Working the bee yard doing hive rotations, 2018

hello mr. Etienne it is January 21st 2018 and today I'm in our st. Lucie yard and what I'm going to be doing today is finishing up doing our hive rotations I've been doing hive rotations yesterday and Friday and Friday I went out to our st. John's yard did 13 of them and yesterday we had a group from from our bee Club the River region V Club they came up to the Abbey and probably got 20 25 people up there and now we did did the rotations of the highs up but they have a bee record Ralph he took half the group and I took the other half and we went on our ways and we did splits up do did the hive rotations up there and so today I'm out in the last yard the st. Lucie yard oh yeah and yesterday that I when I did the the one in in Bush our st. Michael's yard - so here's our last yard right here nope I've already done the st. Jude yard and we only had three out there but all three of them they made it and so today I'm in our st. Lucie yard finishing up and so what is rotations what are we doing with rotations so rotations we want to do this in in preparation for splits now here in Southeast Louisiana I mean right at the end of January and today our temperatures got to be writing about the mid-60s right now and I know folks up north I mean golly y'all still got three feet of snow up there I know I'm thinking about buddy Jeff you can't Jeff up in Alaska this probably got 10 feet of snow up there or Scott Hendricks up in in a in a Canada he's probably got about 4 feet my boy Dan up in Nova Scotia he's probably I don't know he's got a probably in an icicle or something so all you guys have north I'm sorry for y'all but you know down south when we're getting ready making preparations for our splits so what is the rotation the rotation is simply taking your your hot bodies and and moving the one that's on the top down to the one at the bottom and so the reason why we're doing this is because the bees have a tendency to move up from the bottom box up into the top box this generally was where their stores wore where so they're going to move up into this box as as the winter progresses and so what we want to do is we want to get the bees down lower because bees have a tendency to to move up in in their boxes so by rotating the boxes around we're actually giving the bees the opportunity to move up into their hog as opposed to force them to move down so it's just a you know procedure that that we do in preparation for splits now theoretically you know that's what we do we we take our two boxes and we just reverse them but in reality it's a lot it's a lot different because we you you to run into so many scenarios in this yeah ideally would just be just move the boxes down that's great but there's some times where the bees haven't actually moved up into the top box or you might have a scenario where it is you know which one's got more bees in at the top one to the bottom one you know which one which one's got more stores in it so you know you have to actually make a call one when you're actually doing their rotations and you know hopefully you're gonna make the right call but generally my theory is whatever box weighs them the most that's the one that's going to go on the bottom and and then I'll put the lighter one on the top it's just my my way of doing it one of the tools have been using the last couple days are these really really cool hot tools probably most of y'all don't even know what that thing is but I've been using this thing now for at least at least five or six years I've been using it and I had the one that only I only had one of them and I had it out of the shop and in our cnc guy al says what is that I said what's one of the tools I'll be using to do my rotations it'll it was uh looked at because you know I could make that on the CNC and I said you can't he says yeah so I gave him my the only tool I had he cut it uh made made the pattern then he started cutting these things out on the CNC and he's actually got a st. Joseph's have even written on the handle right here and these tools what we do with these tools is as we jack up the separate the two boxes you stick this tool you see it's not and and that notch you can actually stick the tool in there and it'll elevate it'll split the boxes and hold them that way you can get your tool in there and what's gonna happen all that bridge comb at the bees have built during the winter and in the summer spring we will be able to separate that and pop out our frames because the frames on the bottom box they're gonna be stuck to the frames at the top and you won't even be able to lift that top box so you need to break that bridge Chrome in front of there that's another reason why we do the rotations we want to clean off any of the bridge comb the Berko many of that comb that's wild on our hives we want to get rid of that stuff right now so in March when we do our splits we're not going to be having difficulty doing moving our boxes around so by doing this at this time of year we really just give ourselves a really big jump on on on the when we do our splits and another thing these boxes right here these only have two boxes on it but some of them have three boxes on it and when you have three boxes on the high for me I find it kind of confusing when it comes time for the splits so right now I'm taking all the boxes hives that hit three boxes and I take the third one and I bring that back up into a V generally that was their hunting box and it's just drawn-out comb and there's nothing in it so it's just it's just something it gives the the Queen an opportunity to move up there that third box and I don't even want that possibility happening we're gonna keep her down in these these two down here there's another possibility you opened up your hive and and well like yesterday you've got announcing that's I believe that that would probably anywhere between 25 and 30 percent loss right now I think yesterday about the 40 hives that we did yesterday we probably were we're at we probably lost 10 maybe even 12 of them so we're right around at 25 30 percent like well the ones at st. Jude that was three for three that's a hundred percent let's see st. John yard we had a thirteen and we lost three of those so that's a 20% and so here at st. Lucia and I didn't open them yet but we had nine hives up here and I think we've lost three of them so they're again it's about a 30 percent loss so you know we're 30 35 percent something like that for a total loss or our hives but that's why we're gonna do splits because we're not gonna we don't want to buy bees I tell you what there's one thing I hate worse than losing bees is buying these because it just it just just doesn't settle well with me besides I don't know what kind of genetics you get these we know these bees have survived if we do our splits these are surviving these and then we can grow with that so there's a lot of reasoning behind you know what I do with these girls but today we're gonna do the rotations so I'm gonna put my suit on cuz they've already got stung and just walk it over here they stung me and so I'm gonna put my suit on and I'm gonna light the smoke or just in case yesterday it really I didn't need a lot there's one lock one trick that I do do besides using this cool will to right here I found that when I open the top the bees are just gonna they're gonna want to come out so I leave the inner cover on them when I when I break the Box apart and really does tend to keep the bees in place so with the grace of God we'll go ahead and we'll finish up our yard right here st. Lucie yard and follow along how I'm doing my rotations and God willing you can do yours too let's do some rotate since I had that camera set up at this end we'll just start at this end we'll work our way down this one I've seen a couple bees going in out it sounds like there's something in it but we'll find out whether we got it dead out or not in this one right now I did see two or three bees going in but those could just be robber bees going out in stinkin cockroaches gross let's see get the bees are down below us now we got us a dead out on this one see if there's anything now these bees have been gone for a while because I see wax moth trail in here I don't see wax moths but I see trails of them in there so these guys these were gone even before the the winner set in his wax moths don't come around in the cold so I'm gonna bring this thing on put these things on the truck leave it like this I'm put this stuff on the truck and take it back up to Daddy so we're gonna move over to the next one now I know that one's got bees because they stung me so let's do that one I'm not gonna put the smoke on them yet I just want to open them up and see what's going on inside and then if I need to put smoke on my will but I know we got bees in here should be a pretty good hive and again the scenario I said that you don't know whether it's you know theoretically the bees should be up here but there were no stores up here the bees aren't going to be up here and in this case they're not see something because it doesn't even appear that this even drawn out come up here yeah so these are this is just empty comb so actually what I'm going to do I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the drawing out coming from that hive now I'm gonna set it on this one since it's already drawn out anyway I'm going to give these bees a head start so let me grab this box right here all right so what I thought is I've gotten this box right here which was on on that other hog with that dead out hog and and I've just put some drawn-out cone frames in this thing took the one from that other side that looked really nice and just put them in here so now we're gonna we're gonna put these frames on top of this box right here I remember these the frames that in here this wasn't even drawn out comb so we're actually gonna there's no stores that I'm giving him but we're giving them the the comb that's already got the comb that's already built on it they don't even have to build it out so she can actually move up here in the next couple of weeks start laying or they can come up here and start putting stores up here because it really is for us down here in the South it's really gonna start opening up within the next three weeks we've we already got the willow trees are blooming and I know our red maples are just about ready to start I'm keep looking up in the trees see if I can see any red up there but I know the will is a blooming and I've seen the bees already coming in this is high particular they've already come in with pollen so they're bringing pollen in right now so we're just giving them the innocence their jars so they can start filling the jars up so let me take this top box off and put that one on it now there's going to be a cluster of beads on this one I know so we don't work kind of fast and it's not a really big cluster it's not big at all let's say I count one two three four four five frames my friend so we got a nice cluster there and we're just going to add this to it because within within gee-whiz three weeks they're gonna have this box all chunk full it will they just really explode in the springtime down here so we're just giving them room to go ahead and start expanding early and that way by March man we are really ready for them to do our splits all right so and we put the lid back on this then we're gonna move on down now I have seen well there's bees flying in this one so we know we got bees in here how many that we don't know so again we won't put the smoke on them they're just gonna open them up and see what's going on remember we do want to change our boxes if if there's food up in the second one I got this one poop it's pretty good all right so I can see bees right here through our hole so I'm not gonna take the lid off because I see the bees up here that that's that's fine I don't want to break this cover and the bees will just come out so I'm just gonna break the seam here now I'm gonna stick my tool I'm a little hot tool in there because I can feel the bridge come in there and I just stick it in the inside of it now I'm gonna go ahead and start popping the frames off of it I think coming out so let me put a little smoke on him and I'm putting the little hog tool in deeper to make sure everything is clear all right so now I should be able to lift this box off set it on the side scrape off my Berk own bridge comb and then do the reverse one let's see what that works it doesn't always work like that though so this box it weighs at least 60 pounds now we still have bees in this box but they're all moved up here yeah there's I see there's three frames of bees on there but they're up here the bees are up here so now what we're gonna do take this opportunity we're gonna scrape off all this drip phone we are not going to go open this hive up we don't want to disturb them it's not necessary all we're doing is rotating we're not looking to see which is the Queen right and it doesn't matter we know she's laying already but not not as much as she's going to within the next couple of weeks all right so we got that cleaned off we still got comb underneath this that we have to clean off so now we're going to go ahead and and I'm gonna flip this over and take off the Berk home from the bottom and it's not a lot but still we'll pick it off we got that cleared off another reason you don't want to pop that top it stayed on there and sewed it in the B stayed in there so now we're going to pop this off we're gonna set this one on the lid right here because we'll probably have to clean the UH the comb off the bottom of it - well it's all clean so it's not necessary so now's a good time who wants a cow tower bottom board it was clean except for the stick right here that's really you got some good hygienic with your bees when things are clean now we're gonna put our top box on top of their stay in square it up so now we're gonna pop our lid man that's six frames of bees look at all those bees Wow that's what you want to see these are healthy bees here and now we're gonna put this box on top of him see a bunch of hi beetles on here and see if I can kill a couple that really makes my day he's the back side of that tool it's a great sport yeah only five of them but I got them off all right the lid back on and now we're gonna put our telescope and cover there's another beetle one right there to know more now that is how almost by the textbook it goes a rotation goes I'm gonna move over to the next one now now this one I'm trying to remember I think this one was a dead out even before the winter but I see bees coming they they could just bite be robber bees let's find out what's going on with these girls yeah the only residents of this thing are cockroaches yuck yeah this is a um a dad let's see um if there's any wax more evidence on these barely any drawn-out comb let's find the drawn-out cone look I don't see any wax move in this but that's cold nasty cone this stuff is gonna be relegated to swarm trap stuff and I don't like the bees using this it's good enough to catch a swarm but I don't want my bees using it I see the suppose this one up and move on to the next one this one's coming up to the ADI all right I know we got bees in this one see bees flying let's see what their status is now see bees up in the top not a whole lot kind of think these bees are still down in that bottom box there's bees up here but there's a lot of honey gee whiz it's eight frames of honey I can see in here but there's there's no bees up here you're gonna find that cluster somewhere in here if the bees have moved up they're going to be in the center part of it so they're not in here I can smell it smells really nice so we're gonna leave this one alone - there's no we there's no need to disturb them because we really don't want to disturb them I know I've got a pretty active one right here cuz these girls are flying pretty good right now let's go ahead and see if we're gonna have to rotate these girls now maybe not I don't see a lot of bees up in the top it's pretty Hollow whose bees up here as a couple of frames you see we've got any honey on those frames I'm sure there are because I can see some of its cat I got that bridge that's got the bottom of this thing show you some of this honey these girls are working on there you go bunnies right here honey right here on here running here honey here and it looks like this oh this spot good this two five good frames of honey in here so these girls we know we know they got plenty of food they just haven't moved up yet which is all right they will move up he'll eat their stores and they will move up all right we moving on to a box that's got three on it let's go see what that one's about I don't know if the camera can see it but these girls these girls are really flying hard right now there's one green pollen in right there and again this is one it's got three boxes on now what I said you know beginning I don't want this third box on here if there's a bunch of honey in this thing I'll consider leaving it but I really don't even want to leave it even if it's got honey there's honey up here there's gonna be honey down here too so we've definitely one I want to take this box off of here so I don't have to give the Queen the opportunity to come up here and late because when we start doing us blitz I don't want to find brood up up in this third box so let's go ahead and take this box apart and see what happens and again I'm trying to not use the smoke but I have to I have to oh here's my favorite guys up here's a pair oh not anymore even a ladybug I don't like seeing those all right so I got to show you this this is this is what you call bad beekeeping okay I got to show you all right showing you my faults this is this is I don't know why I did not put frames up in here but this is what happens when you don't put frames into spaces the bees will build all kinds of weird comb right so remember the lesson here fill up the space but in your box or else you're gonna get this disaster but it is pretty all right let's take this mess off of here and see where our bees are that is some really beautiful comb beautiful car it's good see if we can break this stuff out of here how about that alright let's knock this stuff off cuz we don't want this this was all honey stores the size of these cells I mean it's just huge huge the bees are starting to come up now see who's knocking on our door mr. ed right the bees are not in this second box I can see them down in that bottom box we're just gonna cover this up put that in the truck and move on all right let's hope that I remember to put frames in this one but in any case this box is coming off and going into the truck get out let's see I see wax moth up in here oh this is a this is really a ugly one oh man this is when you go Oh gross and this one's been dead out for a while if I mean it's probably been probably in September maybe October because it is just like gross all right I'll tell you what i'ma spare you yelling at the seat is stuff we're gonna move on to the next one all right so here's that last one got my fingers crossed hoping it's still alive I see one of them just went in there hopefully this they're still alive I think so I think this is a live one this one what this was actually the box that I split last year and when I had when I do my splits I put a spacer bar between the two boxes because the entrance that this box had before was in the back so I put an entrance in the back when I take that box off and I put another pod body on top of that and so that's what this this space right here is so I'm going to take this out that this needs to come out now even though it's an interest and the bees do use it in fact they're back here right now but they're just gonna have to get used to coming back used to this interest right here so we're going to take this box off remove the spacer and when we know we got these in here so that's a good thing back there up in the top - that's probably got something to do with the spacer in the back bees coming in using this at the top we'll find out how many up here yeah the hive has already moved up into the top because here's the cluster right here here's our cluster let me grab the camera and imma show you this now this is this is what I'm talking about a cluster when they're clustered up in the top so here they are right here and you can see the bees are pretty lethargic right in here this region right in here but you can see how tightly they are well you may not be able to see it but there's a whole line of bees here a whole lotta bees here a whole lot of bees here another line of these here and there's some out here so I'm not here so the bees have have definitely moved up our queen is now in in this top box so I'm gonna put that lid back on here separate this off take it off take the shim off and do our rotation now there's going to be because that 3/4 inch gap right here there's going to be bridge comb between this box in this box that's for sure so here's where we're gonna use that tool and stick it in and see what holds it it just holds it for us now I can come back here it doesn't appear than any of our frames are attached so we can go ahead maybe actually lift this thing off screen it so we're gonna pick it off over here we're gonna set it right now that's probably about a 30 35 pound a box of bees right there now you can see all the bridge comb I was talking about right here we're gonna remove this shim plate right here it served its purpose and now it's no longer needed I'm gonna be building more of these and now we're going to just remove this come right here there's hardly any bees in this box right here all right so I'm gonna take this put it on the side if they call them on the bottom of it everything is good there are no bees in here at all they're all up here beside we know we've got comb underneath this so we're gonna have to lift this up and scrape it off do this kind of quick cuz the bees are starting a little aggravated alright and now we're gonna go ahead and just set this right onto our sting they just all going right back inside right now now we're going to put our bottom box on top of this and then their inner cover on top of that and they have it our hive rotations are complete now and all of our yards Oliver highs are done and we did pretty well in this yard we had non hives and only seven of them I mean only two of them died so that's that's less than 25% but somewhere between 20 and 25 percent loss that's very good very good for us I think our average is like 30% is supposed to be considered an average and okay so we're below the average on this that's really good so well I'm going to close this video I think I'm going to close it with some pictures of our our shots with the with the river region beat Club yesterday out in the fields and close it with that so thanks for watching keep on watching and I'll be making more god bless mr. Denham out of you till next [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Jeff Horchoff Bees

Views: 60,750

Keywords: Honey bees, working a bee yard, removing wax, pulling honey from bee hives, using a smoker to calm bees, specialty hive tools, bee suits, rotating bee boxes, preparations for spring time splits, feeding honey bees, dead out bee hive, wax moths, hive beetles, small hive beetles, freezing temperture kill offs

Id: bm4x5axWHmY

Length: 37min 5sec (2225 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2018