Beekeeping | Why Did They Start To Swarm BUT Then Go Back In???

there's a viable queen in there well as you can see look how many bees are just everywhere beetle beetle beetle beetle [Music] so now we want to kind of open up and see what's going on in there do they have a queen we made a split and so it's about time maybe for the virgin queen to take a mating flight they could have followed the virgin queen out beetle beetle beetle beetle beetle small hype beetle it's like i'm gonna be battling beetles this year beetle beetle beetle i made a video where we split this hive and it was still very populated after we made our split so it could be that we're wrestling with overpopulation still even though we made a split let's start on this side here because there's less comb being drawn out they've drawn the comb out really wide underneath here and that's going to make it tough just to pull a frame out without kind of ruining the comb next to it but you see they're starting to even pull this all the way out to the wall nicely take a look at both sides there's not going to be a queen up here look at that fresh comb though not cool to see fresh white comb like that with nectar in it the queen is below the queen excluder we're just gonna take a glance and see if this super is ready to harvest on may the 17th or does it need more time in in the hive so i would say it'd be interesting to see but i would dare say that some of this is probably capped over toward as we get toward the middle this is a very heavy frame getting to be capped over at the top you can see that and still not capped over so as we continue to go toward the middle you'll see there'll be more and more frames that are capped over and this is amazing early harvest for me you know in the middle of may to be able to see capped over frames i just put these in there and they were all empty and that's almost ready to harvest okay well enough that's that's going to look the same all the way across and we're not going to spend too much time uh looking at that so what we want to do now is get down into the brood nest area and determine why they swarmed i really do think the virgin queen went out on a mating flight and a bunch of bees followed her out thinking that something was going on and maybe a swarm a virgin queen left yep so this is the colony that made it through winter if you remember did really well that we watched through the winter we watched several of them i videotaped many of them but this is one yeah that's heavy let's stick it on top i'll just set it down here somebody told me to bend with my knees all right now we're going to take the queen excluder off we've got some other projects going on and they may need my attention out in the field so i've got my gmrs radio on and that's what you're going to hear occasionally gmrs radio is a really cool thing it's not like ham radio ham radio you need to take a test and show that you know what a diode and resistors and be a engineer and electrician but gmrs radio is kind of neat it just requires you filing with the fcc to get your license kind of like getting a fishing license you don't have to prove you can fish and then you need to you need to follow the proper protocol of being a operating at gmrs and basically you just got to give out your call sign every 15 minutes or at the end of a conversation but otherwise you could get to use up to 50 watts like on a base station most handhelds are 5 watts walkie-talkies are two watts and so that helps us here we can talk uh you know maybe 15 miles out with a gmrs radio where walkie-talkies that you buy you know box stores they're not going to get more than a mile and that's if there's no trees in the way so i got my gmrs radio on right now in case they need me oh i got to take my watch off i always like to work without a watch i get stung more frequently if i'm wearing this black watch i've i just need to take this navy seal luminex dive watch off luminox put it over here and not forget it they have something about black wristbands the bees are like interested in all right you can see a little bird comb here we've talked about that before and if you look at this you can kind of see the honey how it's reflecting like a lake in their lake of honey and all the bees are just in there enjoying it aren't they [Music] going to do the same thing on this deep we're going to actually go in there and take the frame off closest to the wall and then work our way to the brew nest area and take a look what i'd like to see is what's going on with the queen because that way i can tell if it's a virgin queen or they just did she just get mated what's going on with my queen why do they swarm and then go back in here do they need to be split again that's a good question and so we'll take this frame out against the wall this is a piece of plastic frame i've never i haven't had many colors of yellow plastic frame most of mine are black but this is interesting yellow it's got nectar in the centered honey that's all honey right there capped over honey look at that somebody asked me in a in a comment can you smoke your hives too much somebody told him to use a lot of smoke i think he said his mentor said use a lot of smoke and he asked my opinion should you use a lot of smoke when smoking a colony and i my answer was absolutely because you want to take your time and be gentle with bees and i like working bare-handed smoking keeps them calmed down and i said bees only live 35 days in the summer it's not like they're going to get lung cancer they don't live long enough to die of lung cancer from smoke and they don't have lungs anyway these don't have lungs they do have spiracles where they take in air push it through muscles oh look at that you guys are getting to see this this is pretty cool look at that queen cells and that one there is one that has been opened see how the hatch door has been opened on it but the other queen cell here it has not been opened there's a viable queen in there we're gonna do something with her right because i had such a good winter survival that i had to make so many splits i've already split some hives three times for example and that really increased the population drastically and used up all my equipment i don't need to spend any more time here looking at frames i'm going to show you what i see down inside this colony if you notice down inside i just have wall-to-wall bees after making a split so there's no reason for me to keep looking i see queen cells i can make a split with some of these queen cells that are ready to emerge well as you can see look how many bees are just everywhere and we've already made one split we're gonna make another split so what we're gonna do is just pop the super off so we can get down to the deeps and we're gonna pull five frames out of the deeps and use that for our split but i'm gonna i am gonna take one of these frames here ah let's take one that we saw a queen cell on even though it's a super i am gonna have to put it in my split because i want that queen cell to emerge as a new virgin queen and be the head of that hive see if i can relocate where that queen cell was was it one on one of these down here wouldn't it yep that's a good queen cell there on the bottom that's only one um i do want to leave some for them in case they need more but i think they have a queen in there so let's go ahead and pull this one over here i've already got this box set up with drawn comb in it that'd be good all right let me see what i've got i can move four over because i got six in there got a lot of bees everywhere got a lot of beads on my smoker move along girls get off the smoker get off my hand there you go wow that smoker is working good just made a video a couple of videos ago about how to light your smoker keep it lit and i hope you really enjoyed that got some use out of that video some of you commented that it really helped you and you kind of saw what mistakes you were making these queen cells are ripe by that i mean they're going to emerge any day i can tell by how dark brown they are and how some of them have already emerged and opened up there's another one here let me see oh it's empty i took the door off nobody's home all right well that's good to know we won't take that it's going to put that back over on here we'll move these frames around a little bit differently than we had them i should have eight in the box got another plastic frame that's already got honey in it i keep on hand for moments like you know starting off a nuke or a hive might need a little boost or something so got some of that going on there good they can play with that all right now let's get this super off what we're gonna do is uh open it up down here get some smoke between the two boxes the lower deep and the upper super that will help us control the bees once we open this box up there we go yep i do like to use a lot of smoke very good i'm going to go for this frame right here toward the middle it has the most likely um prospect of having brood on it toward the middle of the brew nest area and i just swallowed the smoke i hear a virgin queen or queen piping is she piping on this frame piping is a noise that she goes see some drones i see a lot of foragers with worn out back wings it means they're almost at the end of their life from foraging and working so hard i'll be able to fly after a while i'm just looking to see if i'm going to transfer the queen over and if i do i can correct it later this will have quite a few foragers on it so that's why i've got this hive facing the wall i'm having to smoke the whole perimeter everybody i've got some bees that are already telling me that i've had this open long enough they're buzzing my hat and i will go to gloves in a suit if i need to but right now i don't have to yet again we're going to look at this frame we're going to check for things like queen and queen cells and divide this up to save it from swarming oh this is one of those awesome company frames all right get to see how the awesome company is doing my ink wore off and sting may be nice all right not much drawn out on that one a little bit drawn out here clamp plants for a queen real quick no queen visible who could ever see a queen in that meth okay we're going to take this frame right to my right check for the queen working fast but kind of slow working purposefully okay it's a super frame i got queen cells i'm just going to get the job done and move it then i know what to do i'll slide the one next to it over oh wow need a smoker [Music] now somebody's on a mower don't bring that mower down here by me captain it's the last thing i need is more noise more noise to light up this hive all right open that gap up there without having to shove and roll bees down in there oh good i got her done all right guys look at that and i got five frames of bees over here now i need to fill the gap over there gosh that's a lot of bees i know you hear me talk a lot about my winter bee kinds but feeding these bees in the winter i mean you just got to be ready to come out of winter and want a lot of bees that's all it is to it wintery kinds are going to make a lot of bees in the spring because they were well fed all winter long so that's how that goes [Music] so you gotta have a strong back and a lot of equipment to make some splits or catch some swarms we have one more frame to get in there [Music] that'll be fine put that frame in there and then make 10. [Music] and then we just got to concentrate on staying calm and getting it back together so we made our split i think i'm going to put the red one the red one was the one closest to their deep so i'm going to put that red one on here then we can add more on the top so the red one we won't have to put a queen excluder on either one the supers are part of each of these brood um areas so we really don't have to worry too much about that do a little smoking around the joint here i didn't say smoking a joint i said smoking around the joint find a place to put my fingers just supers heavier oh good top cover please top cover with no queen excluder straight like that oh yeah now we got one more to put on over here we'll leave this queen excluder off looks like i got most of them

Channel: David Burns

Views: 32,629

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, swarm cells, winter bee kind

Id: Q94Wwg_vkDE

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022