These Hives were LOADED With Honey

so guys you can see we're out here with the bees  and what i want to do today is i want to get into   at least one of these hives and see what the  status of nectar collection is first we're   going to have to do some cleaning up around these  hives you can see it's really a huge mess out here   there's grass that's really really high at least  a foot and a half tall there's wooden wear that's   laying around from some dead outs last year and  this stuff needs to be cleaned up last fall was   not a great season for me as far as not having  a lot of time to do things it was great in other   ways but one of the things that got neglected  around here was the bees and unfortunately   that lack of time just resulted in when i had a  dead out i would just kind of throw the wooden   ware to the side not having enough time to deal  with it so now we've got to clean this mess up   and kind of get it looking like these this  place has been maintained halfway decent   and after that we'll do what's probably my least  favorite chore and that's trimming around the   hives it's kind of unpredictable how the bees will  react to that sometimes it's okay sometimes it's   not we'll wear a bee suit just to be safe and i  know that y'all can't see this at least not from   the ground but there's a swarm up in that tree  and it's probably a good 40 feet up so there's   not a whole lot i can do about that it's possible  that swarm will go into one of my swarm traps   i may put a box or two out with a bottom  board on it just to see if that helps that's what you got to watch out  for in little places like this   that's a nasty little bugger right there i'm putting on some gloves just in case i'm not sure how well the camera's picking  this up but these bees are coming out of   their hives with a purpose there is something  out there in the woods that they want to bring   back and convert into honey and that's one  of the evidences of a nectar flow and we   see bees coming out of the hives kind of like a  shotgun blast they're on a mission right now and   it's pretty exciting to watch all right  so we're going to give this a try i'm not   so sure how good it's going to go because i've  actually taken about three stings already today   so they're a little bit testy and i was just  walking around the hives picking up stuff   it's not really normal so i don't know if  it's the weather or if they're testing for   some other reason but it's got to be done  it's got to be cleaned up around and if it   doesn't work out so good we can come back in the  morning and check on the honey because there's   no way you can get into a hive that's been  that's been stirred up that's been agitated oh my goodness these what are they doing i  must have a testy hive they've never they've   never really acted like this before rarely  maybe it's the weather probably the weather so that actually went really well so there's a few  of them that are a little bit irritated but all in   all um they they tolerated that pretty well we'll  come back in the morning and see about the honey   and the hives so it's the next day and they've had  plenty of time to cool down and uh the weather is   okay it was drizzling rain just a teeny tiny bit  a second ago but hopefully these bees are in a   decent enough shape where we can get into them and  see how they're doing on honey collection we'll   start with this one right here this is a pretty  tall hive it's got a little puff of smoke here   it's got one two three four five six seven eight  boxes on it of course a lot of that is is brood and just from what i can kind of see from here  i don't think there's a lot going on in this   very top box it seems pretty empty so we'll go  ahead and take it off and go on to the next one   got a little weight to it all right  now i can see from here that there is   a lot of activity in this hive there's  some capped honey going on in here   so let's pull one out maybe two out  and kind of see what they're doing oh yeah check that out look at that it's time  to harvest so i'm using my gopro today that   doesn't have a flip screen on it so i'm hoping  that i'll be able to kind of see what i'm doing   so this is what i want to check on just want  to see what they're bringing back exactly the   consistency of the color mainly is what i'm  interested in the color of this honey and   it looks pretty clear i'm going to taste this  tasting honey in a bee suit's always a challenge i'll taste some more just for just to be sure  yeah so that's pretty thin thin light honey not   a whole lot of not a whole lot of character to  that honey actually i wonder how much of it is   is the sugar syrup i was feeding probably not a  lot because it does have some good color to it   but that's very early very thin very light  spring honey i'm going to take one more frame out   and i want to show y'all that's never good i  want to show you all something it's kind of cool oh that's not that's not cool that's not  the cool thing i wanted to show you so   what i really wanted to show you was these  capped cells and i don't know how well you   can see it but there's one worker bee coming  out right here about to hatch but there's a lot   of cap sales or a few rather capped cells still on  this frame of honey and really what that means is   they've started putting up honey or nectar rather  hot and heavy and they're just kind of putting it   where they had brood what's not quite as cool as  this right here this is a queen cell and this is   the time of year of course when bees swarm and  this is possibly very possibly a swarm cell it   could be that they're trying to supersede an old  queen i really am not sure but either way they're   probably going to do something with this whether  it's replacing their old queen or swarming i'm   not really sure it doesn't look like it's too far  from hatching so we'll just keep an eye on it i   suppose i'm going to go down one more box just for  kicks and see what they're doing down there too   oh that's heavy i got a lot of honey in there  wow so just looking at it from the top there's   quite a bit of honey in here as well there's some  brood in these middle frames so i'm going to pull   i'm going to pull this frame right here  because it looks like it's mostly honey and   like i said they're hatching out the brood  that's in these center frames right here   and they'll they'll just replace it with  with nectar when they hatch not a big deal of course i guess it's entirely possible that this  is the hive that swarmed yesterday i'm not really   sure there's still a very large population of bees  in here so that makes me think it's probably not   all right so here we go here's a good  example so here's a great example of what   i was talking about there was brood in here  most likely not that long ago and uh they are   they're just filling it back in with nectar  there's some bee bread down in here as well   but this is nectar i mean this is nectar that  hasn't quite been dried out into honey yet it's   getting really close but it's just not quite  there so let me do some quality control here yeah all right so let's put this one back in and  let them repair my little gouge there so not a   actually not a ton of flavor to that honey it's  very very thin not a whole lot of character to it   as the year goes on it will probably get a  little bit of a little bit more flavor to it   but it's still still good will still be good on  a biscuit really my main goal here was just to   see how much they were putting up and they have  put up a tremendous amount of honey or nectar   in a very short amount of time i don't think the  flow has been going on now for more than maybe two   and a half or three weeks and the population  in this hive is very very strong and they're   putting honey up or put nectar up rather like mad  and this box is pretty much empty so that'll give   them some more space to continue let's check  one more hive and then we'll leave them alone so these bees are sweethearts  i hope the next hive is as well so i'm actually a little bit hesitant  to get into this hive because i think   this is the hive i'm about 99 sure this  is the hive that was made from the swarm   that i pulled out of a cedar tree last year  not here possibly wild bees and yesterday   they were acting just a little bit irritable but  they seem to be okay for now that's um decent   activity in this top box they're putting up nectar  pretty good let's go into the next box and see   this box is looking pretty good too we'll  pull this one first because i think that   this one's got mostly brood on it oh yeah lots  and lots and lots of brood in this one still so here we go this is a great example i hope you  all can see this so you see here you've got this   rainbow pattern of where the brood used to be and  there's a few little pieces in there a few little   cap cells in there very few but as soon as they  hatch out they're just back filling the brood nest   with um with nectar in the same way on that side  and eventually that frame that we just pulled out   is going to pretty well be the same way but we'll  do a quality control on this right here as well hope that y'all can see that fairly well um  oh yeah oh good oh goodness yeah so that's um   oh that's a lot more like it that's  the stuff that i enjoy that tastes like   some good spring honey there probably clover  and blackberries and that kind of thing   so oh yeah that's that that makes me excited  right there i'm excited for the harvest this year all right guys i lied to you i'm going to do one  more box but i'm not looking for honey in this box   i'm looking to see the health of the hive so this  box a while back before the nectar flow started   was was queenless and they were  in pretty dire straits so i   pulled a couple of frames of brood from  another box and i made sure i had some   good young broods and eggs and so forth that  they could make their own queen out of and i   just pulled a couple of frames for another box  stuck them in there and left them alone and as   far as i can tell they have bounced back to some  degree we'll dig a little bit and see how much you can tell it's still a very low  population of bees so it's not the   not the healthiest hive ever but they are  they're surviving and they would not have   survived this long without a queen so i  feel like there's probably a queen in here we just got to find some eggs well here's some honey in here but it's obviously  old honey from last year let's keep digging here and it's actually pretty remarkable  that they didn't get robbed out   during there in the early spring because they had  a low population they've got a whole lot of honey   in here it really just makes sense that they  would have gotten robbed out but they didn't   of course being robbed out that would  have that would have killed the hive so i'm not seeing any evidence whatsoever  of a queen um i'm going to go back to the   top box and look in it because it's  possible that she's operating up there okay all right yeah she's doing she's  doing her thing up here it looks like   but she's not doing much so you can see on this  frame right here there's a queen cell right there   it's an old one and here's a an emergency queen  cell up here and there's a couple on the back   side as well but other than that it's a pretty  rough looking box of bees there's eggs in here   a few eggs and they're on the bottom  of the cells there's one egg here on   the side of the cell which could tell me  that i've got a laying worker in here but   there are some on the bottoms of the cells  standing up where they're supposed to be and there's some multiples in here as well but  they're on the bottom which could be the case   that it's a new queen and she's just kind of  getting started haven't quite learned the ropes   yet but the population of this hive is really  really bad i'm going to steal a couple of frames   from another hive and um and uh let them oh  and here's a here's a drone with deformed wings   syndrome i treated these bees for mites but man  they are looking rough i don't know that this box   is going to survive it may be to the point where  i should just shake them out and distribute these   these frames over over the other hives so here's  what i've done i have taken two frames out of   this box and i'm gonna replace these or swap these  rather with two frames that have brood and eggs in   them from some other box and i've also reduced the  size of this hive down to three boxes so half size   i'll put the boxes that are not being used on  another hive another three hives to give them   more room for honey that will give these  bees less space to defend and it will   help the other hives have some more room to put  honey so let's find some frames in another hive   these bees seem to be very very healthy very very  productive so i'll take a couple of frames out of   this hive oh yeah oh that's heavy it's good so  i think this is gonna be the box that i get my   frames to donate to the other hive with and  this box is just full of bees this is great not that one that's full of honey and bee bread   well there's some open brood over  here but not quite what i wanted yeah so they're back filling  this with honey let's go down   farther and see if we can get some get some brood oh yeah this is what i was looking for right here  so i've got open brood here we've got lots of   capped brood and what this is going to do when i  put it in that other box it's going to be able to   get those bees a little population boost because  these bees are not too far from hatching out maybe   well maybe a week something like that and  that'll give them a little population boost   but i also want to make sure i put some  eggs in there so that if they need to   they can make themselves another queen and  i'm not seeing any eggs right off on this one   let's check let's check another box  well let's check another frame rather that's looking good super nice all right i'm going to give them  this frame right here this has got eggs   brewed and capped brood so that should help  them out and give them these i give them three   actually give them these other two that have  lots and lots of good good capped brood on them and i'll put these two frames from the weaker  hive into this one and a lot of y'all are probably   thinking well isn't that going to set this healthy  hive back well no it's not and the reason is this   hive is so incredibly healthy that she is going to  immediately come up and lay eggs in these frames   that she has space in so she's not  good this box is not going to lose   a population to speak of at all it's one of the  joys of a healthy beehive a good strong healthy   hobbies they can take care of their self so well  except when it comes to varroa mites unfortunately now i got most of the bees shaking out of those  boxes back into this weaker hive because they   need all the help that they can get so now i'm  just going to distribute those three boxes over   the other hives and this will help all the healthy  hives not run out of room so fast to put honey so guys that's going to do it for this video i  had planned to plan a food plot in this video as   well but this has gone kind of long so we're  going to end it here plus it's getting late   and i forgot to go somewhere here pretty soon  so i'm just going to end it here but i really   appreciate you watching the video these hives are  just doing really really well five out of the six   of them are and hopefully hopefully we can see  a bounce back on that sixth hive and if not that   that's okay that'll give me some it'll give me  some comb to go into the other hives i guess so   anyway i'm happy to report that the honey is  coming in really really strong or the nectar   is coming in strong if i don't say nectar that's  coming in somebody will undoubtably correct me   in the comments so the nectar is coming in and  they're making it into honey but it's coming in   extremely strong right now and these healthy hives  that have a good population are putting it up   like gangbusters and i'm very excited hopefully  we'll get a good harvest this year it'll be   probably two weeks possibly in two and a half  weeks before i'm able to actually get these   frames out and uh and harvest the honey but it'll  be it'll be a lot of fun when we do and i'll try   my best to film that as well so that's going to do  it for this video i will see y'all on the next one

Channel: Fall Line Ridge

Views: 37,610

Keywords: honey, fall line ridge, bees, beekeeping, work, trimming, weed eater, spider

Id: xPvG579r8eU

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022