Beehive inspection - Honey Super & Queen Excluder add on

welcome to the channel if you're new here my name is Dave and if you're returning well my name's still Dave if you can't tell take a guess where I'm at but if you can't tell I am in the bee yard today so it's the afternoon late afternoon I just got off work a little while ago and we have a beehive that I talked about several weeks ago we were going to take you guys along each time we checked the hive and each time that we uh did something with it or manipulated it so it's definitely time to do that to recap we uh put a package in several weeks ago checked on it to make sure the queen was okay after several days and we have not touched it since truthfully this time of year in the spring when a lot of activities happening I probably should have checked it a week ago but you know it is what it is time gets away from you time is a valuable commodity and uh not one that I always have a lot of so without any further Ado and wasting your time let's check this beehive out [Music] all right I'm back so as I said this fret this Hive has not been opened since I opened it last time on camera here but I will tell you I've cheated I guess maybe a little bit sorry I've cheated maybe a little bit because I have opened all my other hives this is the last one ah we got a little bit of weeds here get rid of them sort of a little Highway for ants to get up in the colony if you don't take care of those I'm here you just can't see my face so I've opened all my other hives so I have a good idea what I'm what I'm going to walk into here I'm suspecting this Hive is going to be chock full it's going to have a lot of bees in it possibly a lot of Queen maybe Queen cells which are cells that uh indicate that a swarm is coming that they're making a new Queen for a swarm I don't think they've swarmed yet um but we do need to get into them find a queen make sure she's still doing well or at least find some eggs specifically eggs that have been laid recently and uh we're gonna add a uh we're gonna add a second story to this condo so here we go all right so we have the outer cover there and we talked about this last time and here's the inner cover it is basically there to help keep that outer cover get gumed down and sealed forever from where the bees make propolis now this right here is well kind of what's left of a pollen Patty I threw it in there in the beginning bees need pollen for their brood I was concerned there might not be enough and so you can give feed them that's an artificial it's basically like a cake of pollen and it's kind of a very gooey kind of consistency and when it gets warm like this it just kind of gets gross so they've worked on it but they haven't eaten it all and that's a good sign that they're probably getting pollen from elsewhere and that they're hey that there is enough pollen in the area which according to any weather reports around here and the air quality index there's plenty of pollen going on right now they're very sedate and uh I only hit them with a little bit of smoke and I'm not even sure I had to do that so we're gonna dive in here we're going to look for a queen but uh I think by the judging by the amount of bees so when I put these in here when I put these in here originally there was enough bees that they covered about three of these frames there's 10 frames in here as you can see they're now covering all 10 frames so in about 12 to 14 days they the this Hive has tripled inside yeah no I guess it's been longer than that about three weeks which is about the time that it takes from hatching to to uh full to to growth or from laying the egg to hatching excuse me so we got lots of bees I'm gonna pull this first frame out um the first frame you can really sometimes hurt the bees you got to be careful um if they're wedged in here and when you pull the first frame out see it has a tendency to kind of can sometimes roll them I may get upset I'm willing to bet either you or I would get upset as well so we try not to upset them everything's smooth movements try to do things that will uh not get them riled not get them upset and we're going to look for the queen and hopefully I can find her and show her to you so this first frame that brown right in the middle you can see has got brood on it so she's been laying eggs like crazy we may have picked a really good frame or excuse me a really good Hive to follow along with because these bees look super strong we can see on the opposite side more more uh plenty more brood so she's got a nice patch of brood on both sides the white around the edges is uh resources that's honey they've packed a little packed a little around the edges of the hive this one if we look you can see there's not the white capped honey but they've actually filled it with nectar I don't know if you can see that hopefully you can it looks glisteny that is nectar that's been brought in but has not yet been fully cured and dried and so the bees have not sealed it up yet so we're going to take another let's get another um get another one here pull it out uh looking for a couple things I'm looking for the looking for the queen of course always uh that's the Perpetual beekeeper is looking for the queen oh now this one it's like they built a lot of bunch of home on the bottom sometimes they'll use that to build what's called a queen cup which basically is a replace a cell that grows a replacement Queen but other times these bigger cells are a little bit bigger if you can see that it's hanging off the bottom and those are for the male drones now this this uh frame I don't see any uh I don't see a queen on it either however you see it still has brewed kind of around the edges that middle part I'm guessing was probably full of brood less than several days ago that is hatched out it hasn't had anything else put in it it hasn't had any nectar put in it the queen hasn't come back and laid any eggs it doesn't look like uh but that looks like that was probably a frame full of brood in the very recent past so again we're going to set that down as well and still no Queen but oh my goodness look at this she has been busy okay I'm pulling this next frame out and I'm going to show you why this queen why the I know this Queen's been busy I want to see first of all if she's on it let's make sure that I don't want to go do a whole bunch of gyrations if she's on the frame frame she has been marked with a red mark on her head the uh the breeder does that and uh the marks the marks are too uh let you know what year that Queen was but they do also help her stand out so this year is a red mark there's other colors there's red yellow white and each one corresponds to a year but years ending in three have a red mark now I'm going to show you what I'm talking about with this Frame and why she's been busy that is all brewed and that has all been laid in the last several weeks so we're looking at a complete frame of brood and then when we turn it over those are all legs and they will all hatch out oh I don't know I'm guessing probably in the next week or so so as you can see with that and you saw that all frames were all 10 frames are already full of bees they're going to be overwhelmed here shortly and they need some space so that's what we're here to do we're going to give them some space and this queen is doing great I'm so excited with this Hive and with to be able to that this is the one that we decided to share because so far so good and uh it's always exciting this time of year the bees go crazy they're they're uh laying eggs they're Gathering nectar and everything is just going like gangbusters so very exciting to see if you think you want to be into bees they are a lot of work but they're also a heck of a lot of fun and by a lot of work I'm sorry I shouldn't say that but they are they're a weekly task and uh uh several hours maybe an hour or two depending on how many hives you have and then there's certain times a year when you're net when you're extracting honey and in the spring when you're just getting them going and they're ramping up they do take some more time but but uh it's not overwhelming it's not overwhelming at all and they are a lot of enjoyment I mean assuming you like bees if you don't like bees then there's nothing you're going to find enjoyable about this so except maybe the honey afterwards in which case just buy your honey from a local beekeeper and and avoid the stress on yourself all right so I've got you down here close this is the frame I just showed you this black one here that uh was covered in um covered in brood waiting to hatch and then we're gonna go to this next frame here and I'm not sure I'm going to dig through this whole thing digging through when you think you have a concern for example whether you're Queens laying or whether you might have a some sort of diseases or foul brood or an heavy infestation of varroa that's important to do right now these bees are going like crazy there's another frame see the see The Brood right around the bottom there and then The Brood around the edge so that was completely full like that last frame I showed you but they've already hatched out all except around those edges the middle part no honey no nectar no pollen no brood it's a little bit a little bit of uh I'm sorry they're back filling it with a little bit of nectar not sure if you can see the glisteny I think you can so that's nectar they're bringing in after the uh after the um the batch of brood uh hatched out so those bees when they hatch out they can't fly they will um they will stay on the frames and they actually are nurse bees to begin with I believe yes and then after a period of time a week or two whoa hey whoa okay just got stung there right through two vinyl gloves sorry about that um here's another one lots of lots of uh lots and lots of uh brood so I'm not gonna pursue continuing to dig through this um dig through this uh scrape the stinger out there we go I'm not going to continue to pursue digging through this they're starting to get a little agitated and there's really no need for it there is nothing nothing that's an issue here so we're gonna put this back together and I'm gonna put another box on top of it see they're starting to get wound up now I do try not to smoke them any more than I have to but they're starting to really get on me when when a bee stings you it actually releases pheromones that pheromones those pheromones will excite the other bees so what I'm doing here they stung me on the finger there the ring finger she stung me on the ring finger so I'm going to give that hand a blast of smoke that helps block those pheromones go ahead and smoke the bees like I said I don't like to do it I like to do it as little as possible however sometimes it needs it and then we're going to shoot these right back in here together okay come on girls work with me just for a minute more and I'll have you back together you need to push these frames over because we've got one more to go in here you do fit snugly now this Frame is full of beads I can try to slide it in there but it's the last frame which means it's going to be tight what I'd rather do what I'm gonna do is we're going to shake those bees off now there's hardly any bees on the frame and we can slide this in here much easier just sliding that in there with all those bees on there will roll the bees between the frames and crush them shaking it off like that you may injure a few but overall it's going to be a much better outcome now oh my fingers really starting to fry good job girls um now the next thing we're going to do that we have here is a device called a queen excluder you can see it's just a sheet of uh like a heavy duty screen it's so it's it's wire and what we do what I do what I'm gonna do what I have done there we go is we put that over the top now those little grates those little grooves are wide enough that a bee can slip through but not so wide that the queen with her larger abdomen can slip through what does that do I'm going to show you one second okay now we just set another box on top this will be a box that eventually gets filled with honey let me move you around for a second and I'll show you okay now this is a honey super it's not as deep as the first box you saw how the frames in the first box these frames much shorter much smaller um the first two years that I did this I use mostly what are those deep boxes they get very heavy um I realize that fairly quickly and so I switched over this year well now I actually take that back I did that the first year last year I started switching over to using more of these shallow boxes for the honey a uh one of those deep boxes that first one that the they're in one of those boxes can weigh 80 plus pounds when it's full of sugar which means if you have two or three of those stacked one on top the other they're going to be stacked five six feet in the air because the frames are sitting on a stand and you have to pick up 70 80 90 pounds even if it's a really good Hive over a hundred pounds and you're picking it up five feet in the air five and a half feet in the air I learned that quickly that that's not something I really want to be doing so I switched over to these uh last year not that I didn't have some but I switched over largely to these in order to alleviate that these are called mediums and these mediums uh are gonna run you full of full of um excuse me full of um of uh honey diesel run you yeah you know man 35 pounds or so still heavy not you know unmanageable though so a couple of these you can see that I gotta scrape that off because it's not kind of not sitting right in the in the frame or in the hive scrape those off now these are leftover frames that I had from last year I've already extracted honey from it you can see the cells are it's got drawn out comb but the comb is all broken over the bees will take that wax they'll reuse it they'll repurpose it they'll get their get their stuff in order and as they come up through that Queen excluder they will begin working on this for honey this Frame does have one one frame in it that this thing is see how thick that it sticks out that sucker is packed full of honey and it's from last year we're going to give it back I'm a big believer in giving them back part of their honey or leaving it on of course during the winter we can always feed them with syrup we can always manipulate them in that way but I do believe that quite personally on a personal level they made the honey and they certainly deserve part of it so you can call that a weird spiritual thing or whatever but it is what it is so because this one sticks out so much and it's so fat I've actually only got one two three six seven eight I've only got nine frames in here over the next week or so they will work that frame down and we'll add another we'll squeeze another frame in if not we'll just have nine in this box it's not a big deal it just means that they draw the from the sides of the frame they draw the comb out deep thicker and it'll be uh it'll be more honey so we're going to space those out nice and evenly the bees now have um an extra box in order to make honey and to store honey which will free up space in the bottom box for the queen oh and I'm sorry I'm not sure I said this that queen excluder that Queen can't fit through there and I said that but I didn't say why so the reason for that is that will keep her down in that bottom box and in doing so it'll keep all of her brood and the and the eggs down the bottom box which means when I come back later to to collect the honey these top boxes and I'll stack I'm sure is way this hive's going I'm going to be stacking more more um more of these small boxes on top that as I stack them up the queen can't get up here she can't lay eggs in it laying eggs in it can mess up the honey it can create issues because you've got a you've got some frames that are full of honey and then they got some brood in them and it makes it difficult to extract as well as you you want the honey to be you want the boxes with the honey to be honey so that's what we're doing I have not used a queen excluder before I didn't use them the first or the second year and I had problems both years I've heard a lot of bad things about Queen excluders and I've heard other people say that's all hogwash that the queen excluders are are fantastic some of the knocks against Queen excluders number one is that by confining the uh Queen to just one box or even two boxes you are confining the amount of space she can lay eggs in which makes her feel cramped and promotes that the The Hive May swarm the other thing is that I've heard is that the the worker bees do not travel through the great well so therefore they will not create Honeywell if you have the um Queen excluder on and I've heard and and to be absolutely fair if I thought those things were the case I wouldn't use them but I've heard a lot of beekeepers especially on YouTube that as well as read in books and seen in person who say that's hogwash those those are simply not true those things don't happen and that um that if you have a hive that's just not producing well it's not because you did or didn't put a queen excluder on it it's probably because the hive just isn't producing well for some other uh either the Queen's not doing well or for some external reasons such as weather or uh forage ability or forage the availability of forage plants so I went in all I went all in this year I know that not having a queen excluder is a pain it makes it very difficult during honey extraction and so I'm I'm giving it a shot and we'll we'll have to see together so put it on the bees are all set there's really nothing else more to see here um there's the new frames those will ideally the bees will collect any leftover remaining honey that might be in there they'll use it they'll reprocess it as well as there's a this full cake of honey here that they have that they can use for resources they can pass through the screen they'll move the resources back and forth however they need to and I will probably it's not going to be today but probably when I put another another box on here which may be as soon as a week or two from now we will uh put in what's called an upper entrance on here also and I'll show you what we do with that so I think we're about done for today I'm going to close up I hope you learned something I hope you enjoyed it and uh I'm uh I got bees all around me so I'm gonna sign off and I hope that you have a good weekend it's coming up on Memorial Day weekend I don't know whether this video will get out before Memorial Day weekend so we'll put it as I hope you do have a great weekend enjoy it remember what Memorial Day is about but take time and spend time with your family friends enjoy it stay safe stay prepared and as always I'll see you on the next video thanks thank you

Channel: Observationist Dave

Views: 568

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Id: 7c2YzYWu8Vg

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023