Bee Explosion
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- Опубліковано 2 лис 2024
- I am Rob Summerlin, a back yard beekeeper, I started keeping bees in 2022 with 1 hive, in 2023 with 2 hives that expanded in 2024 to 5 hives. I am no expert but am learning all the time, feel free to comment or ask me questions.
Lately i have been working 7 days a week, mostly 10 hour days which doesn,t leave me a lot of time to inspect my hives. I like to take my time to make sure I don't miss anything. Unfortunately in this video I felt a bit rushed, my weak hive just had a huge population explosion with the first batch of brood emerging. so they are no longer weak and need more room. Fortunately Sun Parlor Honey is 10 minutes away so I was able to go there this day and pick up more equipment, 2 deep 10 frame boxes with 20 frames cost me about $180 Canadian.
It has been 10 days since I added 2 strips of formic pro to one of my hives, so I needed to remove the remnants of those, I expected to see less material left over but they certainly seemed to have dried out. This was my first time using formic pro so I was concerned, It seemed that they had a population decrease so I will have to check that again soon, I did however find new eggs. Anyway I was also hoping to perhaps find some fully capped honey to take but alas I did not, maybe next weekend. Thanks for watching and please subscribe.
Well done getting that weak hive to flourish!
I love your gentle approach with your bees. Personally, I try to wear the thinnest gloves I can get away with, so I can feel the bees with my fingertips, and I lift the frames at the ends, so I don't accidentally squish them where they're moving around a lot in the middle of the top bar.
Speaking as a second-year beekeeper. I'm not a fan of 10 frame deep systems as they weigh a ton when the honey starts to appear. It's much easier managing ideal sized supers, and of course you can put as many of those as you want on top of your brood box. As for double deep brood boxes, I think that just causes more work trying to inspect each hive, and the bees get more disturbed when you have 2 big boxes to go through with the hive open for inspection.
What I have is a 10 frame brood box with a permanent ideal super on top which I never rob for honey. On top of that first super I put either a flow super (which I love due to the ease of harvesting honey), or more ideal supers. The bees always have the honey in their brood box in addition to a full super to get them through the winter, and this seems to do well where I live. Our winters seldom get below -1 celsius or so. In colder climes you might need an extra super going into winter.
Making small colonies like mine makes them easier to manage, and you can always do a split if you see swarm cells developing (it looks like your girls have these and are getting restless).
Hello my friend,
I’m From Kentucky, USA
I also keep bees, but I must say your hives look very healthy.
Like the old saying goes; whatever you’re doing, keep on doing!
Thanks for sharing your Apiary with us. Keep the videos coming
@@matthunt4512 hi and thanks for stopping by, yes im pretty happy with how they are looking, hopefully i can keep the small hive beetles, wax moth and Varroa in check. Take care.
God look at that smoker rolling its got a build in fan that Johnny getting it
@@ec9596 its a new smoker i just purchased
Lots of smoke is good but it burns out fast
Thanks for watching
That sec box you pulled looks like a queen cell at the bottom and looks like they drawn some comb with no frame
Yes when I added that box I only had some medium frames so I put them in, that comb is drone comb ( never had eggs laid in them ) and is full of nectar, if it ever gets capped i was planning to cut it up and add it to jars of honey.
I dont think that was a queen cell
The girls are getting busy.
They sure are , a real turn around after a late start, still not convinced ill be able to pull any honey this year though
What happened to the bee explosion
In comparison to how this hive was doing just a few weeks before it is an explosion, i had to add a box, they were down to 5 frames until i added the queen, they are now up to 20 full frames
I'll be interested to see how that works out for you. When I pull frames to a second deep box I only pull two frames and both are capped brood. I then replace those frames in between larvae or eggs. The reason I do it that way is the bees will draw out the two foundation frames in the bottom quickly because they do not like the blank space in the brood area. It also keeps them from drawing out the honey frames super thick in the second deep box. In my experience nectar and honey frames by foundation end up producing super thick stores on the frames you moved up, with little to no foundation being drawn on the adjacent foundation.
@@Mr.q895 its like they say ask 100 beekeepers a question and youll get 120 different answers. I was always under the impression that you shouldn’t split the brood. Im a 3rd year beekeeper, im going to assume you have many more years experience? Anyway I appreciate your input and maybe it is something I will try
Take care
@honeybees1970 absolutely! It may work well for you, but I have never had success with moving honey/nectar against a foundation frames. I've been working bees since I was a kid with my grandpa, but only started my own personal apiary about 8 years ago. I have 35 hives as of now, but with the recent purchase of 1200 acres of farmland I hope to get closer to 350 hive over the next 5-10 years.
@honeybees1970 never split the brood is one of those things beekeepers like to say but can't really give you a good reason. As long as the overnight Temps are above about 50-55F there is no harm. And it does cause the bees to draw comb quickly. I do it all the time. It works especially well to bring outside frames into the center to get them drawn out.
Thats a lot of work for sure, i have a hard enough time remembering what i saw in my 5 hives when I do proper inspections, as long as I see eggs, lots of bees and no major pests then im happy, not sure if ill be pulling honey this year but thats ok as long as the bees have what they need to get through winter, next year hopefully will be great!
Get a j hook hive tool so you can get your frames out properly and you won't kill bees or even your queen
Ive got about 4 hive tools, 2 of them are J hooks, ya think I can find them lol, nope thanks for watching
2 queen cells also
At 17:30 sec
17.30? did ya see the queen? I still dont see her