure exactly where it's gone so we're pushing the limits today it must be what's the temperature in the truck today eight degrees and these bees are just flying a little bit but we're trying to press through uh another couple hundred hives today just to make sure we're doing assessments and dropping patties just to make sure that these big colonies have protein on hand with two days of rain coming and cold and it doesn't look like until later next week these highs will be able to get up and flying again which is extremely frustrating but i'll talk a little bit pessimistic and then i'll come around and tip back some colonies and i'll just show you what i'm looking at we have boxes of bees i mean we're going through a major hatch right now this was a medium colony that we upgraded to a strong so i mean this queen has a little bit of spirit in her what is she a 2015 so she's got to be a younger super seizure but look it's just a box of bees and if you look what's going on they're just hanging off the frames which is not a good sign because that's going to allow the queen to come down and lay queen cells come on bees well they're not moving for me so they're starting to come down they're laying drone brood underneath here so that's a really good sign that means this colony has some girth it's feeling really good you're going to notice some queen cups here but they haven't had any attention put to them yet but they will next week i bet you once this hive goes through more of its hatch this colony is going to feel extremely full she's going to come down and start preparing to swarm so we have to get space on top to bill to pull these bees off the bottoms of the frames move them up into the top box to kind of avert the swarming spirit so we're just entering into that this cold weather is not gonna really entice that swarming spirit of these colonies let's tip this next one here but uh just the fact that they're going to run out of space it's just going to promote a crowded nest we don't want a crowded nest this time of year so this is what i'm tipping back all day long beautiful puts me in a great mood they haven't drawn any uh oh yeah they are there's drone cells all the way down the bottom here so they're feeling really good and we have a few queen cups where'd i see some down there no attention paid to them so we got to get space on these guys alrighty and a drone we haven't seen too many walking drones but they're starting to appear so that's you know things are progressing but i'm a little bit torn i'm not sure exactly what to do i hate giving space to colonies when it's cold out because you just disturb the entire you know all the cluster dynamics is going inside you also give them a huge amount of space up top and it just kind of shocks that that that nest and it induces stress now colonies that big won't matter a dam because they're they're just going to kind of envelope up into that top box and they'll just take it over but colonies that have marked blue they're maybe not quite as strong as that and they also lose their ceiling it goes up on top over another box their cluster will kind of snap back a little bit and they're oh they're all their entire cluster dynamics change and it can induce stress and if it's really cold and wet kind of like what's coming here you know it it can only promote disease like chalk brood or you know you get into the other viral diseases or bacterial diseases one thing we could do is we could add this space underneath that brood nest and that way all those bees that hatch out it'll give them a place to go it's not going to prevent the swarming at all anything like that because you know that queen's moving down you want to keep her moving up but it just gives the place for those bees to go and kind of relieves that swarming spirit just a little bit but it's a hell of a lot of work going through lifting boxes and slopping the the seconds underneath it's a lot of work then you got to come around and put that second back on top just because that's the way you want the queen moving you want to move up and lay out that split so then you can take that box away later on a surplus so i don't know what to do we'll proceed with our work we'll allow this these couple cold rainy days to pass us by and then maybe midweek it'll warm up a little bit and then we'll slap out you know three or four hundred seconds onto the apri just to provide a little bit of space to allow these colonies to develop and hopefully you know they upgrade the forecast a little bit to a little bit more warmth just to allow us to proceed with our work you

Channel: a Canadian Beekeeper’s Blog

Views: 114,780

Keywords: commercial, beekeeping, honey bees, a Canadian Beekeeper's Blog, northern beekeeping, apiary, how to manage bees commercially, Canadian Beekeeping, Ian Steppler

Id: 9Ks8rodryJ0

Length: 125min 24sec (7524 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021