The Incredible Discovery That Saved My Entire Bee Colony

foreign [Music] welcome back to cold country homesteaders if you guys been watching my last couple of videos you already know my current project is honeybees and today's the big day to see if my tan Hive here is going to make it uh last video we put some brood in there to see if the bees would make a new emergency queen as they call it uh the some happened to Queen she's not in there anymore there was no new brood so I took a brood cell or a brewed frame with brood cells in it out of my blue Hive there and put it into my tan hive and today's the big day to see if they made emergency Queen if not I'm out of luck and I'm going to have to buy a new Queen which will not be fun so let's get to it this uh morning I had some horse Hooves to go out and trim and uh they were a little stinky you know it's been pretty wet up here so there's a little bit of thrush going on and uh behooves were kind of smelly and if you work with horses you know that smell really sticks with yeah so to these bees I smell different I don't smell like I normally do when I'm working with them um so we're kind of curious how that's going to uh affect them and as I was thinking that and walking closer getting my B gear on a bunch of bees came right out towards me to check me out and I've never had that happen normally I can stand almost right in front of the hives here lately and they know what I smell like and everything and they're familiar with me and they know I'm not here to harm them so they haven't bothered me but today is a different story so this uh check may be a little bit more interesting than I thought and maybe I would like but hopefully we'll make a good video for you guys so if you guys can do me a favor and you appreciate my content just hit that like button down below leave me a comment and uh I am kind of short on time today it was supposed to check this Hive over the weekend and I never got to it just life happens so I'm doing this before I have to go to work but I will look through every frame and just make sure that I don't have a queen somewhere that maybe they hatched out and uh just do a normal quick check here so actually a good friend of mine over on another YouTube channel that got me it back into YouTube and eggs and honey acres is the channel name check them out they're pretty neat he uh he'd be spitting facts uh he does a lot of honeybee facts and honestly that's where I've learned about a lot of facts about these honeybees and a lot of good information but he's also trying this method and it will be interesting to see how it works for him because I uh from what I've seen when it comes to honeybees there's a lot of it's a lot like farming where everyone does something a little bit different and everything works a little bit different for everyone I've tried doing a lot of uh reading and Googling about honeybees and how to take care of them but it's so hard there's so much information out there that Don't Be Afraid just to try something and see if it works kind of like what I'm doing I saw some guy do this I'm like oh that seemed great that would be a great way to clean up hives but also not take away it from the bees themselves and so far it's been working pretty well see how neat that home is they don't like this plastic comb because I didn't know this at the time and I probably should have gone back and fixed it but I didn't uh you need a layer of wax on these frames apparently they're a little bit picky where it really needs to be just the right amount of Wax and they'll build comb a whole lot neater when they die they actually release the pheromones letting other bees know that a bee died and uh that the hive may be in trouble so the more of that pheromone smell that I get on me the more likely the beef are to get upset and start coming after me which we do not want same thing when you're training horses in a way every time you take them back to the barn you always want to take them back calm because if you take them back jacked up next time you go to get on that horse they're gonna be pretty jacked up so the same thing with honey beef it's less jacked up you get them every time you check the hive the calmer they'll be for your next check nice nice beautiful comb on this I mean besides the queen problem this Hive is thriving they uh they are building comb like crazy and they're actually filling this in pretty nice and neat here see how this is darker comb but it still looks somewhat newer I'd say that's probably some comb ice or wax I smeared on it last time not seeing a queen yet there's a drone bee they still have drones in the hive about 99 of these are female the only males are the drone bees and uh there's normally not too many of them they're uh only purpose is really to breed and that's about it [Music] now my brood frame should be one of these plastic frames here and we'll do a look at that that's the brood frame right there plenty of brood very young brood there [Music] yeah stupid Hive tool does not want to stay put nope that's a that's a drone right there saw a bigger bee and wanted to double check they do not like when you blow on them but it does help move them when your hands are full so I am not oh there we go whoops this side of the frame is pretty without uh brood though and I thought the frame I had put in here had a good amount of brood on both sides so this actually might be a good sign just gonna reach around you here so right there that may be a queen cell started right there the only issue with it is that it's empty so they should have made a queen cell around some brood and they did not so that's the problem just gonna look over this Frame really well because there's a chance there is a queen man look at that look at that bunch of bees there they're just all crowded on top of each other just a little odd it's a little weird but there is a lot of brood in here there's some capped brood in the center there some very young brood so you won't be able to see it on camera but what you're looking for is just a almost a tiny little flake of rice in the center of this comb and those are new eggs that is what you want [Music] so the other thing is I just well I didn't even notice I just looked up there's a big uh storm cloud rolling in and uh these do not like over calf and they I'm sure they can also feel the uh oh there she is okay so keeping my eye on Earth loser there's a Queen right there so she has a unmarked Queen there you can see her here we go see her moving around and all the bees kind of moving for her she's kind of running away that is a different Queen I don't know where she came from but she's pretty good size um so she's been hatched a while so the good news is probably the last time I checked this hive she was actually out mating and that is awesome I was so concerned about this hive not making it just because I could not find a queen or queen cells because last time I checked I actually destroyed several Queen cells but luckily due to me probably not checking it every week I actually missed the queen seller too that hatched out and uh she must have been out meeting sometimes and your time can be an amazing thing okay so this is perfect I found new brood I found a new Queen um The Hive is doing great but now I'm just gonna wrap up with the rest of my check here this Frame also has quite a bit of brood on it so it looks like that new Queen has been very very busy in the last week which is amazing [Music] so I always heard good things come to those who wait and I don't believe in being lazy but man sometimes you're just blessed for uh not getting around to what you need to because if I had uh been on top of things like maybe I should have and uh went to go destroy all those Queen cells a week prior these uh these probably wouldn't have been doing so well because I probably would destroyed the queen cell that had that clean in it that we just found today foreign a lot of people say is when you're doing honeybees you should always put the frames in exactly how you found it uh I don't really do that uh maybe that's per my issue but I have mix and match frames before mix them around where they are and uh even taking empty frames and shove them in the middle of the hive and it seems like the bees will actually fill it faster I've heard bees are like OCD where they hate they like they like to build from the middle out so if you have empty frames towards the middle and bottom of your hive they will actually fill in those frames before finishing the frames they may have already started that you moved [Music] um and from what I've done so far I'd say that's probably true because I've definitely swapped some uh empty frames around and they've definitely worked a lot harder on those so they have some completely empty frames here on the opposite side they have some more filled frames so what I'm going to do is take this first frame that I took out from this other side here has quite a bit of Comb on it so they're definitely building heavier on this side and shove it down here there's that comb on the outside of the box and that will hopefully help encourage them to build more comb on some of those those two other frames right here [Music] work for you seems to be working for me and I'd probably say it's worth a try okay so hey come here real quick I got great news one I'm drenched in sweat but that's not it but in the tan Hive we have a queen bee so probably what happened with one of the queen cells that I got rid of geez two or three weeks ago two weeks ago I guess uh one of them must have hatched so I must have missed one I did take two weeks in between uh my first check in that real first check I suppose uh and she must have hatched went out and was being bred last time I did my check but this time there was a ton of brood in there I mean there was just uh brood everywhere and she was a pretty good sized Queen she didn't have the coloring on her back sadly I did not bring a paint marker with me I'm not sure if you can use the normal Paint Marker if it has to be specific like oil-based water-based you know but there is a queen bee so that high will survive and do very well uh and my blue Hive holy crap there's like four or five frames just full of brood full that Queen has been extremely busy that high this thriving which is awesome because I got a package today that will be in my next video and uh man I'm so excited to show you guys but also try it out with the blue Hive not sure if I can do it next time I'll have to do more research but it's just awesome so thank you for watching I hope you hit that like And subscribe button staying tuned for my next video and mostly catch my next one because I think it will be the whole next chapter of my journey to keeping bees and I hope you guys are learning from this because a few things I've warned and tried some work great some didn't it so much and I almost made a huge mistake but that high will survive

Channel: Cold Country Homesteaders

Views: 3,921

Keywords: Cold Country Homesteaders, Homestead, Fun Facts, Country living, small farm, homesteader, hacks, how to, living in the country, country, america, farming in snow, modern homestead, how to homestead, young couple homestead, how to homestead in the north, The Incredible Discovery That Saved My Entire Bee Colony, honeybees, beekeeping, what to do when you loose your queen, queen replacement, hive rescue, honey bees, bees, save the bees, beekeeper, honey, queen bee, how to start beekeeping

Id: 4oFhtA83PtU

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023