Tips to a big honey crop

[Music] [Music] [Music] so I'm taking my splits from these colonies and things are working out pretty well I'm not doing any equalizing I'm typically finding the top is getting pretty heavy and honey so if we got it moved a little quicker here and then finding my true splits are filling up pretty fast - and we got to get to them - they're sporting a lot of birds and it's going to get hard to work with them if they hatch and toxic cells full of honey so we're gonna have cells ready on Saturday and we're gonna get busy and make a bunch of dukes and try to stay ahead of the cells as they come ready that's probably one of my bigger hives want to come back and take these guys down on our next round make sure you don't swarm on us giving them space is going to help expand that mess okay so now the sunny box is on top these are honey supers so the queen has four we're four-and-a-half frames rooted in the bottom box it's ready to hatch so we need to space where to put those bees we want all these bees for the honey flow and we want to keep that Queen laying so she's gonna lay down there and she's gonna move the nest up here as that oh as that hive expands up in the top she's gonna follow the bees and she's gonna establish a nest between the two boxes so this is the next step of my single box management allowing that Queen to come up and lay into the first honey box we're not storing resources in this heli box yet we are raising brood we have a heavy flow on right now dandelions wildflowers clovers about to start on your spurge out there so they're gonna store a resource in here dedicated towards this brood they're gonna use that resource to build bees and the plan is as the crops start to bloom as we start to get into the heavy flows where they're starting to store an amount of surplus we will move that Queen back down to the bottom box and allow this top box to hatch out and backfill and then we can harvest it it's June 18th and we're a week and a half away from pushing that Queen down to that bottom box that bottom box is nicely hatching out now the Queen we want in that top box laying up top we're noticing fields coming in bloom alfalfa's blooming now you know hay fields are being cut but anything with seed production there's a nice bloom going on hopefully the bees don't get sprayed we have canola bloom all over the countryside just starting out early canola starting to bloom the other side my a pre there hasn't even thought about it yet so I'm gonna be going around staging my work through the a pre to push these queens down to the bottom box in about a week and a half but for this next week I'm gonna go through with the crew and we're going to equalize I'm just going to take down the strong ones a little bit and boost the weak ones and the reason I want to do that is I kind of want to measure their growth still just a little bit take you know that excellence off some of those high performers because there's more chance you're gonna swarm if we leave them too big and give them till the week just to kind of give them a little bit of a boost before we send her back down in the bottom box and send them into the flow so I'm gonna show you what I'm kind of talking about here here's a hive right on the money where I want them you can tell just by the hive activity from the top here this frame not for him not for him probably have where the queen is probably blended probably been working laying brood so they're there right where I want them [Music] there these guys are nice to that firm bathroom bathroom in that friend probably have the queen laying into them which is perfect on a whole lotta resources up top through this round we kind of see how clothes we wear with our split an evening out all the hives I'd say this this hive looks pretty good bird bird brood maybe you know so there's a lot of attention up in the top box here not a lot of resources stored see that okay this hives too big you can tell it right off the mark so I'm looking down between the frames and I'm not sure how easily this translates through the video but we have attention to all the frames right across the top box normally that but boom boom boom boom boom boom boom where there's honey being stored in the top box here so what we want to do with this hive is we're gonna pull this guy down a little bit so by doing that we're gonna be me pull a frame or two honey give it to a hive that has very little resources in the top box we're also gonna look at how much brood is being laid in the top if there's three or four frames maybe we'll leave them with 2 frames we'll take two frames away from them just to pull just to pull a little bit back just to help pull that the progression of that hive back just a little bit so it'll take that kind of swarmy spirit out of them in about two or three weeks that's all we're trying to do we're just trying to take the swarming out of them is what we're trying to do and I can see this one probably be swarming the big hive lots of bees will produce you lots of honey but don't let them fool you because this hive if it's swarms and they're gonna produce almost nothing that's compared to a hive that looks a little bit weaker right now these guys will grow and if they don't swarm that population will continue to grow into a massive hive to bring in that honey flow so it's the balance you guys have to figure out it's very subjective and what it what difference differentiates beekeepers from one another so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pull some resource from here so let's just work through this hive to see what we've got these are in a great mood today I haven't started the smoker yet we've got a little bit resources going on in there imagine new digs in this frame and there's this frame is pretty much laid over the eggs and Queen cups on the bottom these are all Queen cups yet there's no eggs in these which tells me that she's this hive is you know just a bit a little bit over balanced there just a little bit too strong okay so this frame is for lay eggs I can leave these guys in here do I have here but a frame of captain crude beautiful and there's the queen is she's probably in the top box I know that because she's laying up into the top box she'll be here for a little while until she moves back down so a good chance she's up TalkTalk so I found her so I'm gonna put her aside and what I can do now is they can skim away the strength with the bees on the frame which is really beneficial if I don't find her typically what I do is I just shake the bees off the frame so here we go full framing birds look at that frame agree just absolutely brilliant I'm gonna pull odd one away so I don't want to split these guys down too hard because I want them to produce me a huge crop I'm setting them back a little bit just by taking a brood away taking away all that energy get a visual on here again he's going down [Music] taking this frame there I've just skimmed a nuke from these guys and hopefully with these efforts I've verted these guys from swarming 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 these guys back together but what I'm going to be doing is using these bees to boost weaker colonies through the apron we'll just continue assessing our hives now it's right on the money that's pretty quick work was all you guys did take a peek in you know what you're looking for these guys are borderline but I'll leave them look good once you know what do you want to see just keep looking for these guys are right on the money those guys are making me happy Avery appears to be ready for the honey flow these guys are a bit I'm gonna pull these guys down so I can continue on just trying to find a weak one to show you guys right on the money a little bit dig a good frame from these guys yet okay so these guys are a little bit me so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go into this hive and I'm gonna give them a bit of a boost so they're not they're hardly even up to the top box these guys could use two frames per boost and open up my my donor box it so happens I have two frames of brood here to the drop just like that these are gonna mingle quite nicely I don't worry about spraying them down I could use honey beat healthy or something to spray em but I find bees mingle with each other beautifully this time of year you're so focused on other things other than fighting themselves so put a cap on these guys and we're gonna go into here and we're gonna pull some brood out of here these guys are a bit big and searching for the Queen is a lot of work what I typically do is we just go through and if we don't find the Queen we just shake all the bees off the comb this is a frame full of nectar these guys are a little bit big they almost have this top box full of nectar now we get into the eggs frame eggs here's a frame full RV beautiful cat fruit so we're gonna harvest this frame shaking all the bees off because I don't want to bring the Queen with me okay so the Queen can't be there put an empty frame back in got going on here another frame polgár awesome hatching in fact because these guys are so full I'm gonna take both these frames away this is kind of the so this is kind of where you have to lend your judgment - how much you gotta take away how much you're gonna leave in there it's why have a hard time hiring people to figure this out for you there's some more brood here so I'm gonna keep this behind young brood lots of eggs I haven't found the Queen there's a little bit of resource there maybe what I'll do maybe we'll all well do is I'll give maybe what I'll do is I'll give this a little bit of honey to this hive they help them along a little bit more empty drop the frame nectar honey in there okay these guys have been boosted these guys have been taken down so it's just that easy it doesn't take us very long in the yard to sort things through you know take about 10 minutes 15 minutes just to go through and just even things right out okay so identified this hive as being a small one needs a bit of a boost nothing going on up here I'm gonna give him two frames of brood health emotive look down here I'm gonna have to give them a frame of food too and brood Ramos instant boost so you will kind of see how like we're managing right now I have 1200 going that we're trying to manage and maintain for the honey flow so we have a lot of hives look after not enough time in the day to fuss over mall so we we employ all these little tricks to manage our workload and manage swarming keep these hives and tip-top shape and manage them to express your absolute brilliance throughout the spring and then right into the honey flow to collect that honey crop we only have one chance at getting it getting out those flowers and if our hives are not ready when those flowers come due we miss honey flow and then we don't make any money and we can't pay the bills so we have to bill to manage more hives and less time with workers so as you watch my videos all the way along here you kind of see all of those tricks and what we do to help manipulate these hives into the brilliance we need from the pole in the sunny floor during my equalization round yesterday I wandered into the other side of the a pre and they are ready for honey boxes the honey flow has hit there is your I'll show you a little pollen coming in at least loads of Poland these boxes are filling up with honey now is the time we need to give him space so what I'm doing is I'm going through and I'm equalizing the yard first off and then I'm setting the crew behind me and we're shaking the Queen back down to the bottom box and inserting excluders and adding boxes on top so they equalize this side of the yard so it's ready to be shaken down just skimming from the strong and boosting up the weak a little bit and then what the guys are doing is they're going through and we're shaking the top box down into the bottom box this way everything in the top box will be shaken down to the bottom and then reorganized in an empty box we put back over top and excluder then we know that the Queen will be down on the box have been shaking all the beads have been shaken down into the bottom box so we know the Queen's down here we don't have to look for excluder holds are down bees will go back over top and as you can see this box is filling total honey and we put an empty on top ready for the flow and all of a sudden we get sent into this massive honey flow I'll show you what we're seeing two or three days ago these hives were light and stores and now every one of our hives is being packed full of honey so we got boxes of honey on top police eyes we got to get these supers out now so I'm going through a head of the crew and I'm equalizing we try not to get too excited because earlier I'm assessing any high with a lot of resource meaning it's big and strong but now there's so much coming in all the hives bringing in the resource so I have to try to figure out which ones are strong look at the nectar pouring from those friends I'm simply simply just kind of thinning them down and spreading it it was all I'm doing for equalizing look at the nectar these bees are getting soaked in the bottom you're making quick work we're trying to get boxes out before we go to the nectar in there trying to get the boxes out before these guys plug themselves solid [Music] so you guys are wondering what I'm doing today we have all the excluders put in thirds are on and the bees are filling the box right to the top we're working now to get fourths on but what we're doing first off because we put the excluder in or dividing up that brood nest now that's 32 degrees in or we're sweating buckets out here we're dividing up that brood nest and what we want to do is make sure that there is no Queen activity up in that second box I have some untrained guys shaking bees throughout as we're putting excluders in and they may have missed Queen cells who procedure cells also if there is any hive that we accidentally killed the Queen there'd be emergency cells up in that second box so what we're doing is before we add the fourths we were quickly tipping the hive back the second back and just leafing through the frames just seeing if there's any queen cells up top and we want to make sure there's nothing up on top going on when we're trying to use as a skateboards when pulling honey off bees don't clear the boxes as well when they're virgins up on top so we got to make sure that there's only brood up top to hatch out to backfill and any of the hive activity is going on now down below the excluder so I kind of show you what we're doing so we're just simply taking off the third which we're finding is full of honey and then we are going to tip back the second box was the brood box now we've turned it into a honey super and we're just making sure that there is no Queen cells and here is one they've got missed wait so we got to make sure that this doesn't handle cause trouble later on so we just kind of smash it then we just kind of leave through the bottom looking peering up just to take a look to see if there's any other Queen cells in the top box they got missed through the shake we're working pretty fast as we shake bees so somewhat missed and then we've been through a few hundred hives now and we've developed two hives that were drawing out emergency cells where we probably killed the Queen through a process so we made sure that they had carry out their acquainting process on their own below the Queen excluder and killed all the emergency cell cells up top so here's a hive I'm working on and here's our third look at the honey pack in here already we've got a box well honey we got to put force on right now and fifths next week so I just basically go through leafing through there's there's cups in there but they can't do anything with the cups through the brood nothing going on so when we close her up and they follow behind with fourths and then we as we're doing this we're also assessing these hives further one last time this is particularly big so I just count the brood frames in here and she's got four frames of brood still in this box so we might skim this and boost up a smaller drive yet so after this round this is the last time we look down into the brood nest this is this is it we're now into the honey flow and we handle honey boxes from now on until September so it doesn't take us long probably about half an hour yard everything has a fourth box on it now I have two crews going so we're gonna get roughly five or six hundred hives done today and tomorrow and then Friday we should just be able to finish up everything should be in fourth by Friday next week we'll go around and add fifths and then see where the flow takes us from there I'm just going through finishing up putting force on the guys have the weekend off so I'm doing this job myself and I'm telling you sure makes me appreciate having a bunch of guy who's doing work for me because boy this is taking like four times as long as it usually takes but I'm just going through just want to go down I just want to see where this colony is at the rest of this yard is in pretty good shape seconds full honey thirds half full honey and they're putting forests on we're gonna put gifts on next week so I'm just gonna go down and show you what I'm seeing the last colony of the yard forgot my smoke of course so working without smoke so they're a little bit worked up this box is 3/4 full honey you're like you can see that in the shine of the Sun these guys could take it for us like right now the yards pretty consistent we spend a lot of time kind of equalizing things sorting things through now I just want to take I don't do this on a regular basis but I just want to take a peek this colonies full honey lots of bees I just want to see if they were preparing for swarming underneath and so far just I just do this spot checks through my a pre just to see if I got that balance right but I generally for the most part I'm not anything any attention says bottom box anymore just spot checks to see how close I got to my assessments I'm just looking down the bottom they're a little pissed to that off smoke but there isn't any sales all right Ernie there's cups no sales but looks like I have been successful on keeping this colony moving upwards it looks like I've been successful in keeping my a pari moving upwards all the growth that has hatched has gone straight to work collecting honey and they seem don't they they don't seem to be interested at all and swarming these guys are getting a fourth the guys are coming around next week putting on tips whatever needs it and we're gonna be extracting in two weeks by the looks of it we just received a rain two days ago we were starting it really dry with the heat the crops are still in good shape giving off a little bit nectar starting to slow down a bit get two inches of rain and the crops would come back 100% so there is nectar shaking from these frames the bees are filling up and we got to spend a lot of attention just making sure they have enough space up top to be able to capture all the production is what to come in so making my Sunday afternoon a pre-assessment right now we are right in the middle of the honey flow and these boxes are filling up so I have to decide on what I'm going to start extraction and with that I have to decide how many boxes to put on these hives this is a common question I get from a lot of beekeepers so I'll just kind of step you through just a small little process and what I do just to help judge what's going on what I'm seeing and what I should be anticipating as of right now I can't start pulling honey until next Monday the reason for that is well because of reasons other than the business so the earliest I can start pulling is on Monday which is a 16th it's a little bit early for me anyways but these boxes are filling up so I'm targeting the 16th okay so what I'm doing is so what we did earlier is we shook the Queen down we gotta wait three weeks after that so that timeline matches up nicely but we've also had thirds fourths those are filling up and I generally have a rule as a box a week rule and we're in a good strong honey flow these bees can fill a box per week we had to judge the colony size to build to determine that some are a little bit slower and the quicker ones but we have to assess these colonies to build to make sure they they have adequate space to store all this honey flow as it comes in because we don't want to miss any of it so we had them forced last week I was way out to the lake and my guys go around and stock fifths on moeslem so I have twelve hundred hives going on when you include my nukes from pushing 1,400 I'm not even sure anymore I can pull five hundred hives a week okay that's what my capability is so what I do is I take my apron and if let's say rough numbers if I have fifteen hundred hives I divide that into three five hundred hives per week that means it can take me three weeks to get through all 1500 so I have a little bit less than that but all the same it takes me three weeks the first week we're getting to them quicker than the last week right so the first week we're gonna box them up a little bit tight we want to use that space we want them to fill it right up so we're not pulling empty boxes in the first pull the second week that said that's a one week further than the first weeks pull so you can pretty much count a box on that right so we are a little more generous when we box up those hives typically we gave them all fives the third week you know that's two weeks that's you know two more boxes you know a box box and a half more so we box those guys up pretty generously and I'm standing in my yard right now this is one of the yards that I'm scheduled to pull in the first week so I'm just going to show you what I'm looking at and what to gauge I've had him put fifths on because there's a pretty strong flow going on and I'll just show you kind of what I'm seeing here so I'm just gonna show you the staging and some of my hives here let's just show you what I'm seeing so this hive here is in fourths this hive here the crew is put in two fifths we're pulling honey in one week from today in this yard so I'll just show you what I'm looking at right now and what I expect to see in a week's time so in this colony we have bees actively working to the top working right across the the nine frames actively storing nectar up to top but there isn't a lot of honey stored in the top box here yet so we look down into the third and this third is practically it's about three quarters full of honey so not a lot of cappings yet I'll just pull a frame I'll show you don't have smoke with me so I'm but here is a full frame of honey not cured yet not there's no cap things at all this extends right out to the outer frames so this box is nicely filling it's not going to take long to finish off this third box and we'll have them move into the fourth so it'll take them a week to finish that off and then nicely get this box full for next week what I'm gauging is I don't want this top box like completely plugged because that usually tells me that I lost production I want to pull with this top box about 3/4 full so I know there's a little bit of space yet it's not as efficient as having a plug box but at the same time I want to gather I want to capture all that honey crop all that honey flow coming in so by having just a little bit of leftover space in the top as I pull these boxes as it kind of reassures me that I didn't leave any honey in the field so we look at this colony and the crew put fifths on this one and these bees are actively filling this top box full of nectar they're working right across the top this frames full of nectar the outer frames aren't quite worked on yet but there's at least five or six frames in here they're actively being stored with nectar I looked down in the fourth and this fourth looks like the same as the third did in this other colony this fourth actually is for us getting some cappings in the top here not just just starting here's here's a frame where they're starting to cap on the outside these frames are filling up quite nicely getting some weight in there there's a lot of honey in there looking down into this third and this third is pretty much full of honey still working their way up so in about a week's time these were all be filled up and cured and they'll be nicely on to the fifth here like I say this top box I don't want completely full I want him nicely filling it up but not plugged so I know that they had lots of space to store the whole that incoming nectar so I'm just going to step through a few colonies here just to see what's going on so when I'm going through I'm a week away I'm just taking a peek I'm just double-checking my career's assessment to see if they're on the money or not see the bees right across the top bars there and it's hard to tell from a video here but they I can tell from up here that they're preparing that calm so they're actively storing nectar in those combs so they assess this one is a fifth correctly is what I'm assuming now is this box to be mostly stored honey and it is but I can see is big fat frames being filled out and this box will be I am I assume this box here will be capped over this coming week and the bees will be moving up into that top box to store that fresh nectar coming in probably 10 or 15 pounds of honey on the top you already take a peek and it's calling you - the bees are nicely spread across the top [Music] kind of seeped from the bottom to here you're actively storing a lot of honey in the top box here I'm looking down into the bottom it's nice to pick up boxes and feel that weight looking down into the is next this of the forth here and I don't sure if you can see but there is honey actively stored and all the frames on the top here looks like they've just about filled that box out they got another week's work on that and they'll have that plugged up oh yes box is heavy and this box is practically all there's a lot of captains going on in there the site hasn't been capped yet but this Hein has just just starting to count so they're just starting to cap the edges they're beautiful this box pretty much done this one will be done this week and they'll be on to the fifth there's a lot of cues that the bees give you to let you know whether or not they're comfortably producing for you or if they're going into swarm mode now when I work through these colonies what I noticed was bees working all throughout evenly across the top bars actively storing nectar I'm looking at the entrances of these hives these guys are fanning you're looking all the fan and going on there to dry down the incoming nectar and just busy in and out busy actively working now these colonies are pretty big colonies they're growing they're going to go through another hatch rate shortly there's gonna be a lot of bees in these hives we don't want them a swarm right now they're telling me that they're not even thinking of swarming they're in work mode and that's really reassuring for me to see just little cues like that you're looking for when a colony starts to prepare to swarm they actually tends they tend to are I find that seems like they tend to shut down their bees are just hanging around there's not a lot of work going on up top and yeah they're just preparing to divide that colony off to start a new one somewhere else but when you see a colony actively working spending all of its attention towards that honey crop out in the field more unlikely those guys are working towards keeping himself together and producing that mass of honey crop you want so I'm just gonna pull these guys down just to take a look at the very essence just to see what's going on down there full of honey thirds full honey beautiful frames just starting a capped over full box of honey here this box is practically capped it's our backfilling around the emerging brood nest we go down go down into the brood nest look underneath and I'm not seeing any preparations for swarming I can't really tell much on the camera there I'll just put them back together take a look what's going on forgot to bring a smoker with me so there's just a little bit riled up or frame and see what's going on here beautiful laying pattern love it larvae eggs there is no backfilling going on I'm not gonna dick too deep into these guys these guys are massive luca another full frame of brood here one more frame out queen doing quite well that has got some Poland some nectar in eggs so I'm counting brood frames right across here here's a supersede yourself and a virgin walking around so it looks like these guys in the middle of queen replacement so she's gonna find that old Queen that old queen still laying I'm just gonna close these guys up to let them take care of whatever is going on inside here I'm looking all through here this frame is just full of larvae and fresh eggs standing straight up these are fresh eggs in here so the old Queens either just being killed off or or she's getting the hunt I'm not worried about that virgin running around to swarm this calling you off because I'm looking in the front they're actively working and all these boxes have bees actively actively working inside here so I'd call attic Queen replacement just the way I like it so I'm gonna put them back together I'm going to add a curiosity I'm gonna mark them and come back next week just to see if indeed OHS is a super seizure and if they successively are able to switch those Queens over there's a lot that goes on inside these colonies that we're not aware of we can only do so much we can set the hives up and then we basically have to let them do what they want to do and sometimes it's warming outside of our hands a lot of the time it's just queen replacement that just helps to rejuvenate that nest and carry it forward these guys are producing me like four boxes of honey right now so I'm just gonna put them back together I'll let him get back to work hopefully replace that queen successfully get her own mated and then I'll come back next week hopefully to or maybe in a week and a half I'll give her some time and I'll see a fresh reinstated brood nest inside this colony so it's July 15th I'm just making my Sunday assessment rounds I'm thinking about setting boards tomorrow which will mean that'll be the start of the honey pool I just want to go around first before we get going just to see what the moisture is on or honey I got to make sure that the honey is not wet if the honey is wet what what I mean when I'm saying what I mean like 20 22 percent that's pretty wet honey I do not want to start pulling honey when it's wet what we want is 18 and a half 18 percent honey you know if it's about 19 I might push the boundaries a little bit of 19 my Packer packs tens of millions of pounds of honey and they can blend that 19 percent off pretty quick with the later stuff I produce at 16 percent just as long as I know what's coming in so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna go through a few hives here with my refractometer just to test honey up on top and to to test the honey down below and I'm going to take a sample throughout the hives in a little while just to mix together to see what my average moisture content is so I have a pretty good idea what the coaster content is of this honey before I pull it aside I want to pull wet honey I don't want that to do that stuff and neither does my packer so I'm just going to take the moisture content of the honey and every one of these boxes here take a random sampling through the boxes with my refractometer this this tells me the moisture content of my honey sample just to give me an idea where this hive of that these right to the top and you guys are full of honey I don't have my smoker again lots of bees going on in here and they are cool I'm just going to pull a frame out which is cops for the looks of it starting to cap okay so I just take a sample this is the middle of frame here I'm not going to take a sample of capping and the top box is reading seventeen and a half percent there's no use me testing the rest these boxes of the top box is 17.5 percent then she's a gold goes on so they don't sting me right off the mark here I don't have any smoke with me I'm always looking to the trees working these urns looking for swarms and having open to call any yet that has that has few bees in it which is great these guys are capped right to the outside look at it I'll pull an outside frame for you guys here turn the cap around turn to the outside here so I'm just going to I'll show you guys top box outside these guys are cooking and this going to do a quick test on this one that's a team two so I've gone through a few colonies now and registering most in the top box at you know 18 18 and a half we have lots of strong ones here and majority is plenty plenty good to go smaller colonies throughout the top boxes 20 ish the bottom once you get down the bottom we're getting into the 18 so there's no question about it we're ready to go here Monday morning and we're setting skate boards these hives look fantastic they're all full honey were pulling them up pretty easy these are in a good mood today they're out foraging actively foraging and we're I'll show you what we're doing here so I have a full staff today we haven't tired extracting yet we got to pull these boxes up get the bees cleared and then get them back in by the end of the week so we'll be probably extracting on Thursday until then I have a full crew overstaffed in the yard until we get going here and I'll just show you what we are doing so basically we are lifting the boxes up putting three empties down and the escape board so we come in and we lift up the full boxes of honey leaving the brood box below the excluder and then we replace with three empty boxes [Music] disabil to catch that flow as it continues to come in these won't even know that till we removed the uneven recognized empty box above then they'll go into overdrive to fill these boxes back up stacking boxes and these boxes are full of honey these hives have been performing really well I just want to show you something here here is the colony I left my tags on of my assessments in the spring and there's a blue tag and there's a great take the blue tag means we've harvested a full split off the great tag is we pretty much just skimmed them or or kept them the same so when you look at the two hives here I both yield at four boxes full of honey except if you consider that blue tag you only the full split this one probably the yield another three boxes maybe four boxes on top that just shows you the production difference between the strong colonies and then the colonies that only able split coming out of winter I'll just take you down I'll show you the guys working the arm here again these are actively foraging [Music] drop tree empties on top [Music] the skateboard you bought full of honey just like that we'll come back in two two-and-a-half three days and we'll just simply strip those off put them on the truck the top here's a spacing problem they've conveniently filled it up with comb these guys they're just turning the cap the top box Oh a first day of pulling honey I got some guys back in the honey house cleaning the place up getting the equipment ready to go I brought a bunch of guys out to the yard and we're just ripping boxes so was pretty quick work I'm just gonna show you what to do I just kind of caught up in my job here in the yard so I'll just briefly show you what we're doing all these boxes now have been cleared the bees are now down into the bottom filling those empties back up with nectar and these tops are free of bees stacks up and then this simply put you slide them on to the pallets on the truck here's daddy [Music] the guys work their way out and as you can see these bees are busy bringing nectar filling the coin box a little over staff right now because we're not running the honey house yet as soon as we do that we'll have two or three with me in the yard at all times and then the other any crew will be working in Mattias Oh you conceal the bees have moved down there all underneath the screen they can't get back up through the phones Cameron to the top I'll show you the bees working on the ready bringing in fresh this rain is half full of fresh nectar already three boxes they're working on hauled once I'm rushing the escapes I avoid a day just because I want to get tiny house going but it appears the bees are in heavy enough flow that they're clearing quite nice meat there isn't a whole lot these boxes [Music] just driving by one of my nuke yards hi was here five days ago and these guys were just getting into the top box thought I had a little bit of time look at this I've gone through a hatch I told I mentioned this earlier got a watch because these guys will just absolutely explode and look at this they're absolutely packed they've got their boxes absolutely packed full of honey I gotta get boxes on these guys like right now it's amazing how quickly these guys can pack away the resources absolutely packed I won't get to these guys in another 10 days so I'm gonna have to add some equipment just to keep them at bay [Music] open up anymore yeah that big Thunder head coming at us so I gotta get busy I gotta get that truck load we're just poped into another yard just took another yard to finish the day so I got to get that under cover before we get rained on these guys are gonna have to hang on until I get back more space so we had a nice little rain last night and what I noticed today was stripping off boxes I noticed earlier that the flow had really slowing down the bees weren't filling the comb up as quick as we can see and if you can see that that's a frame or fresh nectar back in the flow boxes were packed it's like 300 pounds in the stock Oh tolling honey today there is a half section of canola just to the north of us and I want to show you what's going on underneath the boxes we are pulling and these boxes are practically full and you can tell when there's a good flow going on because underneath the covers on the hives that lots of bees we have wax being built up so they fill up the boxes and then they start filling up that empty space between the skateboard and the right in here between these skateboard and frames so this is a sign of lots of young bees and a heavy flow coming these two boxes have been filled within the last three days we put another box on and maybe we'll put a fork on depending on how long that canola blooms to the north of us be nice if we had a whole countryside was late bloom canola like that this parts of our a free experience a nice second pole like this wherever there's an oil falfa or late lake canola or sunflowers one behavior the bees I never get tired of is when we pull our truck into the bee yard it kind of blocks their their flight pattern so when we move the truck these go out of their holding pattern and they all find their home all of a sudden so before you know it the truck has moved and they all of the sudden find their home they come in so hard that they actually hit the grass going into the hive really needs it see the bulb pulling on them this is canola pollen coming in little yellow faces I never get tired of this well I made a mistake through noon today left a few boxes out of extracted comb and it has caused huge robbing fury so whatever we July 28th and we are in heavy robbing so it looks like we're going to be extra vigilant on what we do around the honey house and there on the yards to avoid robbing because I run the escapes right through to the end I use these five covers so I'm pulling hunting right through the Rabi season and it allows us to set our boards and then keep the bees out of the boxes so we come back they have no they have not had access to the boxes we pull into the yard and we can strip this a stripper yard in about half an hour and we can be in and out before the bees I actually know we're here so it's an extra little step but it works really well so this yard is a bit of honey in it as you can see my boxes are pretty old I'm setting up grade them if I have lots of cracks and everything so when I insert these escape boards and the bees move out of the honey boxes to move down there's no more guard bees up top and the bees will come and Rob the honey out through the cracks so I used to tape them as you can see here but today my boxes are in such rough shape that was using a lot of tape and it was becoming a big job so what I did and this is not typical of anybody I know that I made these covers one winter found a fabric shop told me a bunch of cheap knit fabric and I sewed these together so now we just Pole until a yard set theist escapes and then pull over these covers got elastic on the bottom to snap tight and it has an absolutely eliminated all the robbing concerns that looks really goofy but it works so we set these escapes the bees move down we come into the yard we pull off the covers and we strip the hives of all the honey boxes on top and it works it very well so we'll be out of here before these bees are actually over here and this is completely eliminated robbing throughout the season so just one of those things that I do differently and it works really well so we've been here roughly half an hour but the yard pulled off and the bees are just finding us the uncovered boxes in the back the tarp helps keep the bees off the comb so just as they find us we are out of here so I've been noticing in this yard piles of dead bees in front of all the hives and smell just a little bit of you know that some dead bee smell saina pesticide poisoning the production this yard wasn't compromised maybe the internal health of the hive has been compromised compromised I'm not sure I've seemed to be okay so might just be an acute poisoning sure something that the bees will deal with yeah we'll see you there there's been a lot worse cases than this nevertheless it's still a concern of mine of the pesticide use within agriculture it's hard to get away from it but we as beekeeper see the direct result of it so like it says two truckloads in today we'll get another two truckloads in tomorrow and then we're gonna pull the last twelve yards next week and then feed the road pulling honey today to the second round and we're finishing things off so the bees right back down into the bottom brood chamber so this is it if we're doing is we said it escapes the top three boxes have honey in them put the escape in and all the bees all the bees are driving down into the bottom brood box we have supplement on just to help supplement the developing winter nest as you can see they've been active on it they're just devouring these patties you can also see a little bit of comb being built up on top and this is a sign this is a really good sign this is a sign of young bees within the brood nest and what we're doing is when we set these escape boards underneath the honey supers what we're doing is where we are removing those honey boxes from the function of that brood nest that escape creates a barrier there is no longer continual high of movement up until those honey supers so what we do is we feed some syrup there's Nicki's just finishing feeding this yard the second round of syrup just to all come up and by feeding that syrup it ignites the whole process right now there's no nectar coming in so these bees are lazy they're looking for food but they don't actively have any food to forage on but by providing syrup when we put that board in those processor beans within the nest they get excited and they start summoning attention to the whole entire nest and as those bees get excited they want to go collect the nectar they'll start its leaving the honey boxes go down through the bird nests go collect resources bring it back in but they can't bring that syrup back into the honey boxes because there's actively been removed by that skateboard so then they store all the syrup down below and this helps clear these boxes of bees at a time when there's dirt so we come back and there's no bees in these boxes because they've been there starting the cycle and as they try to cycle they get interrupted by that it's game for them that is what we are doing and that is how we do it it also provides the benefits of when we strip these top boxes off but this is full of honey these brood chambers underneath are like eight to ten frames of brood and very little honey they have fallen stores and such we have to make sure that these enough syrup on had it all to keep himself alive until we get more syrup out soon so we put these escape boards in we're feeding at the same time to make sure that they're bringing in nourishment below to keep those bees alive very important right now is a critical time of building a winter nest so we try to put as much attention in the can to promote all the conditions like like a recipe you give a little bit of protein the poems coming in a little bit of sugar and it should make you very how to quit good looking brood nest for winter my winter DS so whatever we do we need to see that late flow it's a very important building a winter nest is to have that source of natural pollen coming in it's very important building bees we can't do we can't build bees will vote for no matter how much supplementation we do we need that pollen to come in to help properly nourish this nest supplementation just aids them in the development of our of our bees and brood nests we just are just trying to promote all the basics it's the pollen that's coming in that builds of these that provides and with all those essentials that we can't provide him [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: a Canadian Beekeeper’s Blog

Views: 545,298

Keywords: honey flow, honey bees, bee hives, nectar management, supers, collection honey, making honey, commercial beekeeping, how commercial beekeepers collect honey, ezyloader, escape boards, robbing, honey production

Id: UGSycKisL1c

Length: 75min 6sec (4506 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2019