Beekeeping | How to Find Your Queen In An Aggressive Hive

look at that we have a Mite on a drone pupa this Cupa fell out during inspection and it shows that the mites are already on the drone look at that now they're on my hive tool hey guys I'm David Burns I love bees I'm passionate I'm on fire today about this video because I'm going to open this Hive up this is my most defensive Hive on the property surprise I'm not stung right now but I'm going to show you today how to work a hive that's more defensive and not get stung and then I'm also going to show you when you have to make a split this Hive storms a lot I've had it for several years I'm going to show you how to absolutely find the queen when you have to find her to take her away to make that split we have a fun day planned let's get into this doggone Hive a lot of you think you can tell if a hive is going to swarm by maybe looking at the entrance or watching their behavior from the outside look the only way you're going to know if a hive is getting ready to swarm is by getting into this Hive today and you have to take a look at the frames and see if there are queen selves that's about the only way to do it so let's get into this Hydra day and let's start taking a look see what is going going on if you remember this Hive maybe about a month ago or longer I gave them an actual jar of sugar water one quart it's all I gave them I think back in February maybe early March and it was just a way to get them sort of pumped up for spring which really seemed to help but what I want to look at today is did that one Court actually help them start raising some brood I'll be honest with you this is not the nicest Hive on the property that's why I'm suited up and wearing gloves because it doesn't take long at all for these bees to let me know they're not happy that I'm here so we'll we'll see what we find what I'm looking for today is what kind of activity of of any swarm cells that I might see let me pop in here and say Please Subscribe guys I love it when you subscribe and give me a thumbs up it helps my videos so much I love making videos for you guys hit the Subscribe button right now let's just on this Hive you sort of have to work as fast as you can while being slow I can see that this these beads are still very very protective of their colony they're just coming out pretty fast as I work them so that that's why I'm working on my smoker more if those of you that have a little bit of more defensive behavior from hives you have to keep working the smoker and you have to keep working in slow motion as fast as you can because if you go too slow then the beads are going to just get more agitated the longer you have the hive open and you're showing your presence every Thursday night live stream seven o'clock we have giveaways and I answer your questions Thursday night seven o'clock the links in the description below Central Time see you there so it could be that the queen is on this Frame because of the larvae and the eggs that I see but notice the frame how it has drone brood at the bottom some of that's been torn open and look at this queen cell right here at the bottom is there anything in it yes that Queen cell has larvae in it look at that Bingo we picked up a swarm cell that fast do you everybody see the Swarm cell Red Alert this Hive is on Swarm Duty let's put this frame back in the hive to keep that swarm cell warm that's important so we do know we have a swarm cell on a frame it's at the lower part and it has a larvae developing in it floating in royal jelly its location tells us it's a swarm cell because the location shows it at the bottom of a frame see if we have a swarm cell on this Frame it's very lightweight which means it has a brood on it I can pick that up right off the top when I lift them up all right look at that good brood some brood has emerged we do have swarm cells right there in the corner two of them look at that ripe and ready swarm cells we definitely want to find the queen in this hive be nice to see her and decide how we want to split this Hive to prevent this form that will be happening in the next week week and a half this Hive will swarm in 10 to 20 days look at that solid brood pattern so we are on Red Alert somebody is calling me uh can I call you back I'm right in the middle right in the middle of a beehive okay bye-bye that was a B Team Six member patient enough to allow me to call her back all right so let's keep looking for the queen because I see eggs on this Frame and I always know the queen is going to be really close by where those eggs are okay so we're gonna put this frame back in the hive as well because it has swarm cells on it so we have two frames with swarm cells work as fast as you can as slow as you can slow motion movements keep the smoker going on these bees that are a little more defensive than most colonies you'll have a better time to inspect longer we're just looking at the top deep we've got the bottom deep to look at too so we have a lot of work to do today okay not really seeing swarm cells on the bottom of this Frame good brood pattern so look this Hive did produce a lot of brood just from the one quart of sugar water that I gave them if that makes sense to you guys they have a lot of cat brood that they probably would not have had had I not given them that early start of one-to-one sugar water with all my additives we sell additives to put in those jars so be sure to pick up a pack of our additives it's still not too late to feed additives to your bees I'm going to do it because I don't have a good flow of nectar yet it's starting to pick up but I can give all my colonies a big boost by mixing my additives to one-to-one sugar water for sure that's a good brood pattern it is opened in the middle because they're emerging out not seeing Queen cells per se I see a little bit of drone activity on the bottom part of that frame so again you're looking for Queen cells when you start working a hive like this trying to determine if they're going to swarm on you or not how populated are they and do they have swarm cells we have a lot of drone brood at the bottom I don't see any swarm cells on this Frame and sort of look just that fast looking toward the bottom for obvious swarm cells let's take a look at the other side a lot of brood has emerged a lot of a lot of bees all piled up together my queen could be underneath that pile I'd like to take the old Queen with me if I take the old Queen it forces this Hive to actually raise a new Queen but I'm going to tell you what I've already got a lot of bees that are buzzing the tower and what I mean by that is they are around my face letting me know they don't like me here and so it will be a challenge to go through the top box and then also go through the bottom box it'd be a challenge to um examine every frame of colony that's a little more aggressive than normal but we might have to do that to find our Queen unless we just get lucky and find her up here somewhere so these this is an example of the success that I have an overwintering bees I raise a lot of bees of winter physiology in the fall and then all through the winter I continue to feed my beads candy boards so they can continue to stay healthy good nutrition and uh that's something that I've been doing for well over a decade now it's recently more people are starting to feed bees some form of maybe fondant or something over their hives in the winter and they're seeing the same success that I've been writing about for well over a decade when I first started doing it first started talking about it it wasn't very well accepted people were like that guy's an idiot for feeding its bees in the winter you should never do that but if you've ever heard one of my talks that I give around the country about this then you'll know and see my videos of how successful this is to feed bees and how well fed bees of good nutrition actually makes them stronger to resist different types of viruses so good nutrition is the key that's for certain with this Colony I've noticed they do not like at all any sudden movements you may have saw just just made a sudden movement picking up my smoker and they sort of boil out of the top from way back there I was probably four feet away and they noticed that sudden movement so working bees in slow motion is looks like this put your hive tool slowly in like this I'm going to loosen this Frame side of the frame I'm going to go over here slowly look at that see how the bees remain calm when you work in slow motion now I want to lift the frame up with my J hook so I'm going to go slow motion like that look at that I know it seems ridiculous but you can work your hives longer if you work in slow motion and you don't make them all upset when you're ready to pick it up go ahead and smoke it before you pick it up again smoke the bees off the top so you get your fingers in the right position more successfully approach it slowly like this when you pick it up draw it out of the hive slowly this is heavy it's got honey on it don't go fast just because you can okay we'll look for the queen here because there is a little brood in the middle she could be there laying it's possible we could have missed the queen on one of these earlier frames look at that we have a Mite on a drone pupa this Pupa fell out during inspection and it shows that the mites are already on the drone look at that now they're on my hive tool let's see if we can smash her well I think I've smashed it maybe not no still alive trying to kill it but it's moving around on my hive tool now I smashed it there it is dead on the tip of my hive too now I want to smoke between the boxes really well trying to raise it up as tall as I can with the slipping too much okay there it sits now let's get back to work foreign that is holding some drones right here we'll just scrape that out of the way and discard that don't throw it in your yard I don't think it's good just to throw this around let's let's discard it properly all right shall we look for the queen but don't find the queen here we're going to drop back to the other box and look more precisely always pull out the frame over here because that will be the frame that has the least amount of bees and the queen is likely not to be here so we don't have to worry about rolling the queen and killing her usually this frame has capped honey on it that's all that's on that frame let's set it aside and make sure that's all I see over here yep okay guys while we're looking for the queen let me encourage you to please subscribe click on the like button give me a thumbs up it helps my videos so much do me a favor I appreciate it so much if you could subscribe now as we pull this Frame Up let's take a look and see what is on it again feeding that one quart of our additives made so much brood and so many young beads that are foraging so hard today look at that cat brood there it's beautiful and this is only like April the 11th or something so normally most people come out of winter in Illinois anyway with nothing like this kind of brood let me hold it up here and look for the queen so let's drop this frame back in here we need to smoke them though they're boiling up out of there they're flying up at me so it's time to smoke them one good thing about coming out of winter with a lot of bees is that your hives didn't die in the winter sort of like a con is that you have to get out here pretty quick and start doing some swarm control methods like we're doing right now but hey which would you rather have swarm control methods or dead bees coming out of winter I'll take swarm control all right so look what I'm going to do here in order to keep looking for my queen I'm not going to do a walk away split although that's what I'm look that's what it's going to appear to look like but I'm putting the top on and I have one deep as you can see over here that's just right there and what I'm going to do with this deep is I'm going to carry it away from the bee yard to my picnic table and I'm going to inspect it over there it's a kind of a neat trick I've learned it from other beekeepers technically it's not my idea that when you do that the beads are much more gentle when you take them away from their full Hive location all right so this is interesting I got The Hive on my picnic table over here and let's see if they are calmer any bees that will get airborne are going to find their way back to their hive it's so windy today it can't really get my smoker to blow smoke where I wanted to am I recording yeah okay all right there we go I gotta get a little closer to get that smoke on them we've had not so good weather to be outdoors with all the wind unfortunately in Illinois we are a windy state so I'm always battling where to put extra hives and always try to get hives out of the wind especially for winter you know dang all right let's see what we can find so what we're going to do is look for the queen in this house and we're going to determine if it's true that the bees are easier to work when you walk off with a deep like this away from the hive see here's our frame of Honey on the outside wall not going to find the queen there at all it's just not going to happen we'll set that aside what this affords me the opportunity to do is if I don't find her here again I just have to go back and look at 10 frames over there so we know she's in one of these boxes this this Frame is so heavy Big Frame of kept over honey they went through the winter with this kind of meat scrumptious food on board that's crazy isn't it yeah I'm gonna say that they are much easier to handle over here I think that's true another heavy frame those of you that are really strong fans on my channel know that this particular box the second top deep was full of honey all frames and that's what we're looking at today they ate very little of it in the wintertime since I gave them winter be kinds they ate the winter be kinds and didn't really feel the need to go after the honey so strongly wow this position I can actually see much better to see the queen I was in the shade over there and I was holding my and my camera angle wasn't just the best for finding the queen I don't see any eggs on this Frame let's look at the other side okay I don't really see any brood on this Frame so let's go to the next one yeah the bees are much more gentle away from their hive like this I have no idea why that is but they're less flighty they're spraying a lot more Nationals playing around so much more easier to look with the sun shining on the bees I see larvae and I see eggs all right so there's our Queen see how easy it is find the eggs find the larvae and there's our Queen got bees on her right now where did I you can see the queen is right here by my finger she is nice and large look at that see her right there so I want to take her she's going to become part of the new split there she is right in the middle I wanted to make sure I could still see her make sure she didn't fall off so we're gonna gently put this Frame right in the middle watching the queen all the way down all right she is on the comb doing doing so now we need some resources so we got a frame of brood with a queen on it we're making a split one of these frames had cells on it so we want to not take that one we don't need the cells this Hive back home needs the cells more than and then they'll probably use those cells to replace that Queen so super swarm cells make good Queens all right that's not a bad frame there if it doesn't have cells on it I don't see any cells so let's take this one too that'll be two good frames of brood for the split I'm gonna put it on the same side as my queen is on over here so we're just simulating a swarm by taking this over to the new hive the new hives are split we take the old Queen so the bees feel like Mama's Gone they have to raise a new Queen right gonna take this Frame of honey for resources look at that that'd be great for them to have let's put it over here we got one more frame maybe two we could take five frames out that'd be like making a nucleus up yeah look at that I don't I don't have to use Smoke by moving this Hive over moving this one deep Hive body over here I'm not even really having to use smoke and this is my most aggressive defensive hive on the property I like them I've had them oh gosh it might be my third or fourth year of having these bees and they do really well so I I put up with their little more defensive Behavior let's see what we got here kind of the same thing a lot of good brood a lot of good pollen up there and not seeing any Queen cells either but again it's I know they have eggs so I'm not worried about that let's take it we're going to put it right next to our honey frame all right that's four I have three frames of brood a mixture of pollen and honey on them and then one solid frame of honey this is the Big Frame of nectar let's go ahead and now that this Hive over here needs the nectar and the Honey to raise a queen from so let's let's give it to this hive okay now we owe this Hive for drawn frame don't we doesn't have to be drawn we can put it in some new if we want to now I'm going to give them four new frames to draw out this is going to be on the top so let's take a couple out and put them along the outer edges of The Brood that they already have in here okay good all right perfect no science to what I'm doing here in my opinion I'm just giving them some frames to draw out because this is a season to draw frames out but I'm also kind of deciding making sure where to put those undrawn comb not to disturb The Brood Nest area entirely because this again is the top area we have brood below them as well kids we're going to take the top off and bring the Deep back bring the top deep back to position how do we do pretty good there we go kind of speed things up there a little bit so I like to put this Hive right here need to have room for the mower to go through there I'm going to leave my screen bottom board covered for this new split that I'm making it's just going to give them a little more protection all right there we go got my new top this new plastic top I highly recommend these and these bottom boards these plastic B smart bottom boards we sell we are almost sold out because you guys love them so much all right I'll make sure that's sitting the way it's supposed to yeah it is all right now I need to put a brick on oh gotta put frames in here two more or three more [Applause] looks like I can get one more over here one two three four five six seven eight nine yeah we got one more frame to put in here let's make them all slide that way I got one more frame to put right there that's too tight yeah we got room all right let's put the top back on it and let's put a brick on it [Applause] now we're going to leave the golf cart in the front like we did last time and see if we can cut down on the bees returning and returning to the Mother Ship now I can tell already that they are taking orientation flights but I'm gonna block off the two outer sides of this bottom board here kind of here look at that put that front tire right there those beads are gonna have to decide they're living in a new place I hope you can see my love and passion for honeybees and if you want to get into beekeeping watch this video right here how to start beekeeping I'll see you over there

Channel: David Burns

Views: 122,823

Keywords: Beekeeping, beekeeping 101, Beekeeping tips, beekeeping training, honey bees, how to inspect a hive, smoker, keeping a smoker going, smoker fuel, beekeeping classes, beekeeping basics, beekeeping for beginners, how to start beekeeping, lighting a smoker, david burns beekeeping, varroa mite, when to start beekeeping, packages of bees, queen bee, where to buy a queen bee, hot bees, finding your queen, making a split

Id: rB4hUrrCn1E

Length: 28min 50sec (1730 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2023