Beekeeping | How Often Should You Inspect Your Hive & More

yep there's the queen hey big Squad David Burns with you today I'm pumped and excited to share with you a new technique for inspecting your hive as far as manipulating your frames go a lot of talk is around about you know do you put the frames back in the exact same spot that you took them out of does it hurt the hive if you manipulate your frames well you know you've watched me I don't always put them back in the same place I recommend that you do but a new study shows it really doesn't matter and today I'm going to show you a technique that I developed that I think I was the first one to ever come up with this as far as I know that makes inspecting the frames and putting them back in very easy I'm going to open up a hive walk you through it let's get started now one of the things I want to teach you guys about inspecting a study came out just today like June the 8th I think saying that if you don't put frames back in the exact same order that you take them out it really doesn't matter that the bees are pretty resilient and one of the things that I try to do when I inspect all 10 frames like this is that I'll pull this one out closest to the wall for the reason that the queen is usually not over here so I don't have to worry about rolling her as I pull this Frame out usually there's no brood over here it's mostly honey so I leave this one outside the hive and that gives me space to slide frames toward me as I inspect and when I do I slide them all this way this Frame that's outside of the hive I will have all of these nine frames pulled this way including that one and then I put the one I took out here I slide it against this wall now that's a new neat way to do it and if you do the math if you think about it if you inspect the hive a whole season it it will take you about a whole season to actually get this frame back in its original position if that makes sense I'll show you let's just get started this is a neat technique so watch this video all the way through so you can see this Frame is empty nothing on it pretty lightweight like I said that's why I start over here oftentimes this is the last frame to be drawn out and this is relatively a new deep that I added not too long ago at all so they're just starting to work it even though it had some drawn comb on it all right we got crazy comb a little bit you can see what's going on over here and it looks pretty good I don't see any eggs or anything and here let me look again let's keep working our way across now like I said this Frame here had a little bit of kind of stretched out combed you see how it's a little bit bumpy right in there not to worry I don't care about that so as I look for eggs I'm not seeing any eggs so they're drawing this out for for honey production so this is what I mean I'm pulling these frames now I'm putting this one just barely Off the Wall that's usually its final position it needs to be in so now these two I'll never have to manipulate again this is better for your bees because a lot of times I used to do it when I was done inspecting I had to move all the frames in order to make them the way they were but again nine of these frames will be in their original same position toward each other boy this one is really pretty heavy but it's got some good brood on it it's a super frame and a deep box and that means that they're going to make some drone brood on the bottom and good capped over brood in the center and then it rainbows out to larvae pollen nectar pretty typical rainbow effect now if you wanted to do mic control you could tear these uh these drone on the bottom you could tear that off and do away with it or you can leave it on there like I'm doing we need drones so I'm just going to ignore it I do that on purpose just to be able to have a little bit more drone and sometimes I do it just because I'm desperate I don't have a deep frame when I'm in a yard and I just throw a super in there and that's what happens all right now I've been teaching you guys about misreading your queen and I want to teach this to you again this is going to be a great frame to explore well most of us that have been in beekeeping for a while we're going to say that's not a bad brood pattern there's some open uh brood at the top maybe some hygienic Behavior don't know don't worry about that it's not perforated for foul brood anything like that it looks healthy and there's a lot of larvae and a lot of eggs and if we flip it over though this could make somebody think oh my my queen is got spotty Brew because it just doesn't look normal does it but let me show you another frame you can't judge a Queen by simply looking and deciding about one frame only there may be other causes that are happening that make that look unusual so look at this we we were concluding that she didn't have a good brood pattern had we not lifted this Frame Up we might have killed the queen and replaced her right but look can you get a better brood pattern than that or that so let me show you let me pull this other frame up again that sometimes you misread misjudged the Queen by misreading a frame again let's take a look oh no not a good brood pattern even the capped over brood in the center a little bit of spaces that are missed uh oh not a good brood pattern right but then you look at the next frame and there can't be any Brew better brood pattern look at that solid solid so be careful guys when you're evaluating your queen don't justify your weight evaluate your queen based on one particular frame we're working our way across this is the main thing I want to show you when you inspect every frame you're actually working your way across and you're not having to re-manipulate your frames again now we're getting into nectar with honey capped over at the top and here we go let me look down in the cells don't see any brood again that's nectar being put in just drop that back in got two more frames to look at this is when you want to do a more thorough inspection by looking at all the frames that you can okay they're pulling this out for honey storage over here and they got the nectar going they put that closer to the wall as we would expect and the next frame next to the wall has always been the place where I find more wonky comb and you just have to kind of deal with it sometimes but see they're not really pulling this Frame out much at all just getting started so what I what I can do is let me show you I'm pulling these frains back toward me so I've got nine frames in here and now I don't have to touch these nine frames please pay attention so what you want to do is tighten these nine up leave this Gap over here you always want a little space against the wall but use your hive tool like this to make sure that the gaps between the frames fill up now this is a little bit off there we go so use your hive tool to tighten up all the frames and what we're going to do now is put the frame that we took out that was in this position we're going to place it over here in this position now let me tell you a few reasons why this has been official if you remember this is the comb that isn't drawn out on one side a little bit wonky if we left it in the 10th position over here it may always stay that way they may never get on there but now every two weeks it's going to be rotated closer every about every two weeks twice a month it's going to move so you're looking at this Frame getting closer and closer to the middle passing through the middle so in a course of a whole B season that frame here that was right here that frame is going to just rotate all the way through and and it's going to be a neat way to do it so I've never heard this concept before it's something that I came up with myself and it's just the way that I can make sure that frames are pulled out evenly and that one frame doesn't always stay unpoled or undrawn out and also allow some space over here use this extra comb or use this Frame that you put in here to to make everything tight in the middle all right let's take it take a look at that the bottom deep a lot of you oftentimes send me pictures or ask email questions about what your bees are doing based on what you're observing in the entrance you can't do that you got to go into the hive start examining what's going on in the hive and look at that they haven't done much with the new frames yet they've gone up into the drawn comb that already had given them up above but they are starting to stretch out uh into these other new frames so I started this Hive maybe it was a split I can't remember maybe it was a package a nuke or something but these were the five frames that I started with giving them five on the outside that's again a good plan of mine is to take this Frame out and just start moving it this way during the inspection process you understand now in this case it doesn't matter a whole lot because this Frame that I'm looking at first in the number one position here toward me is simply not drawn out and probably so is that one oh it's drawn out a little bit there's a little bit of a start all right let's keep looking at the next new one right here and let's see what it looks like we're also inspecting the hive they've drawn out the back side a little bit and they've drawn out the front side a lot and packed it full of pollen look at that great pollen in there all right we glance for the queen during the inspection but we know she's not going to be there again this one's going to be in its final position we don't have to manipulate it again it's going to be right there all right let's work our way across looking at this next frame here frame number three because I took one out again don't judge The Brood pattern because these uh The Brood in the middle has emerged and they're drawing it out cleaning it getting ready for the queen to lay some more brood in there we've already seen her laying pattern up above and she's doing good so this is looking good too a lot of eggs and larvae down in these empty cells being replaced so that's good keep working our way across how long should an inspection last how long should it take it's going to take as long as you need to I always tell people when you inspect a hive you want to inspect you want to have two different type of inspections one type is to go in every two weeks and look for eggs if you see eggs you're done get out but as you want to look for pests and diseases you want to spend more time in the hive looking at each frame So today we're looking at each frame so that's going to take you I don't know anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes taking us longer because I'm talking to you and I'm showing you stuff but see that's a good brood pattern right there compared to the one that we just looked at good Lane coin we're happy let's keep working our way across don't forget the smoke sometimes you get two um you know occupied in your inspection you forget to keep the Beehive smoked we just saw a good frame of cat brood and here is a frame where they have emerged we've got a lot of brood that so we're not worried about the hive they've got a lot of frames of brood they're well capped over be emerging any day for reference if you see a frame like I showed you capped on both sides that's almost about 7 000 new beads that will emerge out of there there's about 3 500 cells on each side now this Frame is full of eggs and very young larvae down in the cells here so the queen has been here recently laying those eggs getting this Frame ready for brood production same on the other side some eggs brewed being laid let's look for the queen again over here okay if we missed her anytime you see eggs it means that the queen is in the neighborhood very close by see anything there let's make sure we smoke them again yep we're on our bottom deep looking at things looking at all 20 frames today isn't that amazing it's fun stuff to do and it all right good frame of brood look at that and I want to show you some things on this Frame there's some blobs but that's just drone brood being blobbed up like that I don't know if that's a queen cell I want to take my finger move the beads off there right there that's just drone brood look at this side here another example of very good brood pattern very nice and you can see on the very end here young larvae and eggs again the queen is really working hard to fill out these frames of brood I'm not seeing her so let's put this frame back oh I see her she's right there wasn't sure you probably saw her too just happened to see her walking by yep there's the queen all right good watch the queen all the way in now we're going to go ahead and inspect inspect the 10 frames because that's what I'm teaching you to do in case you didn't see your queen or you were looking for pests and diseases look at all 10 we know the Queen's on here this is going to be a frame being pulled out on that side for nectar and these these two here are empty so we don't have to pull them up all right so let's stretch them this is a technique again remember right so we're going to take this Frame that has a little comb on it that we took out from number nine a number one position we're going to put it over here to number 10 away from me all right we're done let's smoke them down and put the Deep put the high back together some people say the queen doesn't go down but in this case she does because there's a lot of eggs and brood up in the top deep and now she's down in the bottom deep she moved down on her own accord isn't that amazing what you can do with these frames and make it simpler for you when you're doing your inspections it's just so much easier guys I really love you I really appreciate you being a part of my beekeeping Channel means a lot to me and Sherry we have a ball with you guys have a ball with you on Thursday night live streams everything like that we work hard to help you be a better beekeeper I kind of think it shows doesn't it so thanks so much for being a part of the YouTube channel here and be sure and click on subscribe give me a thumbs up it means so much now I've got a video right here I want you guys to watch you guys asked me this question a lot David why don't you use inner covers well follow the video right here I'll see you over there we'll explain it

Channel: David Burns

Views: 27,209

Keywords: Beekeeping, beekeeping 101, Beekeeping tips, beekeeping training, honey bees, how to inspect a hive, smoker, keeping a smoker going, beekeeping classes, beekeeping basics, beekeeping for beginners, how to start beekeeping, why keep bees, save the bees, lighting a smoker, david burns beekeeping, varroa mite, when to start beekeeping, packages of bees, queen bee, where to buy a queen bee, bee suit, beekeeping business, how often should you inspect your bees

Id: eG1SwVnSk1I

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023