BEE STINGS (Part 1) Best Practices to Avoid Getting Stung

[Music] [Music] today we're at illawarra beekeepers doing a video on these stings we're going to talk about the best practices to open a colony the best time to open colonies and times to avoid opening colonies and to talk about first aid should someone be unfortunate enough to be stoned the first step is to ensure that you've got proper protective clothing and that you put that protective clothing on to protect your body from booze stinging you if you've got someone that can check on the protective clothing it's important that they do that to make sure that you're boo proof before you go into open a hive it's important to put the protective clothing on away from the hive so that you're ensuring that it's properly fitted so for the purpose of this video i've got one glove on most commercial beekeepers and when beekeepers become competent they don't wear gloves because if you've got to catch a coin to pull frames out it's much more convenient to not wear gloves booze usually don't attack your hands and if you smoke your hand and your gloves that tends to repel the bees so for this purpose i've got one on one off normally when you start beekeeping always wear your gloves and pigskin gloves are by far the most appropriate gloves to wear because you can get good fur with pigskin gloves washing up gloves and that are not so successful because bees some of those brands bees can still sting through the glove when you go to an april it's important that you've got all the equipment you need when you approach the hive to open a hive you need a smoker you need a fuel and by far the best fuel is radiata pine noodles other suitable pines are stringy bark tallow wood uh balbari tea tree bark the smoker is your best protection because smoke repels booze and you can protect yourself and control the colony with a bee smoker the essential thing is that you light the smoker in the bottom and get it hot you need to do it in a safe location the top of a beehive is an ideal place to do it or some other safe fire resistant place the smoke needs to be cool so it's important that the smoke is cool if you smoke yourself that helps because that helps to repel the bees you also need water so water's handy to wash your hands and gloves because they get sticky you also need a hive tool to be able to manipulate and manage the taking apart of the hives and the removal of the frames some people have a smoker box which is a good idea because it can prevent and help keep the smoker safe when it gets hot you need to check the smoker before you light it to make sure that the bellows are sound that it's not coked up with any ashes or anything like that and it is a sound construction and the bellows produce plenty of cool smoke cool smoke is essential and plenty of it helps control the bees you only need to use enough smoke to control the bees and that's important you don't need to over smoke the hive but you need to aim the smoke at the bees this box is a specially built box you know the whole smoker it's fireproof so when you finish using the smoke you can put it in it you can block the entrance up to extinguish the smoker and many commercial beekeepers have this type of smoker box if you don't have a smoker box that's a tin bucket yeah it's also handy for carrying the smoker in to keep it safe honey bees by nature you know defend their colony the same as we you know protect our house we don't like intruders coming into our house that are uninvited and beekeepers are uninvited into a beehive because they're uninvited the bees naturally react by time trying to protect their colony and the way they try and protect their colony is to become aggressive and their aggressive nature makes them sting to protect their home and that's why buoys you know become aggressive because they protect their home honey bees don't go out to sting people however a certain percentage of the population anaphylactic and have a severe reaction to bee stings it's important if you become a bee keeper you have some indication as to your tolerance to boostings or susceptibility to boosting young bees don't seem to have as much fandom as older bees young birds have got a lot more hair on their body so if you get a young boy you know to sting you you'll know what sort of reaction you're going to have and how it reacts with your body and that's probably fairly important to do that before you actually start to become a beekeeper but the best protection is you know light the smoker properly put on proper protective clothing and hopefully you know never ever gets done well you're artificially inseminate coin bees and if you buy coin bees from a coin breeder those bees are normally of a docile strain so i'd strongly recommend you know buying coin bees of a docile strain when you commence beekeeping and that goes a long way to helping prevent being stung later in this video we're going to go through conditions where bees are likely to be more aggressive than normal and by far the best time to open hives is when the sun is out the bees are very active so most of the field bees are in the field working normally in a colony bees spend about three weeks in the hive there's nurse bees three to four weeks in the field and then they pass away so bright sunny days is the time to open hives but you need to be careful if you're in a residential area that you don't open the hives in the middle of the day when your neighbors next door are having a party outside and if you can avoid when the neighbors are home that's the best time to open highs because once you disturb a hive the bees become defensive within a given area and there's more likely to be problems with napers if you open your hives when they're home and particularly firm in their backyard so avoid that you need to understand the behaviour of bees to know how to handle them the best practice to open a hive is to let the bees know you are going to open the hive by smoking the entrance of the colony so you go to the entrance of the colony and you do about seven or eight puffs aiming the smoke inside the entrance smoke doesn't hurt bees it tends to repel booze then with a gentle motion you take the lid off the hive and you puff smoke under the lid of the colony you then put the lid back on so what's happening now is that the bees have got smoke in the top and in the bottom and their natural reaction is to go to nectar which they've collected which is in uncapped cells and they gorge themselves on nectar because they've got nectar in their stomachs they're likely to be more docile than if they don't have nectar in their stomachs the next action is to remove the lid from the colony and you take the lid off and place it at the back of the colony it's very important to stand at the side of the colony when you work the hive you never stand at the front because bees are coming home you weren't there how do they move you they sing you to get you to move so always work at the side this is your best protection from things the bee smoker so you need to have it available all the time in case you need to use it you can hook it on the side of the box so most motors have a hook so you can hook it on the side that gives you two hands free you have to work the hive the other way and the way that i prefer to use is to put the smoker between my legs and i can walk with it i can move with it and it's got a guard so i'm not going to get stung get burnt and i've got it all the time if i need it the other thing that beekeepers tend not to do is to not aim the smoke at the buoys i see plenty of beekeepers using plenty of smoke just like this and what's happening the smoke is going over the tops of the frames you need to put the smoker at that angle and you aim the smoke over all the frames now it's important to harm it over the whole box not just one corner other beakers just do one corner these bees aren't exposed to smoke therefore they're not repelled the next step is to remove this super you get the hive tool under the box like that lift it up and remove it i keep the smoker between my legs or i can hook it on that box i then lift it off and put it to one side at the back on an upturned lid this now exposes the bees in this box and i've put one glove on i'd smoke myself before i started i'll give myself another smoke and you can see i can put my hand there and bees don't normally attack people i can put my glove there they're not attacking i then get the smoker and i go over all the frames like that and this is one way to prevent being stung i can then remove this box and place it on the back like so i then give the queen excluder a good smoke and once again i can put my hand there and they're not attacking me there's no booze interest in my hand because i had smoke on it the same with my glove i now smoke over the whole bottom box like that i then remove the coin excluder and make sure there's no coin on the queen excluder put that upside down on that box there now everything is done with a positive movement i don't shudder and shake i then remove a frame just to examine the brood box the second frame from the wall is the easiest one to remove now it's important to lift this frame out squarely if you don't want at an angle if you put in an angle you like to kill boys when bees get killed they're more likely to become aggressive so i then lift this frame out like so and it's a new frame of foundation that the boos are just starting to to draw the boos are calm on the frames i'm not over smoking them i'm just giving enough to control them if i was to put huge amounts of smoke in there the bees would go silly and all start to fly around so you only need enough to control them i'll now put this frame back in the hive like so and i'll reassemble the hive so i put the queenie scooter back on like so and if you slide the excluder on so that the bees get pushed away you're not squashing any you try to avoid not to squash any i then give this another smoke here so you don't pick a box up without smoking it so you need to smoke it again lift the box up and once again you can tend to slide the box on to repel any bees but the light is there so you don't squash any put on squarely like that make that let's make this lift the box up and put it on again and if i want to i can check you know one of the top frames in this super and the second or third frame from the edge is the best one to take out take this out and here we'll notice you know a frame full of honey honey's kept neck does not these bees are unloading the nectar in the super and they're very docile bees so smoking my hands you know has helped that they're not even interested in my hand i'll put that frame back in there then i can place i'll then place the lid back on the box i'll now talk about you know when you shouldn't open hives and this is really important you know most people that are recreational beekeepers have got time on weekends to fit in you know when they want to look at their hives it is very unwise to open highs when it rains the reason being most of the colony is home so a colony could have sixty thousand bees so if it's raining the sixty thousand are at home so don't open the colony if it's a sunny day it might be only thirty thousand home at night never open hives boys can see in the dark they can crawl in the dark they get onto your body for body heat if it's cold weather so you never open bees you know when the weather is cold windy weather you try to avoid windy weather so by avoiding windy weather because more bees are at home when the weather's windy if you've got oven bees in windy weather it's important to use the smoker so that the smoke will blow into the hive not away from the hive late of an evening you don't open them late of an evening because most of the bees are at home late of an evening certain honey flows tend to upset bees particularly flows that are very aromatic and some plants only yield nectar of a morning some you'll only have an afternoon so citrus is one of the worst flows for bees becoming aggressive on sometimes spotted gum and some other flow so flows can affect the temperament of your booze nothing to do with the genetics it's just the flow at the time upsets the bee robbing if you expose honey to bees they will rob when there's no nectar in the field and if bees rob they become very aggressive so if your seaboo's robbing you know don't open a hive if bees are robbing shut the hive up and walk away hives that need re-cleaning or have just been requeened can sometimes be aggressive because the queen pheromone is not as prevalent in colonies that have had coins in all the time you're more likely to get stung then i mentioned neighbours before you know don't open hives when your neighbors at home if you can avoid it because bees once you open them tend to circle around that could be an issue with them getting stung certain areas wasps are fairly prevalent ants are fairly prevalent cane toads in some other areas so if the hive is being attacked at the entrance that's an indication that you're likely to get stung also so you need to control whatever the pest is that's irritating the hive certain strains of bees are more aggressive than others so buy coins from coin breeders that have got docile strains of buoys if you rough handle hives they they're going to become aggressive so you don't bump the lid you don't pull the frame out so that it squashes booze and that's really really extremely important you do everything deliberately and you don't shudder and shake if you're going to shake booze off you shake them off so smooth handling the other thing you don't wave your arms and hands around if you wave your arms and hands around you're more likely to get stung these fly at about 25 kilometers an hour so by waving your hands around they'll dodge your hands and still sting you wearing glasses can be a problem in the booze can sometimes get behind your glasses so you need to be calm and take your glasses off and the bee hopefully will fly away many beekeepers now keep bees on stands and it's really critical that that stand is a solid stand if the stand's not solid you shift the hive the stand shakes the bees become agitated and become quite aggressive because the stand is shaking so if you're going to have booze on a stand make sure it's extremely solid and that's really important if you've got more than one hive on the stand it becomes doubly critical because if you have a stand that shakes you're going to upset the hives on that stand all the hives on that stand so the hives we're using here at illawarra apri are on concrete uh slabs but there's a growing interest in keeping bees on stands so the hive is raised off the ground the advantage of that is that you're not bending over as much and it's more convenient quite often for your own personal point of view to work bees on stands many stands i've come across are not stable and because they're not stable every time you work the hive the bees become agitated because the stand is not stable if you wear a watch it's important to have a metal band on your watch if it's exposed not a leather band because the perspiration on a leather band tends to upset bees another really critical thing is when you're looking at bees don't wear perfume hairspray or any aromatic cosmetic because that will tend to encourage the booze to sting a lot more so that's a no-no long hair they can get tangled you know also in long hair which can be an issue many beekeepers get stung keeping the entrances of the hives clear in this case this hive is on a concrete stand the trick so you don't have to clip grass at the entrance of your hives all the time is to get a piece of core flute and you can buy core flute at bunnings sometimes real estate agents throw out real estate signs and that's ideal to put at the entrance of your colony just like that and that will prevent the grass growing it lasts for two or three years because it's eliminated um core flute gives the bees a cool landing spot and the grass is not going to grow up at the front of the hive entrance don't stand at the entrance of the hive i mentioned before because that's the sure way you'll be getting stung because the bees are coming in you weren't there before how do they move you they sting you to shift you on so they're the main points as a preventative action that you can take um to reduce the risk of being stung by bees there are numerous designs of bee suits and there are numerous designs of vales black nylon tulle now is a popular veil material that just fits over a broad brimmed hat in this case the veil is zippered to the bee suit and it's got a wide brim on it by having a wide brim on it it keeps the veil away from my nose and from my face and it's virtually 100 percent boo proof because of the zippers just as a tip if you're unfortunate enough to get disease in your buoys a radiation is used to control bee diseases there is no need to have your bee suit irradiated if your boobies become diseased you know washing is sufficient to get rid of any bacteria that may be on your bee suit and if you do get b suits irradiated the zippers are likely to deteriorate very rapidly because a radiation damages plastic when you're going to buy a bee suit you know fit it on at the bee supply place and make sure you're comfortable with it and the same with gloves and everything else before you actually go purchase them there's a lot of cheap bee suits on ebay and you know various online cellars and some of those are so thin that bees can actually sting through the material so you need to buy your bookkeeping equipment from a reputable beekeeping supplier another thing you know i should mention is mowing any strange noise and the ground tends to get vibrated with uh you know engine noise mow around your hives you know towards sunset or when bees are not active there are two different designs of hive tools that are available for beekeepers the one on the right this one is the one that i've used today the advantage of this type of hive tool is that it's easy to separate the supers and it's got good mechanical advantage and it's also can take the frames out by hooking under the edge of the frame this is the more conventional australian designed hive tool that has got a hook on the end which is far better for taking frames out of hives and this is the hive tool that the majority of beekeepers prefer the australian design one as opposed to this american designed one if you come across a hive that's extremely aggressive that you need to do some management on the best technique is to pick that hive up and move it about two to three meters away from where it originally was located where it was originally located place another box or a cardboard box what happens is all the feel bees will go back to the original location where you shifted the original hive two that was aggressive after about half an hour there'll only be young nurse bees in that colony therefore you're dealing with half the boost to look at young bees are not normally as aggressive you can do whatever management you need to do on that colony and if it's that aggressive you need to reclean it once you've recoined it you can move it back to the original location and shake the bees out of the box that you'd place there and wait six to eight weeks if it's been re-cleaned and the colony will be totally different genetically so occasionally bees get in one's veil and it's really critical you don't take your veil off if you're working bees because if you take your veil off you're going to get stung a lot when bees get in a veil just like this one is here i just get to the veil and i've got it in my hand now and unfortunately i've got to kill a bar a bee because it's out of place it's likely to sting me that could have serious consequences it's like if there's a clover plant in your rose garden you pull it out it's in pasture you let it grow so when booze get out of place like they are inside this vale i'm not taking it off i'm going to kill the bee so bees are attracted to our body for body heat and that's why they tend to crawl and get onto our body for heat 34 degrees celsius inside a beehive we open them up the temperature drops where's the nearest warm thing your body and that's why sometimes they tend to go to your body for body heat at times when you're working around bee hives bees will drop off frames accidentally and get on the ground because bees like body heat they'll go to your legs and they'll tend to crawl up your legs for the body heat if that happens there's two options the first thing you should do is to walk away from the colony so you walk away from the colony and if there's a bee goes up my dunes i can feel it on my skin i can put my hand there it's out of place i can squash it it'll drop out on the ground if there's a lot of booze up my leg i just simply walk away from the colony and i stamp on the ground hard and all the bees will disappear you'll notice that i'm wearing riding boots and that's the preferred preferred footwear because it protects your ankles don't wear open shoes or anything like that when you're working bees if you're unfortunate enough to be stung by a bee and that shows the bee's sting into the skin and its abdomen being taken out so therefore that bee is going to die when that happens it's important to remove the sting with the hive tool by just pushing it out never pull a boosting out because you grab hold of the sack which means all the venom gets into your body so with a simple movement just like that that totally removes the sting from my body you can also remove the sting if you've got long finger nails by just flicking the sting out with your fingernails never ever pull a boosting out because if you pull the boosting out you can press the sack with the venom in it and inject all the venom into your body a bit like a water pistol with a rubber end on it if you squeeze it the water comes out you squeeze the sting the venom goes into your body [Music] you

Channel: Save Our Bees

Views: 33,273

Keywords: beekeeping for beginners, beekeeping australia, beekeeping videos, beekeeping 101, beekeeping beginners kit, beekeeping for beginners and what you need to get started, beekeeping basics, beekeeping basics getting started, amateur beekeepers, bee stings, OH&S

Id: gKUfFnWRtQs

Length: 27min 38sec (1658 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021