Beekeeping | How Much Honey Should You Leave On Your Hive?

oh this is working out really well oh yeah i got the rhythm oh [Applause] that was a good one i'm on fire again with another video about nutrition today and we're gonna take a bee out of the hive that's forging we're gonna mark her put her back in and we're gonna see if we're getting our money's worth out of her work today all this and more starting right now [Music] what's up i'm eas certified master beekeeper david burns thanks for stopping by today and if this is your first time here please subscribe to the channel because i'm here to help you keep healthier bees and make fewer mistakes that is my passion and i want to show you today we got some cool things planned today we're going to actually take a forager mark her and time how long it takes her to go out gather the nectar and come back many people don't know how long it takes is it a minute two minutes a half an hour it'd be good to see if we're getting our money's worth out of this forager how about if we block it and make them all get stacked up behind i have better chance of getting more at one time let's try that that's an idea point it toward the entrance oh that worked perfectly look at all the ones i'm gathering all right oh i got one all right whoo i might be able to get some white right [Applause] here why died out bite mark bite mark white mark back in landed on the top there there she goes in wow it was a 41 minute foraging flight but what we're really concentrating on today is taking a look inside a hive with 30 frames to see if they have enough nutrition to stay healthy last week we did that using my inspection guide we actually went through a hive and we evaluated how much brood was in there today we're going to evaluate how much resources are do we have in the hive do we have enough pollen do we have enough pro protein such as pollen do we have enough beet bread do we have enough honey and nectar what is the amount of resources we have in that hive listen this is crucial pretty soon the nectar flow will stop your bees will begin to go into a nutrition deficit especially a protein deficiency that will affect your young bees such as your nurse bees not be able to produce a royal jelly and a lot of the larvae begin to die in the fall because the bees can't feed them the royal jelly they need all new larvae one to three day old larvae get royal jelly not just you know queens so all of them need royal jelly which is produced from the glands of the nurse feeds that are 6 to 12 days old so without proper nutrition those nurse bees can't do any nursing they need to be well fed and i want to help you today understand that gear it up listen bees need proper nutrition it's been said that without proper nutrition it's one of the leading causes of ccds some say bees even have a better resistance toward pesticides if they have proper nutrition it's just like us the healthier we are the more we eat good food then we're able to fight off more of the diseases out there and bees are no different bees need the proteins the carbohydrates the vitamins and minerals just like we do so don't be misled and think your bees are fine go in there and find out using my inspection guide i'll leave a link below in the description here where you can get the inspection guide or my website is honeybeesonline.com check that out you can get the inspection guide there and i'm going to use this video to show you how to use it to evaluate if your bees have enough nutrition in the hive now in summer beads are going in and out they should be doing okay but that's gonna be interesting to to see in this hive what we think but all this and more is gonna happen and we need to get going let's get right into the video right now okay so we'll take a look see what kind of resources we have today and as you uh may remember my queen actually laid some pretty good brood up in my honey super before i had a chance to get her below that and a queen excluder but we are going to go ahead and count what we see here today we have nectar around the edges and on both frames so we'll say one one quarter nectar on both sides if you're receiving value from this video i really hope you'll give me a thumbs up and please subscribe i do these inspections like frame by frame to help you learn the basic ways to navigate an inspection how i handle frames might help you handle frames what i'm looking for is going to help you know what to look for using my inspection guide so i hope you're getting value from this video i really do appreciate you hanging in there watching it i'm going to be evaluating what we're looking at at the end of the video and giving you an assessment of what i think about this hive you're going to be surprised so stick around now this has taken in consideration that you will leave this super ass resource food for this hive any other supers that you want to take off probably needs to come above this super i like to leave a super on all year for the bees to put their excess nectar and then i can also overwinter with the one super and a winner be kind and give the bees enough resources we're going to call this um it's almost capped over let's look at the other side same thing so we're going to say one frame of honey slash nectar even though i have my queen excluder on it's a lot of bees up here in this honey super and one of the things i did this year i put the honey super on long before i probably normally would i like to wait until i get a lot of frames pulled out in my deep below it but i was making a video and i needed to show how you do it and i just left it on there and it kind of like serendipity invented a way to make more honey is put your supers on really early how's that so you see the same thing here we have a pretty good frame of of partially capped over on both sides same thing so we'll call this another frame of honey slash nectar as you can see here we have about a quarter frame of nectar and honey and the same on the other side so we'll say a quarter on both sides so a half a frame honey uh slash nectar and let's put these frames back in their final resting position so we don't have to move them a lot of beekeepers start shoving frames after they're done trying to get everything lined up as you put your b as you put your frames back in line them up that way you'll just have one to slide in when you're done not much on this honey super here they have just started to pull the wax out on this new frame that i put in here on both sides a little bit of drawn out frame a little bit of drawn out comb we'll count this as zero again on this one we have i'm going to call it a half a frame a half a side i guess this half side is of nectar and honey and there's a bee doing a little waggle dance but doesn't look very coordinated with it and a little bit of brood here from when the queen was there not a big deal not a catastrophe that's gone that will emerge soon and then once it emerges they'll just start filling it with honey not as not as much on this side we're going to say this side here since it does have some brood from the queen when she was here we're going to say this has a quarter side of nectar and honey this frame has one quarter of a side with honey and nectar one quarter of a side and we'll call one quarter of a side here as well they've they have started to put some nectar in these cells it's not really full but they're starting to so we're going to call this a half side of nectar i mean we'll go ahead and call this a half side as well on this one we're calling it a half side of nectar combined nectar and honey and we'll do the same on the other side as well this frame we will call half a side of nectar and honey one half side and the same on this one a half side of nectar and honey put our hive tool right here above the queen excluder and work it all the way around until we can free it up away from that super then we can lift the super off and the bottom that way the queen excluder will stay put all right so what we're going to do now is continue to count our resources we're going to lift off our queen excluder here this really helps us to keep our queen down and just shake the beads off there and as you can see i did not have a full frame of i didn't have all my frames drawn out when i put the honey super on and that seemed to really lend itself for the bees putting more stored honey above them which i'm okay with because i think they will continue to draw these frames up i'm gonna call this a quarter frame a quarter deep frame side about a quarter zero on this side here gonna leave it outside the hive just temporarily to give us more room to move frames around let's get our smoker on that again i'm not really gonna register this there's not enough here to really register on either side they've this is a the wall side or they just haven't drawn that out much yet so we'll say it's zero for now let's leave this out to give us a little more room to play in here again we're looking for resources we're going to measure how much resources we have in the hive and then i'll talk about whether that's enough or what's going on this can be a little deceiving it can look like a frame of nectar but it's not it's young larvae about a one or two day old larvae that are in here same is true if here capped over pupae eggs around the outer perimeter which is what you would expect in the brood area zero resources on this frame i've got little resources at the top corners some honey capped over in the top corners man that's not much we're gonna have to call that zero because it's just immeasurable you can't really measure that again not much noticeable resources here to speak of so we're going to call that 0 again and the same is true over here and of course there's our queen looking to lay an egg walking around looking into cells like she's doing this is just a frame that they're continuing to draw out the comb on so not much to report in the way of resources at all there on a frame of solid capped over brood you'll never find any resources of any significance at all you know a little bit sprinkled here and there where some have emerged but that's of now zero nothing a little bit drawn out on top no stored resources this is not going to be anything significant to report although they are bringing a nectar into that comb that they have drawn out same here not much to report not drawn out on really much on either side yet because they're further away from the brood nest area they haven't really drawn out much yet on the outside wall area but they will they'll pick up the pace and get out get over there and get that stretched out probably within the next month by the end of july i would say that's going to look pretty nice there's a small high beetle that i have to kill i'm going to use my finger i think yep so that was a small height beetle right here that i just smashed with my finger so far i've seen three small high beetle in this hive and i've killed all three of them it's worked out pretty nice all right let's put this back together and lift this off go down deeper and inspect the bottom deep on its edge like this right here that will hopefully confine my queen to that location you may have noticed that i put my gloves on i've had this hive open a little while and i got stung on my arm and i've got to look at 10 more frames i got some bees buzzing buzzing the tower so i thought i better put some gloves on it gets really bad i'll put the suit on we're going to call this you see the nectar in here i'm going to call that a quarter frame of nectar zero on this side with a small high beetle i want to let you see that small high beetle see that small high beetle oh a bee got it but the bee can't do anything with it they're kind of too hard of a shell on the beetle for the bees to do much about it so the beetle just walks around and if it's a mama beetle she may want to lay eggs in there sometimes the bee can grab them and fly away with them a defensive mechanism of the beetle it's a scurry into a cell and hide out there so we're going to go ahead and take her out as smasher with the tip of my j hook hive tool interesting frame of pollen not a lot of pollen but you can see the orange pollen nothing to speak of at all here they're still drawing out some comb and again i got a little bit of nectar here and i got some signs of of some pollen in the cells a little bit of stored pollen but not much to speak of so we're not going to count that this frame has zero resources on it and some drone brood now this frame has b bread at the top not much but i'm going to say as i stare it down 1 8 side of b bread not much on this side at all we're not going to count that a little bit of b bread not enough to count i continue to pick up more and more bees buzzing the tower and what i mean by that they are buzzing my hat and bail just constantly flying around it making a high-pitched noise like hey why don't you go away mister this frame does have some pollen in the middle some bee bread on the edges we're going to call this about a quarter side this side is one quarter full of pollen slash bee bread we're going to say a quarter side over here is full as well so a half a total of a half frame half of a frame of pollen slash bee bread this side is half full of pollen and b bread we're going to call this half over here so a half a side a half a side of the whole side maybe 3 500 frames of b bread and pollen we got to smoke those bees too many bees are on top of their frames that puts them in my way and it risks me killing some by moving my frames around so i need to get them a little deeper and on their comb it's just too many up around the edges now this frame here we see is only larvae and eggs some a little bit of capped over already but mainly just larvae no resources zero resources and the same is true on this side as well all right this frame has brood so zero resources as a queen cup but it's empty oh boy i gotta get those bees off of that lip i don't want to kill any there we go we're gonna call this one eighth of a frame of capped over honey and nectar nothing here but brood all right here we go let's put this back together in a hurry [Music] now that we're wrapping this high back up i want to talk to you about my assessment about what i saw and the condition that colony is in i'm going to use my beekeeping inspection guide i made this available on my last video so many of you downloaded that and i really appreciate your support in using this beekeeping guide i made it so it could be a helpful guide for you when you're making your inspections and so what we're going to look at today is especially important um it's over on page nine this inspection guide walks you through what to look for some of you open up a hive and you're kind of you you kind of get um loss maybe sometimes and what to look for you know maybe a lot of people just open it up and say do i have a queen what am i looking for i'm not sure what i'm seeing or you get distracted by the bees stinging you or not being cooperative you know and you kind of lose track of what you're doing this guide is just that it's a guide to keep you focused so that you can get when you finish your inspection you can get back and you can say okay what did i see and what am i going to do about what i saw or didn't see how do i respond well over on page 8 of the inspection guide it has the information that we've been working on the last two times we've made videos and that is you know how much brood do i have in my hive what's the future of populations look like but today we looked at what sort of resources are in there such as pollen and bee bread and honey and nectar and today i walked you i walked through with you frame by frame on what i was looking at and what i was seeing and one of the reasons i do this on my videos it may kind of be mundane or boring for me looking at frame by frame i do it for new beginners to know how to handle frames they can see me work frames pick them up it kind of encourages new beginners to have more confidence to look at frame by frame a lot of people will send me videos of their hives from five feet back and ask me how it's doing and i'm like uh it needs painted until you look at the frames you have no idea how it's doing or they'll send me pictures of bees going in and out of the front and they'll say how do these bees look i mean seriously last week somebody sent me a picture of the front of a hype not a video a still shot and and wanted me to assess how the hive was doing you can't do that you have to go frame by frame so we're looking frame by frame in here today and i'll tell you what i i documented the different frames that i saw i added up how much pollen how much bee bread how much nectar and honey if it wasn't for that super up there with the nectar and honey there this hive would really be in trouble now it is in trouble can you guess what it's in trouble about it doesn't have much protein inside pollen it's very little very little amount of pollen and uh bee bread we did see some and it's not near enough and here's the thing i live in illinois so right now my bees are mainly on clover and that means that clover doesn't have a ton of pollen they don't have a really a good resource right now for protein and they're not going to really get one anymore we have a lot of protein in the spring when we have dandelions a lot of the fruit trees but and what they'll do they'll start bringing in protein off of grass seeds as if you let your grass kind of grow tall they may grab some off ragweed which isn't always the best form one year get this one year bees were such an a protein deficit they brought in corn pollen it was oh it's corn pollen is not that useful for honeybees at all and the funny thing was about that hive once they brought it in they actually dropped it through the screen and got rid of it it was they just didn't even like it i mean even though i was like i could have told you that so what do you do in a case like that well what i do is i'm gonna watch carefully my colony and it's okay now because they're busy gathering nectar now this is going to affect the bees in the future i've done some talks on protein deficit at bee clubs and conferences about this studies have shown that if a colony experiences a protein deficit like mine is doing then the young larvae that's being fed royal jelly by the nurse bees the royal jelly isn't really what it should be because the nurse bees may have a protein deficit in their bodies and they're not producing the kind of royal jelly that these young larvae need the first three days so it's kind of an issue what happens if a nurse bee isn't well fed she's unable to feed the larvae she'll feed them but what will happen is if these larvaes aren't well fed then they have they live shorter lives they always they don't always make it back from their foraging trips as adults and they're smaller in size they have a lot of issues and you don't see that uh you know you wouldn't think that way but it's true i mean look at people when i'm when a mom's expecting the doctor puts her on prenatal vitamins because you're developing that fetus it's growing so rapidly and you need the proper proteins in a baby to develop the dna and structures of the genes and everything so honeybees are the same way if those young larvae in your hive you're like i want i want to see more brood well you see a lot of brood but if the brood isn't being fed well as larvae you're going to have problems those adults will have problems they won't live long they won't forage well and they're going to be smaller so these things are critical right now that's what you want to know right what do you do about that what i'm going to do as soon as my nectar flow ends as soon as the clover dries up it's going to be longer because we've gotten a lot of rain but as soon as my clover is over i'm going to go right out to that hive and i'm going to start feeding it my additives now i'll leave a link below for my additives that i suggest people use but it's a combination of protein amino acids uh it's a combination of like honey bee healthy and it's one-to-one sugar water so there's a lot of good things in that that keep those bees well fed so i would really encourage you to do the same check out if your bees have a lot of protein well what would have been a lot what would have made me happy i would have been happy if i saw two three four full frames in the deep box of pollen and bee bread i'm talking about at least two or three both sides packed full of pollen and bee bread b bread is more shiny pollen it's pollen mixed with some nectar some enzymes it's starting to ferment a little bit but the bees do that on purpose it's a good food for bees but i saw very little of that and so bees need all this food to raise they're raising their young and they're feeding their young so for me i would give this colony on the resource let's give it a grade i'm going to give it a d plus really a d plus it's almost failing with the amount of resources that are in there again if it wasn't for the super on top there would be hardly nothing in that colony as far as honey nectar and pollen or the protein that they need so don't be fooled when you do your inspection look for the right things i'm hope i'm hoping this will show you what i saw and this hive gets a d plus in resources and i'm going to have to feed it protein i'm going to feed it amino b booster i'm going to have to feed it some honeybee healthy as soon as the nectar flow stops do not feed from the entrance that will induce robbing in the spring only feed from the top and i suggest you use our top feeder for that because that way you can change out your feed jars above a screen so the bees don't bother you and i'll leave a link below for all this but this is so important i hope this inspection guide is a big help for you this inspection guide helps you know what to take out to the colony you know like you need some reading glasses you need to get your smoker fuel in your pockets you're going to be inspecting it for quite a while it talks about making sure you have a hydration drink oh and let me talk about the hydration drink you know as beekeepers we're out there and it's usually in the hottest time of the day right and we're so miserable because we're sweaty it's hot i use a hydration drink that a friend of mine told me about invented by a doctor it wasn't invented by a company or a pharmaceutical company it was invented by a doctor who was working with people in jungles that were that couldn't get to a hospital and he wanted he needed to give him an iv they were so dehydrated and he developed a drink that would hydrate people better than an iv would and so once a lot of us got wind of that that's what we use now it's called drip drop and i'm not sponsored by them i do have an affiliate link below if you want to check that out you can get a hold of this by using my affiliate link what i do i take a bottle of water i take a 16 ounce bottle of water i drink a little bit to make room for my drip drop powder and i pour two of those in there i think i'm mixing that right but i poured two of the little pouches in there i shake it up good man that is that is so good to use it's so easy to use and it really makes me feel so much better uh when i'm out there sweating because i i just soak my shirt under my bee suit i just almost can't wear a bee suit because i sweat so much when it's hot and sweat is running in my eyes when you're dehydrated by the way you don't see as well when your eyes are dehydrated so if you stay hydrated you can see better see the eggs better if you stay hydrated better your mind is to me more clear if you get dehydrated you can't focus anymore and you're out there in the hive and you start making clumsy mistakes because you're dehydrated so this is an important thing about beekeeping stay hydrated when you're out there i'll give you this tip as well are you ready here's a cool tip when you're drinking this water bottle you can drink through your veil you don't have to take your veil off i mean this is worth the whole video right you're like oh my gosh i'm glad i watched it this far this tip is awesome because i used to unzip my veil and swing it back and try to take a drink out in the bee yard and i don't know about you but i either get bees on my face or the bees will fly into my hat all you gotta do is press your veil up against your lips and push the water bottle up against your lips and it just goes right through the veil i mean it's great i got the idea from working in the commercial yards with some of the commercial beekeepers and some of their workers smoke i mean smoke cigarettes you know and they would smoke through the veil and it was great i thought if you can smoke through a veil you could drink water through a veil and i don't know some of you may be like oh i've done that for years that's not a good tip i don't know when i first thought about it and and started doing it it was so cool to use uh just drink right through that veil well thanks so much for watching i hope this video has been helpful for you and knowing how to do a better inspection of your hive and i've got this beekeeping video inspection link below in the description so check that out and i really appreciate your support on purchasing this guide to help you make inspections the way that you should be to gain the right information and then make decisions on what to do to keep your bees healthier that way you make fewer mistakes i think that's awesome that's my passion i want to help you be a better beekeeper and i've got a lot of good videos coming up i've been recording a lot of footage i've been working between all the heavy rains trying to gain a lot of footage for future videos i'm excited about a lot of these videos that i'm making i also have an instagram uh so if you want to check out my instagram i'll leave a link below my granddaughter is really taking the lead on this and every time there's someone new following me on instagram she like flips out and goes crazy she sends me a text we got a new follower on instagram you know we're up to 15 followers on instagram i'm trying to post uh little reels on their little short videos and i'm trying to maybe make a little comments about what i'm seeing uh every day or so so check that link out below for instagram and you need to make lara really happy by uh you know getting on that instagram and following us and she'll flip out when she sees more people are following us that gives her a lot of thrill so i'll look forward to that and i look forward to making these videos for you and i'm going to make a lot more here in the next few weeks so be sure to subscribe and if you click on the bell and that's going to notify you each time i make a new video and i think i want you to do that because i put a lot of energy and time into my videos and i need you to watch them and enjoy them and if you click on the bell it'll pop up on your phone that i made a new one so do that okay take care i'll see you next time well i hope this has been helpful for you i hope you got a lot of valuable i hope this has been helpful for you and i hope you got a lot of valuable information about it please subscribe so you'll be notified each time i make a new video i'm gonna see in the end of course i gotta wait on a train to go through hope this video has been helpful for you today and please leave me a thumbs up and subscribe that sounds terrible i can't talk

Channel: David Burns

Views: 78,263

Keywords: Beekeeping, bee hive honey extraction, bee hives, bees hive, david burns, feeding bees, flow hive, foragers, harvesting honey, hive, honey bees, honeybees, how much honey to leave on a hive, how to start beekeeping

Id: hJU_LlB_gHQ

Length: 32min 20sec (1940 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021