Beginning Beekeepers Thriving-Steven & Rodney

well hey there folks it's Barry's best honey and I'm Mike can I do bees welcome to Southeast Louisiana welcome to another adventure [Music] all righty we're gonna go on down the road here we're gonna go see a new beekeeper y'all met Steven back in the video and I will link it up somewhere along this video of when we work some hives together and he was learning from me uh in my yard and uh he is went and he's grown his beehives that he bought from one to two and he wanted to work with me a little bit and he and he had me just kind of tell him how to do splits and he watched just do one and we did one in the video and he got to go home and do his own and you know how it is when you knew just like I was it's like many many of you guys were that man not grown up in the be world uh we're nervous doing a split in your first year is a it's a big deal you know to some of us when we were young and new in it I was not young when I started I don't know why I said that but nonetheless it's kind of nerve-wracking remember those days where we take anything we do might harm the bees like oh my gosh I painted the inside of this set you know and as we get older the bees realize you know it wasn't a big deal they're very you know resilient but splits in your first year when you're still learning you get a little nervous and so uh we're gonna go see how well he did on his splits he did a splits about it I guess a month and a half ago and uh I think it's bees are doing fine and he's doing good he just text me every now and then shoots me a little video tells me what's going on we confer a little bit and uh he keeps on keeping bees what I see in his little clips that he's showing me he's doing just fine his bees are doing just fine but I'll go appease him because I think he's doing great but I'll tease him like I don't know what I can teach him he's got a down pat looks like to me and he's gonna learn as he goes another thing we might do in this video is I'm hoping to go see Rodney and see how that one is doing the little baby itty bitty tiny swarm and uh he gave me a report and sent me a little video clip and they're growing pretty good I'm hoping from what I could tell they look like they were and he's been feeding them and growing them into the boxes so hopefully we'll get to go see that too so we shall see but let's get on down the road let's go down here and meet up with Steven and see how his hives are doing all right folks we're out here on the scene we got Steven out here y'all remember Steven say hey Steven to the camera good evening everybody now last time we seen Stephen he was helping me he's the one that got that Hive going for me and y'all seen that Hive up there in the this yard in town they're huge um they're doing good they've got two full deeps now but uh since then as I said in the intro he's already split his hives it did it all itself you know didn't have anybody come do it just follow some instructions they saw on YouTube kind of followed what we did and for Mike Mike we just we just did it out there and he got to see it so we're gonna take a look awesome Friday he wants some Marcus Queens too so we're going to take a look and see where he stands so let's let's get busy because we got uh to get both these hives to and get these Queens found and marked um so we're gonna do that so everyone he's concerned that they're not doing anything but the problem is they're not doing anything for anybody so it's not just you Stephen they're not see here this is the same thing we've been seeing in April we don't normally have to feed to get these to get these full they draw them out without it but this April they didn't and now we're into May oh man that that box is packed pack of these box like that in May in Louisiana should be drawing that comb out in a matter of days [Music] if you feed this Colony it'll take a gallon in a day quickly and it's got some weight it's got nectar in there so they're putting nectar in and they are starting to find some I will say that in my house they are for sure so they're starting to backfill their nest a little bit instead of draw out comb but not terrible they still have a they still have larvae down there yep there's eggs down there I can see them from here a little bit of drone Brews sticking out but then regular Brews so they're finding some nectar that one's full wow look at that that's gonna be a lot of bees and no nectar out there significantly coming in but they're building like they're something isn't it look at that frame that is gonna be a ton of bees yep see here another frame full of brood good gracious a couple cups under there nothing unusual by that yeah wow there's gonna be a lot of bees in there look at that that's it's a good high it's a good Colony good colony of bees this is the one I originally from Dirk right it's one of his older frames and this is the actual queen that came from him too right no this is the new this is the new Queen okay that's right because it's the old house he's over there right foreign right there just saw I see her all right so we're gonna use a queen catcher he's not my queen and I don't think he's ready to start grabbing it with his fingers just yet so I'm gonna use one of these I got this last year I usually used to use a regular clip and or one of those tubes but we're gonna do this I don't do it one hand I got my buddy in Florida actually chopped the head of a queen off one time so we've got her kind of awkward to video that and this is the new Queen so you got what color for her oh he's got close to Red we'll put it that way he's not necessarily not a pink yeah he's not worried about coloring that shade for a year but we all want to try and do the other one in yellow because she's last year's but there you go now just dot her Thor just touch it there you go that's good enough let her out yep you don't want to keep dabbing it because what'll happen that thing will start dripping some uh some paint next thing you know get excess right we got her out we can go ahead and look in the bottom real quick so that's no fuss no must no chance of hurting her I don't want to hurt his new Queen um I've gotten where sometimes I squeeze him and mess them up and so let's see what we got in the bottom kind of the same thing we got it they're kind of chimneying up they aren't drawing the sides but they only got the the middles drawn um and that's typical of what we're seeing down here this this year normally they'll fill those out but yet they get so populated on these Center ones you you have to put something on the top and when you do they chimney up on you and they don't want to draw the outside so the only way to really fix that is to feed them if you really want to get those foundations thrown out while there's a minor flow coming that they're not going to build with so all right unless you want to keep moving no you got a queen you know she's laying I mean it's a healthy Colony the big thing is is the amount of food they got they don't have a lot so in his case what I might would do is just weigh the box and maybe feed them one gallon and uh a gallon that'll help them at least draw those frames out put some doors away because we just don't know what's going on with the flow he's in the same boat as me and they froze over here just as well as we froze so that's kind of my take we're going to go through the next one but I think his bees look good she'll come on out there she went there she went boom they are growing they're not gonna swarm I don't see they think they're gonna swarm there's not enough of a flow they've got a little bit of room left in there I think it'll push them out a little bit um and so what we'll do is have him feed for for a gallon and go in and look and see if they're drawing if they are slap the super on we won't let them go too far too long on feed with all that brood coming out because we don't want to swarming but the bottom has got mostly eggs so they still got a long way from being completely brooded out um he's good with that and she lost all her field bees but yeah they're starting to draw it slowly or was that like that might have been like that they've drawn it okay good because it was all clean you see what these are we don't have to pull them up I just want to look and see yeah this was something wrong that they're working on though it's better yeah okay well that's good we'll just put it back together we don't need to be in here good deal at least they're trying to do something in here all right same exact situation except on this one they are coming out here and they're working on this one too so there's a little bit that wasn't here last week oh that's good there's there's a little bit of nectar coming in but it's just so it's so light compared to what we've ever seen me anyway oh wow this is better is that full of eggs yes that's good so she's trying they're all growing there's enough nectar to kick start them a little bit that's why we don't want to over feed them if we do get a float look at that beautiful these are all better so they're growing Goods yeah they're growing good into here that's good so this one you may not even have to worry with feeding but we'll see let's see what kind of food stores they got there's a little bit of nectar in there yep she's filling it up filling it up so she's she's definitely um pushing y'all along good yeah so this one I mean they got food lined up in every frame it looks like on the tops and we'll weigh it real quick too and this one may not want to feed it just depends on how heavy they are because this one's growing fine and we'll have what they need see the nice brood frame she's putting in all these bees are putting brood in mine at home these here looked out this Frame here it you can't see it but man I'll I'll dip you all down there That's The Brood frame this one but you can see is always at the edge while it's it's those two on the right are almost drawn or they're half or so drawn they're starting to draw though so these bees are widened out a lot but they don't have a lot of food it's hard to feed them at this point because you're gonna put a super on them to give them room so but at the same time all this brood coming out y'all smelling stimulate swarming it's kind of a fine line we're walking right here with his knees because these look good and y'all gotta agree he's done a good job I would say she's a stealthy one y'all see her right there okay there's a perfect spot oh man I ain't got the door open we're gonna put this on I'm gonna slowly without chopping her in two closer up in there there she is she's in there I think that's enough uh they might rub that off over but you know what I don't know if I'd chance it we could probably put one more dot on that thorax all right go ahead there you go that's good that's playing make it work that's plenty that that pin is leaking real bad it dumped all over my box so we don't want to do a Bruce Jenny on this and make her big yellow instead of Big Red and y'all know what I'm talking about that watch his channel look at him come back up this is a box of bees here so we're gonna put a Little Smoke on them let this queen go there you go there she goes don't let her go out there we're gonna do they play this game there we go lock her down go on down all right go get you out of the box and I'm gonna watch her she's gone all right she's good we're gonna close them up those bees are uh these bees are loaded up in that eight frame so he's gonna go ahead and put two supers on for now and we're gonna foreign have him monitor the weight there's obviously something coming in here because they wouldn't have been triggered like that to grow so we're gonna count on that being what they need to grow and just monitor their weight and put two supers on because it's it's just a fine line right now that's it that's it guys his bees look great I got it I gotta say he's done a great job so there we go all right hopefully we get to go to Rodney's in the same video well hey there folks it's now the 25th of May many many days after I did Steven's Hive with you guys I just did not make it over to Rodney's to check on the little one but he's been shooting me some small videos he's getting quite comfortable going in the bees it looks like to me and uh the bees are growing which is what you expect if you're keeping them fed and keeping them going and that's what I asked him to do was uh best bet for those bees was beat them up so he fed him up up into a point and I said you could probably quit because there'll be some nectar coming in and there's a little nectar trickling in we're gonna ride over his house take a look real quick after work I want to see where they're at I want to see how they're doing I want to get my eyes on them I'm seeing from a video what he's shooting and bees are looking good let's roll all right guys we are here on the scene of the bees of course you know me but I'm also here with Rodney good evening that's Rodney and he does bees now too anyway we're here at the hive y'all seem to set it up but look it's got a double deep on it I'll explain that in a minute but I hadn't put that on there just in case because his video showed me that these things were going really good so we're gonna open them up and show y'all where they're at since a lot of y'all asked for a follow-up on this colony to see how it did so let's take a look look these these bees he quit feeding them well how long ago did you feed him last time you fed them three weeks three weeks yeah and they're look they're building in here we're gonna take a look at this see what's see if the queen has come up here and started working now they got a little crazy comb going but that's the frame yeah this is this is crazy cone wow this all happened in the last week or so though huh last week there wasn't none of that in there last week so these frames might have had not had enough wax that's what happens we don't have enough wax but we're gonna leave that for now because they're storing honey up here but we're going to peel that off right there yeah we'll do that after the video so these bees are exploding yeah this is that tiny High it wasn't none of that in there last Thursday let's look at this car this one full of nectar they're loading their nectar so they get they got nectar coming in up here somewhere he built his up into that first deep and put their second one on and hasn't fed him at all look at that so this is all pure honey good gracious this is full of honey so you got a flow coming in up here look at that's full of honey that's the entire they're gonna cap this so there's no Queen up here we're gonna leave it alone there's a little bit of crazy comb now what I will say about these frames you got I don't know where she got them so uh the person that had this Colony before got these maybe they came from Hoover or somewhere and these frames may not be whack been waxed properly so what we're gonna do we're done is we're gonna shake those bees off of there okay and uh we'll get a bowl and put that comb in and scrape that and we're gonna move that frame to the outside we don't want any crazy comb because you can't manage the hive that well I'll show you they didn't go all the way to the outside so they look good so you usually won't be on a nectar frame this is all nectar here's your brood pattern she's a nice one again you can see where the flow just kind of stopped and he was feeding them to get them through but they didn't finish these frames there is some nectar coming in so there's no reason to keep feeding them because we're going to end up having to feed them during the dirt just because of how this year is going yeah she's look at that that's a that's a nice Queen she's doing a good job I always get good Queens out of that spot drones coming in they always gotta watch for swarming make sure they got plenty of space and they do oh yeah this thing was the smallest form I've ever seen I didn't just say that in my title I meant that so she's backfilling this it's already merged out and she's refilling it with eggs they're back feeling a little bit of honey in there but she is back filled with eggs so as they emerge she'll go back and put eggs in it so she's operating out of one brood box right now to see all this is all fresh larving eggs right here that's what all that is she's done been on this Frame and moving over some more yeah we really don't want to take any chance at hurting her there she is right there pull her up there she is all right folks here she is there's the queen and all her majesty she's doing a fine job again I always get good Queens out of that area good swarms this one was small I knew if I had a chance it would grow and it has and she's done fantastic so we're gonna put her back oh slide these frames back together and we're going to take care of that crazy comb oh there you go guys we went through Stevens a few days ago and you saw how good his look these are exploding and here we are with Rodney's there's Rodney Rodney's munching on the honey right now that's that's that crazy stuff so what we're doing is his look great how many how many so you probably fed how many quarts you think not over 2000 yeah so not over two gallons to grow them to feed them y'all seen how small they were we wanted we didn't want them to starve that was what was key no starvation and grow them at the same time they have obviously grown the second box what you see there is from whatever nectar he's got around we got Elderberry no Tyler so what do you think about them hey I'm tickled I'm excited over I know Mike the Granddad here Mom the daddy of them hey we I'm happy I'm happy they're growing they doing bees they being bees yeah they're doing that thing that's right they are so it's it's a good thing we're seeing a lot of growth y'all said it'd probably be a very strong Colony I knew it had good good genetics out of that area I've gotten them out of there for a few years now but I'm glad they're growing and I think it's gonna be just fine he's probably gonna have to feed the dirt like everybody else but that's okay we'll we'll get them in the winter we'll get them both up for winter and that's what we're doing we're raising bees down here this year all right guys well look I'm gonna let y'all go I appreciate y'all joining me I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please don't forget to give it a thumbs up if you don't mind of course it's Barry's best honey I'm Mike and I'm Rodney and we do bees y'all have a wonderful wonderful week and may God bless you see y'all later [Music]

Channel: Mike Barry

Views: 3,421

Keywords: beekeeping, bee hives, queen bee, queen, swarm, comb, honeycomb, brood, honeybees, honey, hive stand, bee suit, veil, hive, hives, hive tool, smoker, pheromone, hive beetle, varroa, mite

Id: -hYJpTZ2VtA

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023