Beekeeping TIPS For The Month Of July | Strong Honey Bees

now you can tell there's not a lot of beads that are bearding on the front right but now the hive next to it we got this is a swarm we caught a while back you helped me do that we got a deep and a deep and a medium super in the middle gosh look at that is that insane or what i mean look at that they're hanging down all the way to the ground seriously now why is this hive looking like this this one is probably tighter with less boxes is it because the colony is smaller or weaker no you know what the difference is this is a screen bottom board screen bottom board that allows ventilation solid bottom board what's up everybody david burns eas certified master beekeeper with you again here on a hot afternoon in july man it's a burner today 98 degrees i think with the heat index of 109 so great opportunity to get outdoors and make a video for you guys wondering what in the world are you supposed to do in the month of july got some great tips for you today well since it is hot and usually humid in the month of july depending on where you live i know some of you are watching from other countries some of you are watching from southern states way up north i know there's going to be a difference in the climate that we're talking about but going to kind of clump it together and say most of us are kind of hot and dry or hot and humid it kind of depends but july is kind of that month when things start winding down now here in illinois right now we're going through a drought believe it or not look at the grass wow look at the clover it's even burned up too we have not gotten a lot of rain now yeah the bees are still going in and out they are bringing in some nectar they are filling up honey supers even during a drought bees are pretty good at going out and finding stuff if it's out there might have to go a little further might have to find some unique places next to low river bottoms or creeks or something but they're pretty good at finding some nectar out there so hopefully your bees are still working too but i know there are many places in the u.s that july brings about not only the drought that is kind of weird for us but it can be a dearth a dearth is described as a time of the year when the flowers have just sort of dried up there's no more uh nectar out there for the bees to go to now so we're dealing with hot and humid weather what are you going to do with your bees first i want you to think about shade now obviously there's no way we're going to move our hives to some shaded area they're too darn heavy not going to happen but we can bring the shade to the bees now sometimes it's a good idea to put something on top of the hive look at this example here just take a big sheet of maybe a half a sheet of plywood cut it in half to it's a four by four and then you can lay it on the top cover on top of it with a brick or something a cinder block hold that down you can use a piece of cardboard but just remember if it starts to rain it could just make that card board melt away so something a little more firm will help some type of a wood but doesn't have to be a real thick piece of wood but if you can put something that overlaps that top cover and it's going to just make that shaded area all around that hive especially during the hottest time of the day from like 10 to 2 you know so if you can't if your bees aren't in a good place of shade right now in the afternoon i i know you can't take the bees to the shade bring the shade to the bees another thing you have to do right now during the month of july is you have to provide a water source now you don't have to actually bring the water to the hive but you need to have water somewhere on your property and what i like to do is i'm showing you here i've got a bird bath i put some sticks or rocks in there just a place that bees can go and get some water they're using water listen to this this is insane it's so hot in their hive that they're bringing in water and actually setting it on the brood putting droplets of water on the pupa capped over pupa to help maintain a cooler temperature it's called evaporative cooler i read once that bees can actually bring in one gallon of water throughout the course of a day on a hot day and disperse a gallon in there just for air conditioning just as it evaporates it can help cool the hive now that's what we do with our bodies when we sweat that water on the outside of our face actually cools us because it helps wick away the heat when the wind blows against our wet face and that's what bees are doing by bringing water in but if it's really dry where you live and there hasn't been any rain they're going to have a hard time finding water so please create some sort of a place where your bees can go for water don't trust the nearby river the nearby pond that may work but it may not so provide a water source tip number two has to do with the drought and not only the drought but the dirts and that's all about feeding now you wouldn't think you'd have to feed bees in july because a lot of us still have honey supers on i'm not feeding my bees when i have honey supers on because i don't want my sugar water to become part of my honey but there may be a time now in july which um that's another tip coming up that we're going to take our supers off and we may not put any back on and in that case if you're done with your honey supers if you've already harvested you're not going to collect any more are you going to leave one super on you know to help them get through the fall and into winter now is a good time to think about feeding your bees and we're going to talk a little bit more about that coming up but feeding your beads right now is critical if you're done collecting honey don't have your honey supers on or you think they're just not going to do any more honey supers it's time to deal with the drought it's time to deal with the dearth here's what a lot of people make the mistake in doing they oftentimes harvest their honey and they remove every drop that they can i mean two or three supers are coming off they're harvesting they're excited they made a hundred pounds of honey back at home at the hive the hive doesn't have a lot of honey on there because we harvested all their excess now they're going to go into a july august september october dearth period a drought period and they have zero stuff on board that they can use its resources and get this this is when they have the most brewed in july and august so when they need the resources the most is oftentimes when we take the most off leaving them in a lot of deprivation of honey and protein deprivation by removing frames that they need protein from maybe pollen now it's risky when you start feeding bees in a dearth or a drought because all bees are looking for a source of food and so if a strong colony detects that you're feeding a colony and they sniff out a entrance feeder don't ever use an entrance feeder in the fall that can induce robbing always use a top feeder feed them one-on-one sugar water you can put a protein powder in that sugar water if you want to we sell a mix for that i don't really like using the protein patties the pollen patties i think it can attract too many small high beetle and they're pretty prolific this time of the year when it's hot and humid outside so i don't want any more beetles that i have to deal with so by putting my protein or my protein powder in my one to one sugar water and putting that on a top feeder in a jar it doesn't give a chance for those beetles to lay eggs and those protein patties but there are times you're gonna have to feed i know once you're harvested your honey you're gonna have to start feeding your bees to keep all that brood going you need a lot of brood for winter so you've got to feed bees especially if they're a weak colony some of you have been telling me that you have a colony that's not doing very well you know maybe you have a couple of hives one's doing great one's lagging behind they haven't drawn out the the combs yet and and the foundation yet and you're frustrated am i going to get the comb drawn out before winter ah well you might have to feed them one to one sugar water because they have to consume about 11 pounds of nectar honey sugar water in order for them to produce one pound of wax through their wax clams so if there's a drought and there's no nectar out there pretty good chance you're not going to have any wax buildup on those frames like you want to do so you might have to step up to the plate start feeding your bees again take precautions don't let them rob don't let them get into that feeder if you're feeding from the entrance or something don't do that feed from the top and always check for robbing well tip number three is all about it's time to harvest the honey probably where you're at i know i've got a lot of honey to take off got to go out there and start harvesting that honey now harvesting honey this time of the year especially if it's a drought or it's hot outside rough on the beads rougher more rough on the beekeeper hot outside today i could not work my bees it was just too darn hot out there but when you start harvesting your honey in july and august i want you to be sure and leave enough on there for your bees to make it through the next few months i would recommend leaving at least one honey super on there for them now some of you may be saying hey my bees have honey down in the in the two deeps or the deeps down there in the brood nest area if they have honey in the brood do i really need to you know put more honey on top or leave honey on top yeah you better for insurance because again they have a lot of brood and that they're nursing along open larvae takes a lot of food so they have a lot to care for in feeding new bees emerging and all a lot of brood a lot of population they need a lot of food just for housekeeping details so keep a honey super on there don't take every drop off a lot of people take every drop off because they want to fill those jars up and make some money at the next farmer's market but hey remember your bees may not have a good fall flow we're counting on asters which aren't great you know golden rod and you know not a lot in the fall and fall can be rainy sometimes your bees may not get a chance to fly out there and gather so try to get honey off that you're going to enjoy the bottle but try to leave enough on to help them make it through the next few months now guys before we get into tip number four which is probably the most important one i want to encourage you to subscribe to my youtube channel here if you haven't done that click on the bell so you'll be notified each time i make a new video give me a thumbs up tell me you like this video oh my gosh it helps me so much please do that now say you liked the video would you please now let's get to tip number four now the most important tip is tip number four has to do with my control remember i started a new series i'm going to be producing more videos on my control especially what chemicals to use what treatments to use we've already had one and apovar we talked about that i've got some other videos coming up about treating mites if you want to use some chemical tools or treatments to control mites we're going to talk more about that but certainly i've got a lot of videos here on my youtube channel about using green drone comb powdered sugar dusting screen bottom board breaking the queens brood cycle especially in july august and september to cut down on the mites brood cycle that's so important i have a mic control course that talks more about that and many of you have purchased that july 4th you know i had a lot of a lot of you that purchased thank you purchased the half price deal on my online courses i appreciate that so get control of your mites because look mites are at their peak in july and august and your beads are going to start going down in population because the queen just doesn't lay as much when it's hot and dry and not as much resources out there so the populations of your bees are going to go down but the population of your mites are gonna actually out brood your bees every time a bee emerges that's had the mamma mite in their lane you'll get two mites per one b in other words a b will emerge a new worker b emerges but two mites emerge so they begin to out brood the bees in july and august so you have to red alert sound the alarm red alert you have to do bike control now test fermites do a powdered sugar or an alcohol wash get some numbers know what your data says and then you're gonna have to use wisdom and how you're gonna get that level down to less than three mites per 100 bees that you test have to do it i know it's like you don't want to right can i just treat anyway no we don't like using treatments if we don't know what we got beads can become resistant to things like apovar if we're just willy-nilly treating when we don't need to so be sure and get numbers of what your mite levels are and then develop a course of action to reduce the mite levels now because you need healthy bees now going into winter all right tip number five is all about queen issues some of you are still trying to nurse along failing queens or you can't find your queen there's no brood yikes you gotta settle this in july come on you gotta go out there you gotta cowboy up get that hive queen right no matter what you got to figure it out if you can't see eggs you can't see a queen put a mated queen in there in a queen cage let's do something you got to go to get that hive queen right you got to do it it's all it is to it stop wondering stop waiting let's get a queen laying eggs in there in july this is going to be harder to do in august and september to introduce a queen and it's going to be really hard for you to find a queen people that produce queens like myself man it's just tough to make them past july so you gotta get queen right now that's tip number five you gotta do it by the way don't just walk up to your hive and go oh my gosh look at all the bees there's they're so populated my queen's doing really good because look at all the bees flying in and out can't tell by the entrance can't tell by the population you got to go look for eggs how many larvae eggs and capped over pupae are in that hive and then you know how well your queen's laying i know it's tough to do in july because they're really populated it's hard to do a real complete inspection a lot of beads pretty intimidating got to do it got to know how your queen's doing or you'll lose the hive in the winter tip number six is a fun one one that i love to do equalizing your hives this is for people that have more than one hive you may have two hives three four five ten whatever now is the time to start equalizing you shouldn't be telling me i've got a really strong hive but my other four are really weak i don't know what to do well go grab some frames out of that big gigantic strong hive equalize them out try to make these hives as equal as you can with the same number of resources and brewed that gives everybody a chance to get prepared for winter so you can move frames around steel with some nerf speeds on it there's no fighting much to speak of when you do that equalize hives by moving frames over that's why it's always better to have two hives better than just having one hive you have some resources you can move around when you move frames around by all means do not accidentally take a queen to the wrong hive the two queens one will kill the other make sure your queen is located before you move frames tip number seven i spoke about it briefly about robbing oh my gosh july and august big hives are going to rob little hives out they're going to be sniffing around trying to get that honey out of those sweet hives that can't protect themselves i would recommend you use an entrance reducer in the smallest setting if the honey flows over and that way there's less area for the guard bees to protect from robbers coming in a big open 14 inch opening in the in the front of the hive also it may be a good idea for you to check online order some robber screen this is really helpful you might put that on there your bees can find their way out but robbers can't find a way in this is the time to do that in july and august don't let your hides be robbed out really watch them carefully how do you know what robbing looks like bees are flying all over the base look at this video here now this video shows uh beads that are actually uh this is these are honey supers that i've stacked up together for beads to clean out and put a top on it to keep rain off of them and but this is this is what robbing looks like actually so with beads are all around your hive trying to get in every nook and cranny so be careful about robbing take the precautions reduce the entrance maybe consider a robbing screen once your honey flow is over finally tip number eight kind of summarizes everything but it's it is a unique tip right now you got to prepare for winter i know it's hot outside winter is the farthest thing from your mind but what are we just 12 weeks away from september let's see july august yeah i saw you know 10 or 12 weeks away from fall and so we need to start developing beads that are strong healthy mite-free so what you need to do now reduce the mite levels because even though you could kill your mites all in october before you go into winter with some kind of blast of a solid acid or something like that formic pro hey guess what you kill the mites viruses that the mites vector are spread are still in your bees and they're going to carry those viruses into winter so if you can get ahead of the game start killing mites now the next generations of bees will be less likely to have such an infestation of viruses that will take them out in the winter time so it's up to you right now friends get control of your mites i've already spoken about that you've got to also have a great queen equalize those hives by moving frames around you've got to also feed them if you're in a dirt or a drought you got to leave one super on and while we're doing these things it is for winter prep tip number eight is all about right now let's get some doggone strong colonies in july and august september we got to work hard now so that we can get them through the winter all right so you can't wait you got to start now thinking this is all about winter prep right now in july if you haven't seen my last video about using a particular treatment for mites you need to watch it right here i describe a treatment i'm working through all of them to help you reading the label help you to apply these treatments to control your mites check this video out right now i'll see you over there

Channel: David Burns

Views: 67,369

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, 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, July Beekeeping Tips

Id: u5ljPlyhIqI

Length: 18min 44sec (1124 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2022