Why I use pliable inner covers and thoughts on upper entrances

I got another message over email and I'd like to make a video on it hello and I follow all your videos on YouTube thank you for sharing quick question what do you use as inter covers and how do you talk vent I'm just a small beekeeper with 100 hives but your videos videos are all of help Thank You Chester ok this is a question I've been getting from lots of beekeepers around they see my videos and they see these inter covers I'm using and it's not typical but I'll show you what I do so what I use is just simple I'll calm foamies just their bubble wrap insulation at the same time I buy it at Rona they come in big rolls that's you can wrap your hot water tank in them [Music] you wrap I don't know what else you do with this stuff but I use it I cut it off into a square chunk the same dimension as my beehive and what I do with it is let's pretend this honey box is a brood chamber beehive put the the Foley on top same dimension as the box and when my top goes on I like it because it helps eliminate the drafts spread especially in the spring when you crack a box and you put the lid back down you got all these little cracks all the way around and it's cold that draft gets inside and I don't like it on my cluster they have a hole I just cut a little feed hole in here like that you see I have a feet hole here and I match that feed hole up with this hole in the plastic like that and then the bees have access out that hole and then what I do is I do all my feeding most my feeding with these pails pail feeders with screens just a pail sealed top has got a gasket inside to create a seal I fill my syrup up through the cap this is a fine mesh stainless steel screen and is melted and it's embedded into this lid there's two holes underneath that screen so when I tip it upside down the circle run out of that screen and it creates a suction within that pail and when does that the surface tension on that screen will hold the syrup in the pail and the beads will come up so the bees will come up through this hole and then I'll just sell feed off that screen and they'll drink that pail down so that's how I do on my feeding I do my feeding on the outside of the hive with these pails very efficiently and my covers I'll just explain what I do with my covers here so migratory top flush on the side so I can stack my beehives tight together it has cleats on the end and these cleats if anybody wants to know what they're for it's just to help keep that lid on if there's just a square piece of wood piece of plywood on top she'd be sliding all over the place but because these cleats are in here to kind of hold the top to the ends and it secures on top so it just helps to keep that lid squared these runners are on top or basically just used to lock in when you're stocking pallets your your runner and the pallet should fit in between here so it just helps lock the stocking of the hives also on these tops you'll notice I have a rim it's a half inch rim all the way around and that does two things for me it helps put pressure on the outside of this foamy all the way around the outside so when I put my lid on it helps create that seal up top the other thing it does is it creates a little bit of head space here for protein the feed gives a little bit of space there for that patty to sit while the bees consume it okay as far as your upper entrance question I have to answer that kind of two ways when I wintered outside I found an upper entrance to be very important we get lots of snow and lots of ice I don't know if you've been following all of my videos but you'll notice when I was moving bees and some of my hives are covered right up as snow and the bottom entrance was ice straight up the bottom entrance will ice up but if you have a top entrance the release of that warm air will keep that top entrance clear of snow and ice because of that they won't be trapped in the box and that's very important when wintering outside here in Manitoba anyways and the other reason is just to build a release of carbon dioxide and the the excess moisture Oh to the hive but for me I winter indoors and because of that it's not as crucial for me to have an upper entrance ayuh regulate all the air circulation around the rows and around the bees and I have my entrances are open so I have a fairly good exchange of air within the shed around the hives two other reasons the other reason is I don't want an upper entrance because I pull honey boxes with with the skateboards and I like to have all the activity at the bottom and the hive when they come in and out I don't want to have any activity up top I want everything to go through the bottom and up just helps clear the box is a lot easier through the cold of the winter though now you know what - 25 - 35 dry dry gets very dry here in the prairies when you get those big blocking highs come sit down on this for months on end that exchange of cold air into the shed removes moisture from the shed it removes the excess moisture which is good but because the air is so dry my shed will get down to ten percent 15 percent relative humidity inside I like to keep it about 35 40 ish percent inside and the reason being is because of condensation so here I'm talking to you about relieving the condensation from the Beehive who is being very important but I also want to create just a little bit of condensation around the cluster in the winter shed just to give the bees something to drink so I find the magic number around 40 percent so where that cluster can hold in the winter shed instead of venting through a top entrance which I would have had I don't have the top entrance here that that little bit of a shroud of moisture on top kind of condon condenses onto the interior of the hive bodies okay on the inside and the bees go and actually when it's really dry they'll go and they'll they'll drink from the condensation on the outside I've watched it and I think it's very important wintering bees inside that they have access to a little bit of moisture especially when the relative humidity drops so low inside the sheds through through winter so and roundabout answer that's my reasoning for not using upper entrances I just want to mention one more thing Chester you made a note I'm just a small beekeeper with 100 hives but your videos are all of help thanks don't say just a small beekeeper everybody's a small beekeeper and another beekeepers eye you know we're all doing the same thing and regardless how many hives we have we have four hives or 4,000 hives or 40,000 hives it's all the same beekeeping work just on different scales right you're gonna do the work with that 4 hives the same as you're going to do with 40,000 hives if you're not doing the same work as you're doing with the 40,000 hives of the aren't the four hives then you're doing something wrong okay we all we have to make sure we keep the basics of beekeeping true we got to make sure we're looking after these hives do regardless the number of hives we have it's all the same work just different scales and and guys will put programs together and strategies to build accomplish all that work but as soon as we start cutting back on the work because of scale that's when the hives suffering that's when they start dying and we have to be very careful we don't we don't ignore some of these very true basics of beekeeping that we have to pay attention to appreciate your finding the video is useful and guys just keep giving me feedback and I'll make videos on my opinion and we'll just keep the things spinning here all right

Channel: a Canadian Beekeeper’s Blog

Views: 51,058

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Id: PKASeCnB8eg

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2017