Why are BEEKEEPERS killing BEES? Comprehensive look inside...

ah all right all right all right right all right a little bit warmer I mean we've been battling like 60s and cloudy and we haven't gotten to the bees because I've been waiting for it to get a little more sunny out and then they were getting a warm day then they were getting some cold e cloudy rainy days and dr. Leo and I have been talking on the phone and in case you guys are new here dr. Leo and I produced VB videos to help you guys out and together we produce videos that have well over a million views on them and we try to put out a lot of information and open-source information to help you guys out on your bee journey if you're just starting out or if you're kind of like me I was already into it for a few years and learned some stuff studying with dr. leo here and actually changed the way I did B so this is dr. Leo my friend here you guys can hear about what he's about here for one second and then we'll tell you what's going on in this video hi I am dr. Lea I'm a nature will beekeeper in the Ozarks of southern Missouri I catch local wild swarm and keep them in horizontal hives that require little maintenance and that's something that each of us can build from some scrap lumber you have lying around I also published books on nature beekeeping methods to make it they're accessible for everyone the main book to read these are keeping bees with a smile this is the new 2020 of this classical book on natural beekeeping updated with more full-color pictures and will get you off to a good start of how to never have to buy bees again once you catch local swar yeah and it is keeping bees with a smile instead of struggling to keep your bees alive natural beekeeping that has very low mortality rates is real accessible to everyone a year ago at my suggestion doc said out what's called a bait hive or just warm trap in the tree it's just a small hive that you place in a tree and just as birds move into birdhouses the local bees when they swarm move into this swamp trap and duck had one swamp trap out and it got occupied by local wild swarm so it's a hundred percent success rate yeah and there if you remember a year ago when I visited we were not working with live bees because all the previous bees that doc had had perished during that winter and we were talking about the reasons for this high mortality and well one of the chief reasons is that you may not be using and you may not be working with the bees acclimated to your local condition right so if you buy these in commerce you never know where they were bred what genetics they have so catching local swarms is really the way to go yeah and the climate too like they are adjusted to that climate so you guys will notice when we take you guys into the forest that's the hive that we caught it as a live swarm last year and the other box was actually a weak box that didn't have a queen but we actually got a queen sent from our friend mr. rooster down there in Mississippi and he sent the Queen to us and we put that in the box so you guys are going to be able to see the difference on a queen that was brought in from a different climate in a different area how about box is doing versus one there was a swarm that came all together and acclimated to our local temperatures yeah that's totally true yeah but the great thing is that once you caught the local swarm and you have this local genetics and your big hives you don't have to catch swarms every year more you can increase the number of your hives by making artificial swarm something that we are going to demonstrate today yeah and I have a new book called raising honey bee Queens that explains the methods for increasing the number of your hives and multiplying the colonies for itself and even for sale literally you don't need to buy bees again if you have good local genetics that's arrived there the winter in your local condition right and actually he knows and as a proponent of he can actually make more monies with bees on the yard the bee yard here then most people can make with cattle right and they don't disrupt the land they don't a lot of times when you see guys move in and they do cattle what first thing they do is knock down all the trees they want all the pasture and then that disrupts all the natural habitat right that's totally correct yeah and if you'd like to learn more about that I invite you to come to the homesteading life comes oh yeah Jagan states are putting up in August and Hannibal Missouri I will be talking there and presenting to talks on they shall be keeping and multiplying your local bees right and they're the techniques that we will be covering today I also described in the classical book by the French author George de león's who was the first to invent the horizontal high with the frames that we are using today and they're called keeping bees and horizontal hive and there I also have a website with free plans for building hives like that and free information on catching your swarms and keeping bees naturally it is horizontal hive calm yep and we'll have that linked all over for you guys so right now we're gonna get into it because that Sun is beating down on us and we're gonna get into the shade and see what's going on with the bees the use of smoke is a very ancient practice in beekeeping even 4000 years ago in Egypt they knew that if you smoke bees when working with them they will be more peaceful and today we know that the reason for that is that the smell of smoke means to the bee colony that they may be a wildfire around and that's an emergency so instead of paying attention to you opening the hive they prepare themselves for dealing with the emergency they gorge themselves on honey because if it becomes too hot they may not have access to the frames with their honey because of all the smoker and the temperature so it may sound unnatural to smoke the bees but actually if you need to open the nest as we do today giving to be some smoke is less disruptive than opening it up without any snow I use burlap for smoke a few if you do the same please make sure it comes from certified organic coffee bags because the ones that are not certified organic may be treated with all kinds of poisons to prevent fungi growth and there that's not something that you want to burn and inhale while you're working you want and there is no right or wrong fuel for the smoker anything that will smell there like pine needles or even sawdust is a perfectly acceptable alternative if you live in a place where sumac plants grow the clusters of dry sumac berries are wonderful and they were shown in the research to also have anti varroa mite properties in the old days they're the favorite few of beekeepers was dry the cow dung but today probably it's not the material easy to come by in all of the price all right we're ready you know for me it's always a joy to see that being so strong and healthy in the springtime yeah but I also find it amazing that if we were to grab a few bees put them in a ziplock bag and send them to the lab to be examined for disease they would find all kinds of disease agents with them so that means that it sells the strong colony it's not the counted and it's completely free of parasite or disease agents right but the one that has a strong immune system right such a wonderful message that the desire and then we get that from being recycled over and over in the same location you're gonna get stronger bees with a better immune system which is just like us the better our immune system is the less likely we are to catch any of these things that could cause you problems so man they're really outside the hive yeah so that means they're very congested there and we have several options we could expand the nest by adding more frames in front of the entrance to the way the congestion and making music with the bees to ventilate or we can actually take half of the frames and move them in a separate box to create two hives out to one and some people may frown on that thing that's not really natural splitting a colony like that but for me the definition of natural beekeeping is whether you are doing something that the bees want to compare themselves or if you are working against their nature right so when they're congested like that if you did nothing what would happen they would swarm and then half of the bees will fly out to occupy a new carroty and make two hives out the one right so if you helped them almost being a midwife in rasa's then it's totally natural because this is what the decent this condition want to accomplish all right I love it well we'll have to look inside to know if they're strong enough to actually do that right yes and also depends on your priorities when they're strong like that if you were to keep them in the same box just adding frames then they could produce the very big harvest of honey for you because they have a lot of workers to go and go out in the fields and collect nectar but it's really important for the bees to go through this process of splitting every summer that's important for their health because while they're splitting and they're raising a new queen they don't have brood and brood the eggs and the larvae of the bee is not just the young bees but also food for parasites so by going through the splitting cycle through natural swarming or through you doing the artificial swarm as described in keeping bees and for example handbook you help them cleans themselves or for pathogens at the same time as you are increasing the number of five and actually doesn't go against the increasing of honey production because while they're raising a new queen they don't have brood to feed so all the nectar that would be used for feeding more larvae is now being used for storing the hive all right what's getting there suet follow you want to give some smoke at the entrance don't blow it into the hive it just alerts the bees at the entrance that hey there may be wipin parvis be paying attention to this danger rather than the two big polar bears breaking into our home maybe ants living under the cover the captain's all the time and have never seen them bother the bees but it also depends on your climate in some climates the ants are so aggressive like places where there are fire ants that you will want the bottom of your legs on the hive to be immersed in containers with water or oil better water so that the ants cannot roll up into the time also an important or the precaution see how this rope is almost they're going to burst so this prevents the top from opening all the way out and ranking the hinges so when you build yours it's better to have a piece of wire like regular fencing wire here instead of the rope and that's one thing we need to do in the next month to prevent any disappointment from the thing break mode many times you can estimate how big the colony is by putting the farms of your hands along the top four planks covering the nest and right here at the entrance side it's much much warmer than in the far end of the hive so you'll be able to see how congested this part is and the relatively few bees being the far end of the box [Music] if you see many drones the male bees that means that the county has the resources for raising the the males and they only do it when the colony is strong and has the reserves of honey and they're adequate their workforce the worker is being female for feeding these drones or that serve the important function of carrying on the wonderful genetics of this colony to the next degree as you can see this whole box is pretty much full of bees here the frames are full of calm so as we are going through the nester I'm confident that we have sufficient resources here to separate this colony into two parts and have two fives instead of one yeah this procedure is called artificial swarming in the old docks today it's called this plate and there is described in keeping bees and horizontal hives by lambs and also in raising honeybee Queens or five realtor [Music] how defensive these are really depends not just on the colony itself but on the environmental conditions like what we have to weigh there a horizontal five you pretty much have to open the door nest only once or twice a year in the spring to make sure that the queen is there and laying eggs but this inspection today so late we really don't have to do that because it's obvious that the queen is in great shape judging by the strong population of the colony and another reason for doing it is to assess whether you can multiply this five and never several colonies in place with one so you can see here that in this brute section our portion of the time here the open entrance there are lots of these a lot of home construction and it's fairly congested and in this far end of the five there are significantly fewer bees so one thing you could do you could move some of the frames from the far base section of the five in front of the entrance to give them more room to fill to expand and raise no brood and I know last year when we were talking about the bees that these are a little darker than normal oh yeah remember how we talked about like they are exactly because historically the first bees that were brought to America whereas the European dart be the strain of the native to the north of Europe and they have much better winter survival and they're very good resistance against the varroa mites in many parts of their range and when you see darker Bay's that don't have as many yellow stripes on them that suggests that there it's a mixture of the prevailing Italian blood with the European dark days which is very good and some of the Queens that I have they're almost pitch black all right I'll grab another box so that as we are going through the frames I have another box to put the frames in and there if you have a very strong nest like that and it's overflowing with these and you want to create another night you need to take have the frames with larvae and eggs and put them in another box together with the bees and all and take the box some 50 feet away the beauty of this simple method described by George the lens and keeping this with a smile is that there you do not need to find the Queen which have a half of this artificial swarm that has no queen will be able to raise themselves a new queen from the eggs that they have in the comp and how long does that normally take one month from now when you check them you will have a new queen already laying eggs two weeks from now she will already be there hatched there she needs some additional time to go and mate with drones and then go into the egg production if you are trying to take the frame house and it's not coming out not because it's good with some problem to be present the big question is raised but because it just doesn't want to get out feeling stuck don't force it out there it could be that there is some honeycomb that's built between the frames linking them together right and if you reach the comic part it will be honey running all over aggravating the bees so if you try pulling it up and it doesn't work just try a different frame if you frame that strong colony lots of drones and reserves in this bounder at the bottom of these cells is the bread which is fermented fallen the source of protein and most probiotic and there the small frame is also filled with fresh nectar that will be dripping out of the frame if you filter the frames that look like covered with sandpaper gizzard through that means they see larvae that are undergoing the mental forces to emerge as adult bees so the frame of reserves for now to make our manipulations easier I will put this it's a separate box when I do so my food frames are refoundation on both sides so that the bees are feel that they're they're surrounded by and quarters and they're don't feel alarm pull over finding themselves so normally when I go over five during the spring inspection I carry a pencil with me and I just dude marks on the top bars here telling me what the frame has be for brood o for open brood meaning eggs and larvae before eggs are deep of drone brood and this is helpful big berserk remember if you want to make two more files out of one by simply separating the colony in several parts it's very important that each part has rationalized play laid eggs in there this is what the colony needs to raise themselves a new queen if they don't have a queen look at this beautiful frame of rod it also has some fancy room the larva in the bottom of the cells and when you see this it's sure indication that the queen is there and very very fertile [Music] to make a viable artificial swore you need to give you splint at least two full frames of brood and one frame of reserves meaning pollen and nectar the difference this time is literally overflowing with bees we'll be able to borrow some more frames from there Doug if you would like to make more colonies out of this fiber you could split it in two even three parts doing that good you know another thing that you cannot see on the video is that how wonderful it smells when you open an eye like that there is all the smell of propolis and fresh nectar being evaporated yeah and their fallen brought into the hive all right so another frame of reserve sir brood and I'm looking at the bottom of the sells for eggs and this frame does have some eggs at the Cardinal they look like tiny like tiny grains of rice so this is what they're looking for in order to give this plate and the mother colony summer something to start a new queen problem next year that I would recommend that we do this spring inspection much earlier I wasn't crazy it was but the bees inside were still active and there if we did this six weeks ago it would be immature less stressful experience for the bees because they would be curious and it would make power either okay this one has eggs and there with my pencil I will write on this frame that it has eggs so this way now they able to raise their queen from summer so there when the calm is dark and all like on this frame it really helps notching the cells with their the eggs to make it easy for the bees to transform them into queen cells these dark cells have a lot of cocoons which makes it difficult for the bees to extend and change the shape of the cell to turn an ordinary cell into a queen cell so by notching some of the cells and opening them up this work will be easy for this to accomplish if you had very young yellow calm with this you wouldn't have to do the notching when you do so pay attention to where the egg is part at the bottom of the cells so you don't damage the eggs of the tiny larvae there and also if you have a frame with eggs this is where the Queen is more likely to be so handle the frame over the line no in case you fall from the frame she falls into the five and not in the ground so drive you have to under the cell almost to the midrib and then down he has to sacrifice the few cells down but you open up the space for the beasts to transform this cell into queen cell otherwise these are all cocoons that are very rigid are in the way which makes it different for the bees to change the shape of the cell from the regular worker cell into the cell that looks like you peanut something like that this is the beginning of the Queen cell so doing this operation with the cells with tiny eggs and tiny larvae next they were either for the bee when you make this artificial swarm all the foragers from this box will go back to their modified because they're so close together for this reason make sure that it's very strong and has efficient bees in there compensate for the loss of the foragers another great frame called camp food the kept brood will soon are emerge and become art worker bees and it's good to give her plenty of that to the new colony to replenish her the loss of the foragers that stay behind in the original mother part and again when making this problem wise is strong as what's really necessary successful split with just two frames of brood and they're fresh eggs and one frame offer onion call in the reserves will be total solutions okay now we have plentiful resources in the box brood honey and their pollen what I'm looking for is another frame with there a lot of our freshly laid eggs and this portion of the kind is so congested that the be the queen bee would be moving into the depth of the hive to lay more eggs so we are more likely to find the frames with eggs farther away from the entrance so let's look at here the extra base clustering on the top bars I will just leave this box this time let's look at some frames in this portion you see it would have a frame wait there lark get propolis a lot of propolis which is a great mother baiz and for you as we are working with the five I always carry small box with me and if you scrape some of the extra propolis with you have to you can make her tinctures for own consumption as immune system booster and fighting pathogens in the old days before toothpaste was invented this is what people were using for purifying the mouth right just their chewing some resin the resin trays so here is a frame of drone brood lots of these bigger cells that I kept looking like bullets and many beekeepers tried to prevent their the construction of the cells Crispin's Unani without gathering any nectar the colony and proper preparation they need to raise a lot of drums those drums are big they are but they have no stinger so they may be buzzing around you quiet intimidatingly but they cannot sting the Queen dusk and is stinger but there shall we use it on another plane when they are competing for troll over the five this one does not steam because unless you grab her in your pan frame-up never meant appalling be Brad tiny camp from the winter and through everything's looking pretty normal pretty strong oh it's very strong again you could easily make her like three fives out the one right now we're making just one that means it will be very strong split you see they lightened up a little bit out front it was worried about what's going on inside they did drop down a little under underneath there I did my inspections in early March this year the weather was very nice and warm and their early inspections are just easier to carry out because there are significantly fewer bees or then you set them up for the active part of the season and you don't have to disrupt their nest when they're very active like this I'm gonna get we're not really looking for the Queen we're just kind of looking around what's up we are no we are not looking for the Queen but we are looking for some more eggs to make sure that both the split and the parent colony has a crazy way from if we found the Queen and for example we know that the Queen stays here with the mother colony then we'll only need to make sure that the split has the eggs but because it's quite difficult to find the Queen and very strong five like this now here we have some cross calming Anthony B is connected to frames together with welcome and there you may see probably more with their plastic foundation than with natural wax all right so grab one more frame with brood from the Brut section and put it in the in the new box I will add a few frames from the Far Away section of the knife in front of the entrance they will build it out quicker this way keeping the Brut frames together makes it easier for the piece to heat the brood at night it's especially important early in the spring when the temperatures at night are very low so by moving some frames including them in front of the entrance you are creating more room for them to build in front of the entrance without increasing congestion in the box if they were to continue to build common the depth of the kind it makes the travel distance from the entrance to the Far Away portion of the box much more and this would create traffic jams and traffic jams inside the hive is one of the causes of swarming by giving them more space in front of the entrance you alleviate the nature of our swarm right so you can make your own er artificial swarm small splits as they're called today because they're almost thinking they're running out of rooms exactly right and it's not like they're thinking the way they perceive it is by smell right by the smell of the Queen when they become very congested the Queen pheromone cannot as easily circulate through the hive when there is rule and when the Queen pheromone cannot circulate they they lose the smell of the Queen which may mean the Queen may not even be there right and they go into the queen is it survival of the fittest right they know what they have to do to keep their line alive yeah and they do it so differently every year depending on the weather conditions that's amazing right you know this is why I do not practice feeding and almost all beekeeping literature written today tells you you need to see the bees in the spring so they build up a strong population well see how strong the population of the bees can build up without a cloud right just eating their net their natural diet of honey and pollen also if you were to feed your big sugar mmm you are not creating the same kind of resilient B that's been raised there on the diet of natural pollen and nectar which is nutritionally far superior to the sugar water that beekeepers give their bee we actually used to do the sugar water and then through the reading of your books and meeting you and working with you through the beekeeping and natural beekeeping we haven't given the sugar water in years to the bees so and they seemed healthier you know for it all right so this is all complete we need to give one more frame for them to build here and a couple of frames with foundation into this box and we'll carry some distance away and put it on a separate okay when you make this official swarm you want to move this box certain distance away if you don't then many of the bees in this box will fly out trying to locate the Queen and the Queen is still in this box right they will go back to the Queen depleting the population of bees in this slide right moving it a certain distance away prevent the young house bees from going out of the box trying to find the Queen and congregating back in the original box about 50 P yeah ideally if you have space or something like 50 feet it was a very good distance okay I will wait to it want to make sure that the new box is off the ground yes and also if you eventually transfer it into a permanent five that will be on supports one cinder blocks are on flags it's best for the base for their orientation the entrance to the permanent box a month from now is it the same height of the ground as where it is now do you think that'll work yes and then if your high will be on their highest and than that then there they will reorient and find in your entrance right so this is the complete first step in creating an interfacial swarm whether it's successful or not we'll know in four weeks time when we open the box and look for eggs if you see B eggs in three weeks from four weeks from now that means that they've raised the new Queen and the Queen's successfully mated and started laying at this will be a fully established new colony at that point so if you haven't hit that subscribe button make sure you do it right now and get the notifications because in four more weeks we're gonna be out here we're going to show you guys exactly what's going on now we're gonna go check the other high [Music] yeah I really see how this queen is comparing to the other queen even charging by the activity at the entrance of the hive there is a big difference yeah all right let's get in there and see what's going on yeah but and also this hive and their trays for pest control underneath so many times when you do a quick inspection to see what's going on you can slide out these and you will see by where they're dropping beats of pollen and wax how big the brood chamber is without opening the entire box right so here you can see that's proximately half the length of the hive about 15 frames is active and the rest is still empty you can fill these with oil but what becomes messy after a while when all of these this material mixes with the oil or it can be filled with diatomaceous earth which is much which is what we actually have and we have some bad winds I was explained to you on the phone that actually blew the hive over oh I'm so sorry thing coming right out of winter so I came out really fast I got it hood up and then I put this blocker behind it but it looks like they're done okay and see it's another important message if you are looking at some models of bee hive that you are using or I am using on my website and just apply this to your particular situation if you are in an area with very strong winds you may want to make the legs they're spread out or or even drive 80 past right one of the leg and attach it solidly to the tea pots to prevent it from tipping over and right wing yeah you think would be pretty heavy but me and that will was really crazy come on so here is the feature of this box instead of a piece of rope there is wire that prevents it from breaking and delete falling out completely when you open it up the thing we were talking about some people hadn't watched the other videos is how we have these color-coded oh that's exactly what we're talking about yeah there's no frames and there's frames are just a gap there isn't there is a gap between the frames that's very important to respect the spacing yes and have frames continuously throughout the entire box yes because if there's gap they will be building come from the top cover board and when you open it up you're gonna cause this problem with the honey and get them excited and all kinds of problems so what we need to do we need to take a small bucket or container and there a knife and brush all the beads off and harvester Visconti and Irene serve the frame when something like that happens and there is a portion of the comb that collapsed do not leave it like that right you need to fix it and clean it up there because all of this collapse comb can cause an infestation of small-time beetles and other right things yeah that the bees won't be able to get to them in this collapsed calm so let's go ahead and stick that now [Music] smoking lightly brushing them off [Music] you may not be able to save every single be but realize that every hive has between one and two thousand new bees catching every day so the loss of some bees are is not going to make a big difference so this on the sides we break that off we should preferably capital so it doesn't spill more honey right so you just take a very sharp knife you cut it off at the base and make sure there are no bees on so now you can see that the there's honey down in the bottom there in the tray so let's clean that out as well right please otherwise there may be other creatures getting there to be funny and that's not accessible for the bees alright so get protected I'm making a quick car inspection to make sure I don't see a dead Queen and on the screen and there is none which is fortunate have spilled honey preferably clean it up as you go so you don't have mobis stuck and honey as you are handling the frames or the cover boards you're the lazy drones enjoying this with life and when it be becomes are covered in honey like that or it's alright because all the bees will lick it up so this B will survive and do it alright now let's open a few more boards and see what we have there so clearly we are now looking at the highness section and some of this comb has kept find it probably from the last fall GT cars that you find in the fall know we loved it so they could have it to go in the winter here and there again I see some cross combing the calm interconnected so I don't want to read this apart and we'll go farther until we see some frames that don't have any cross common them and then we'll look at these yeah it's a completely different vibration compared to the previous time not only in the quantity of this but here I can take my hood off and they're just be working with these bees with no protection and this explains why one of the reasons why people wanted to replace their local bees with Southern Queens the Italian bees that are number one most widespread commercial bee in America much more gentle so you can handle them with little protection with their impunity but local bees can often be capable of standing their ground here is a queen cup that they started building oh yeah with that this is the shape of a peanut that the bees are constructing in preparation for swarming eventually the Queen will lay an egg in this opening and it will be transformed in a complete queen cell where the new queen will be raised at which point the old mother Queen would have the bees in the hive will fly off to establish a new colony so they're kind of getting crowded enough yeah of course even have the hive this size 15 frames or that's a lot of bees and certainly strong enough to destroy me so I'm not surprised if you find enough brood and resources in this box to to make another split if you like and because these have much more room and fewer bees we could make this split in the same box by inserting a divider and turning this one 5 into 2 will open an additional entrance and this way you will have our two colonies living in the same box temporarily whichever half has no queen will raise them sells a new queen after one month you check for eggs if you don't see eggs in one of the have that means that there they weren't able to reclaim themselves for one reason or another or maybe the Queen didn't return from the mating flight it sometimes happens when they're eaten up by the birds in which case if the split failed reuniting them is as easy as removing this plywood partition board and nourishing them together now how hard is it to take that other hive out you know those other part out and put it into a new hive and move it it will be very easy to just transfer just like we did yeah another sign of preparations for swarming is the abundance of drones and drone brood once the colony sends is that they have the resources and the strength to procreate they do two things they start raising new Queens to swarm and they also start raising a lot of drones because drones are the ones that will mate with Queens from other hives they do it outside the hive in flight to prevent inbreeding so these are two pathways for the colony to get into its next generation all right lots of these lots of brood another knuckle very good another queen Cup yeah Queens and another one not one you will see many of them but if they are not sealed completely and have an opening in the bottom that means that the Queen has not yet laid there so don't actually make multiple ones you can pick one and then go and she will probably eggs and several of that I see and maybe on different days and it serves her a very important function for the bees if the time comes to swarm and there the weather is unfavorable they are able to destroy one of the cells that has the Queen that's about to emerge and just produce another one a few days later this way you know some people thought that bees can't foretell weather yes but there is the simple explanation that they just hedge their bets and they create different cells aged differently so they have the flexibility of doing swarming when the conditions are the most favorable this swarm will be hanging on a branch while the scouts are looking for a place to live it could take days for them to locate the new dwelling right so it's very important for them that it is done when the temperatures are high and the weather is are nice with no rain especially no cold rain because this could range and kill the peel this one okay brood you can also tell the difference in the color of the bees and the drones they see dog these are very yellow right totally different look than the other the other one was much darker right the bees were more defensive right and extremely prolific probably twice as many bees as here right this one feel have the box the other one was maybe 70% more frames built and in terms of the quantity of the bees even more than what we see here so I will temporarily set this and the empty portion of the five so we have room to work and inspect other frames so basically old dirt rooster he's got them lazy Queens down there in the south well you know the way we need the pool said there is the right source of bees and the wrong source of this there is nothing wrong with this sort of these except that they are not acclimated to these conditions right the bees that will do great and Mississippi or Florida are not the bees that will do great and the real father north and vice versa right right the same way is if you take an oak tree from Minnesota and planted in Florida it will not thrive there either right that totally makes sense okay lots and lots of nectar and brood and drones I'm not seeing any empty cells or cells with their eggs because I expect that here too they were running out of room and they filled everything with nectar so next year let's do this inspection sometime in March [Music] in other word of precaution if you make an inspection like that on the call today right now we're sweating over because it's 80 degrees if you do it when it's sixty degrees then make sure you don't expose the highest for too long right because the drop of the temperature may be detrimental to the development of brood it's called brood because the bees brood on their cells filled with the larvae and the nymphs the same way as chickens brood on their egg oh there you go I need to maintain their high temperature around 95 degrees right for the eggs to develop properly and this is by the way the reason why women wear children inside their bodies are for nine months one of the reasons is to maintain the optimal temperature for the development of the fetus right I'll look at this cell yeah right there yeah now this is a capped cell Wow so that means they're making a queen right a mega and queen right now and two of them look at that there is another one that's capped which means that we can make splits right here using the queen cell that already kept right and they're accelerating the process of them creating a new colony so this peanut-shaped cell in the center covered with bees is a queen cell and if it's completely sealed at the tip that means that the larva of the queen has already matured to the point where it will spin a cocoon after the cell is sealed and the queen will emerge in a few days here is one there's another one yeah you could see the other ones were Hollow and this has got this is all closed done mm-hmm [Music] it's another feature of the southern Queens or in southern teas that you got is that and they will be building more cells and swarming more readily than local bees because they live for in a warmer climate when they can for army warming more often right so that's great we have the resources for making a split right here and it's helpful if these frames have natural beeswax foundation this has plastic so it will be impossible to cut out itself but if it was waxed we could cut out the cell and put it in one corner of the hive and leave the other one with this section of the hive but let's look we may have more from Queen cells on other frames too and if we do we'll divide there the colony in half leaving a queen cell in each portion and open another entrance and after inserting apply we divide the board this split will be complete and it's all almost certain that it will succeed because they raise their own queen right it's almost ready to hatch and they have plentiful plentiful resources of broad nectar and pollen wow what a different picture compared to what we witnessed a year ago yeah or even just 20 minutes ago you know some people write only that it becomes overwhelming because most beekeepers have the problem of keeping their bees alive right and mainly we have a problem where to put them off multiplying so quickly it's almost like you know you have no more containers in your household for holding food and it just keeps just being produce like in your garden right okay for a successful split or artificial swarm as they were called in the old days you need several things you need there sufficient sufficient amount of brood because the portion of this split with no Queen will not have any egg production for a while so you need them to have enough brood to raise new duration of bees in the absence of the queen while there is a new queen you need a sufficient number of these to take care of the brood and take care of the Queen cells heating them and feeding them right and you need sufficient amount of reserves of pollen and nectar so that if it rains or for a week or two weeks and the weather is unfavorable for foraging right they still have all the food and they need to sustain themselves and here is another queen cell congratulations it's sealed we're having a baby yes and we and here is another one Wow but it also means if that if doc wanted to go right now to ten hives instead of two hives right we would have had the resources of our making eight additional hives from - I know you're not repaired but you know that's one of the biggest problems all for natural beekeeping that it can become overwhelming with this dlc they are healthy they're strong and they keep multiplying that's what these do so you know some of the people asked me after watching the previous video does this recipe offer frying some of the dead bees in olive oil and then rubbing into your account for promoting air hair growth does it really work and there it seems to work I do it there but I never had enough dead bees to do y'all hang around some of those regular beekeepers alright and I also wanted to point out that many times the beekeepers blame everything on pesticide right saying all is the pesticide that are killing my bees right but look here doug is in the country where he is surrounded by agriculture and he cannot control where the bees will go to certainly in addition to his organic clever growing around his homestead they will also go to the fields with corn for corn pollen right and soybeans or whatever else they can find within two miles and much of it the problem most of it will not be organic food but they still a thriving which tells you that number one most important thing in natural beekeeping is to be working with local bees right I've seen it okay very good so this frame has are the queen cell and we're leaving it here so now each end will have Queen cells yeah so how to make a split and horizontal hive we made an expansion of the brood nest and we discovered two frames with their swarm cells the big cells that look like peanuts where they're raising a new queen in preparation for swarming this way we can put one frame with their the swarm cell on one end of the hive the other one stays behind where it was and we're also separating the frames with brood pretty much 50/50 between the two portions of the hive realizing though that this original brood nest will receive all the foragers coming back from the field so we can give more Brut to the new split inside the same box because they won't have any foragers originally but the new bees hatching from the brood frames will strengthen the population of this music legend so I will go through the remaining frames and I will move a few more brute frames into this new compartment so there are three frames with proven resources on the original left side of the nest there are only two in that one so I'm taking that a full frame of brood and bees and adding it to the newly-formed their artificial swarm was played [Music] let me take least one more all right take my hat off it was getting so hot so I'm back into the old hat straw hat there you go dog the bee whisperer looks like we have some kind of brood and comb down here in the bottom of it another regular construction so let us actually clean it up now that we have it exposed would you eat the darks nah I do the dark comer usually is the one where deposits of B bread are mm-hmm actually when you have your camera switched off changing batteries I was feasting on some bee pollen which is very good food [Music] one two three four five six seven eight nine one two three four five let me take one frame from here also understanding that many of the B's that we are now transferring to the new compartment are foragers they will fly out of the newly open entrance tomorrow morning and they will return to this original portion of the hive right so Tamar of the population of the newly formed there split won't be as impressive as it is today but no worry they'll still maintain some over there because they're protecting those they will win so exactly the house bees they don't fly out the hive the younger days they called nurses right they will stay in the new compartment and when they become foragers when they become older they will know that entrance is the only entrance to the hive and will stay in that portion and trimming some of the calm again okay now that I've split the resources into halves more or less I am putting three frames with foundation in front of the open entrance of the regional nest to give them more room to build and not see you as congested this way we hope that when they do raise a new queen they will our stay here rather than swarm and then I slide everything back together in this case because there is some cross coming on these frames we want to be able to slide they're all 5 frames as one unit so I'm breaking the propolis sealed on each side but don't actually separate the frames completely so I can just slide them together without ripping apart the foam that they connected the frames with and I'm sliding all five frames together then I will add some more foundation here so they don't attach or come to the divider board that we will place in the middle and I give some frames of foundation to the newly formed colony and that I will also put in front of the entrance sliding the rest of the frames into the depth of the five again adding foundation in front of the entrance helps alleviate congestion because this is where all the foragers are arriving this is the bee sister spot on the time here we go we have divided this hive in two halves and the each half has a queen cell pollen honey brood and all the resources to become and self-sufficient colony the only thing we need now is to put a piece of plywood completely separating the two compartments so they become new independent bee colonies resilience tells you in his book keeping bees and horizontal files that as you gain experience with the bees you often want to work with them with no gloves so you'd have more feeling in your hands yeah and just a word of precaution the bee sting unless you're allergic is not going to hurt you yeah but make sure that you remove all the Rings with you from your sting from the fingers before going to the bee yard it's not swelling the ring may cut off blood circulation to the finger lose a finger lose the finger lose the ring yeah and going to the emergency room is not really helpful because what they will do in the emergency room they will just cut the ring and your wife will not like it if it happens to you and it happened to me once and if it is and the wedding ring then you can save the ring if it's too late to take it off because the fingers swollen by applying a lot of ice and elevating your hand for several hours and by all means if it starts turning purple then it's critical you will have to cut the ring regardless right and you guys know too that if you do get a bee sting you don't want to grab the Stinger out because at the end of that stinger there's a little ball of the juice that they shoot in you what do you call it venom venom and if you squeeze it to get it out you're gonna push it in deeper and you're gonna cause your bite to be worse so actually you want to scrape it right great with a credit card or a fingernail or your five til your five tool but you want to scrape across there and have it scrape right out okay next time I come I will demonstrate yeah there you go okay this guy vis ready for the piece of plywood bit to be inserted in the middle and we are opening a second entrance and you have four colonies instead of two advantages like that alright let's go get that board so the only thing left is to insert the divider between the two colonies that we have made out of one and I asked Doug for a piece of plywood and he told me he didn't have any plywood around the only thing he had was a piece of oak from the cabinet of his building so we use that and there were inserting it between the two close to the last frame all the way down to the bottom of the hive and so it separates it in two parts and goes all the way to the cover board so the bees cannot cross above the divider either pay attention to where you are putting it so that it's not against the entrance slot the one that's in the middle otherwise the bees will be able to use the entrance load to go around this er divider so it needs to be separating the two colonies and two halves completely so there is no communication because the walls of the hive that's built out of natural wood may be slightly irregular if you see any crack between the divider and the wall of the time that looks like big enough for a beam to go through then you need to put some propolis this big glue that the scrape off any of the surfaces in the hive force a small amount of beeswax to cover this gap to completely seal the two compartments you don't need to do it if the walls are of the hive and the divider board have a gap less than sixteenth of an inch or sixteenth of an inch 1/8 of an inch is pretty much the borderline anything bigger than that and the bees can go back and forth and then the split will not be as successful we want them to function as two self-sufficient new bee colonies [Music] so we're not gonna put this on there because the board's blocking it correct but keep it here preferably under the hive so it doesn't get warped from exposure to rain and we'll use it ran there we relocate the half of the colony that we created in the box of their own but the only thing left for today is to open the entrance all right here's your hive tool to take out the material that was blocking the entrance and there we're done well we got it done right before the Sun went down didn't we [Music] okay well you don't think that these are so much work but actually takes a little bit to get in there and give to a minute it is but I really enjoy working with the bees now for sure because in our society we are being raised to work with their bad objects right even computers and they're they're very predictable right you press a button and you have a result with the bees you need to be fully live and open open up your senses because they're communicating and interacting with the living being yeah I mean they know your vibrations they know your smells they know everything you can tell when I mean I was telling him I was been watching the bees even though I hadn't really worked with them but I could tell there that one hive that was the swarm hive that was a pretty it was pretty busy in there they had a lot of dancing a lot of communication going on where the other hive was you guys noticed on the film that it was a lot less activity you know even though the colony was very healthy that was wrong and prepared for swarming naturally or being divided artificially as we did with you and if you would like to learn more the resources to go to the three books on nature will be keeping that I edited and published and translated from russian and french the two procedures we were doing today separating the horizontal hive in two parts so that the part with no queen raises a new queen and there you get two columns instead of one and the other procedure when we actually took frames put them in a different box and move the box certain distance away that's called artificial swarming and this is described by George the Lance and the classical book on natural beekeeping called keeping bees and horizontal hive so we just took that information from the book and showed you guys real time putting our hands on it moving the bees walk you through this whole long video so you could learn and all that information there in these books and make sure you guys if you're interested in beekeeping or you have a friend that does they make great coffee table books and also gifts for people who are interested in beekeeping make sure you check out his website we're gonna leave it linked down below it's gonna flash across the screen horizontal hive correct and again my favorite book is keeping vision we've a smile and that's what it is all about not just gaming healthy beers and plentiful honey yeah but having a smile at the same time because there's a lot of times that I've left all the honey on there just to make sure that they could survive the winter and be organic that I wouldn't need to give them any more help than they need naturally but I can tell your dog that this year not only will end the summer with more colonies than you had originally but also will have plentiful honey that's good so hopefully you guys enjoyed this video if you didn't smash the subscribe button make sure you do it we're gonna have a video coming up in about four weeks and we're gonna walk you guys through this whole process how each one of those systems worked the how they did we're gonna move them into the new hive and a lot of neat stuff coming up and don't forget to check out horizontal hive dot-com also dr. Leo will be speaking at the homesteading live conference that's an August 2nd and 3rd in Hannibal Missouri that function is fully going guys nothing's gonna stop that function from going on so if you haven't got your tickets it's almost sold out and we hope to see you guys there and also when you go to his website horizontal hive dot-com you'll be able to look at some of the classes that he offers at his property and he takes you guys to his bee yards and also goes through those classes with you as well and stay tuned because in the future we're gonna be doing a class together at his property that you guys will be able to attend and that'll be a lot of fun too so yeah I look forward to it thank you for always coming up you know it's about a five hour drive for him to come up and make these videos for you guys so you can learn all this great information so make sure you leave a comment down below and just say thanks dr. Leo for investing all this time to come up here and hang out with you guys so hope you guys enjoyed the video make sure you leave your comment down below and we'll see you guys well that was a busy day [Music] you

Channel: OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

Views: 233,933

Keywords: Off Grid with Doug and Stacy, Doug and Stacy, Doug, Stacy, Off Grid, off the grid, off the grid living, off the grid homes, off grid living, off grid cabin, off grid with Doug and Stacy, off grid solar power system, off grid house, off grid homestead, off grid solar, homestead, homesteading, homesteading for beginners, homesteading off the grid, natural food recipes, holistic health, holistic living

Id: 1sWF8tkalUw

Length: 78min 39sec (4719 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020