The Modest Beekeeper - A Documentary

one time I left a bunch of supers in my car right I collected the honey from Kearney who studies at Kearney had him in my car I left them in the back back of my hatchback and went inside for like 15 minutes all the bees I have here found it within like within 15 minutes at about 20,000 bees in the car right how do you get him out now right so I I just waited till it was dark out open up the hatch they all flew out at night and then they took out that took out the honey supers at the door but that was everything I learned from mistakes basically don't do that never do that again [Music] okay hi I'm PJ Martin I'm a hobbyist beekeeper and we're here to look at some beehives bees are important because they are responsible responsible for up to two-thirds of the food to eat or more so bees pollinate almost every flowering thing no we're gonna go take a look at some bees know about these beehives and see what they're up to and see if they need a little bit more room and check to make sure everything's healthy in there everything is going as planned when the Commun slinger a smoker material I like this stuff because pine needles your life pretty quickly make a lot of smoke use the smoke it calms down the bees because number one it masks and a long pheromone that they may give off when you go in there and also in the wild bees live in trees hollowed-out trees smoking out so this simulates a fire and then when there is a fire they gather all their personal belongings and leave the only personal belonging that they have is honey so then they gorge on honey and they become too busy too fat to actually sting use this mask the alarm pheromone and just keeps them busy while you go through the high so [Music] then I usually give them a little will smoking all these recipes a pack just to get them to go down a little bit [Music] [Music] they're very docile they're not like here go here's a drone this is a male bee they don't sting whoa the drones pretty the Brooke drones pretty much don't do anything except mate with the Queen and in the springtime and they pretty much done the male bees they pretty much all summer lonely just sit around meet so uh female bees these bees they stay on top or all the workers they do all the work maybe they have a caste system the bees are first born they're in charge of just cleaning up the cells and then on a charge of a week or so later than in charge of taking care of the baby bees they're called nurse bees and then they become foragers I only lived four to six weeks these the worker bees that are all female they don't they don't actually collect honey to collect nectar from the flowers and they bring it back to the Beehive and they fan it with the wings and they actually ripen it to get it to answer about 12% moisture around there somewhere 14 12% see this thing's pack see how they capped it with wax that's all honey under there Phoenix crush room bags see this that that is that's a good stuff and that's good it's mostly from trees that get most of their uh honey from trees see they're just from trees from black locust Linden and tulip poplar let me get the see this cells that aren't sealed that's nectar now they sit on top of that and they fan it off to get the moist to look at the water out of it and then it becomes honey and then they seal it here here's a drone this is male bees they do not sting they only mate with the queen in the spring and they just kind of hang out and eat cuz they're dudes you know that's a dude's - hey yeah they eat well the females go out and do all the work sorry sorry guys people always ask Oh where's the Queen showing me the Queen find the Queen the high of this big I mean there's probably 50,000 60,000 bees in here so basically as long as I see that some there's some kind of bee brood in here which this is these deceased cap beige cells are drone brood see that this sky right here that's a drone these are ready to hatch out male bees so the bees use the pollen as a protein source that use the honey as a carbohydrate okay so the bees bring in they're told to either bring in honey or pollen yeah they uh I wish I could have found when doing a bee dance actually do a dance if they find a really good spot to forage they uh they will tell the other bees by doing a circle dance where they go in a circle and at some point they waggle the bee waggles straight up that means fly directly towards the Sun and that's where it is yeah and they also have a static their statically charged and have a magnetic field so they always know where North is and another thing so uh they do the waggle dance depending upon the angle of the waggle they are telling you the other bees they tell them hey go 20 degrees left of the Sun and that's worth where to find that that's where the money spot is that's where the you know that's where the goldmine is they find something really good just uploaded oh my god I'll give you this piece kpop sorry guy looks and put this aside hey guys delicious then they did a study that it actually did they can feel some kind of empathy bees they do a facial recognition to I know they recognize me because I know that they are did an acute sense of smell so I think that's why they don't go after me it's another thing to say they know I come out here I'm not here to bother them you know I go it's that guy I think they smell me they bees do to get pests and here's one of them where that little sucker go ran Tommy Derrida's hi beetles I get hive beetles sit black beetle this one right here where I sit am I gonna torture you know they the bees actually trap them they'll containing them in an area when they'll actually seal it off like a prison okay I do have to hide Beals they trap the high beetles they can contain them and they don't really do anything to the bees the bees I mean they get other things like they get in like this like a daddy longlegs spider they don't really do anything but the thing that kills the bees and why a lot of there's a lot of colony losses they get mites on them varroa destructor mites it's like a tick for bees so it's it's like if you had a tick the size of a dinner plate on you sucking the blood out of you so then it by wintertime it weakens them make it wishful PMS no joke parasitic mite syndrome if I could find a mic and these these these beasts these colonies are pretty healthy so they're not like over one with unbuttoned usually what you do is you do like it either a powder test and ether roll they call it you can't take a mic count think about a pack cup of bees roll them in sugar or alcohol and then count how many mites come up I'll see this is all just they just fill this up with nectar it's not right honey yet its nectar if you could you could stick your finger in there and taste it but that your chicken this is nice that's nice oh all filled so I'm just gonna put this back and add another bump it's gonna add I'm gonna top super this one which means I'm just gonna add since they're still working on this one I'm just gonna put it add another box to the top I got to get one more frame when you put them on you put them on when they're just foundation you got to put ten frames in there because as you can see there's a there's a space bees have what's called bee space anything more than 3/8 of an inch and they will they'll take this calm and they'll they'll build it in between that space will make what's called baroque home and they'll just this go crazy so we first start this foundation you got to put ten frames in so they build it out evenly [Music] real beekeepers suit looks like not clean [Applause] so I'm putting my suit I'm suiting up today cuz they're gonna be up it's all over it's the real deal plenty bees flying around all over the place I'm gonna be stealing their honey and he may not be happy about it don't be angry but I am taking the stuff [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Applause] and they're ready for new super they start building fresh coments white stuff on top and this one's really really loaded up that down gently [Music] [Music] it's bad it's about 5 pounds of honey in there it's [Applause] I'm gonna go behind me I'm gonna shake em off first suicide [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] make it want it stragglers [Applause] box [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] some people use a leaf blower and tip it on its side and blow them out but think that's kind of invasive kind of rude the damage that they can't get hurt it's a little more time-consuming but so you put in eight frames out how much thicker how wide they make it but that's that's thick I noticed some some giant what we used to call bumble bees yeah they'll try and sneak in bumble bees to try and sneak in sometimes wasps will but they still actually like they've security guards out front there guard bees I've seen them like awhile I've seen a yellow checker try and get in actually like they will bum-rush the yellowjacket four or five at a time and can't throw them out but you don't belong here get out back behind the red velvet rope [Applause] don't mess around [Applause] nice to see calm they built on the side of the Oh so they fill this with nectar and then they ripened it and then they it gets down to a certain percentage of moisture under like 14% around there somewhere they they seal it off and then that's that's funny nice late honey [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] the my mentor Joe paddock got God god bless him and rest his soul he he taught me like a good seventy five percent of everything I know about bees and he was old school he was slow vain he did he did everything old school so and then he passed away about three years ago I've been teaching a couple other people I'm not really teaching but just give them I'm like an advisor I don't really like to say like you know I mean more advise people because a lot of things that I say don't really work out that way because bees are these are bees do funny things and the workers are women so you never know what they're gonna do [Applause] you ever watch those shows hunting Bigfoot and they're out there they're gone and they're going there who making this Sasquatch noise hmm whatever and it's sick it's sounding back whatever it is I said you know that's another bunch of stupid Bigfoot hunters out there in the woods doing the same exact thing a mile away from you there's no Bigfoot this is how you extract the honey you take the frame so we took out of the hives the other day that are now free of bees place them on top of this uncapping tank do I have here nut board take this hot knife it's electric plugs in its to be about a hundred and something degrees not sure and it's basically just takes the caps off melts and cuts them right off just go like that you stick to it a little better than this this stuff sometimes sewing Mersh motion works better again close and see how it sits and this one holds nine frames it's a hand crank one you can buy one with the motor but obviously they cost a lot more and then you do that to each frame so you get nine put it in its hand crank and just spin them out it's wobbly just anyone and nut it's all for the center the centripetal force spins the honey out of the cells goes in this this is stainless steel food-grade tank and then between these two tanks there's there's a does a stainless steel screen here I do it in the garage the garage is well right now 280 degrees in here and July gets to be about it's in 90 degrees in here you don't want to heat up the honey any more than 100 degrees because it breaks down any of the enzymes that are in it a lot of the honey that's store honey is like pasteurized if you see that don't you don't need to pasteurize honey they the force filter that filters out any of the pollen that's in it any of the beneficial enzymes in nutrients in there a lot of store-bought honey technically isn't honey and then basically I do that until this is full there are holes in the bottom of this and it goes through the stainless filter takes about probably three to four honey supers until it's filled and then probably nothing's gonna come out of this because I didn't I only put that one frame in there but there's a cap on here honey pours outta there if it was full that's that's where that goes that's about it that's the extraction from Spacek extraction process I'll do another one [Music] [Music] [Music] bees get most of their nectar from trees people don't realize that they think that it's all from like flowers of likely 80% of the nectar that they collect to make honey is from black locust linden and and tulip poplar trees flowering trees they collected from it makes this nice late honey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] here before don't tell me that you're sinking [Music] sweetheart I never lost by [Music] [Applause] like [Music] [Music] bees don't need us we need bees I gotta go down I go down to the basement to be oh my god you

Channel: Renewed Media

Views: 64,014

Rating: 4.7419353 out of 5

Keywords: bees, beekeeping, indie film, documentary, honey, beekeepers

Id: UzYbEGs1upo

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2018