HORIZONTAL HIVE outperforming vertical? ... SURPRISED ME!

i have been so busy this year in 2022 trying to rebuild this garden doing this cute little garden shed and getting this garden prepared for actually having space to grow things that i have sort of neglected the bees some beekeepers would say what six weeks seven weeks is not a big deal the bees will do fine you don't need to be in the hive all the time others will want to hang me for not taking care of the bees every week i don't normally fret too much about letting the bees go a few weeks but this time i do feel like i kind of neglected them because i've been so busy in the garden but we're gonna go see how they're doing [Music] [Music] so [Music] i'm gonna go ahead and scrape some of this comb that's going the wrong direction out of here and then just pull these frames and see how uh how these beads are doing in here they have plenty of room they don't need that top box actually it's been very hot we've had 100 plus temperatures 100 degrees fahrenheit plus for well since since even in may it hasn't been consistent every day but it's been most days most days since the end of may has been over 100 degrees so we've had a lot of very hot weather the bees have been all over the ponds collecting water so there were those two empty frames this one has some new comb on it so they have been building some comb in there i'll move that one down to the end here they do have some honey like a queen cup there looks empty a little bit of honey on both sides of this one they're doing okay they're maintaining uh they're just not producing a whole lot i don't expect to see a lot of brood hopefully a little bit but yeah there's brood in here there's larva and some very and some eggs i see eggs and larvae so we have an active queen i don't see her on this frame one of the reasons i do like the horizontal hives is the height that it brings the hive up to so that my back doesn't hurt leaning over like this is a little challenging that's why sometimes i go down on my knee just give my bra back a break yeah they do have quite a bit of brood actually more than i expected they have brewed capped brood which is the covered brood [Music] some resources around the edges with the the pollen cake bee bread lots of brood on this side i don't really have to see the queen i've seen eggs but just kind of taking a peek yeah actually this is the third frame with a good amount of brood yeah i'm not too disappointed in this one it's a little less than i was hoping for because i was hoping for a lot of uh use in that top box and then here's more uh they're putting more nectar on this side and honey on this side [Music] no brood on this one so they had three frames of brood that's good all right we're gonna put these frames back down in here and we're gonna close this box off and go to the next so that was this one here we got it closed up we'll move on to the second box this one was a split both of these were split earlier this year i never did add a second box let's just see how those splits are doing now they have comb coming out the top and lots of bees on top so they may actually need that other box we might just put that one right on top of here let's see let's see what's going on in there we got a lot of cones sticking that this inner foundation or inner cover there we go [Music] look at all that comb they built up on there and pull some frames out and just to see how much they have built [Music] they've been good so far very good so this is one they're building comb on they're putting honey i see a lot of bee bread pollen cake sometimes i call it besides mostly empty and give them a little shake before i put this on the outside [Applause] you know sometimes people look at my videos and i have a lot of beekeeping videos so they want to they want to view me as a beekeeping expert someone to to use as a mentor and i will say that that's very flattering but there's lots of other more qualified people i'm just a guy that does a lot of stuff and the bees have been a fun thing for me to do and i've learned a lot over the last i think i've been doing this 12 years now i show these videos as more of an encouragement that you can do it more than trying to show you exactly how to do it they have young larva let's see if there's any eggs in here lots of young larvae yep i do see eggs people sometimes ask me you know how to get started in beekeeping and i would say you know take a take a local class find somebody local who can help mentor you because your climate's going to be different than mine some people have very short summers others like myself have very long hot summers and the bee the type of bee that you get will likely be different how they behave will be a little bit different you know there's a lot of similarities but [Music] there's a lot of there's a lot of variables in beekeeping so they have a lot of good brood a lot of good eggs okay so i don't really need i really don't need to dig through this whole thing i don't need to see the queen and so i'm not going to disturb them much further i'm gonna i am gonna put that other box on top of this one i think they're doing well this is this was a very successful split a lot of times over the winter will lose bees it's fairly typical for there to be about a 25 loss and that's why we split in the springtime i'm gonna get that other box i put it on you can't see because i didn't move the camera but put it on at a little bit of an angle then i twist it into place that allows for most of the bees to get away without squashing them now i'll put this inner cover back on top of this second box and i just gave them a two-story house great two hives down three more to go we're going to move on to this third box i will say at this point though i'm very happy to see a lot of new people online uh through different social media platforms starting the homesteading thing starting their own gardens starting beekeeping it's a worthwhile journey even if you don't do it forever it's very worth getting started it's it's worth exploring the journey of growing your own garden or raising bees is fascinating and will teach you a lot so good for you i like seeing those stories not all splits are successful that box the only bees that are in it are what they call robber bees they're out collecting resources from other people other bees hives and all the bees in that one have gone they probably swarmed deciding that wasn't the appropriate home for them leaving all those resources so now the other bees are taking advantage of that and cleaning that hive out it's a little disappointing but it happens this hive right here was doing well enough earlier in the spring for me to put a second box on so hopefully it's still doing well it may end up being like that first box that had two two levels and i ended up taking one off this might be the same so let's get in and let's see lots of honeycomb up here they've been very busy building a lot of comb up on top you can see a lot of comb here where they've connected this to the top so we're going to clean that off and then it looks like they've done really well of moving up into the second box so we'll check that out and then we'll look down below it's about 9 30 in the morning right now and it's already in the mid-90s it's gonna be another very hot day today is supposed to be one of the hottest days i wanted to get out here and get this done so i could close them up and let them regulate their temperature when it gets into the very hottest part of the day usually between noon and 8 pm is when we get the extreme extreme temperatures on that the furthest frame to my right furthest away from the camera this is what we get they got a pretty decent store of honey started got some fresh comb well not real fresh but they have some comb started here so that that one still has a lot of room to grow and this side's empty this side has a lot of honey and we have a lot of good honey on that side and this side a lot of good production there and then an empty one so i did put some empty ones in between some that had some comb last time up here in the top they have several empty ones when i first opened this hive i was thinking maybe we would get lucky and put a third box on but they still have lots of room up here i'm gonna i'm gonna just move some of these frames stagger them and then uh take this top box off and see how they're doing down below yeah they have they have a lot of honey started up here this is nice this is going to be probably the only hive that i might take a little bit out later later this year the honey production here on the farm has not been really good over the last few years i've only gotten a little bit i don't take as much as i can sometimes there's still a lot of honey left this is a nice frame of honey right here oh and some brood just got stung on the finger so they have several frames of brood up top that's okay because i i don't really i used to use queen excluders a lot trying to keep the honey separated but i don't do that anymore because i don't collect honey from entire boxes anymore like i did before now i just take a couple frames here and there actually quite a bit of brood up here this is the third frame and there's some in that fourth frame there so i just mentioned that i wouldn't need to put that third box on but i'm a little tempted to do it just to see because they they have in this half over here these five frames the first four and then a little bit of the fifth frame all have brewed they have two empty frames and then some frames of honey that they've been building that's pretty full so i think i might go ahead and put that other box on top of here and let them continue through the fall and then later when we go into the winter i'll reassess and probably knock that back down to two boxes yeah hopefully that works now we got that one fixed up with three boxes hopefully that works out for going into the fall a little extra honey production giving them more reserves for the winter and i'll take a little bit for myself and my family and then i also jacked the front of it up just a little bit because it was leaning forward just a little too far typically i do like the hives to lean a little bit forward just in case there's moisture or water in the hives making sure i'm not standing in ants uh that that water can run out the front but that one was leaning a little too far so i just put a board under the front making it a little more level now the last one to inspect is this horizontal hive i've had mixed results with the horizontal hives ergonomically for me the beekeeper i really like them uh i don't think necessarily that the the bees do better in here i'm not making that call yet i want to go a little a few more seasons but so far it seems like the horizontal hive uh it's harder for me to keep up with what's best for the bees all right so the skinny boards down here we're just gonna take a couple off close to the end of the hive to see how they're doing see if they're building up you probably can't see this but just took one off the skinny board indicates the end of the hive and then everything this way would actually be the colony so i do see a few bees in here let's take a few more boards off pull some frames and see how we're doing okay well so far it looks alright uh it's hard it's hard for you to see because i don't have the camera down there you can't see much anyway i can't even see much because of the shadows and everything but let's just pull a frame so this is near the end of the hive they do have some honey some nectar some honey and nectar on this side as well so that's a good sign i've been i've been trying to introduce more empty frames so i can get look they are building a little bit there uh with these empty frames i put these starter strips hoping to get some foundationless comb going on and looks like they are starting so that's a very good sign they build faster on foundation i don't know that it's better but it is faster some some beekeepers would argue that foundation is the way to go some say that it's not i'm not really dogmatic about that i just i'm experimenting with a lot of different things that's my life it's just full of experiments oh they have a lot of good honey here honey and nectar on this frame oh here's here's a good one this is a good example of a foundationless frame that they're building on hopefully you can see that get a good view of that that's beautiful that's very good to see i have overall noticed that the bees tend to be a little more gentle in the horizontal knives so that's a plus oh that's a very heavy frame they have a lot of honey on this one i'm just looking down in there to see if there's any eggs in this one i don't see any eggs so this is all just for nectar and honey more honey so this is actually this hive right here the horizontal hive see i came in talking about about horizontal hives but this one i wasn't really talking bad i was just sharing observation but this one has more honey so far more honey frames than the vertical eyes which is the opposite of what most people online claim now those people claiming that i don't know if they're just saying it because they heard someone say it look at all that honey this this one is really producing the bees are gentle that's another frame of honey both sides so what do we have now one two three four five frames of honey and the bees are working it they're on they're on every frame lots of nectar lots of okay now we're into some brood on this side so we're starting into the brood nest right here more brood nest got a little queen cup there lots of brood they're mixing in some nectar in the middle of this one but it is a lot of brood again lots of brood trying to get the right angle so i can see yep lots of eggs very nice well this hive's doing well i can't bash these bees they're doing fine [Music] we have more brood here lots of brood so they have five good frames of honey at least five good frames of brood here see what they got in this one more brood lots of brood lots and lots and lots and lots and lots so this is actually a very successful very successful hive yeah i can't be disappointed about this one at all uh back into honey and nectar and pollen so resources so they had [Music] one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven frames i'm gonna say five good frames of brood five good frames of resources a couple extra frames down here let's just see looks like they're yeah just building comb on these on this one this one was an empty frame when i put it in a couple months ago and then on this end we have a solid frame of nectar and starting honey i'm actually going to move this one remove the i'm going to put this one that came from the end right in here slide this one over because that's nectar and honey this one is going to be next to the brood nest so potentially they can have more room here to build on for brood yes looking good okay now i'm gonna scoot it all down a little bit and we'll start covering it back up just give you a different view here these couple down here were empty or had some resources then they had five good frames of brood five good frames of honey a couple of empty frames on the end down here which is what i would expect now we get to take a ball of beeswax back with me to melt down process and i'll have to get that scythe in here and clean this up it's kind of funny you can tell how far in the horses can reach their heads they eat everything down to the ground and keep that right on the edge they're trimmed up it would be pretty cool if i could trust the horses to get in around the beehives and keep that clean but they would get stung they do often and then they would knock over hives that's why i have that fence built around the beehives it's not to keep the bees in a little joke there it's to keep the horses away from the bees so they don't knock the hives over and that horizontal hive wow that surprised me uh lots of good honey lots of good brood they have several frames that they can still build on so i will have to go out probably in a few weeks to make sure that that one is still good meaning that i i might have to add more frames which would be fantastic so far in all of my experience with horizontal hives they hold 35 frames and i've yet to have one go all the way to 35 frames but it would be pretty cool if that happened we got a good ball of beeswax to take home and melt and process into either woodworking wax or a candle or something fun for mama curbs so that's always fun this was just excess stuff that was on top you know between the the inner cover and the the frames so no loss to the bees just extra stuff that i was able to bring home what else did we learn we learned you don't have to be the world's best beekeeper to do this i'm certainly not there's lots of people way better than me um in fact there's a lot of beekeepers online that would argue i'm not very good at this and that's okay because i am keeping bees i am successful um maybe not as successful as some but i'm doing i'm doing the work and the bees are doing okay and my fingers swelling up a little bit because i did get stung but you can do this get started if you have room and you have a desire get started become a beekeeper even if you do it for five or six years you learn and you decide it's not for you and you get out of it that's okay you can share your knowledge and your equipment with someone else and help someone else get started down the road it's it's a worthy journey it's fun it's something that helps connect you to nature in ways that other things can't bees are very good at connecting you to nature you have to become very aware you have to look for signal signals and yeah i still have a lot to learn but it is a fun journey i would encourage you to get started if you have any desire at all and do remember everyone has a story and every story counts i believe in you i believe your story counts thank you so much for being a part of my story through this video and letting me be a part of yours god bless you i'll talk to you soon

Channel: Daddykirbs Farm

Views: 9,249

Keywords: Blake, Kirby, daddykirby, daddy kirbs, daddy kirby

Id: TRgWcd2aUH8

Length: 28min 13sec (1693 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 17 2022