American Bee hives are ALL WRONG here is why! split hives 4 weeks later

here we go we're gonna get right into this video today we're gonna follow up with you guys on the beehives that we split you guys remember the last time that dr. leo visited our farm we took a couple of the hives from the horizontal hives and we split them into two and today we're following up with that we're gonna see how the eggs we're doing for the Queen's see if they hatched what's going on inside the hives and also put them in their permanent homes if you're new to our channel my name's Doug my wife's name's Stacy and we live in a log cabin on 11 acres where we grow and harvest most of our own food and a lot of the things that we do here on our channel is all about like living self sustainable like we grow our own food we harvest it we ferment it we have a root cellar we have bees for honey and also to help pollinate all of our land around us and a lot of times with our bees we bring in our friend dr. Leo who helps us walk through some of these horizontal hive setups because these are all new to us we've been hoorah beekeeping for about eight years and most of its been in vertical hives and now we went horizontal so this our friend dr. Leo he has a bunch of great resources for you guys and he's going to tell you about those right now yes thank you Doug yeah it's always a pleasure to come here it's a five hour drive for me but I always look forward to coming here it's like having a short vacation and I'm dr. Lisa Raskin I'm founder of horizontal hive comm website that has free plans and advant and advice on keeping your business all in horizontal fives I also edited a number of books to help you get started including the one that we are now are practicing here in life keeping bees and horizontal hives by Lance and another one keeping bees with a smile these books are show you how to have simplified beekeeping that's productive but it's literally with a smile instead of putting a lot of strain on you and on the bees while you are handling all these heavy boxes you have the decent result of hives like this one and the methods described there are so simple you can be successful them from the get-go for example a month ago I was visiting Doug and we separated the colony in this hive in two parts and now we'll see whether they were successful in establishing two colonies and stead of one and the beauty of the method described in keeping bees are in horizontal highs we didn't even need to find the Queen for that yeah so it's all about careful beekeeping that's respectful of the bees and doesn't hurt your back and also the one that's just super simple yeah and if you guys remember if you caught the video right before this one as the hive that we split in this box actually created a queen and then they actually did a fly off to the swarm so we've actually gotten three hives out of this I just couldn't keep the other ones put they actually did take off so we're gonna go into this hive right now we're going to show you guys what's going on and then we're gonna explain to you what's the next step alright so this is where we left this hive or four weeks ago and there we separated the frames in two parts open another entrance so now there are two active entrances we made sure there were eggs in both sides of the hive actually this one had their queen cells from which new Queens would hatch we made sure there were some queen cells on each side of this divider board and there then we'll have the bees alone for four weeks which is significant after four weeks as we go into the hive if you see brood which means eggs larvae or capped cells where the bees are being transformed into adult bees so if you see that on each side of the divider that means you have now two lane Queens and you essentially have two colonies instead of one again one of the advantages of the horizontal High layout is that all of the frames here are on one level in a regular vertical hive in order to check for brood in the lowest box you regularly need to remove additional boxes on top of this lower box that means a lot of lifting for you and quite a bit of disturbance for the bees so you slide this frames apart and then you lift one up along the Calder here is true that we have a lane Queen in this compartment this is sealed brood looks like sandpaper coverings there are larvae of the bees inside undergoing the metamer forces into adult B so without finding the Queen we already know that this part of the hive Rick wind itself there the new queen went and mated with the drone successfully now she is a new mother of the new colony so that with this we need to decide what to do with this new hive and we have several options so when you say options what do you mean by that well it depends on your priorities and what you want to accomplish with the bees are the simplest way to go now that you have two colonies in the box there are two open entrances is to just add additional frames in each compartment and fill them up so that the bees have more room to build additional calm and expand but we did set up a month from now both parts of the hive will run out of room and you will have to transfer one of the halves into the hive of its own what it does though it buys you another month of time instead of giving them another five right now you're just delayed by one month right and then the option is to give them a separate five taking all of these frames and putting it in another hive next door and the advantage of it is we do it and then both colonies have plenty of room for expanding and then bringing in the harvest of honey especially now that we see clover all and bloom all around us the only reason why we'll go with option number two is because we have the boxes now or ready to go sometimes when you guys are doing this you won't have that opportunity so it's always good to know a ways that you can buy a little extra time so you can maybe get your equipment or gear together or build another box so that was a good tip right there so yeah we're definitely going to be moving these into their own box next door very good but there is another thing that I wanted to suggest some people who watch the previous videos are asking me why am I using hives that are different from yours I also use Rosano hands but you use these frames right and I use the European style frames that are narrow and deep like this right and the reason you are using these frames is that when we converted your hives into these last year you already have the standard American equipment so it made sense for you to use this particular style of frame however for hundred years now it's been noted that bees and horizontal hives actually do better on the shape of frame that's more consistent with how they live in nature in narrow deep tree hollows and actually there was research done by a university in Europe that compared the productivity of bees in a hive like that and in a horizontal hive like this and this developed better and produce more honey all other things being equal just the shape of the frame made so much difference so there this european style frame is called blends frame la YMS after the author of keeping bees and horizontal hives who first introduced the horizontal highs with this style frame which is the most widely used their hive in the world right so what I suggest we do today instead of just giving this our colony a hive of its own let's transfer them in a hive that uses these frames because then you'll be able to compare the two setups side-by-side right when I did for a number of years in my location in southern Missouri in the Ozarks I saw that this was so superior to the conventional lengths that I switched all of my hives to that right that's good it's always good to experiment well then how does that work well we just put those in the box and then build the rest with this or we I mean you can't really actually transfer them off of those yeah the frames I'm not directly compatible so what we will do we will cut them with a saw so that this part of the frame fits inside this and we'll messed it and just screw it in and all the new frames will add into the hi will already be this format so all the new frames they will be building on this style on foundation and there will take it from there and compare sounds like we have some work to do I brought you a couple of horizontal lanes files that use this european-style format for the frames and I also built here two of the stands for these fives it's a very simple project but one thing I wanted to point out that I like using red cedar lumber for the stands because it is naturally rot resistant you don't want to use any treated lumber around your bees because they may leak up some liquid from the surface of the treated lumber and it will end up in your honey but red cedar will last 30 to 50 years and their wonderful wood to work with and also amazingly most of the red cedar around here that's harvested it's not even being used by lumber but is mulched for producing mulch so you can use this wonderful local resource that's good for the bees and go to the planet Earth when you set up a stand for the hive the only thing you need to check is whether it's leveled bees build calm according to gravity so having a level and making sure that the foundation for the hive is completely level will produce nice and straight a honeycomb for you we are setting the new stand close to the existing hive because once this colony is transferred into a new hive they will need to reorient and find the new door to the new home so the entrance to this new hive needs to be really really close to their current entrance so that the foragers can easily locate it the only other precaution really is to make sure that your stand is level it will help bees build very straight calm as they build according to gravity straight down so this is almost perfect on if you had to adjust it then you could put some flat stones under the legs and make sure this stand is leaning a little bit forward rather than backwards and being flat this is significant because the water running down the front wall of the high will be entering through the entrance if the stand is leaning backward so right now it's leaning backward so in addition to it being level from left to right we do want it to be leaning forward just a little bit to shed rainwater flat stones really would help this is perfect yeah that's a very nice set up this is the first box this one is built out of solid pine this is why it's quite heavy but this extra thickness of the walls compared to the standard thin walled American highs provides the insulation that is very valuable for the bees both in the winter and in the heat of the summer and then that little hole down there is just a little bit yeah additional ventilation sure we've set everything up we have the hive on the stand it's level left to right and leaning forward just a little bit to shed water from the front wall and right there I like to draw your attention to one big distinction between the horizontal hive that takes regular American length straw frames like this and the lands horizontal hive the regional horizontal hive invented in europe by georges de león's author of keeping decent horizontal size because the frames that you are using with conventional American horizontal highs were designed to allow bees to go into the next box up they have a gap between the top bars so when you open the horizontal hive with standard American frames then there you're exposing all the bees between the frames and this is why you need the special cover bullets are on top of these to contain the disturbance with the lens horizontal hive because there are no additional boxes to put on top by design the top bars are made to touch so when you open the hive like that you don't see any bees you don't disturb any bees except the ones that are on the frame you are working with and what you're about to see is probably most disruptive operation and natural beekeeping you will see but it is a quick and definitive and if you are not comfortable with cutting the calm and embedding it into these frames as I will show on horizontal hive comm there are also plans for making a jig that without cutting this frame just rotates at 90 degrees so you can insert the temporarily into the hive without cutting but then the procedure for the transfer is not as reliable and takes much much longer here we're just cutting and nesting the these frames into this one we will be done in 20 minutes so we need to go through the frames and the result of length straw hive and you can of course transfer your length straws nuke or a regular length stores vertical hive into horizontal length hive using the same technique you only need to transfer the frames with brood on them the honey you can fit to the bees using a feeder afterwards so you take out the frame and take a look whether it has any brood on it okay so here is an empty frame just with some foundation transformed into comm we don't need to cut this so we can put it aside for now now we go to the next frame that is a big fat frame with lots of honey on top there is only honey on this side and there is some brood on this side this means we can go ahead and we can [Music] cut this frame not only that we have a little surprise on this side the they release the capped Queen cell on this frame so that means that this colony has plans of swarming again and remember the history of this one is that there it is headed by the Queen from the south from the state of Mississippi and southern bees are much more inclined to swarm than northern bees so it's not really surprising them trying to throw many times over during the summer anyway so here is a frame with brood on this side so we'll transfer them into the new hive but I will start with the frames that have less honey and more brood on them because cutting honey is a very messy it starts running and bees become agitated the last kind of the frame the easier it is to cut this frame has lots of bird on it and it also has a seal queen cell on it meaning the colonies really sad on swarming again even though they had Queen cells capped and ready to go just there four weeks ago now there they have a new queen and they want to swarm again which makes sense because the nature they are not really honeybees in the sense of making honey for us the main objective is to be fruitful and multiply so as long as they have resources to swarm repeatedly during the summer they will certainly go for it before you start the transfer it's not a bad idea to go through the entire hive and make an inventory of frames to know how many frames of brood there you have just to make sure you have prepared the sufficient number of the new science frames and there if during this inventory you spot the Queen it's also a good idea to grab her and put her aside in any container out of the Sun so she is not accidentally damaged during the transfer you don't have to do it because er the Queen will usually be fine and of course will be shaking and they're swiping all the bees of the frames before we do our cuts but it's additional guarantee that she will not accidentally be lost as we are transferring the frames from one hive into the other so right now I am on frame number four and all the four frames we have three frames are full of brood which explains why the colony is making plans to swarm again because of this divided here the space available to them is relatively small and they've practically grew out of this space becoming congested and this is a trigger for swarming again another frame of brood with the two sealed Queen cells so if you would like that we could make more splits right there and instead of four hives you might now have eight they want to go for it another frame that they just started drawing out and you see that Doug is using frames with plastic Foundation and they give you the convenience of ordering the frame and it arrives like that with this plastic foundation for the comb already embedded in it it has another ironic advantage of being free from pesticide because most of the wax foundation sold in America if not all has pesticide in it from contamination that bees are commercial bees bring into the hive but I only use natural wax foundation and to get very clean wax free of pesticide I imported from the mountains in Spain where bees forage on wilderness crops away from our commercial agriculture and I think I'm seeing the Queen this is and it's great that for we spoil it her because I want to set her aside there during the transfer to minimize the chance of hurting her you don't have to have a specific car Queen cage around I just picked up a plastic card on the side of the road when coming here if you put her in any transparent container please make sure it's kept out of the Sun that she will be fine in there in there during out transfering procedure when you grab the Queen always grab the Queen by the thorax which is the central part of your body when the wings are attached don't grab her by the abdomen because this is where all of your angling apparatus is located you could damage her by grabbing her by the abdomen so I'm putting this Cup with the Queen into the new hive in the shade and she will be saved there while we're transferring the frames once the frames with bruda in the new box we will release the Queen and it will also be additional attractant for all of the remaining days to join her in the new box pretty good I'm ready to start cutting all right so here we are ready to transfer the frames from the horizontal length through five or any hive containing standard American lengths trough frames or the 19 inch top bar by nine and 1/8 deep into the lens frames that are 14 inch top bar by 16 deep narrower and deeper the way bees live in nature all right so take a frame and you will shake them and swipe them into the new file just very sharp moving down and then you swipe the remaining days in and here we go fairly quickly especially because we know that the Queen is not on this frame while we are working on the empty frame no bees your procures visitor grunting it's a good idea to cover the hive so all the VP's that were shaking down there stay in there okay now we take this frame we need to mark where the cuts will be the cut is 12 inches wide for this transfer because we're transferring into delaying style frame so it will be from this edge 12 inches 10 and I just marked with the knives where the cuts will be the first thing I do I cut off this slug so it's not in the way through the entire frame with foundation wax or everything this whole frame is then nested into the lands frame centers and attached with some drywall screws right here we have yesterday the length drop frame inside the Lance frame if it's out of the plane then use the third screw straight and straight on it it's out of the plane use another third screw so it stays within the plane of the layer okay and then give it to the bees and the new hive as fast as you can they will continue working and they will expand their comm downward filling out the rest of the frame repeat this with the rest of the frames that have burdened them davus frame we shake the bees off into the new high we cover the car we go and do the cut please do save this cut off because you will see will we will install them in two frames to so nothing will be wasted this is my template a piece of fur board plywood that I use for marking where the cut will be made drywall screws were method here than our constructions screws or deck screws because drywall screws thinner and they don't split the wood as much so with them you don't really need to pre-drill [Music] all right again check refits in' in the plane with this one it's so perfectly lined inside the lanes new frame that you do not need to drive an additional third screw in here even though you could one reason you may want to put this third screw anyway is for additional strength during extraction when eventually you extract honey from this frame it will be spinning and having this locked in here will provide additional support we repeated with another frame with brood take all the bees all the frames are that had bird on them the cut-offs we did save and now whatever kados have brood on them we will install two inside each of the frames the same as we did with the main part of the frame now the two cut-offs are fit straight into the lens frame so we will just attach each of them with the screws and give them back to the bees the transfer is practically complete we transferred all the frames that had brewed Annette and there the remaining bees that stay in this box will actually go back to the other compartment when we remove the divider board so any bees remaining on the frames that have no brood on it I'm just shaking and swiping into the new house and it may seem brutal to you to do this to the piece but remember that the bees are like one big organism I'm not hurting the big organism in doing so and actually it's quite safe for individual bees to but we preserve the Queen we gave them a new big home so in nature we'll be keeping it still beekeeping there are things you need to do from time to time that may look like disturbance to the bees but if you came here tomorrow you wouldn't even be able to tell that this hive was transferred so all the frames that have no brood on them don't need to be transferred it says it time and you can eliminate these frames on the spot I feel a bit crawling onto my shirts only release her okay well she goes now look inside here all of these bees are will be looking for the queen that we will now release and they will fly out and return to this box after we close the entrance to the original okay we have the Queen that was sitting there in this container make sure there is no saw the left in there before introduce her so now that the transfer is complete look how neat it is the top bars touch so we added a few more frames with foundation from this end in front of the entrance to give this colony room to grow an additional couple of frames of foundation on this part and from the entrance and now we'll just spread apart a couple of frames with brood and we'll introduce the frame the Queen back in there so I'm spreading the frames where the brood is and it will be aware that the young Queens like this one that has within the last month can actually fly off so when you release her point the cob downward so she actually goes in there inside rather than flying off um so now I'm sliding the frames back together I'm adding another frame foundation here and we are ready to close the hive with this one you only want one entrance to be open and you can stop the other entrance with anything like a small piece of board or a piece of thick plastic beware that if you use any wood here the bees may profile eyes it so it will be difficult to take out so don't push it all the way in just a little bit to block the entrance and then when you need to open it in the future we'll be able to pull it and reopen it and we are closing the original entrance to this box because we want to compare all the foragers to return to this new home next door as long as you leave this entrance open they will not know that there this is no longer their home and that the whole colony has moved to the apartment next door again you can put anything here to block it a board or even thick plastic like a ziploc bag something that blocks the entrance completely but it is relatively easy to take out in the future when he needs it I avoid putting clothes in there because the bees will chew into the claws and then the rainwater will soak it and the inside of the entrance will start there rotting so this door is closed this one is open all the foragers returning and seeing that they have no access to the previous location of the chi will start looking for where it moved and because of the smell of the Queen here they will eventually find this location by tomorrow morning all the foragers will be returning here so I'm replacing the Garber on this side and you will want to put a stone on top or to prevent it from being borne off and now with all of the bees we could try and chase them out of here with smoke but alternatively we will just remove this divider and let them go back to the original colony and that's what we are going to all right well replacing the cover birds and see how during the entire procedure we didn't even touch the right-hand side their colony all of the bees considered to forage there and until we remove the divider board they didn't even know that the hive had been opened and worked on and since we're here anyway let me open this part and see how they are doing we may need to add a few more frames with foundation in front of the entrance to give them more room oh yeah the friends with foundation we had that a month ago being well built out with calm and honey there are the frames that we added four weeks ago and the bees are drawing out calm and filling it with their honey so they transform just foundation into the wax comm so we'll end a couple more frames so they can keep doing it now that the good kind of flow from clover is underway so I'm pushing the frames into the depth of the hive and I will return to them one of these frames we took from this other hive and then one more frame before closing the hive for today I just give it a few puffs of smoke to make sure there are no bees trapped between the cover bores and the top and not smashed in the process okay mission accomplished I think that we're relatively smooth it is all right guys now we're in the hive that we keep in the forest we have several different hives on our property and this horizontal hive is what we call the forest hive and we have it deep in the woods here as you can see it's still doing really good it's very strong even though we split it and put another put the other part of it with the new queen cells and everything behind you which we're gonna show you guys in a second I just wanted to show you guys that even after splitting this hive it's still really strong and they're doing really really good there's no need to peel into it today so stay tuned for a future video when we start extracting honey out of it but I just wanted to pass by here and let you see that and actually know when you see bees bearding like that you can tell the hive is so strong that as I mentioned a month ago we could have made more than one split off of it right in the old days it was called artificial swarming and the nature is strong hive like that can cause two-three swarms so we could safely split that a month ago into three parts so if your priority is to increase the number of your hives or to sell local Queens with local bees which may be even more profitable than selling honey then with hives like that you can safely do it early in the spring hey really is looking good all right we're gonna get some equipment and then we're going to take you guys over to this other little hive that we split before we get started with this hive I wanted to talk with you for a second about different hive models and differences in materials and layouts for hives this is the standard american lengths to arrive the consensus of boxes 3/4 inch thick that you stack one on top of the other 3/4 inch thick is very little insulation this is why the previous hive that we have there in the pasture is built out of twice as much wood than the walls one and a half inch thick but the one we'll be transferring this hive into the same Lance fiber with the european-style narrow and deep frames is even better because in addition to the more natural frame size this box is also built double wall with their wall insulation in the walls even lengths trough himself the inventor of the most popular American length straw hive was emphasizing in his book the importance of insulation because in nature bees live in cavities with lots of wood around their nest that protects them from the extremes of temperature not only in the winter for the north but from the heat in the summer too you notice that this other hayver is building that means they're the bees are still overheating even with 1.5 inch of solid wood in the walls now this hive has a natural wool insulation inside the wall like that so it's built out of ecological plywood that has no formaldehyde glue in it and there outside the inner casing there is one and a half inch of nature wool and then the front wall is attached over the world so you have the same kind of structures we have in our homes the framework and then insulation inside with one and a half inches of wool in the walls the insulation value of this box is actually equal to seven and a half inches of wood or ten times the insulation value of the conventional length straw five five times more insulation value then has been built out of 1.5 inch boards so with this additional insulation the base will be much better protected from the extremes of temperature in the winter and in the summer so this is my favorite height model this is what I use the most myself and this is what I recommend for pretty much any climate because it is as important to protect the bees from the cold in the north and the winter as it is important to protect them from the stress of heat in the summer in the south this is how this hive is built and there are three plans for building it on horizontal hive calm I brought it for demonstration to show you the inside of this wide box before it was finished so you build the inner box then you put lots of this good insulation and you know my wife bought me a wool blanket that cost five hundred dollars and when I put it on the scale there is exactly the same amount of wool in this five hundred dollar blanket as in these big hide so it's really little raw Rolls Royce of be high for the bees and protecting them from temperature okay so you have these double walls then it will be nailed there and painted and you will have this finished type that you see on your right so once this whole box is assembled and painted and the corners protected with steel angles to prevent moisture from are penetrating into the end grain of the plywood the entrances are drilled and they have the gates that rotate like that you can open any gate put it into ventilation setting completely open it this is the main door for the hive and for the winter you can put the mouse excluder with these openings that allow the bees to come and go during the warm spells in the winter but the mice won't be able to go into the hive and make a mess there the reason for the three openings is that first you could make artificial swarms or splits inside the same box by opening an additional entrance and putting a divider like what we did with these two hives a month ago all it takes is opening an additional entrance and putting a divider separating the colony into two parts also by shifting the position of the entrance you can steer the development of the colony they tend to have the broad chamber in in front of the open entrance so for example if the brew chamber is here this entrance is open during the season I can gradually open other entrances first I open this one and close the original one that these reorient and start using this one and the brood chamber position shifts here the reason we're doing that is that the very old black frames that have been used many times for rearing brood and become contaminated with bacteria can be cycled out of the hive at the end of the season when they will be filled with honey you can do so by opening these entrances and forcing or let's say enticing the blue chamber to shave this way once they abandon the frames that were originally filled with brood and stuffed them with honey at the end of the season you can remove this with no disturbance and cycle the very dark black comb out of the colony there is an additional description of how these entrances can be used and manipulated in keeping bees with a smile book 2020 Edition and we'll cover them more in the subsequent videos to this our gate disks are made out of stainless steel so they will never corrode Neverest and will last longer than this box so you and me and if you are building this hive yourself from the free plans on horizontal type comm you can order these disks from horizontal hive com2 these are very very convenient you can use them on the hives and also on the swarm traps if you can't just warm and your Swamp trap is equipped with an opening like that all it takes is irritating it into the ventilation position when you catch a swarm and ready to bring it home now we are ready to look at this hive this is an artificial swarm or splitter that we made four weeks ago from that other hive or thirty feet from here we took her six frames from the original hive we made sure that some of the frames had eggs so that the diesel this book box could raise themselves a new queen once they sense themselves a queenless and there we made sure they also had their honey and pollen to last them a month until they have a new queen and have new brood going all right the reason for waiting four weeks before opening your artificial swarm hive is that once you split the colony it takes the days 12 days to raise a new queen so it's two weeks then the Queen needs to mature for another week before she goes on mating flights and mates with drones and then a few more days for her to return and start laying eggs there so after four weeks you are able to look in there and see whether there is any brood at all if there is brood even without seeing the actual Queen you know that the colony has a queen if there is no blood whatsoever you know that the split has failed it could happen for a number of reasons one of them the Queen just didn't return from the mating flight and was there eaten by a bird for example because we are wanting to transfer these bees into different hive and we will be cutting the frames as we did in the previous one as we go through if I can see the Queen I will isolate her so as to not hurt her during the transfer so start with the frames that are the least busy and take them out so this is foundation we added the month ago and because the hive was very small at the time they really didn't work on it which is normal they were busy raising themselves in new Queen if you are going into hive and there you are hoping to find the Queen as we do now it's best to use as little smoke as possible because the smoke may disturb the Queen and she will run off the frame and hide in the corner of the hive on one of the walls making it more difficult to spot her so you calm the chase they're building as you go through the frames we're looking to see whether there is broad and the Queen is more likely to be seen on these frames with young brood which means tiny eggs that look like small grains of rice at the bottom of the cells and also larvae the white grubs and the cells filled with royal jelly yeah there is a little bit of open bird on this frame but mostly it's honey and lots lots of nectar so even as this colony was they're raising themselves a new queen the foragers were busy foraging and because they didn't have any brood to see during this month all this nectar was not being wasted it was being stored as honey so you see the top of this frame is completely capped already so it will be good honey frame in six weeks or so again another good frame of nectar Pollan of deep breath fermented pollen that the users a source of protein for feeding the brood and ma Paulin here as we are transferring this hive into a new box we'll need to make sure that we give them plenty of room because in addition to storing all these reserves they really need more room now to make fresh calm and to produce more brood yeah we definitely have a queen in this five the razor brood eggs and tiny larvae at the bottom of the cells on the side of this frame facing you so see we made to split six mmm week four weeks ago so see we made four see we made two splits four weeks ago and both of them are successful that means the final percent success rate and instead of two regional hives are four weeks ago we now have four as there is more broad on this frame too so we are ready to transfer this hive in their new home which I know they will be really happy with the best protection you can have from the heat and the cold in the winter and the plaintiff room to grow have a good brood nest for themselves soar enough honey for themselves for the winter and produce a good crop for Doug and Stacey we are ready to do the transfer and st. sir we are removing this existing hive altogether it's really best to put the new hive in exactly the same spot as the regional hive was in so that all of the foragers returning to this spot they remember as the entrance to their hive find the entrance to their new box and the whole trench will go either because any bees flying here will be returning to this spot instead of trying to locate the new entrance to the home so let's move it a few feet away and put this new pile on the stand and level it in the spot this one now is and see with this method you don't need to find a queen we didn't notice the Queen going through these frames we know she is there because we saw eggs and brood right if we didn't find her she just goes for a ride with the rest of them right so you guys will see both ways one we found the Queen and isolated her and then we added her back and then this one here we're just going to take all the frames transform into the new box and everything you'll be just fine mm-hmm okay with what just for it a couple of feet just enough to put the new box and exactly the same spot so let's take it off and put this stand there and level it well the answer already building on us aren't they then ants like living under the beehives because all of the dead bees that'd be much harder being eaten up by the ends right now again you guys want to make sure that your stand is level just like we talked about the other hive and it needs a couple of flats on this side and we brought some with us although this and that's very nice and making sure that it's a little bit leaning for it with this are insulated have it's not as important as with the solid wood one because these openings have been drilled at an incline so even if it is they're not leaning forward a little bit which this stem does but if it was completely level it would still shed water now even with the vertical hives the old times that we use you always want to have those slightly tilted forward as well absolutely yeah so basically all hives you want slightly tilted forward nopal that's the penthouse so all the three entrances the one that we leave open is the one closest to the spot where the original entrance was that's the this one so this one is open the two are completely closed now would you ever actually start a hive off using the middle entrance or would you always like to use the ends so that way it can be the brood and then onto yeah I like doing it from one end with smaller colonies like this one right this way instead of coming all of this expanse on both sides of it it has a wall so it can snuggly start from one wall and build out this right make sense with very strong colonies you can install them in the middle too so I have some empty frames prepared here to receive the cut frames from the original box that we'll be transferring also if you don't have much honey inside the frames that you're transferring you can give it to the bees later by putting it in a feeder like that so it's called the Lions frame feeder it has resurfaced inside so the bees have a good purchase with their legs and don't drown again you don't need to transfer the actual honeycomb because it starts running and just mess it to transfer them brood frames and if you don't transfer enough on the combs and on the frames you can give them some food this way the same is useful when you just purchased a nuke of these in the spring that comes in standard lengths trough frames and if you want to put them in two lanes frames do give them some food and a feeder like that so if you want to use this feeder to feed your bees you can dilute honey with a little bit of water so it's running I would say eight parts are honey two parts water and pour it straight in there use the precautions are for feeding that described in keeping bees in horizontal hives for example if your colony is not very strong and they feed at the at night almost at nightfall so that there is no chance of robbing and these from other hives especially if there is no nectar in nature do not come and do not steal this food from this colony another precaution is that if you are not feeding your own honey unfortunately it's not safe to feed honey from a store it may have spores of foul brood or other contagious disease and there it can be transferred to this colony through feeding this honey so if you are just starting and you have absolutely no other option it's actually safer to feed bees are certified organic sugar 50/50 to water as an exception then to set up to see them commercial honey if you know a local beekeeper and you can get local honey after talking to the beekeeper and making sure they didn't have any file brood in the last few years then this kind would probably also be safe to say but please er be very cautious with and there don't introduce or any potential disease into the hive with the feed and so now we are ready to do the actual transfer we have frames ready to accept the frames the feeder will probably not be necessary now after we do the transfer because this is a relatively small colony will restrict the volume of this box or with this divider so that they have less room to heat and protect and temperature regulate and as the colony outgrowth the original few frames that we give them will move this divider board sideways and add more frames this is something you only need to do with the small colonies like a small swarm that you caught or a package of these that you installed or this new split colony that we are installing for very strong colony it's not necessary except putting it in for the winter when you removed all of these frames with honey you don't want just this empty called volume to be there and the bees losing the heat from their brood chamber you insert it here at the end of the year just before the winter sets in after harvest frames of honey but so now we will put it in to restrict the volume of the high for this very young small colony the whole procedure will be similar to what we saw with the previous hive we just take frames from there put the bees here cut the comm and put the frames here the only big distinction is that with this hive we didn't notice the Queen when going through the other box which is fine we'll be just shaking and swiping all the bees here and make sure that you handle all the frames above the original hive and above this one so you don't accidentally drop the Queen into the grass you can use a variety of tools for cutting the comm the best one to use is either a table saw if you have one that runs out the battery or if you can bring into the yard but anything this a circular saw like this is excellent sawzall or something that moves like that is not as desirable because it creates more vibration and there the young brood and the cells may be more disturbed than when it just a blade quickly rotating with less vibration and even the bees the vibration is going to bother them more with the sawzall than of the other very good here we need to move fairly quickly and as we go through and the reason we need to go for it liquids because I heard some thunder in distance you don't want to do it under the rain or in inclement weather so you just take her whatever taking your hands you shake and slide the bees into the new box and you move on to the next frame again you need only to cut the frames that have brood on them the rest you can remove all together remember that because we did not find the Queen and this time she may be on one of the walls and all of the equipment should be shaken and swiped straight into the hive to the extent possible this is an intense part of the transfer so I'm putting my suit on and instead of shaking them down I'm swiping them down in case there is a queen someplace on the wall if worst comes to worst and it shows lost during the transfer you do have eggs on the frames that we transferred so they will be able to raise themselves a new queen if they have to but I think it won't come down to that usually this transfer is a quite successful then be prepared to remove everything from the a theory so they cannot return to the original box and be attracted by the smell of the box there are bees flying around it's fun for them to join their sisters in the box because there they will be attracted by the smell of the bees inside the box and they will enter through the entrance now we're ready to close do it the entrance is open all of the bees are agitated that you will see them congregating around the entrance just within five to ten minutes you see already some bees flying and entering at the right spot what helps is that this spot is fairly close to where the original high was and where the original entrance was and also during disturbance like that they start fanning and emitting certain attraction pheromone you can see some bees there the entrance standing with their abdomen pointing outward and they're feigning their wings spreading this smell that shows the rest of the bees where the new entrance is so all of these bees gradually will take flight and sense the smell coming from this entrance and redrawing their sisters there after disturbance like that or there is a small chance that the whole colony may abscond leaving this box altogether it usually does not happen when they have their brood preserved with them and in our case we transferred all the brood so they will likely to stay put in the box but if you are working with certain bees that are more likely to count after disturbance you may want to close this entrance so that it's on this lock position it allows all the bees to re-enter the box through the slots but the slots are too small for the Queen to leave the hive so they won't be able to depart and after a few days reopen it so that they can be regular traffic of bees coming in and out with these bees I don't think it will be necessary so we'll leave this entrance wide open as it is now another awesome day working the bees you guys it gets a little hot you wearing those bee suits you know you're a little nervous because the bees the one in the forest again was a little bit more exciting than the one that we had out in the field and we didn't even really go in there we were gonna put a couple of those frames in there from that box that we transferred but they were so riled up we actually put those out in the pasture to make sure that they had a little bit of honey out there so if you guys got any questions about these bee videos make sure you're leaving them down below and make sure you catch our playlist with all this information in there if you're a first-time beekeeper or even if you're pretty good and you're wanting to hone your skills or like myself I was into it for a while and I just wanted to keep researching so I could better my game and I could do it more natural because just like everyone else we learned what was taught us by the Amish in our area and they were using the sugar water and they were having problems with mites matter of fact speaking of mites did you see anything while we were messing around with the hives about any mites yeah and actually then if you look into the trays are in the hive in the field yeah you won't find too many mites in there yeah yeah so that's important too is with the natural beekeeping they build off the immunities and they're able to battle that stuff a lot better you know what do they even have scientific evidence they're at Cornell University when they looked at the mite loads of commercial bees it was almost through the roof and when they look at the mic loads of the colonies that started as local wild swarm it was very close to zero yes just like you guys when you guys keep your immune systems good and in check and you're eating right and not needing a lot of sugar and processed foods and the white devils you're gonna be great you're gonna be able to battle flus and colds and things that come your way but when you get that immune system compromised and you're drinking all those sugary drinks and monsters and Doritos and processed food and food out of a box you get the slightest little sniffle on the colds and the flu and everything else so learn from nature you know take care of yourself and you'll be able to take care of all these viruses and things that are going around around your area and you'll be able to be a lot better for it so don't forget Leo has horizontal hive comm you guys can go there you can check out all of his information we work really good with Lily's an open-source guy so if you guys want directions how you can build your own frame boxes how you can build your own swarm catchers your own frames for inside the box all that information is available for you guys at no charge that's correct and you know talking about natural health I want to mention that the receiving is Stingo to here and there from the business problem is another benefit of beekeepers yeah yeah some of my friends got into beekeeping specifically to get stung for health benefits they actually use that in the Orient I'll tell you like sting you for though for cures yeah and there it's another topic for another day but it's are something that's helping many people with their conditions where drugs can build no health right so there you're chillin and know some of you guys had questions in the previous video and dr. leo is here not the swarm one that I just did with the one before that we were working with the bees and you know he had his hands out there and even like in this video and you guys were asking why he was running the smoke over his hands okay and he could tell you why he does that well it discourages beasts from stinging or but again if you don't want to get any stings at all just wear protection sure put on the suit put on your gloves and then the chance of getting stung is very slim but I work with the bees with my bare hands because I enjoy it better and also I have more feeling when I grab frames everything and finally when I receive a stinger that's not a big deal for me at all I say it as free epithet II with bee venom yeah a local naturopath will charger 60 to 50 to give you for 3 stings if you have your own bees you can get as many as you like at no cost and the reason why I was putting the smoke over his hand after he got stung was because bees actually release a pheromone and that signals the other bees to come and help in on the stings to help protect the hive okay so when he gets stung then he smokes his hand and then that will help break that sent away from the other bees that's correct yeah so make sure you guys check out his books they're all online at horizontal hive comm keeping bees with a smile keeping these in horizontal files right and this is basically a horizontal high but it's a Langstrom high right so today we saw both we saw the lengths are high with longer frames right and we transfer these beads into the lay inside my entire Lance is the author of the book keeping busy are in horizontal files right and his height model is number one one most widespread Rozonda live in the world right so from now on we'll be able to compare the development of the colonies in both size models you guys are not gonna get the information like this on any other channel make sure you hit that subscribe button down below give us a thumbs up on your way out say thanks to dr. Leo it's a five-hour drive to get up here and I think we might see him later on the summer is it well when the time comes to pull honey yeah he's gonna come back and pull honey with us also he'll be at the home studying live conference in August in Hannibal Missouri it's the first Sunday and Monday every year in Hannibal Missouri where he'll be doing workshops and speaking on natural beekeeping and the like so make sure you guys get us on your calendar make sure you hit that subscribe button and I think we're hot sweaty and done for the day so as always thanks for coming yeah and we'll see you guys on the next video yeah oh and by the way for the sake of clarity because dr. Leo wanted me to mention this to you guys you can set out a swarm box a swarm trap we did that in a video I'll leave a link for it down below if you guys want to see that and you can catch a swarm with a swarm box okay the reason why we are dealing with these horizontal hives the way we are is because we caught a swarm and actually put it in the horizontal hive box in the forest and we've split that now okay we used a swarm box it's in the video below and the hive that's out here in the pasture we actually had a high swarm move into it a queenless swarm they hung out there for a while and then we split that as well okay so it was just a fluke so we don't want you guys to watch these videos about these horizontal hives and think that you have to have these horizontal hives to do any of this stuff these methods work on any beehive okay and then we explain the benefits of the horizontal hive so we wanted to make sure you guys understood that you don't have to collect the swarms inside the horizontal hives and then cut all the frames and everything we're basically dealing with what we have okay on hand at the time that this all happens and then making it work from there just like in the swarm video you guys were telling me about getting a vacuum and stuff like that I've had out of the eight years I've been collecting bees or you know managing bees here on the property I've had one other time other than this that the hives were strong enough to actually make a swarm and we caught those successfully so to have a vacuum just laying around to suck up bees on a swarm it's just not on my radar right now it might be in the future but we'll see so just we're showing you guys how to deal with things as they pop up with items that you have on hand and hopefully that clears up some of the gray area see you guys tomorrow [Applause] [Music]

Channel: OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

Views: 361,769

Rating: 4.9124641 out of 5

Keywords: Off Grid with Doug and Stacy, Doug and Stacy, Doug, Stacy, Off Grid, off the grid, off the grid living, off the grid homes, off grid living, off grid cabin, off grid with Doug and Stacy, off grid solar power system, off grid house, off grid homestead, off grid solar, homestead, homesteading, homesteading for beginners, homesteading off the grid, natural food recipes, holistic health, holistic living

Id: OnYqwNO6Mag

Length: 76min 34sec (4594 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020