Comb building in a dearth, results

hi i'm pierre count the bee whisperer uh today i just wanted to quickly go through some of the colonies that were set up a few weeks ago in order to build comb during the dearth as the honey flow is starting to come to an end i wanted to make sure that i could show you that the process may have worked because we're going to have a honey flow and that wouldn't really be showing that the feeding could do the job of making up that comb now in a previous video where i was making up nukes for my queens i actually split this colony the smaller yellow one and in fact it was full of brood and mostly drawn comb upstairs but we may as well have a look at the colony we set up next to it which was all foundation upstairs i think the yellow hive had a bit more uh bees in it had a few eggs going into those combs upstairs and so i was i would have expected that one to grow and build home faster but this one and a few others on the other yard with just foundation upstairs so let's have a quick look and see how we have progressed and i want to give a shout out to eric damboys who helped me identify the shortcomings in my sound system of how i could fix it i had some of the pieces but didn't know how to put everything together and today is the second video i'm shooting using my new sound system so hopefully it's not totally blank but what you'll notice is my voice should be about equal volume despite the fact that i'm now 10 feet of well five feet from the camera in fact if i go over here the sound should still be pretty good anyway let's see what we have upstairs also people commenting on the videos also pointed out that when i'm using a bucket feeder it is much more successful to use a bucket feeder when you fill it all the way to the top this is absolutely correct because when you turn it over you're relying on this to form a vacuum seal up here or it's basically actually atmospheric pressure pushing the sugar syrup up but most people think of it as a vacuum up here and the bigger air space that you already have in here in other words if you only half fill your bucket you've got a much bigger space that's required to make that vacuum whereas the bucket is full your vacuum is formed very quickly now this sugar syrup is almost entirely eaten so let's just see how the girls have done in terms of building some comb upstairs now we certainly have them occupying the entire system here they're occupying it all which is good how much have they built in fact i've gone through rough roughly a bucket and a half of food since this was set up as i say at the time this was entirely foundation now i'm not expecting this to be entirely built but i'm hoping to see some progress in say let's say six out of the ten maybe a bit more now you can only tell that they're building comb here there's some wax on there and they're festooning here we have a lot of bees festooning the areas where the foundation is festooning is the process of building comb and they've got a significant amount of comb built here but considering this is the outside edge not bad at all remember this is going to become a increased volume brood chamber some come built here some comb built here so certainly getting on with it it's not entirely even getting near the middle now we actually have quite a bit of honey stored here already of course in this colony it could be sugar syrup so we've got a fair amount of there's it doesn't look like the camera is pointing in the right direction here so the building a fair amount to comb storing it with sugar syrup and i'm pleased to say that we are starting to get a nectar flow i was walking around the bee yard last night and i could just definitely smell that sort of sweaty sock smell of goldenrod honey and the queen has been busy up here too we have eggs eggs and larvae plenty of eggs young larvae at the bottom middle and eggs all around it the queen's pushing out the brood chamber that would almost count as a full comb here's another full nearly full comb brewed at the bottom honey your sugar syrup at the top pretty much another full comb full of brood another full comb now normally given the honey flow that we haven't had with during the dearth this would still be foundation had i not been feeding that's why it's so important to feed a colony that's still building its brood chamber if they need a lot of sugar syrup or nectar in order to build all that comb that's about two-thirds built maybe three-quarters about a quarter built on this side and about half built on this side very nice so we've got two combs and the one over here it doesn't look like this much built on it yet but they are festooning around it lots of bees on it so they're in the process of building so i'm going to move this one from the outside i'm going to move it three in because there's plenty of bees to cope with this so we're going to get this built a little bit more completely a little bit faster i'm gonna move this one about three in so we are i would say two thirds of the way to being a fully built out upper brood chamber during a normal honey flow that might only take two weeks it's been three weeks now and with feeding that's not too bad so that's let's see if we can had the same results on our other colonies still a little bit of sugar syrup here that's going to dribble quite a bit let's go check out the other other hives okay so we have three more colonies here that were set up to uh draw comb and we'll have a look inside them see how they're getting on i've emptied the bucket here again it looks pretty nice plenty of bees festooning and building significantly right here tell you what let's move the camera a bit closer put the bucket over here i'll put the camera up here okay okay that first frame look pretty good lots of comb there was about three quarters of the frame and built about halfway up this one's complete pretty much on both sides mostly full of food this one's actually quite heavy already it's actually got capped honey in it capped honey on this side so some of that sugar syrup of course presumably most of it is another completed comb queen's been getting up here very nice that's three fully built combs here and a fourth and a fifth and they're storing quite a bit of food here as well and a sixth and the seventh and on the eighth half two thirds built there and about three quarters built here so i would call it pretty much eight combs built and even these outside edge frames are halfway done so again i'm going to move these outside edge combs in three spaces and that should see them finished off with the honey flow so i'll be i won't be feeding anymore this uh from here on in this colony is ready actually for a honey super as is that other one so we're ready to put honey supers on these hives we're stopping feeding and now these girls are ready for the honey flow that was the real advantage of the feeding the bees through that dearth build bulk them up get them going have the queen really supercharged building brood downstairs and to some extent upstairs and now they're really ready for that honey flow with the natural nectar and then and the everything from here on is going to be honey so i don't mind sugar syrup in the brood chamber that's actually a wonderful food for the bees to overwinter on sugar syrup over the winter is great because sugar syrup has very low undigestable materials in it the ash content in other words is extremely low which means that the bees can digest just about everything and it means that the they don't need to get out to fly or defecate frequently during the winter time again this bucket is pretty much empty how are we going on here so don't over feel that you're short changing your bees by feeding them sugar syrup instead of honey for the winter a lot of honeys during the winter time can give the bees some extra some problems because there's a lot of undigestible material or in other words ash content in those in that food and undigestable material basically fills up their gut over the winter and if their gut gets full they have to defecate so they have to go out to go to the bathroom over the winter time and here in maine we may get months on end where they can't do that even when they're outdoors okay so this colony is not as advanced as the other we've got the frame not built at all here and another comb not built at all this is probably just a difference in the population of the bees themselves okay so they're building here and to some extent on this side this one's built a lot more and storing food in there that's one built two built three built four built five built and of course what we need to what we can do is take the opportunity just to trim these little bits off here just so they build nice and straight that always helps you have better combs and again there's two unbuilt here these are this foundation so i'm going to move i'm only going to move two frames in towards the middle that's foundation this is a built comb there's a built comb there putting foundation there built one here it's not too much brood on this yet so i'm not breaking up any brood chambers here which is handy and i'm gonna i've got built comb on either side and put foundation in the middle so this is only about half built the others were three quarters to 90 percent built so process still worked very nicely this is not quite ready for a honey super whereas the other two so far are top of the feet mounting the camera on the top of the feeder okay let's see how these are looking the last of the ones that i fed to build comb over the winter over the summer that's rain on the top not sugar syrup by the way when you're seeing splashes it's because there's it's rained recently i think we had a little shower last night it has officially been the wettest july in record since records began in maine okay this looks similar to the one we just went through i'd say that this foundation here comb here foundation there foundation foundation foundation and starting to build comb so about three frames of foundation there not bad full two full three full and we've got a little bit of this bridging comb so we'll just trim that out i'll just make sure the queen is not there because there are eggs in that space so just in case we're just going to trim that off and they'll build straighter the next time so don't be afraid to do that to your combs because the bees will repair this and do a fine job with it the second time round so whenever i come across this sort of stuff i cut it off and the bees will repair that nicely and you end up with nice straight combs and they're getting on with this one so we've got five combs substantially built and five combs virtually untouched i would say that this is not quite big enough to move two frames in the middle so we'll just uh move one of these frames of foundation into the middle not where i repaired it i'll put it over here so they're coming along very nicely getting very prepared when the honey flow gets really gets going this cone building is going to really accelerate but i'm not going to be necessarily having to feed them to do it because now the honey flow is really getting going you might just let them do it with the honey flow but these two i may continue to feed for a bit longer i'll put the feeder on here just to keep the weather out and there we have it so i would say been fairly successful in getting comb built in the hives uh in those five that i did it with anyway and so let's see one that i took apart last week it was already full of brood two here which are now full of brood and honey and ready to put a honey super on and two which have uh got a little way to go yet maybe another week before i could put a honey super on those anyway that just demonstrates the benefit of feeding during the death to get comb built it really does help a lot if you do have a dearth especially now as we're now moving into a honey flow those hives too well one i split and two i'm really ready to uh put some honey supers on in fact come to think of it the one that i split uh may very well be able to take a honey super up at the top but i'll have to check that out anyway it's uh shaping up to be a warm spell now we're getting into the high 80s now so it's uh time for me to go in and see if the sound system actually worked i'm peter cannon the be whisperer see you next time

Channel: Beekeeping with The Bee Whisperer

Views: 3,224

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: Iz7rDOfa4M8

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021