Beekeeping - Taking Apart My Largest Bee Hive Ever!

hey everybody what's up i'm david burns EAS certified master beekeeper i meant to be yard today and i'm looking forward to getting in some beehives showing you some cool things we're gonna dig into the big height behind me today so what we have here is an overt winter colony starting out the year and three medium boxes these are actually eight frame boxes and as the season progressed i needed to add a super I didn't really have any desire to put new equipment on there even though we manufactured new equipment I don't like to waste it on myself but I had an eighth frame deep so I put that on there for a honey super but then I had a whole bunch of ten frame equipment that I did I use them on my hives so I just added a spacer as you can see here and that only that allowed me to utilize a ten frame and you know look at that handle it's upside down that's why I used old equipment that we couldn't sell for some reason like that anyway this spacer allows me to use a ten frame super on an eight frame hive and so then they continue to grow right and I added this deep box because they were expanding so quickly I needed a lot more room I've added the deep super run here and for good measures I don't know if they went up this far but I added another deep but even after I did that the hive was gigantic in size right they swarmed on me I wasn't paying attention to signs and signals they were given me so since they swarmed on me I don't know how much work they did on these upper boxes that I added and there they were going really strong until about a couple days ago we had a really strong nectar flow but today is the first noticeable day that I've seen a dramatic decrease in nectar flow it's like a switch went off very few bees traveling in and out amazing that they can go one day just working their butts off to the next day not much activity so this is most of them are home I'm gonna show you a couple of things about inspecting a big hive like this particularly because like I said not much activity going on as far as the nectar flow look at that I mean they were boiling out two or three days ago that means a lot of bees are home that also means a nectar durst that means that other colonies are looking for may be opportunities to rob I'm taking precautions that's what I want to show you today taking precautions on get all my pieces lined up out here how I'm gonna take this apart and minimize robber bees detecting that this hive is open and that's always important that's a good tip to learn it's got my smoker starting over here and as you can see today we've got some burlap in here we've also got some old blue jeans that I use he's smoking up pretty good there every time I show a video on smoke smokers or smoker fuel or something all of you are like oh dang I wish my smoker was that good my smoker goes out on me and if you've watched some of my other videos the big key is you gotta have a lot of fuel you got to get a good fire going and you gotta have a lot of fuel in there and get her hot so that when you close it up it has fuel and I'm packing a little tighter than than I should but I got an idea that we're gonna have this I've open a long time and again I may have some robber bees out there looking around Scout bees kind of looking for an opportunity to Rob out a hive put my reading glasses on so that I can see eggs whatnot we're gonna glove up today because there's a lot of work to be done I've maybe open a little while and I'm wearing the bee suit today [Music] I got some propolis up there in the top I hear bees up there a lot of purple Wow look at that look at that profile is sticking up [Music] need a ladder oh my gosh it's heavy the reason I reason I'm putting it here is to control any robber bees so I've actually just kind of placed it on a screen bottom board as you can see here and that allows some ventilation and then I'm gonna put a top cover on it but before we do we're gonna take a look at it I can't believe I picked that up and put it down there it was so enormous ly heavy it was just I I didn't drop it I mean I didn't ever feel like I was gonna lose it but it was just so heavy Wow so let's just start taking a look let's try to go for a frame in the middle that that'd be a quick inspection I can tell the frame in the middle is not rubbing against any other frames next to it so as not to damage the comb you know just like we expected full of nectar nothing capped over yet but certainly getting very close I don't I pulled this one out to see if there was any brood I didn't see any brood normally brood would be in the center there so now that I've inspected this giving my glove back we feel good about how much nectar is in the very top one so we're gonna put a top cover on it that a control robber bees alright now we're gonna do the same thing we're going to smoke this one and drop it right on top of the one that's on the bottom board again we can take a look and control any robber bees during a nectar girth like we're having now so let's smoke the top of it that's gonna be a little easier because I won't have to reach so high up and get a grip on it again a lot of propolis missiles heavy Wow oh what a workout who needs a gym guys always remember when you're working bees to keep your smoker puffing and you know add some air to it or she'll go out on your son we'll take an opportunity now to get some air going all right that's good let's take a look at some frames of honey my suspicion is that some of these in the center are gonna be really ready to harvest I'm gonna make some room because this one is not drawn out on the edge and this the other combs are really really full and I don't want to rip one open and leak honey everywhere so I'm this allow me to pull it back like this kind of separate them out again we don't know if there's any brood up here or if this all just gonna be honey okay so what we have here is honey mostly capped over not all let's look at another one whoo look at that a super frame in a deep box they added their own wax to the bottom your own comb it's kind of cool-looking oh yeah I'll have some comb honey today break that off and take her inside one way to make comb honey in it let me show you one more Wow look at that baby that's some comb honey okay so let's go ahead and put our top cover on for protection there all right back to the hives smoking them a little bit like this helps sort of drive the bees down at the same time it calms the bees as well we're gonna be able to look at these frames let's just pull one up in the middle and see what it looks like because they're not touching so if we're careful we can pull one out without scraping the other one lot of sticky propolis today but good thing is it's very hot outside which is allowing the propolis to be pretty pliable today so this is our third honey super we're looking at on top of the brood nest area and boy that's just right for the pickings and that isn't that beautiful good job girls I don't think you can get any sweeter no pun intended any sweeter than that kind of did a little experiment with this colony wow they're all capped over so this all needs to be extract or taken off and extracted we're gonna keep looking but I'm saying is experiment with this County is just give them a lot of boxes that they can fill up when it seems like you know maybe they're never gonna fill them up I gave them so many extra boxes and they fill them up so we're gonna move this heavy super over here back to our our storage pile and stack it on top now we're going from the ten frame super here down to the ink frame stuff trying to free up all the propolis there we go can't believe those hives formed a couple of weeks ago because there's a lot of bees in here Oh can't do this anymore whoa take a look at another one I was curious if we would find any brood in here but I guarantee of what we're gonna find is nothing but more honey supers filled with honey we're gonna start on the edge just take a peek go across no brood mostly capped over on both sides as you can see and that's all the way against the wall wow it's gonna hold this out for a second not long long enough to take a peek get other stuff [Music] Wow oh look out look how much just pulled out beyond the woods you see that they like drew it out way past the wood both sides are beautiful okay so this whole super here all the way across yep capped over ready for harvest captain top back on behind me well let's put this one on there cover the whole distance but it'd be fun they give us some protection again we're just protecting our scenario against robber bees because it's a little bit of a nectar dirts right now some Scout bees may detect some open boxes here a little bit and I'm killing my back today with this stuff these things are at least 50 plus pounds golly let me use my body weight this one seems to be extremely heavy lean it into my stomach my hip and move it over oh yeah she's a beast whoa baby Wow this is a honey monster machine here we go again with the third up from the bottom and let's start with the one against the wall see what it looks like Wow third up from the wall completely capped over ready for harvest all the way across all right so this super this super is packed full of honey as well so I've got 1/2 a deep full of honey a deep full of honey a super full of honey a deep full of honey this super is full of honey this is such a prolific honey producing hive now we're getting down to the bottom two now we're gonna put a top on alright all this stuff here it's just a little bit of what we call connective comb or Burke home and it's what the bees do between the frames hanging down from the top and the top are the ones on the bottom a little bit of space there now remember I told you this hive swarmed a few weeks ago and I don't know that they've made a new queen yet so we'll start taking a look at some of these frames we're hoping we're down to the brood nest area a lot of people ask me David do you use Queen excluders well you can see from the way I operate my colonies I don't need to my brood has been held down really nicely I've had nothing but honey and nectar above my brood nest area I teach in my classes how to do that and it's a technique that's really easy to do and that way if you have to use a queen excluder you kind of limit the honey production some people call it a honey excluder so hopefully we're down in the brood nest area and this is a frame of pollen which is a good sign look at that frame all that pollen in there and a bunch of drones male bees walking around okay so we know we got good nutrition in the colony I don't see I haven't seen any small high beetle I saw three or four on the top cover which I killed immediately all right this frame is polished ready for the Queen to lay in those are drones the big boys walking across I don't see any eggs and again since they swarmed I doubt if they have had a chance to actually produce a queen yet I saw that Queen cell that's used nobody was home in case you saw it you might be thinking hey he missed the Queen cell it's a it's a swarm cell that had been opened up [Music] okay on this frame we do have larvae you can see white larvae down in the cells and we have capped brood so a new queen is working hard good good deal and I'm really thankful that she's staying down here again look at all the brood that's been laid capped over on this side you might be thinking is the Queen marked absolutely not because they swarmed and so the swarm clean I've not taken time to open this up and check for her part of marker I'm gonna only look in this box right here since I saw good brood pattern there's no need for me to find the Queen I saw evidence of a prolific laying Queen so I have no desire to actually have to see her that is an excellent brood pattern and I actually sold the Queen out of this box earlier in the year and just to kind of relieve some pressure and break some brood cycles but whoever whatever customer got that one they must be happy too good brood pattern just keep looking at across here isn't this great my gosh life as a beekeeper is so rewarding to be able to go outside and and work your bees and enjoy what you're seeing and have all this bounty of honey that I'm faced with behind me they're excellent brood pattern oh my gosh I would just say again this is us this is the highs at over wintered so nicely an eighth frame equipment and I love the genetics the beads are already attempting to clean up some of the spilt honey from when we broke the sections apart from the different boxes you could see them cleaning that up beautiful and beautiful brood pattern okay so I'm done looking I love everything that I see I mean this is just your model beehive you're everything you want to see in a hive is right there I love it and so we're feeling good about this hive so we're just gonna put her back together and I'm debating on what to do with all that honey behind me oh my goodness gotta do something with her right so I want to take this opportunity to thank you guys for subscribing to my channel on beekeeping we've been doing beekeeping videos since the beginning of time so anyway there's my brood nest area to eighth frame medium which are 6 and 5/8 I think deep and so the brood nest is there and over here look at that all of this is filled with 80% capped over honey from this year 2019 using some each frame equipment on top our 10 frame equipment on top of 8 frame equipment it worked really well so now I've got a lot of work I've got to get the bees off of all of my boxes and start collecting all of this capped over honey and if I can actually harvest it quickly put it back on is in the nectar flow continues which it doesn't look very promising they could actually fill them up again I don't get any kickback for promoting this stuff just took it off the shelf in our store but it's called honey bandit no unpleasant odor all food great ingredients nothing works better blah blah blah right clear supers fast and friendlier than anything else available that's a big claim I tried it last year Oh my gosh Wow couldn't believe it let's go ahead and work this over let's go ahead and see if that's a you know I've got all these super stacked up over here full of nectar or honey so I'm gonna drop each one back on the hive put this stuff on it on a towel force the bees back into the brood nest area let's let's get working okay so we've placed another super on from the pile over there you know we've got all those supers and we place one on top of the brood nest area here and so what we want to do now is see if we can run the bees out of it with our solution so the one the way I like to do it is lay it across this hive like this and then spray it it doesn't smell like terrible either if you can't get my gloves tighter yeah all right there we go this one does chase the bees out I'm gonna flip it over I'm just wetting this side of it all right here we go you can hear them revving up they're getting out of there I leave the edges open here for ventilation to pull some of the smell down in there and it takes about three to five minutes not long I'm glad that I'm um I'm not downwind of it I got downwind just for a minute whew it's not it smells like cherries dad they're B so if you were to look down between the frames you've been watching me do this just for a few minutes here and if you take a peek of what it actually looks like down the frames I mean there's just very few bees down on those combs anymore you're always gonna have some right but for the most part they're gone taken and so what I'll do now I'll just keep going like this a little bit when I turn it upside down I'm probably gonna have bees on the bottom frames bottom of the frames so I'm gonna take my beaver I should get my bee brush ready and just brush them off and then I'm gonna lay it on top of a top cover I've got it I've got another way to control this so I'm gonna get my top cover situated and ready and if you notice I'll just I just kind of place my top cover over here in the grass and the shade and I can put my I'll be able to put my super over there and I'll put a top cover right on top of it to protect it from robber bees all right let's take a look let me get my bee brush and some rev up the smoker just in case always keep track of your smoker all right let's pick it up from the front it it did not work as well as it has in the past so now we go to plan B let me show you what Plan B is all right Plan B is this Plan B is a lot more labor-intensive takes more time Lampe I'm gonna take a super and lay it inside the top cover right here and I'm gonna individually brush bees off the frames one by one and move them over to the empty super let me show you how that works not bad he's gonna brush all the bees off must but most of them will come off it's not all I'll usually do this on about 3 frames and then I'll put my top cover on it so as not to attract robber bees if you hold it down in there you can brush your beads into the hive oh this is awesome this is really a lot of fun people I'm not sure what kind of day job you have I can't imagine your day job would be this much fun maybe it is maybe you got a good job this is a shallow super frame in a medium box so they added about an inch and a half of drone comb and didn't really do much with it this isn't completely kept over I've got a drying room that I'm gonna leave get these in for a couple of days anyway so it will all be good alright I'm gonna put the top on that there we go quality control got a little brood on that one we're gonna leave it and let's see this one isn't kept over well enough this one is not kept over on this side never nope neither okay so this is all we can take so we've got two three four five so actually we need three more frames super frames to drop in here and we're gonna leave it this would be a good thing to leave and the nice thing about operating your own be business if you need three frames you can just go into your store grab three frames off the shelf and not tell not tell them that you took their like why are we three frames short on inventory David well you know what's been going on with their frame well we think you took them to your eyes me yeah that yeah we watched your video oh shoot now I've been found out all right we're gonna leave that baby on there got to be nice to have because we're gonna push more bees off of supers sweep them off down into boxes and if we don't have enough boxes below they could potentially get a little too hot so it's good that we got a little more room down there you know I mean and I mean our honey super there is eight frame deep and it's not gonna fit in to our super box there so what we're gonna do is just simply switch your Rooney out three of them in there let's just change out these three into the deep box super is hanging in a deep just to harvest no big deal right now perfect that's for later move this over it's our new holding point top just yet alright here we go let's move the deep super on to the hive that now has their original three brood nest area and that top super did have a little brood in there which is fine I think it's 80% heavy and 20% stuck there we go Oh should have weighed that baby let's put a top on that one here we go beads are gathering at the top probably smell some of that stuff see if we can smoke some of them down before we apply the rag the fume rag let's do it the same way we'll put it on we'll spray it on this side only and then we'll flip it over the reason why the bees did not get out of that other super using this stuff we know now I've got to pee up my leg is because there is a little bit of brood in there bees aren't leaving bruises so don't hate the product flip it over boom take some smell girls get out of my super again you can open up some edges either for bees to crawl out or for the fume to be carried down into the box a little better or you can just seal the whole thing off and hope that I've run them out we're gonna use the same procedure again we're going to see if we can get most of them out with the fume rag and if that doesn't work we're gonna brush the unit ow very good brush these bees off I don't know if you've had much thought about bees and how they relate to humans one thing that I'm interested in is that what happens to bees may be an indication of what could happen to human you know if bees are being affected by our environment or pesticides or whatever may be a precursor of us being affected remember the stories of coal miners I think they use a canary bird and the in the caves and if the birds die I wonder what if that's what we either like we're not gonna take that one well does that mean that in the future finding ourselves like that side oh I love that I want to take that and like take a picture of it and put it in some famous magazine you know you just don't want to take a lot of it off that's not kept over cause I need to ferment once you bottle it all right this frame is one that we put in there so it's not ready yet put in there kind of late or something I don't recall good oh yeah both sides are good brushing the bees off so you can see that a bee brush can be very important to have in your apiary in your toolbox so you can brush bees on situations like this there's a lot of these are ways to get bees out of honey supers by the way too you can use a bonafide field board and use be robber which is butyric acid stomach vomits synthetic butyric acid that stuff will run them out bad smelling let me show you this next one if I can let's do a little smoking to here this is kind of neat look at this look how there's an unevenness to the honey super makes it a little hard to cut exactly the way you want to but that's still a prize-winning frame I don't know why Pease do that because they want to I don't know that's just how bees work you know us making them work in straight lines beautiful comb is asking a lot I may only have room for one more in that box if they're gonna be that wide pong here's another one Oh at least I'm working in the shade I actually have a mentorship program where I mentor around 200 beekeepers around the country they they call me they text me they email me they send me video clips of what's going on and it's a certified master beekeeper I walk them through their issues if you're interested in becoming a part becoming one of our to one of the 200 people that I mentor check out our website at honey bees online.com and perhaps not making any promises for half if you follow my recommendations maybe your bees will be like the bees that I am working today no promises these do die of who knows they can dive anything when you take good care of them I can't believe they made this one so full up against the wall sometimes they don't pull much honey in the cop in the frames next to the wall like but boy they did on this one didn't they whoa look at that the frame against the wall how smooth that is [Music] [Music] what I've done down there on the ground is I've actually secured all those frames top cover it's the bottom top cover as a top now we got two frames here that we need to put somewhere while we look at the next box which is a super so we'll temporarily Park this one aside for now you don't need it just yet this is a 10 frame er I'm gonna make sure it's got the wood on it and it does whoa all right so we need a top cover back over there I need a smoker smoke the bees down this super does not appear to be capped over on every single frame so we're just gonna take the frames then they're probably all the way capped over which I don't think it may not be more than one or two [Music] you can see lotta nectar in there I ran the bees out at the top you can see they're starting to cap it over yes [Music] beautiful on both sides Wow I got sick that is we just have a few hives brushing these off your supers really works well is that jumping spider off of me I like doing it this way pretty handy little thing to do I need a top coat instead of a top cover you can excuse a piece of plywood like that piece of cardboard like that works really well instead of a top cover oh one more now we can't leave this box with gaps in it like you're seeing here we've got to be able to fill those back up with frames one two three four five six seven eight with one two three four five six seven we can put three more frames in this one let me show you if you want to look at this frame here it can't be capped over all the way so we'll put it over here have not even drawn out yeah I won't take this one it's a super frame in a deep box with honeycomb on the bottom that you can just break off and chew and enjoy I'm going to put that in the deep box collection right now they're super frame goes here need one more not sure if we have it or not we'll look kind of take this one it's like crazy in this those of you that are watching this and you're you're not a beekeeper you've never really been around the honey beads you're like man how does he do that well bees are pretty gentle actually these bees are very docile I love them they're letting me just kind of move them around without getting too upset or anything Wow not fully capped over not fully we'll leave it okay so we got got we have 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 we can use one more super up here frame one more super frame where are we gonna get it from let's do a little experiment and if we put this frame in there without any foundation then maybe they'll make comb honey early in the year they certainly will but we're deep into July now and they may not draw that out alright alright that one's good we're gonna put our deep from the deep box back on let's try that because we took out everything that was capped over we've got some frames that are heavy but not cap right now there's six frames 60 frames of their heavy pittle wax-coated frames that are ready [Music] he's one more the ones that would be closed for be in the middle like this one and you can see they're not it's got a little bit of nectar but not much so it needs to be filled up we're gonna put it back on top of the hot I can use this over there we go it's gonna still be heavy dog got it let's put the top on all right let's recap what's going on here okay so that worked out well what we what we have now is three deep a three medium eight frame supers that are the brood nest area 10 frames super 8 or so 10 frame super 10 frame deep another 10 frame deep all of these are almost ready but not quite meanwhile we've taken off 10 20 well see that's a deep we've taken off 110 frame deep super a medium how much is in here I don't remember oh just three okay and then over here we've taken off four frames so we're in good shape we're gonna move all these out of the bee yard so that no bees can gain access like they're trying to do over there that's that's why I'm telling you you need to keep stuff covered up because if you don't that's what happens so thanks everybody for watching my youtube video today on beekeeping I hope you learned a lot of things about looking at a big gigantic hive I hope you enjoyed learning how to move some frames of capped over honey and getting those ready for extractions some techniques that you can use a few board or just brush them off and I want to invite you to please take one of my online beekeeping courses I have a lot of them I've got one coming up called getting your bees through the winter that you'll want to to get because you want to get your bees through the winter like the one we just looked at was an overwinter colony and you can see how much difference it makes and producing honey than a first-year colony gotta learn to get those bees through the winter check our website out at honey bees online.com where you can buy products to help support our business and we do appreciate that as always we want to remind you we are the place that invented I'm the inventor of the winter be kind board which we will be putting on our website in just about a week if you're watching this video I know it's going to be dated differently but August averse is when our winter be kind boards go on sale for November shipment to help your bees get through the winter with some good winter food and insulation check all this out and honey bees online.com also we love the subscribers 21,000 that's crazy yes so awesome click over here where it says subscribe punch the button you'll be notified I think you can ring a bell or click a bell or something and you'll be notified when I produce a new YouTube video so do that give me a thumbs up I'll see you next time [Music] don't you ring a bell [Music]

Channel: David Burns

Views: 564,520

Keywords: beekeeping, harvesting honey, beekeeping for beginners, extracting honey, honey, how to start beekeeping, bees, urban beekeeping, how to keep bees, david burns, beekeeper, backyard beekeeping, beekeeping 101, starting beekeeping, natural honey, honeycomb

Id: REGA4uO3E14

Length: 56min 51sec (3411 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019