What is a Resource Hive?

hey everybody it's Josh here welcome back to the channel uh today is March 10th it's nice and sunny outside but it's a little chilly so it's a good day to be in the shop plus spring is upon us um it's going to be go time here any week and so the last bit of winter preparations that you need to make as a beekeeper you better be getting them done so I've been painting some supers because I need some extra supers and uh I have this that just arrived which I hope to incorporate into my yard this year so what is this this is a resource Hive also known as a double nuke you may have heard it referred to as a double nuke but essentially this is a resource Hive I picked this up from dat it uh like I said it was just delivered uh I've never used a resource Hive so I'm excited to try it out but I have a lot of my beekeeping friends that tell me Josh you really need to have some resource hives or some nukes in the yard to be able to grab from to use for your other colonies as issues or needs arise so this is really made popular I believe uh by Michael Palmer who is a very very well-respected beekeeper up in the Vermont area and he's got several YouTube videos out there I recommend you check them out where he uses resource hives and nukes and he's really kind of known for overwintering nukes so he has an extreme amount of experience on this topic a lot of research and uh to to essentially successfully get your nukes through winter I don't overwinter with nukes here in Kentucky so that's not really my intent that's not what I'm going for but my my intent is to be able to use these to perform some splits in my yard and also to have extra resources and extra mated Queens if the need arises so uh I I should note that that I paid for this with my own money this is not a paid for endorsement by any by any means so um I just wanted to put that out there full disclosure so let's go ahead and get into these boxes and see what this looks like now unlike a lot of the equipment that I buy these came fully assembled so I do a lot of my own assembling here in the in the wood shop but there was no option to buy these disassembled I think what are these for I wanted to say oh gosh I'm trying to go off memory here were they like 15 somewhere around there you'll have to check dayen's website um not every supplier carries these uh I found just a few of them and there's subtle differences with each one but I decided the the DAT it ones looked pretty good so I'm going to give it a shot so this is just one resource H uh so with that comes two inner covers n nuke inner covers and then two nuke bodies so two and these are deeps right so these would hold a deep frame um bodies all right let's see what's in the next box and the next box is the lower deep so let's go ahead and pull this out set it aside a minute and the specially designed bottle board so let's get this cardboard out of the way okay so what do we have here so this is a resource High bottom board and the first thing that you'll notice that's different from other bottom boards well obviously it's not screened which I have a lot it's basically what I use in my AP solid bottom board but it's a has a divider in between the two sides so it's a standard 10 frame in length but it's got this divider board down the middle and each end has a uh a board on the bottom that essentially if you were to like cut this in half you could see that being a nuke right and vice versa so it's almost like having two nukes side by side but with this divider in between and so what goes on that set these off to the side a minute is this lower deep and this is standard box deep box 10 frame but you'll notice it's got this divider board in between it which essentially takes up the space of two frames and a 10 frame D so that each one of these sides can hold four frames and that this will sit right on top it' be flush on each side here with that bottom board and so the divider is basically divides two nukes into half now why would you want to do that well for a couple reasons so each side like I said will get four deep frames you can see there's still a little bit of space here but essentially each side gets four frames and you would have four frames on this other side and so what this allows you to do is let's say have a couple colonies in my yard that are showing really good genetics and what I mean by that is let's say uh really good hygienic Behavior grooming low might loads naturally uh that they're showing the ability to uh control veroa Destructor M uh without MDES or without natural means like the removal of drone drone comb um or they're very gentle bees uh iic honey producers all sorts of genetics that you're looking for that you may want to uh propagate throughout your AP you are able to take those one of those colonies and take a couple frames of Brew open Brew okay uh a frame of honey and one frame of open drawn comb which this obviously is not this is just empty foundation without any wax on it yet and you would put that open comb on the outside you would put the two frames of brood and it could be a mixture of open brood or capped brood uh and you would put that in here and then you would put one frame of Honey or be bread pollen you want food in here and then you would allow your bees in here the nurse bees and the worker bees to then raise their own Queen they would immediately notice that they are queenless you wouldn't you would keep the queen in the original colony not in here and you would let the bees raise their own Queen so they would immediately start to create you know Queen cups those would turn into Queen cells and then you would have uh one or two or more virgins that would emerge in here same thing on the other side you can do this at the exact same time so you can essentially perform two walkway splits in this resource Hive so imagine this doubled over here so a different Colony that has really good genetics that you want to have more of in your apiary you would put the same two frames of brood one frame of food One open comb and let those bees raise that Queen and again eventually each side here would have a Virgin Queen in there as these bees started to build up and those Queens go out on their mating flights and come back naturally these nukes are going to start growing and so that's what these empty nuke deeps are for you would then stack these side by side on top of the bottom board and these these colonies are still completely separated they cannot intermingle um which is fine now why which is what you want obviously but why does Michael Palmer use these because in the winter time especially up in Vermont where gets really cold having nukes side by side the Clusters will naturally form towards this middle wall and share that warmth throughout the winter time not as big of a deal for me me here it doesn't get super super cold in Kentucky the bees would still do that uh but I again I don't overwinter with nukes now will I overwinter with colonies inside this resource Hive if they're still doing well you know come to fall time and I haven't stolen the queen from one to help another Colony absolutely th this can be used these can be overwintered here where it's even less cold right it would be even easier for them to overwinter so again now you have two sides here four frames on each bottom you can now put four more frames on each side so now you have a total of eight frames two different colonies each side gets a inner cover and it has a little Notch here so if you wanted to give them an extra entrance you could put Notch down if you did not you could put Notch up now you want those facing in opposite directions cuz one thing I haven't mentioned yet is that each side has an entrance so each colony the bees are going to be coming and going from opposite directions right so this one here on the right bees can't get in from behind there's an opening here on the bottom and it's the identical to this one where there's the opening here but no opening in the back so you're going to want to put this in a location in your yard where the bees can easily come and go from either direction now this is it this is everything that comes with the resource Hive from daten so you have to to buy your own either migratory lid if that's your lid of choice or what I personally use these telescoping covers so this telescoping cover then fits right on top here just like that and so again if you don't want the bees to be able to use that upper entrance you're going to have to block it off somehow or if the opening is facing up you could put both of them facing up towards the same side put your cover if it's a telescoping cover and then push this back so the bees can't access those front entrances if you're going to allow the bees to use those upper entrances you would want this one face down on this side and you would want this Notch face down going this way and then you would just want to make sure that your telescoping outer cover has enough gap on each side where the bees can get in there not as big of a deal it's you know these obviously have a pretty wide opening I think my dad and I will make some entrance reducers cuz I'm not a fan of having this much of an entrance that's like a I don't know that's a good 6 in I generally only give them one you know maybe two in 1 to two in that's just a personal preference on my part so so that's it so you'll need to get your own migratory or telescoping outer cover now what else can you do with this well um again I think I I mentioned already but what I primarily intend to use this for in my yard is to be able to have these being little production nukes for me little little uh uh resource machines and so if I have a colony that appears to be small in numbers I'll come in here and take one or two or three frames of uh sealed brood and that will immediately give my other colony a population boost uh let's say something tragically happens to one of my Queens in one of my colonies and they become queenless well rather than uh wait for them to raise their own queen or God forbid that Colony turns into a laying worker I can rob one of these colonies of their mated Queen introduce her to that other colony and then you know it's it's it's no it's not it's nothing for me then to uh have have this nuke raise its own Queen right uh the expression uh what is it Dad no skin off my teeth or something um so uh then I'm more worried about my primary uh Colony that may be you know producing honey and whatnot this is a colony I'm not going to say it's sacrificial by any means but I'm not as worried about setting these back which would naturally set this back if I take their M Queen out right so uh so yeah either one of these essentially having options and beekeeping is a good thing and this resource uh Hive gives you options I was watching some videos from Kent Williams recently uh and he was saying the same thing he he says you know essentially every beekeeper should have nukes or resource colonies in their hives and I've had friends tell me the same thing and I'm just now getting around to do it it's not that I ever thought otherwise it's just I'm just now getting around to do it and I think it's going to pay dividends cuz I I to this day I have never bought a mated Queen I've always asked my bees to raise their own Queens it's not that I'm against it I just haven't done it um I just try to uh you know um essentially raise my own Queens uh and so this will give me extra options because there has been times where I'm like w I really wish I had a made a queen to put in this Colony uh maybe it was a laying worker Colony or something along those lines and so I had to do combines uh laying worker with a queen wght Colony something along those lines so again just gives you a lot of options another thing that you can do on this is let's let's say both nukes take off man they're just exploding in numbers they're doing great they're kicking button taking names uh and you need to give them more space you can absolutely put a super on top of this now here's the very important thing that you need to remember you've got lay Queens made a Queens in each one of these nukes you got to put a queen excluder up here so if you put a queen excluder on top and I don't have one laying around here but Envision a queen excluder that I've just laid on top of this then you can super up after that and put your honey supers in here and the first question you're going to say is yeah but aren't all the worker bees going to intermingle and the answer is yes and my understanding from watching Michael Palmer is that that is perfectly fine they will not fight or try to take each other out they will actually work together you have to keep the queen separate though that's that's the secret that's the secret to that so and of course you you could keep supering up I mean you you could have these and you could put three four supers if the colonies are doing that well and you don't need the resources at that time so yeah so so that's I I guess that's it in a nutshell uh what I intend to do is I am going to paint these obviously this is made out of pine so you got to give it a good uh couple coats of paint but what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint each side a different color so I've got uh some orange here and I've got some white so what I'm going to do is each side you know this entire side here is going to be orange straight down the middle over here all the way around all the way to the back even the bottom board is going to be one color orange the other side is going to be all white so everything here straight down bottom board white basically the color split in half and you may say well why are you doing it that way because when these virgin Queens emerge from here and they go on their mating flights these two colonies are obviously extremely close together you want those virgin Queens to return to the correct Colony even though they're going to be facing in different orientations which certainly helps you don't want her getting confused and going around the back and going in the wrong Hive so bees can see I believe every color but red so as long as you have two different colors the odds of the Virgin Queen successfully making it back to the correct Colony after her mating flights goes up considerably so that's why you know I people have asked me uh Josh why are your beehives you know why are they all different colors why do you have stickers on them and stuff like that that is all in an effort to increase the odds of a mated Queen successfully making it back to her appropriate colony and not getting killed by going into the wrong one so that's the one one of the few things in beekeeping we have absolutely no control over is when Queens go on their mating flights and come back and hopefully they come back to the um correct colony of course I'm not talking about artificial insemination which obviously we can do that I'm talking about when Queens go on their mating flights successfully mating and coming back so we it's pretty much a hope and a prayer as far as it pertains to The Beekeeper so so that's it on the resource Hive I'm I'm pretty excited to try this it it looks relatively simple and straightforward I almost thought about just building one of these myself but uh myself but you know in the end I thought you know it's not that expensive and what you can get out of it it quite a bit so I think the juice is worth the squeeze as far as the value component um and again e even if you didn't want to use this as a resource Hive and you wanted to just use it to steal resources this is a great way to expand your apiary if you just want to do walkway splits because as soon as these started building up and you've confirmed that you've got two m Queens that are successfully laying there's nothing from stopping you from just taking a 10 frame deep pulling these five frames out you know covered let's say this is boiling over with bees you got a made a queen in here put these four frames into a 10 frame or even an8 frame length stroth deep put uh you know five other empty frames in there and you've essentially just done a split and it's got a mated uh Queen in there it's it's the exact same as if you were to buy bu a nuke from a beekeeper and so now you're you've grown your AP you now have one more Hive uh congratulations and less equipment so um but yeah I think it's a a pretty interesting concept I don't know who came up with this but I'm pretty sure Michael Palmer is the one who's really uh sort of made it popular in terms of the modern day beekeeping but just again so I'll try to tilt this so you all can see inside but this is what it looks like inside there so like I said it's essentially just two nukes split into split into two so pretty cool stuff uh you know th my fellow beekeepers out there if you've used one of these uh go ahead and drop me a comment let me know uh what you think of them uh pros and cons uh any pitfalls that I need to watch out for cuz like I said this is the first time that I personally am going to be using these uh one of these out in my apiary but if it works like I think it is going to I may end up buying you know a couple more of these that way I can always have four five six smaller resource colonies that I can just keep grabbing from if need be uh and any any sort of extra honey would just be icing on the cake really in terms of putting supers on them but uh but yeah that's it uh hopefully you guys found uh this video informative uh if you are deciding to try a resource Hive go ahead and let me know your experience I'd like to hear from others in terms of their experiences if you've used one before or if you're thinking about doing it yourself uh what do you think are you know some of the pros and cons or what would you use a resource high for in your particular AP so and and I know we all live in different regions so I could I could see maybe some of the colder regions where they would use this like Michael Palmer does to help overwinter colonies I don't think I'm going to use it for that purpose but again if bees are in here I'm not going to take them out I'm going to leave them in and we'll overwinter in a resource Hive and see how they do so I think it could be a little tricky with feeding you know syrup I don't know I'm going to have to think about you know what I buy some extra empty nukes and put uh some syrup maybe an upside down mason jar in there cuz if you watched any of my other videos I only feed internally I don't do that open feeding or outside the high feeding I just think it's too much of a gamble with robbing so if if I'm going to overwinter these I'm gonna have to think about my strategy on feeding uh I think you know Hive alive uh the fondant is easy enough you just put those directly on the frames but I'm going to have to double I'm going have to think because I use those Vivaldi boards I'm going to have to rethink about uh quilt boxes or what would I do on top of these nukes and how would I keep them separate I may have to buy something additional but uh I'll cross that bridge when I come to it right now I'm just focused on getting these painted and getting them out in the yard and getting them ready for when I'm I mean we'll be doing splits here within a couple weeks it's not time yet it's still a little too cold the weather hasn't been great for virgins to go on mating flights and quite simply there's not enough drones uh around now that's going to change in about a couple weeks so towards the end of March and the beginning of April is going to be prime swarming season and there's going to be plenty of drones around and the weather's going to be a lot nicer and uh it'll be time to do a couple of those splits and I'll be sure to record uh a video of me splitting a couple of my really good colonies and I want to make sure that those genetics continue within my AP and I'm going to put I'm going to put those right here so like I said hope you found this video informative if you did make sure you give it the thumbs up and I'll see you on the next one

Channel: Bees in the Weeds

Views: 6,423

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Id: noXqLFGT-Yw

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2024