Beginner Beekeepers Must Watch! | Still the best practices in 2021 | Beginner Beekeeper Episode 9

get yourself one of these you get a chance with a little clicker on the top wonders for starting your smoker get everything nice and hot at the bottom start putting pine needles in we have our little setup here pine needles we got a little magnet for your your hive tool if you forget one and just put it on your pants and then the hive tool will stick to it jar oh yeah like that the jar for excess wax that we take off and then we have the the frame stands if we need them but we have some built in ones you can see them right about there and they're on each of our hive stands so here's our setup we got a our bucket which has a harness on the outside we got from Duluth trading it's expensive but it's been the most useful thing that that we've gotten for beekeeping that's not beekeeping equipment we fill it with pine needles and then random other things so marking pens and then I'm just gonna finish lighting the Samaras up I get a little bit of pine straw in here amazing torques that we got yeah if you start your smoker with just a regular lighter and you say that works it works just fine I don't want to change that's fine too we did that for a year one of the people in our beekeeping Club started his smoker with this and I love trying new things so we got one and I don't think I'm gonna go back this this made it so easy I mean pine needles in the first place make it super easy and it's it's cooler smoke for the most part it does get pretty hot but once you start stuffing on top it becomes very cool keep in mind as beginner beekeepers if you smoke your hands and your hive tool that will help the bees not communicate to each other hey sting this so if you get stung smoke yourself a little bit smoke the spot that you got stung smoke your tool your gloves if you don't wear gloves smoke the hand a little bit most most people in our area wear gloves especially during the fall winter time spring and summer here on our on our property we don't wear gloves it's just so much easier Oh we'll give we'll get the front of our hive a couple of puffs right in the entrance so if you did notice the Yellowjackets we put in might away quick strips a couple weeks ago and that means you have to open the very front of the hive all the way that plus the dead they were bringing out attracted lots of Yellowjackets and we're currently fighting that so that's what she was doing stepping on them yeah that's not all your thing see our our inner cover homemade box is homemade and we'll get our inspection started so this August morning are getting close to afternoon we're gonna take just hive apart do an inspection see what they look like we might take the hog half comb off today you can tell they're flying in and out real quick no fighting means no robbing they're just they need a bigger entrance and we're just not gonna give it to them because of the cold at night look at all that propolis that's what we here like to see makes life difficult but I like to see it so for the newer beekeepers a stand for your frames is a good idea if you can't afford it you can just set it next to the hive just on the ground but make sure you check your frames real good because when you have lots of bees you don't want to put your queen on the ground this is one of the few hives we have with a screen bottom board which may be going away next year we have to have a chat about that we always put our inner cover towards the front of the hive whenever we take it off so that if they want to jump up and go back in they can take a little drink they'll clean that up when putting in the last frame make sure you have adequate space so you don't roll any of the bees you want to look at both sides and make sure none of them are just spilling off onto the edge or the sides and then what we'll do is we'll come back we're gonna move this side over to make sure the spacing on both sides this spacing is equal so if you do the math for a 10 frame hive it's more than 3/8 on the outside edges and I'll post in the notes what the actual spacing should be but typically we just eyeball it and say yeah that works and if we come back next week and there's a whole lot of fur comb or they're building on the wall we'll take care of that so wherever we're gonna put the beetle Busters like she said we'll put a puff of smoke and then we're gonna push down and then in the coal that's flexing a little bit but yep she's pushing down the wax might even push back a little bit but we'll get something she'd be there with some sort of white pollen or resin actually look like resin is strange see you again anyway but yeah we'll do that and then we'll take our finger here and we'll pull it all the way down so it hits these dividers a lack of a better term so there she is she's gonna smoke she's gonna put it in there I didn't cover the amount of liquid you put in I put in just up there we go yeah that's that's max because what you'll learn is as you're pulling these guys out if you have it filled more than that you could spill into the hive and basically you'll you'll co to be and suffocate them to death and that's not what we're going for and that's it yeah and then when you go to take them out press down on the edges like so and then what you'll do is to kill the beetles and then you'll just lift on on that side all the way down okay okay so we're chicken the super right now we put this frame in a couple weeks ago and you can tell here here and there where the doc dark spots are they're filling with nectar there's probably some with nectar in it as well but this is gonna be our fault honey right there it's much darker but they have not pulled it out all the way so we're not really gonna take that we'll probably give it to them later on so we're gonna pull the next one out so she can show you what we're looking for and we'll show you what captain he looks like haha so you can you can actually see the reflection in the camera of all the the nectar in there and then if you're wondering what this is up here that is all capped honey so what you want is about 90% of the frame capped honey so it should all look like almost like a sheet of paper all the way across that's wet a little bit and then you're ready to extract right now we're not we're not on this side either but they are fell we only put these in a couple weeks ago so pretty happy with that so this is one of the frames where we had an accident it happens the you'll flip it sometimes and when you're showing people or it's just a really hot day you flip it and the whole section will fall on to the ground you can tell and we we don't use foundation so that is the key for us we will do this turn it and then you can flip it back upside down if you'd like but never never flip it straight up and down you can see like he said a minute ago we had a we had our ivory Queen so here's a an open couple of open Queen cells yeah I'll try and get a better look up in there here we go maybe that'll help you can tell down here this one is chewed open that's how you know that they've been released this Cup down here has not been used yet it's perfect it's just a queen Cup and what you want to do is look up into there and we can see right through it but if there was something in there it'd be yellow milky or white milk and that's gonna be your royal jelly and if you stick a toothpick in there you'll kill whatever's [Music] whatever's being fed and we we don't do that but if you want it to and you wanted to taste what it's like we're told it's a lot like coconut checking on stores and see if there's any brood there's there's clearly not any brood on this frame that I can see however it's not pretty cloudy day it's harder to see eggs if she's laid any in the open cells but you can see some really nice bee bread it's a nectar and even some of the girls are bringing in some pollen still so it's a really pretty bright yellow which if I'm not mistaken as the goldenrod no so what's the difference between bee bread and pollen bee bread is pollen mixed with some honey the bees bees mix it up really well and that's what they feed their little baby bees the larvae so how can you tell the difference the difference is the beeper it'll have a completely different texture actually yeah it's really thick it sticks together just like bread is shiny it is a little bit shiny not not shiny like nectar but okay so we found that Queen on this frame so we're gonna look extra hard for some eggs make sure she's still laying well and again it's a it's a pretty cloudy day so it's a little more difficult to see the eggs however I did find a few at the bottom of the frame here several cells hopefully we can get a good shot of that and I just looked like little grains of rice it's really difficult to see on this uh on the darker comb here's our queen she's looking for some empty space if she finds some I want you to look at the front legs which she's gonna do is measure the cell with her front legs to figure out drone cell worker cell what should I lay is it gonna be a fertilized egg for a worker or is it gonna be an unfertilized for a drone and she has completely stopped at this point she must know that we're filming her she does pick based on what the needs of the colony are whether it's fertilized or unfertile so she gets to choose whether it's a boy or girl B now look at her entourage they are surrounding her they're looking at what what is she doing does she need to be cleaned off did I put some some paint on her lower abdomen that needs to be cleaned maybe I do mark 90% of them there's a couple that are not marked by me also keep in mind as it does get colder try not to open your your hives if it's less than 60 degrees that's Fahrenheit the problem is you do that and the bees will start falling off the comb the brood will start chilling and die we're at about 70 right now so I got a yellow jacket over here I'm gonna try and move the camera up to that he's moving a lot but you can see the bees fighting them off and he's now in a Cell eating let's see if one of the bees come across and grab them and say hey hey hey buddy there it is that's what we want to see that's you want to see well you don't want to put them in this position but you do want to see your your hive caring about the hive and actively doing something about it so we're back to the Queen still sitting there but it's a beautiful picture of all the bees just surrounding her so I'm gonna stop it and take a picture okay as we take a look here let's see some larvae if the bees will move I'll try to move the camera a little bit mm-hmm there we are so there's big fat larva that's good we're gonna look down in some of the holes see if we can find eggs you can see some capped brood as well so there's your capped brood that looks okay that's good you can see a couple day old larva there it's real small little sees that the assistance of the Sun this is more difficult to find eggs but may have one right there the bee moves you can kind of see them reflect just a little bit and keep in mind up there's a good one down there so bottom left B just walked over it you can see it in the middle looks like a grain of rice so that's what you're looking for you're looking for those three things grain rice that larvae that looked a lot like that and then capped so you'll see whole sections that are capped it's not a disease it's normal this one's getting capped so you'll see them start building that wax over the top of them we use Queen excluders this is a brand new one we had on the one in the back there you can see we had mite away quick strips and it's just easier to put a new one on then to put that back on after it's been it's been over a week and a half so we're just gonna stick a new one on there they're gonna prop eyes this make it smell real good and this keeps the Queen and drones some of the drones from coming through mainly it keeps the Queen from coming through and laying eggs in our super which I'm we're going to put the nonstick run what we're gonna do is make sure it's nice and square to the bottom box we're going to make sure that the Queen excluder should stick out on either side just a hair that's just how they're made see it's all over the place trying to make sure it's nice and square if you build your own boxes and you can't make the boxes square because well when you built it it wasn't actually square don't worry about it because the the excluder here sticks out a little bit and that will cover so that no bees come up there are some techniques I'm making the Box the square that we can cover on a later video so we're putting the top inner cover feeder on and I'll show you how that works this I made for a mating nuke so you'll see there's a entrance there an entrance over here there and there and so what the plan is is I'm gonna have a queen castle essentially which is for nuke boxes with dividers on the inside like a cross and then there'll be four separate colonies right now we're just getting the bees to make it smell real good so it's not rejected later on by any of the bees you'll notice that we don't use streams we have noticed that when we don't use the screens the bees will soak up this water maybe maybe three or four days it will be gone we've put on the big courts before and same thing three or four days soaked down done this is two to one and we put pollen in it that's why it looks like tang it's it's not for space however that'd be awesome anyway space bees we'll put that on we'll put on a medium box over it and that's why you'll notice that they're they're the tiny jars even the big jars fit with the medium and then we'll we'll grab the top put the top on there the bees are able to get quick access through here to the feed we do notice that night that all of the holes will have a little bit of bearding going on so it helps with keeping the airflow so this is a bee escape this bee escape I built so you can tell the dimensions are not exactly perfect what I was concerned about is the spacing here it's supposed to be nine millimeters oh we might get a chance to see a bee try and use it nine millimeters which means that they're supposed to come out Oh a bunch are coming now we got a show anyway they're supposed to be able to go out those exits and then not be able to find their way in so wow I'm happy and I'm taking the video because here we go now we'll watch it for a minute and see if any are able to make it back in if they are well I need to make a new one but this is the second time we use this one it worked pretty good the first time typically you leave these on for a day or two in the hive so you'll have your your super on top your bee escape under it so that they can go into the hive and not not go back up into that super however today I just decided hey I'm gonna put a solid board under this super and I'll just put the bee escape on top to make the video and see if they use it which you can tell they are and I don't see any turn around to go back in except for right at the the hole so that's that that's good so once they make it out of that first triangle they don't seem to go back in I'm watching that one he's been defiant there he goes anyway so you're done with your inspection now what do you do well you got to grab all your stuff you left out we replace the inner cover with a different one that's why that's there we got a mess over there we'll grab it all stick it together and then we're gonna take a break and take notes because every time you put your hive back together you should just go in while it's fresh take some notes that's what we do there's other folks that will if the Queen's having problems they'll take this cinder block and they'll flip it up I'll show you they'll flip it up like that that way as they're going through there ooh we got a problem here as they're going through their yard they'll they'll see hey this one was having a problem last time so let's go ahead and do another quick inspection peek in or whatever the issue was but that's why you got to take notes some people though they'll write them on top hey this is what happened last time next time do this that's a good idea too like I said we use brood minder so I take the notes on brood minder we have hive tracks as well if you go to the Kiwi Amana site you can get like 20 or 30% off they got a coupon so go try that out hive Trax is wonderful I just find that they ask a lot of questions that I don't I don't really care for the answer so brood miner makes it easy it's just a little word pad write something in there and it'll mark where that happens always keep your chickens close

Channel: Rascal Apiary

Views: 410,243

Rating: 4.7325745 out of 5

Keywords: flower, instruction, tips and tricks, save the bee save the world, basic beekeeping, pollination, beginning beekeeping, must watch, food, beekeeping, beekeeping hacks, honey, beekeeping help, pollinator, RascalApiary, Beginner, honeybee, backyardbeekeeping, more views, beekeeper, bee, nature, nectar, flow hive, beekeeping online, how to be a successful beekeeper, beekeeping educational video, free bees, beekeeping essentials, beekeeping 2021, how to start a smoker, how to start beekeeping

Id: wyRgJR2ni3A

Length: 25min 23sec (1523 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2018