Canon C200: Beekeeping Documentary

I was dreadfully nervous I could feel my increased heart rate I noticed I was sweating a ton I was moving much quicker than I should have been and you know everything I had researched said you need to be very mellow and slow down and calm and my first experience was the opposite totally out of my control because I was just trying to get in and then get out safely I think I was scared I knew I that I had the protective equipment I knew theoretically I should be fine and they couldn't get to me but the subconscious had a fight-or-flight part of my brain was not sharing that comfort and that was very surreal feeling hey Justin hey Tom how are you good how you doing good I'm at your gate and I've got some bees with me I am delivering some bees to Tom he's decided to get into the Hobby of beekeeping so I had some extra bees so we set them aside I got him in a hive for him and I'm gonna bring it Bob he's gonna get him all set up and we're gonna go over I'm gonna go over just kind of the basics with him on you know stuff he needs to know to get in his hive himself I have a hobby of brewing beer and so one night I was watching a youtube video on making Mead which is fermented honey solution and so I decided I'd want to try and make Mead as a take off from brewing beer and then I got the idea that I would harvest my own honey so that the meat I made was kind of a hundred percent homemade so that got me interested in looking into getting bees so that I could harvest honey five years later in many beehives I still haven't made my maiden but I have a lot of bees so ah how you doing Justin good I've got your bees here but there's some flying around so we're gonna get bee suits on relatively early they must have found a little escape pod oh do you have your suit with you I do so is what I think we should do is you suit up I'm gonna suit up and then maybe back to Ranger up here we'll load the bees into the Ranger and I want to get them down to whatever spot you have sooner rather than later so that the ones that are flying around so they can reorient down in their new home right so get your suit on and then I'll come check your gear to see and make sure you're zipped up okay all right the idea of beekeeping was something that I've been thinking about for probably 15 or 20 years and going into the hive today for the first time that's going to be pretty interesting okay I'll check this you know what you can wear a hat if you want cuz the Hat will keep the veil off your face right because sometimes when you're not paying attention to build them and they'll stick you right there all right so I brought an extra and let me get you geared up now you feeling wonderful yeah that's pretty exciting there's a little tiny gap right here like a finger uh-huh they'll find that if when you're when you're suiting up every time it's good to look in a mirror or just just know your suit and know exactly how the zippers go because if there is a gap they're gonna find it so when I look back on when I first started beekeeping and some of the things I could have done differently I've had a few harrowing moments one of which occurred when my bee suit wasn't closed all the way when I first started keeping bees I wasn't as cautious about that and I got some bees inside my veil and all of a sudden I would feel a be crawling on my neck or pop up on my cheek and and that was very surreal feeling and quite a freak out moment I've my wife has seen me just running across my yard swatting at my neck and in my bee suit all right I'll slide them out we have to be careful not to jostle them too much yeah we should try and be careful can you lift if someone in their heart of hearts really wants to get into B's but the idea of the unknown or things like that is preventing it I would say go for it educate yourself but I would also link up with someone that I either knew or was local that was already into beekeeping and had experience because I don't think anything can replace just shoulder to shoulder being together going through a hive for the first time okay when we get down there I'll pull the strap off and all that we'll get it set up on the hive and we'll pull that out and they'll be free cool let's do it what a nice day when I think about Tom his experience with his first five he's gonna face some challenges that any new beekeeper does I think he's got to be feeling some nervousness but I know Tom pretty well and he takes everything head-on and there isn't too much that discourages him or intimidates him so I I think he's he's gonna enjoy it from day one and I think he's gonna have a lot of personal confidence with the way we're going about it [Music] so wherever we want to put them we want to put them so their fate so their entrance is facing south okay we're all the way down at the end right here it'd be perfect do you know which way is exactly south yep that's due south right there the studies show that that's where they like to leave their hive if they can so want to put it in the shade Justin Earth Oh does it have to be level or as level as we can get it would be good right here looks good too we'll set the hive there these right here Tom when you start doing hive inspections yep you can you can pull frames out and temporarily set them here it's a really nice function half on these stands are real nice so cool all right let's see if you want to guide me on there so I get in between okay hi Tom it's time to uh let these guys go so I'm gonna have you take this hive tool right in between kind of right in between here and here just just the bar yeah slide that bar out then okay just that's that piece yeah just take that out you can grab it with your hands [Music] all right Tom before we get you going on your B's I want to go over the basic equipment some of the hive components that you'll need to know right away I always keep some epi pens around I think that those are a great thing to have either in your refrigerator and a cooler when you're with your hives you know whether you're allergic or not but you don't know if other people are neighbors friends family things like that so so I think that's a great piece of insurance to have great and you're gonna use the smoker to smoke your bees and is what it does is I don't know that it necessarily calms the bee but the smoke interferes with their ability to communicate with each other so if they decide they don't like you in the hive and they all want to start talking about finding that hole in your bee suit and to get you that smoke will help slow down or or interfere with their ability to communicate they associate smoke with they think something's on fire with danger they think that maybe there's a fire by their hive something like that so they're thinking that they may need to pack up and move right away and so just like you would if your house was on fire you go and grab your important pictures and you go do things so they're trying to go grab that honey store it up for their trip when they got to hit the road and go find a new a new home so you're kind of fooling them into thinking that they need to go pack and that allows you to open the lid and go inspect them they make commercial smoker pellets oh so these are real easy you just light one Wow go sit in there and start smoking oh that's cool so how much smoke it actually has to come out of there before you can achieve the purpose this is a good amount here really it's not a lot but this is sufficient I like more smoke so I'll pack it full of pine needles and really get it going but this is this is plenty it smells good yeah it does when I first got into it smoke was my safety net my friend so I was probably just giving away too much smoke so how long will let how long will you need to smoke the to do whatever you you're doing normally right so is what I'll do normally I'll smoke in the entrance I'll blow some smoke in there get some smoke in the hive I'll crack the lid I'll put some smoke in and then I let it sit for about a minute a minute and a half that gives the bees time to start diving in and then I'll just open the lid and see how they react if a bunch of bees don't jump in my face if they look like they're calm and busy then you you probably don't need any more smoke because you don't you don't need to just blast them with it but if you open that lid and they're rushing out at you you may want to throw a few more squirts of smoke and let them sit for another minute and just ease yourself into it instead of just completely inundating them next in line is your hive tool they make a few different styles of this they are all basically the same so what you're gonna do so you always have this on hand either and when you go you're gonna go in and in and wedge this is gonna be like a pry bar for a lot of things they may build comb in a bad spot and you'll scrape it off one of the first things that the bees do in a hive they create a product called propolis it's a very sticky it's it's almost like a sticky waxy substance they go through and they and they glue everything down in the hive oh well yeah all these will be glued and stiff so you always need the hive tool to pry things apart and to clean up things when they're building comb in areas you don't want there's a lot of uses for that tool this is called a super and these are the frames they go in it okay there's ten of these in this hive they're specifically designed to have a space that works for the bees to keep keep the temperature in the hive optimal for what they need to raise their young to survive and to keep their honey and nectar from dripping out of the hive so the next tool I don't I haven't used my brush very often but this is a Bribie brush I I think guys that are producing a lot of honey probably use them more but it's very gentle and and you can you can manipulate or move the bees without hurting them with this so you know if this was bee comb you wanted you were looking at but it was covered in bees and you needed to see past the bees you could take this brush and lightly brush them off and it won't hurt them or crush them but it'll move them and now you can inspect that part of the comb you want and it will let it by doing that will antagonize the bees or they pretty docile and will just it depends on the particular bees I have certain hives that that will agitate them and I have other hives that they'll just move out of the way and it won't be a big deal so yeah it definitely has the potential to you know antagonize them a little because you're manipulating them but again it's just going to depend on the particular hive and you'll get to know your hives over time and hey this hive I know is a little more aggressive than that one I don't use the brush in there and things like that I've learned my experience has been in a hive body they raise their babies more in the middle here and then as you get out it gets more food stores and honey the last thing we have is a queen excluder which is here you may or may not use this it's it's a little bit more of an advanced item but is what this is designed for is if you get to a point where you want to isolate the Queen in certain areas of your hive one of the primary reasons to do that would be you want it your bees to produce some honey and you want on the comb that they're making the honey you want primarily honey there as much as you can get it you don't want babies being laid in with the honey so this Queen excluder was designed so let's say this is this is where the Queen is and she's laying babies down here you can put this queen excluder on and then put another box with frames on top this is designed so that the Queen cannot fit through these slats but all the other bees can you can put your other box on you know now that whatever is built in the second box there will not be a queen laying eggs or babies it increases the potential that you'll get straight honey up there or pollen or nectar and so that's what these queen excluders are primarily for it so I have a question for you a couple of minutes ago you said when you when you get stung or now so this bee suit that I have is supposed to give me really good protection yes how likely is it that I'm going to get stung as I'm enjoying this hobby if your suits properly attached you have your hat on I would say you're gonna get stung less than 1% of the time if you just pay attention what you're doing but you will get stuff so and what do you think when you get stung makes the honey taste sweeter so that's a rundown of the hive that's what you're going to be looking for and we'll go into one of my house and I'll show you this stuff in action [Music] [Applause] thing I really enjoy about hobbies is they are very consuming if you have a passion for something you can really get lost in it you're not thinking about the past the future you're just really right in the moment it can also bring a lot of joy to your life when I go into my beehive I get a total moment of clarity it's one of those points in time that doesn't happen that often at least for me where I'm so focused on my inspection of the bees that I'm not thinking about anything else and there's something of subconscious in my brain that relieves a lot of stress for me all right so now we're gonna see how they react you're gonna want to go real gentle slow move it slow is good wow these guys are just hanging on Tommy smoke no pun intended so I call just set these guys here Wow now see how these bees don't really do much here they're nice calm bees they weren't as calm they'd be jumping up at you okay so what you'll do when you get it like we need to get a frame out right so you just come in real gentle and just kind of push these guys out of the way so you try not to crush them now I'm gonna kind of I'm gonna kind of jar it it's stuck to this one so I'm gonna go in over here I'm gonna twist it to separate it on that end and that end now I can come in and lift up can you get a few real gentle get it Wow then you're gonna come out real slow Holy Smoke hey Wow now you're immediately my queens marked it has a green dot on it so if you see some with a green dot let me know but so if you look here something you can do if you want to like I want to move these guys so we can look in here you can use that brush or you can blow on them and they'll run out of the way see there's nectar here yeah and this is covered baby's here there's some larvae there's eggs here I can see and this guy is drinking yeah they're they smell the little smoke and they're in there trying to get some stuff out and I see down here the honeycomb is outside of it yeah they've built and that's where you'll take this hive tool and you can clean that stuff up and just leave it on the ground they'll they'll reuse it but you can clean that stuff up if you want Wow you see you can move real gentle and they'll kind of get out of your way we call that bird comb like BRR it's cold bird comb has come they build in places you don't want and here's a little honey up here you'll see the honey yeah so they've got brood babies open open space where they're doing either nectar or eggs they've got nectar and honey up here yep okay so now I'll leave this out and if I have a hive stand I can put this in that save it so you can just set this real gentle just let them be and now that creates space now to move some more frames so now I'll get the next frame and then you want to try and pry it up sure it's it's yeah if you can however you can lift it okay so you'll pull up you're gonna immediately look for the Queen don't see then you can you can rotate down and just flip it up give the bees a chance to get out of the way when I rest it oh there's there's the Queen to see her yep she's got a really green yes yeah there you go there you go now watch I've got my queen cage here yeah so if I was gonna cager I just gently come in here did you get her oh no did I yep she's right in there Wow so now we know she's safe okay now I'll set her in a safe place I'll just set her right here okay yep now we know we have we cannot crush our Queen in here cuz she's out yep and now you can be a little you know a little quicker with your inspections and whatnot okay and good job spotting her by the way there's a whole dynamic within the hive they're always competing for space and resources and there's a democratic process that takes place in the hive where you know certain bees are making decisions for other bees and sometimes I compare that or analyze that against the way humans operate it just absolutely fascinates me yeah see this is seeing a lot of brood a lot of baby which tells you they need more space that's why I'm gonna add that because you can see they're built out every frame is full so that's that's plenty we're probably good I'll I'm my button these guys back up and add I'm gonna add a box so they have room to grow from here and see it's really nice to know we have the Queen out of the way I know I'm not squishing her now is what we'll do is we're gonna add a box okay just kind of get it on and slowly now we'd take our Queen like I need to get these but you can be actually pretty forceful and shake them to off like that she'll go right down in there and there she goes she just went back down into the into the comb yeah and now they're fanning pheromone telling everyone okay she's down here because it's a new awesome look at him yep there it because this is new to them so they're trying to let everyone know hey this is new but she's down here we're all down here so they're trying to blow the scent out and then put this back on and I made this it's just to provide some ventilation then you'll take your top bees shake them now they're buttoned up now you just sit here and enjoy the chaos wow that's pretty cool yeah and a lot of these bees returning right here are bees that have been out in the field they don't know anything went on they're just coming back to the ship oh okay they're landing they don't know and but these bees here see these bees out front yep these are like guard bees and they're just working that entrance making sure it's safe yep they've blown the pheromone out they're letting everyone know this is the right spot because they know that this is new something's changed so when I first started keeping bees I found myself having a beer before I would go into my hive and I think it was probably to calm my nerves a little bit and then that became just kind of this tradition for me yeah it was nice to get done with the experience and then just sit back and continue you know the relaxation and a lot of times I I'll take a beer with me and just kind of after I get done all I'll just sit there and enjoy that moment and then kind of reflect on what I just saw in my hive and things like that so what did how did you feel when you saw those bees well you know what I was free I was really calm about the whole thing but when you took the top off and we saw this huge mass of bees I really did set me back for a few seconds whoa that is that's more bees than I've seen in my life in one spot and then when you pull it out and they're hanging all over the place it took on a different complexion than just looking at a box and knowing that bees were in there yeah your natural response is like yeah this isn't this isn't where I should be so after getting in my hive knowing that you've got yours do you feel like you're gonna have a decent level of confidence to go down getting your hive I do I mean with this protection and knowing that there's not a lot that can go wrong as long as you're well protected I think over a period of time I'll get more and more comfortable in going down and and doing just what we did today well get I'm excited for you thank you thank you that's us fun thank you for spend a whole day I'll thank you you

Channel: Chris Francis

Views: 7,019

Rating: 4.8823528 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, beekeeping, bee keeping, bee hive, canon c200, loawa probe lens, macro cinematography

Id: _7gS6dqdkN0

Length: 26min 31sec (1591 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020