Horizontal Hive Beekeeping - PRETTY SATISFIED

they're encouraged by the horizontal hives compared to the vertical wives through this winter hey welcome back to daddy curbs farm and welcome back to another episode of beekeeping here on the daddy curbs farm I believe this is only the second episode in 2020 I'm embarrassed because it's almost April the bees from the outside appeared to be doing their jobs coming in and out but we need to get in and check them out I brought some things back in the blue truck here some hi Butler boxes the storage boxes that I keep some of my friends in also an empty hi Butler to take in there just in case I get a queen on a frame and I want to put her down in there some extra deep boxes some frames some miscellaneous equipment I can be pretty sure that I'm going to need something I don't have in the truck but let's get in and see just just from the outside I know that I have the three smaller hives back here the horizontal hive over here I'm really excited to see the difference between the two if there is any well let's just get in there there's the three hives here in the horizontal hive this one still does not have a colony in it so we're gonna start here with this first one I'll call it high one see if there's any bees in there there's been a lot of cold wet yucky days so we haven't been able to get out here this is a beautiful day it's about 4:30 in the afternoon right now so I'm not gonna have a whole lot of time but I wanted to take advantage of the time that I do have just to check and see if I have if I still have bees well look at that still looks like there's bees in there we are gonna use the hi Butler tote to put our frames in instead of using the frame hanger my friends at hi Butler have shared this graciously with me and I need to make I need to make it a part of my routine it's really nice for storing totes our storing frames what I'm noticing up front up top here just is that that first frame it's not packed which is you know I didn't expect it to have a whole lot in it I do expect to see some nectar and pollen there has been lots of wild flowers starting to come out I don't see a lot yet okay they're still building out some of this wax on the top so I may just skip a few here take a peek in here say let's look at this one okay there is nectar and pollen in this one pollen or the bee bread so they're building up but they haven't put a whole lot up in this top box yet which is fine we're gonna put this one back together and take it off and look down in the bottom a little bit does have a queen excluder pull that off here and it looks like my towel trick with the for the Beatles is catching some beetles that's good that's why it's there I am hoping to see lots of brood lots of baby bees maybe even catch a glimpse of our queen this one has the the big deep this seven inch deep on I mean not deep 7-inch medium on top of a deep and that first frame was empty this one's pretty much empty as well I do see a beetle in there still have some beetles okay this one's pretty much empty as well no brood so far up what I expect as I get closer to the center to start seeing a little bit of brood on the bottom of the frames but I'm not there yet maybe this frame maybe the next one not this one okay the hive looks pretty good and they're there they're behaving it's just nice very nice okay I don't see any brood on this one either so we're oh the next one I think I do this one looks like there's some brood heavy frame yeah this is a brood full a frame full of brood lots of baby bees I don't see my clean I don't see the Queen but she might be on there I'm gonna put it down in this high Butler box just to be safe it's like another good frame of brood here kind of stuck to the bottom lots of good brood got a little Queen Cup in the middle there it might be an old one it looks like an old one some big larva getting ready to be capped over to pupate I see some pollen on the legs it's like some drone brood there on the bottom lots of bees I'm really loving this more brood lots of brood this is very nice this is good so on this south side of the hive which is society I'm standing on they didn't have brood and here in this medium box in the middle they have plenty of brood but it's all on the north side of the hive again no Queen we're still looking good I'm very satisfied so far with how this is looking I've used very little smoke in there they're behaving very well lots of the pollen cake or bed be bred in this one that's their food a lot of pollen on some of the legs nice bright orange there's my queen right there in the middle there she is hopefully you can see her okay we are going to put this together I suspect in the bottom I don't want I don't think I need to get into the whole thing they have a lot of brood it looks like just by peeking down through here it looks like they have plenty of brood down in there as well let's saw the Queen I saw larvae I'm gonna put this back together and move on to hive number two I'm going to put some of these frames staggered in here some of the empty frames maybe to encourage that brood nest to fill out this direction maybe after all this rain will see a nice honey flow when all the flowers start coming out here we are at the top of hive - this is one that I reduced down so maybe it needs an extra box now you'll see the inner cover came off with that one well I am encouraged there's still bees in here we're gonna take a few of these outside frames I can tell there's not much on them oh look at that that's wack smoth right there we don't want them this hive might need to be reduced down even further actually instead of built up yeah there's wax moth several adult wax moth and no activity on these frames I don't want to lose another hive you know there's wax moth damage right there so these these frames are going to have to go to the freezer there's no there's no eggs or anything in it so I'm not taking anything from the hive oh this is not good this is not good that is yucky okay right there that's all wax moth junk so this has to go to the freezer for sure there's a little bit of pollen in here but no eggs yeah this hives not looking good actually there are some bees but overall not looking good so this hive might be a goner yeah got more wax moths here there's nothing on these frames there's nothing to salvage I don't think they even have a queen these are probably just a bunch of robbers look at that that is all just waste that's from the wax moth this hive got weak the wax moth moved in and that's their larvae right there you can see them wiggling around inside there you got one larva wiggling there on the frame I'm looking closely to see if if there is a queen in here there's a bunch of bees kind of staying together so it makes me curious I think what what's going on here this is just the the remaining workers of a hive there's no Queen there's no resources this hive really essentially it's not a colony there's just a few bees left hanging out got to be in my boots tongue on the leg now I just have to figure out what do I do with these girls I am gonna look closely through the frames that I put in here there's a few frames with bees on them not very many I'm just gonna make sure that I didn't miss that Queen because if there's a queen I can possibly salvage something out of this or even if I see eggs there's no no Queen there there's a few drones definitely no Queen looks like there might be eggs in this one it means there has been a queen let's see let me get a get some light behind me here there are eggs there are eggs so we're gonna we're gonna put this in there there there's some sunlight yes there are some eggs in here so we're gonna try to make a five frame nuke out of this there may be a queen in there I just haven't seen her all right so we're definitely keeping this frame because there's some eggs but we're gonna put some other frames probably bring a frame of brood from one of the other hives okay the rest of these frames are dead you need to go to the freezer I'm going to go ahead and get into this third hive and see if there's some resources I can put over to help that nuke if not I'll either go back to hive one or take something out of the horizontal hive we haven't been in there yet my high butler box is full over here with frames I have to go back to the freezer almost everything in this top box is empty down below it looks like a healthy hive but I don't think it's going to be healthy enough to take resources from you have a lot of good looking bees here now I'm into the brood nest if I am gonna move one of these frames over I definitely don't want to put the one with the Queen over there it's a lot of good brood that's three solid frames there's my queen right there I'm gonna take this frame I need to go get some frames of some deep frames that has some comb on it to put in here and there I'm going to leave this queen excluder off of this one for now okay this one that was dying from the wax moth the two frames had any resources and eggs are over here I put a couple extra frames that have drawn comb on it to help them not have to waste energy building that comb now I'm going to shake these bees down in here let them get to work see if we can salvage this one so essentially what we did was reduce that down to five frames two of the frames that were in that hive all the bees hopefully they're out here some of them but they should find their way back in there and one frame of resources from here they have lots of brood in here there's plenty of space on both ends for them to work I'm gonna leave this one not one box for another week or two and then this one actually is doing pretty well and I'm gonna leave it as is with the deep the seven inch and the six inch medium I really don't like those seven inch mediums mostly because they confuse what's going on here in the hive or in the apiary I thought I got rid of all of them I sold a bunch of boxes but there's still a few of them hanging out so I'm gonna have to come out here with a tape measure and figure out which ones they are and mark them and work on this season getting all of them out of the apiary all right let's be honest who's here only for the horizontal hive me man not really I still like these I'm gonna work with these a few more seasons just to make sure that I'm not jumping too soon into a beekeeping strategy that I'm not used to and can't maintain but let's get in and see how they did they've had the same inspection frequency as these over here the vertical boxes so let's see if they did any better holding on to their colony then these two boxes did here's a view from the front now let's see if I can get this box open this is interesting they have completely covered this vent hole with propolis so there's no air flow going through that one now as opposed to the one over here that is not over the colony this shortboard marks the end of where I had frames so everything over here should have bees everything over here should not that's an open vent that's a closed vent I'm gonna leave that because that's how the bees are choosing it start down here with the skinny board now see there there's lots of bees because they're starting to hang out they're starting to hang out on this end where there are no frames so that tells me one my divider board is not designed well my divider board actually gives them plenty of room to walk over the top so I'm gonna have to put something on top of that to keep them over here or they will start building frames from these top boards instead of on the frames so we'll get this opened up slide it down and give them some more room oh yeah there's a lot of bees in here see how much brood they have some people say that these horizontal hives are really good for raising baby bees but not necessarily good for making honey it's one of the things I'm interested in finding out for sure on my own farm here so let's see slide this divider board back a little bit looking to see what kind of resources they have okay so far it looks like this one is mostly empty the divider board is stuck just move it down here giving me a little more room that way I can just put this one right back in there the bees are beautiful they're not too big which is nice I don't want big bees I want natural sized smaller bees it's like they're building comb on that it's like they're putting some honey up in there starting to cap a little bit up there in the top up here under the bees you can see some of that white that's where they're capping honey and they're just building comb out on the other side so they have plenty of room right there same thing here they are building so that means you know they're preparing they're getting ready hopefully for a good season a lot of comb not a lot of resources yet kind of curious how how many frames of brood they have in this one last time I was in here I think they had two or three I'd have to go back and look that's a nice heavy frame right there with honey on it so they do have stores of honey you see a couple beetles lots of honey on this side okay so that's good there's more honey there that's the Whitecaps that's all hunting I'm just scooting these boards over instead of taking them all out really I've exposed more than I need to with this hive more honey there so that's three frames with honey we're not into the brood nest yet lots of bees more honey on this one so that's four frames of of honey no brood nest yet just lots of lots of nectar lots of hunting looks like a lot of drone brood on the bottom of this which I'm okay with we need some good healthy drones in the area there's lots of larvae so now we're in the brood nest for sure there's my queen right there can you see her she's laying an egg right now sticking her tail in down in there and now she's pulling it out walking to another one turning around you know just got to find another one so so she's in there very gentle very calm I think what I'm gonna do I think I'm gonna pull all of these frames down and put an empty frame of comb on this end to encourage a little more brood down here and I'll probably put another frame or two on that end just because they have so many bees see if I can do all of that without upsetting them too much right now they're being just perfect just perfect let's go ahead and look at some of these other frames of brood since we're opening we're gonna move them anyway I'm hanging on the end there lots of good food this is one that has no foundation there is an old queen cup on there I see lots of bees with pollen on their legs so we're definitely into the beekeeping season lots of good brood lots of well behaved bees they're encouraged by the horizontal hive compared to the vertical lives through this winter okay I'm not going to pull all these out I'm just gonna scoot them down I see brood let me go ahead and peek on this one yep lots of brood on that one too so they do have lots and lots of brood so for those who say the horizontal box is good for raising bees it's looking like that is a true statement okay now we're down in here there's some resources on the end but no brood on that one so let's see here if we have anything on this very first frame lots of pollen lots of that be bred so they are packing it in down here so I'm gonna put one frame down here and then scoot it tight and put another frame on the end these came out of the freezer earlier today they're warmed up to room temperature or ambient temperature on the next design the next time I build a box or have somebody build a box I think I'm going to ask for an extra eighth of an inch to fit because these wooden frames are pretty tight now I'm just going to pull all of those back this direction there's our ventilation hole that they closed up even with squash and Abbi these call it this colony last time I was in here or two times ago I can't remember which they were a little more angry I don't know if it was just weather or what but they definitely came out more aggressive and this time they are being very pleasant so like I said this this has some wax moth damage but it was in the freezer so there should be no wax moth living no eggs or anything those bees should clean that up and use that just fine now that I know that the horizontal hive has probably seven or eight good frames of brood that gives me hive to pull from if I need to for these other hives today is Monday I'll probably come out on Friday and check to see how that five frame nuke is doing and the other the number three that's struggling a little bit and I might have to beef them up a little bit by adding brood from these other two hives stronger hives but I think overall I'm like sort of satisfied with the beekeeping through the winter at least the bees staying through the winter I didn't do a lot of beekeeping but the horizontal hive looks great hive number one here looks pretty good two and three not so much but hopefully we can build them up and go into this season with four hives that made it through the winter I need to get another hive into that horizontal right there because I want to continue experimenting with the horizontal hives by the end of this year I hope to have at least three horizontal hives active here in the daddy kerbs bee yard and that way we can have three or four vertical hives compared to three or four horizontal hives going into next season man I just love being able to get out here and share this time with you guys beekeeping is something that's I haven't had a whole lot of time in my my busy life my busy schedule to become a super-duper expert but I do love doing it I do love the bees it's just a good time and I'm glad that you're sharing this time with me because many of you are way better beekeepers than me and I love reading your comments thank you so much for that it does help I believe everyone has a story I believe every story counts I believe your story counts because I believe you count thank you so much for being a part of my story through this video and letting me be a part of yours I'll talk to you soon

Channel: Daddykirbs Farm

Views: 71,308

Keywords: Blake, Kirby, daddykirby, daddy kirbs, daddy kirby, beekeeping, horizontal hive, beehive, bees, bee hive, Langstroth, long lang hive, beehive inspection, hive inspection, daddykirbs beekeeping, honey, bees honey

Id: 0nC_1_KgreM

Length: 35min 3sec (2103 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020