17:40 got a tip that could help you get the IPM boards out one handed. Take a 4in piece of duct tape and attach the narrow end of it to the edge of the IPM board then fold it over so it attached to the underside of the board and makes a tag. You can grab the tag instead of trying to find the board and grab it (don’t put your hands where you can’t see, especially in black widow country). Makes getting those boards out so much easier
Mite discussions are a great way to get best-friend beekeepers to argue! I'm in a different world with my Texas africanized bees. Yes, they're mean, but they also are nearly mite-proof, I lose about 10% of my hives per year and run treatment-free. I don't even test for varroa, either colonies survive or don't. I know most of the country can't run this way, but it works for my bees and me. But then I run my 200 colonies as my side-bar addiction, and profit isn't important to me (but I do make money at it). Keep up the good work!
@@DuckRiverHoney Yes and Yes. At first it will be very stressful, mostly because you seriously worry that you will die. As I learned HOW to work them, I consider it far less stressful. I don't worry about mites, or SHB, or robbing, or weak colonies in general. There are two rules: don't let the get hungry and don't let them get crowded. I've gone to colonies that haven't been worked for a year, one colony I did hadn't been opened for 25 years (!), and the bees were doing great. But it takes different safety equipment, different methods, and a different mindset. I find it far easier, which to me is far less stressful. I'm in my hives 8-10 times a year (total!) and they do great. I'm running 200 hives, and I probably average 5-10 hours a week "work". An old video I did, search youtube for "aggressive bees walk away split" and you'll see what their behavior is like. I treat the 'angry flying bee' sound like music.
great content, I found your vlogs about a month ago and had to watch all the episodes on this vlog series, today I'm all caught up and looking forward to more.
Listening to you and what u have to get in new equipment It takes the fun out of it, and I am glad I am small and never want to be a business. I just want to enjoy my bees not being so big that I cannot take care of them or be rushed to do so. I am soon to be 66 and I just retired in sept, from my job and life is good retirement is just wonderful, Hope everything works out good for u. God Bless and have a good week.
Need to teach you my easy beesy microwave fondant recipe.. they turn it into liquid and draw comb on it.. zero waste every grain of that expensive sugar ends up in a bee feeding fondant
I have taken the time to train 4 part-time middle school students. Two of them staple together woodenware and two of them do the bottling. Their wage is $10/hr and they are glad to have it. The help has greatly reduced my stress. I enjoy the content.
My view is this: Treat over the winter months when bees break cluster (perhaps OA?) or knock the mites down (Apivar) when there is little if any brood in the hive. I've done this for years and have very strong colonies coming out of winter looking like production hives the first week of April (York Co, PA). We recently had Dr. Zachary Lamas speak at our club meeting on Drone Sampling for Varroa research (excellent presentation and great info on viral spreads). His suggestion (to control mites) was to split hives early, requeen and treat. Well that is great if you can find queens to requeen with (here you cannot get local queens that early and having them shipped in is costly and no assurance they are good mated queens) and not everyone wants more hives at the expense of less honey and $$$ woodware! So in my mind... If drones are the preferred larvae for mites coming out of winter then get those mite numbers down before you have drones developing. You will have healthier drones to mate with spring swarm virgins (or grafted queens) and fewer mites reproducing in those early drone cells and hopefully fewer mites then migrating into worker brood when drone brood decreases causing summer mite bombs. Then treat again before the flow starts to knock down the numbers once again. Repeat after honey harvest, and going into winter. Fewer mites mean fewer viruses being shared and healthier bees.
I met Zac in Orlando last fall. Sharp guy, and he’s been a commercial beekeeper which is a great perspective that not many researchers have. I agree with winter treatments, it’s a natural time for OAV.
Looks like you had a nice week with the family. I'm sure glad you are young and can push yourself hard enough to get yourself to your goal lines. I like the old saying "One step at a time" just keep moving ahead. Have a great week.
If you had everything you needed for your honey business right now what fun would that be? It is in overcoming the growth challenges bit by bit that brings the sweetest and most satisfying rewards!! It all will come with time. You have come a long way already in a short amount of time.👍 What I enjoy most is watching your progress and determination to succeed in your own business. Stay positive, passionate and prayerful 🙏 as you follow your chosen pathway to prosperity.🍯
We have been treating with OA for 6 years and doing dead mite counts on sticky boards. We have found that we must oil our sticky boards or else a lot of mites that fall through the screen simply crawl back up and find a new bee. We use the cheapest canola oil we can find but your screens and boards must be constructed in such a way that the bees don’t come in contact with the oil or they are dead also.
@@DuckRiverHoney But the live one(that were cleaned off by the bees due to grooming cases by the OA) may have traveled back up the screen. In one instance, I pulled a dry sticky board and counted 6 mites (not treated). I oiled the board and after 48 hours counted 56 dead mites in the oil. My mite bomb. Oiling is a pain in the ass but try it on a few hives. Chow from Alberta, Canada.
I check mites by treatment + drop as well. I have seen the same. The hive that has a high mite load is often between two with very low loads. I wonder if Randy Oliver, who washes every colony, has observed this phenomenon.
Nathan, I am enjoy your experiences and insights, could you please elaborate on the efficacy of applying OAV on hives with supers still on them, thank you!
No I can’t say I’m qualified to elaborate on efficacy of OAV with supers on. I’d say it’s less effective than without supers, but I’m not aware of research that indicates how much. I’m using it now as a sampling tool. After supers are off I’ll treat more.
Nathan, I am thinking about propagating borage in my field for bee foraging. Could you please elaborate on your favorite foraging flowers or plants to enhance your foraging choices? Thank you
great video I have found this oxylic acid vaping and counting mite count good to find badly infected hives, only thing I am wondering do you have to leave it for 24 hours or will 5 minutes do? and would it be best to treat the high mite load hives with formic acid? and yeah more mites in drone brood bigger fatter longer grubs for them to eat.
Hey Nathan, what time of day do you target for OA? Also, I suffered pretty scary heat stroke this past week...what is your strategy to stay cool and hydrated? I dont believe this is covered enough by the UA-camrs. Never really took it seriously myself.
Early morning is probably best for OAV, lots of bees in the hive then. For heat I take a gallon of cool water and drink it frequently. I work mornings and quit if I get too hot. Being out in consistently allows me to acclimate, my opinion at least.
What makes good UA-cam videos has very little to do with my management. UA-cam is a fun hobby. Disease and legality are my concerns with purchasing a truckload of supers.
@@DuckRiverHoney I hope you get a good pull and are able to maximize your price! The fly wheel spins much faster when you make more money! I would focus on that some more. You got lots of bees and equipment... Market securement and pricing strategy will go a long way. You can do 4-5 market days a week. And when you need to miss you have people you trust to fill those dates. You can scale this approach with booths if the event is strong enough. Now you have labor making you money. The fly wheel really gets going when labor is directly making money and scalable!
I would say checking bottom boards to asses mite levels at this time of year is about like looking for bloody rags around a guys bed to see if he has TB. You will be right to diagnose him with TB if you find the rags but it is too late. For a man that clearly understands math I cant understand your reluctance to do a mite wash. Any small colony that you say has few mites could easily be dead by spring with the rate of mite reproduction combined with low bee numbers, winter and no nectar to dry down for months. Just one mans opinion. I am watching you are filming.
All l can see is a lot of people doing washes the wrong way and thinking they're doing something precise. At least on YT. I can't see two in a row done the same way. When their goal is to make a video.. and not a wash. OAV is not at all worse than a wash like that. Europeans are doing it last 20 years. You just need to know.. to treat or not. Who cares how many are there. You end up treating anyway every time
@@researcherAmateur Good day sir. What other people are doing and YT post aside... The point would be that colonies over 2-4 %( you decide) in fall should be culled out but you treat them in stead. They die any way and you never know why. When they die they get robbed out and the mites end up back in your other hives. You could have saved the treatment time and money, ended a poor queen and repurposed the hive resources. This is just one mans opinion. You are taking on a huge task dont be too hard on yourself.
@@MatWalter-q3h l took the job of beekeeping from my family in 77. I'm surely not about to argue in a different language than my own about methods that work... especially not with beekeepers who have the country average of surviving colonies around 50% and think that 30% is great. If l had a lost of 10-20% every year l would stop beekeeping. What Nathan is doing is absolutely proven that works by European beekeepers over the last decades. It's just something you have to be used to and keep good track of it.. it's not at all worse than washing some 5 -10% of colonies in the yard. At least he's watching the drop on all of them. Is that so difficult to release why it could be used.. much better than "we're going to wash some because it's modern". Have a good day
@@MatWalter-q3h thank you for explaining that to me. So what you want to say is that now I should start washing my 300+ hives and all that other stuff on 40 Celsius heat waves. Always problems with this YT. The lottery of passing the long comments
@@DuckRiverHoney in my situation, i am surrounded by commercial bee keepers that blanket treat. Lots of wild bee colonies. No point in doing mite count. The only thing you can do is treat ti keep the mites at bay. The wild hives to have mite tolerance since no one is treating them. 💁🏽♂️
@@3Beehivesto300 you mean it is like being surrounded by them. English isn't my first language. Sometimes is difficult to see the little things. I'm from a country that has 4.5 million people and 1 million hives. Nobody here does beekeeping because it's modern to have them. I have to do brood breaks and treat that way because if I split too much I have problems to sell 50 ... l usually keep and over winter two queens under one cover to save space and make more honey. Or 3 in 6framers under 2 covers. The money is in bees products not in selling colonies. So we're used to keep them at the border of swarming all the time.
A lot of opinions here from people who never tried what they are talking about. The opinionist.. great occupation. I always wanted to be one and get paid for it
@@DuckRiverHoney thanks. I won't write you opinions if I already didn't try something about it.. or l will write immediately it's just an opinion. Yeah, it's much more difficult to sell nucks here. That's why we started to use 6 or 7 frames in the brood box. With the right timing it gives more honey and less swarming. Or the queen caging method.. it would be easier to sell the brood.. but who will buy it.? I can't keep growing all the time
@@DuckRiverHoney mite drops don’t tell how many mites you actually have. I do blanket treat. Wild hives in my area tend to infect my yards randomly throughout the year.
@ClintWaldron-w1o 36 minutes ago If you have only been growing bees for only four years. What makes you able to teach someone about growing bees. And also how much have you invested out of pocket not from donations received since you have started with you tube. A business degree does nothing keeping livestock alive.
![Extended Release Oxalic Acid [Expert How-To]](/img/n.gif)
Not as young as you, but following your experiences has got me wanting to expand my my yard. Keep up the good work.
Thanks!
17:40 got a tip that could help you get the IPM boards out one handed. Take a 4in piece of duct tape and attach the narrow end of it to the edge of the IPM board then fold it over so it attached to the underside of the board and makes a tag. You can grab the tag instead of trying to find the board and grab it (don’t put your hands where you can’t see, especially in black widow country). Makes getting those boards out so much easier
👍
Mite discussions are a great way to get best-friend beekeepers to argue! I'm in a different world with my Texas africanized bees. Yes, they're mean, but they also are nearly mite-proof, I lose about 10% of my hives per year and run treatment-free. I don't even test for varroa, either colonies survive or don't. I know most of the country can't run this way, but it works for my bees and me. But then I run my 200 colonies as my side-bar addiction, and profit isn't important to me (but I do make money at it). Keep up the good work!
Are those bees fun to work, or stressful?
@@DuckRiverHoney Yes and Yes. At first it will be very stressful, mostly because you seriously worry that you will die. As I learned HOW to work them, I consider it far less stressful. I don't worry about mites, or SHB, or robbing, or weak colonies in general. There are two rules: don't let the get hungry and don't let them get crowded. I've gone to colonies that haven't been worked for a year, one colony I did hadn't been opened for 25 years (!), and the bees were doing great. But it takes different safety equipment, different methods, and a different mindset. I find it far easier, which to me is far less stressful. I'm in my hives 8-10 times a year (total!) and they do great. I'm running 200 hives, and I probably average 5-10 hours a week "work". An old video I did, search youtube for "aggressive bees walk away split" and you'll see what their behavior is like. I treat the 'angry flying bee' sound like music.
great content, I found your vlogs about a month ago and had to watch all the episodes on this vlog series, today I'm all caught up and looking forward to more.
Thanks!
Listening to you and what u have to get in new equipment It takes the fun out of it, and I am glad I am small and never want to be a business. I just want to enjoy my bees not being so big that I cannot take care of them or be rushed to do so. I am soon to be 66 and I just retired in sept, from my job and life is good retirement is just wonderful, Hope everything works out good for u. God Bless and have a good week.
Thanks!
Need to teach you my easy beesy microwave fondant recipe.. they turn it into liquid and draw comb on it.. zero waste every grain of that expensive sugar ends up in a bee feeding fondant
I'd love to get that recipe.
I have taken the time to train 4 part-time middle school students. Two of them staple together woodenware and two of them do the bottling. Their wage is $10/hr and they are glad to have it. The help has greatly reduced my stress. I enjoy the content.
Thanks!
My view is this: Treat over the winter months when bees break cluster (perhaps OA?) or knock the mites down (Apivar) when there is little if any brood in the hive. I've done this for years and have very strong colonies coming out of winter looking like production hives the first week of April (York Co, PA). We recently had Dr. Zachary Lamas speak at our club meeting on Drone Sampling for Varroa research (excellent presentation and great info on viral spreads). His suggestion (to control mites) was to split hives early, requeen and treat. Well that is great if you can find queens to requeen with (here you cannot get local queens that early and having them shipped in is costly and no assurance they are good mated queens) and not everyone wants more hives at the expense of less honey and $$$ woodware! So in my mind... If drones are the preferred larvae for mites coming out of winter then get those mite numbers down before you have drones developing. You will have healthier drones to mate with spring swarm virgins (or grafted queens) and fewer mites reproducing in those early drone cells and hopefully fewer mites then migrating into worker brood when drone brood decreases causing summer mite bombs. Then treat again before the flow starts to knock down the numbers once again. Repeat after honey harvest, and going into winter. Fewer mites mean fewer viruses being shared and healthier bees.
I met Zac in Orlando last fall. Sharp guy, and he’s been a commercial beekeeper which is a great perspective that not many researchers have. I agree with winter treatments, it’s a natural time for OAV.
Looks like you had a nice week with the family.
I'm sure glad you are young and can push yourself hard enough to get yourself to your goal lines. I like the old saying "One step at a time" just keep moving ahead. Have a great week.
Russ I’m feeling my age more each year! 😆
If you had everything you needed for your honey business right now what fun would that be?
It is in overcoming the growth challenges bit by bit that brings the sweetest and most satisfying rewards!!
It all will come with time. You have come a long way already in a short amount of time.👍 What I enjoy most is watching your progress and determination to succeed in your own business.
Stay positive, passionate and prayerful 🙏 as you follow your chosen pathway to prosperity.🍯
Thanks Deanna!
We have been treating with OA for 6 years and doing dead mite counts on sticky boards. We have found that we must oil our sticky boards or else a lot of mites that fall through the screen simply crawl back up and find a new bee. We use the cheapest canola oil we can find but your screens and boards must be constructed in such a way that the bees don’t come in contact with the oil or they are dead also.
The mites I’m looking at are dead after an OAV application.
@@DuckRiverHoney But the live one(that were cleaned off by the bees due to grooming cases by the OA) may have traveled back up the screen. In one instance, I pulled a dry sticky board and counted 6 mites (not treated). I oiled the board and after 48 hours counted 56 dead mites in the oil. My mite bomb. Oiling is a pain in the ass but try it on a few hives. Chow from Alberta, Canada.
I’m not seeing issues with that. This is why I look at drops after an OAV application - I don’t need a sticky board.
I check mites by treatment + drop as well. I have seen the same. The hive that has a high mite load is often between two with very low loads. I wonder if Randy Oliver, who washes every colony, has observed this phenomenon.
I believe he has outliers with high mite loads every year.
Good video
Thanks Ian
@@DuckRiverHoney I love the fresh insight that you bring to the conversation
Fresh or naive, I bring it!
maybe you can swap your deep boxes from bob binnie with someone that have mid boxes drowned, could give you a nice boost of drawn comb for next year
I’d like to get a couple years of use out of the frames and boxes, then sell them off in nucs.
You have a lot of work ahead of ya, Honey Time. Blessed Days Nathan.
Yep, moving ahead. Be glad to get the next chunk of work done.
Nathan, I am enjoy your experiences and insights, could you please elaborate on the efficacy of applying OAV on hives with supers still on them, thank you!
No I can’t say I’m qualified to elaborate on efficacy of OAV with supers on. I’d say it’s less effective than without supers, but I’m not aware of research that indicates how much. I’m using it now as a sampling tool. After supers are off I’ll treat more.
Nathan, I am thinking about propagating borage in my field for bee foraging. Could you please elaborate on your favorite foraging flowers or plants to enhance your foraging choices?
Thank you
Most of my honey comes from hardwood trees. I do plan to plant some sweet clover this fall though, by overseeding several acres.
How many grams per box are you administering OAV on your hives?
Once you identify potential breeder queens next spring will you do the UBeeO assay to evaluate hygienic behavior to further refine your selection?
Probably.
Its all about finding the bottlenecks right?
👍
great video I have found this oxylic acid vaping and counting mite count good to find badly infected hives, only thing I am wondering do you have to leave it for 24 hours or will 5 minutes do? and would it be best to treat the high mite load hives with formic acid? and yeah more mites in drone brood bigger fatter longer grubs for them to eat.
I move yard to yard so it’s easier for me to check after a day or two or three.
Are you concerned about the bottoms rusting out on the container units?
No, they’re elevated from the ground.
If those were Red Drum, that one looked too short to keep. DB
15 to 23” slot. The shorter one was a trout.
Hey Nathan, what time of day do you target for OA?
Also, I suffered pretty scary heat stroke this past week...what is your strategy to stay cool and hydrated? I dont believe this is covered enough by the UA-camrs. Never really took it seriously myself.
Early morning is probably best for OAV, lots of bees in the hive then. For heat I take a gallon of cool water and drink it frequently. I work mornings and quit if I get too hot. Being out in consistently allows me to acclimate, my opinion at least.
Where are you getting your migratory lids
Midway Bee Supply in Ethridge, TN
Nathan what is an acceptable number in your mite drop?
I look at the overall drop. It’s either small, average, or large. A dozen or less is good. Hundreds is bad.
Will the hivelifter be making an appearance soon?
Probably not for harvest. I can move faster without it. For moving hives it’s awesome.
Buy a semi load of used honey supers. You will make honey fast.
Yeah, but concerns with that.
@@DuckRiverHoney yes it would not make for good UA-cam
What makes good UA-cam videos has very little to do with my management. UA-cam is a fun hobby. Disease and legality are my concerns with purchasing a truckload of supers.
As a business, how has this been going? Seems like your capital outlay on those colonies isn’t stopping anytime soon?
Growing, and funding growth from the business. It’s going well overall but it’s a struggle getting the flywheel spinning.
@@DuckRiverHoney I hope you get a good pull and are able to maximize your price! The fly wheel spins much faster when you make more money! I would focus on that some more. You got lots of bees and equipment... Market securement and pricing strategy will go a long way. You can do 4-5 market days a week. And when you need to miss you have people you trust to fill those dates. You can scale this approach with booths if the event is strong enough. Now you have labor making you money. The fly wheel really gets going when labor is directly making money and scalable!
Perfect timing
👍
@@DuckRiverHoneywhat suit do you use day to day?
UltraBreeze. On my third year with this jacket and it’s getting pretty tired. Need a new one for next year.
@@DuckRiverHoney good to hear. I have one in shipping now.
I would say checking bottom boards to asses mite levels at this time of year is about like looking for bloody rags around a guys bed to see if he has TB. You will be right to diagnose him with TB if you find the rags but it is too late. For a man that clearly understands math I cant understand your reluctance to do a mite wash. Any small colony that you say has few mites could easily be dead by spring with the rate of mite reproduction combined with low bee numbers, winter and no nectar to dry down for months.
Just one mans opinion. I am watching you are filming.
I’m running 5 years with less than 8% winter loss using the same management.
All l can see is a lot of people doing washes the wrong way and thinking they're doing something precise. At least on YT. I can't see two in a row done the same way. When their goal is to make a video.. and not a wash. OAV is not at all worse than a wash like that. Europeans are doing it last 20 years. You just need to know.. to treat or not. Who cares how many are there. You end up treating anyway every time
@@researcherAmateur Good day sir. What other people are doing and YT post aside... The point would be that colonies over 2-4 %( you decide) in fall should be culled out but you treat them in stead. They die any way and you never know why. When they die they get robbed out and the mites end up back in your other hives. You could have saved the treatment time and money, ended a poor queen and repurposed the hive resources.
This is just one mans opinion.
You are taking on a huge task dont be too hard on yourself.
@@MatWalter-q3h l took the job of beekeeping from my family in 77. I'm surely not about to argue in a different language than my own about methods that work... especially not with beekeepers who have the country average of surviving colonies around 50% and think that 30% is great. If l had a lost of 10-20% every year l would stop beekeeping.
What Nathan is doing is absolutely proven that works by European beekeepers over the last decades. It's just something you have to be used to and keep good track of it.. it's not at all worse than washing some 5 -10% of colonies in the yard. At least he's watching the drop on all of them. Is that so difficult to release why it could be used.. much better than "we're going to wash some because it's modern". Have a good day
@@MatWalter-q3h thank you for explaining that to me. So what you want to say is that now I should start washing my 300+ hives and all that other stuff on 40 Celsius heat waves.
Always problems with this YT. The lottery of passing the long comments
Expanding to 350 hives and you will find mite drop unnecessary.
Once you get to this size come back and you will tell me I was right and tell me why…
My guess is you’re prophylacticly treating and managing the downside through deadloss and making nucs.
@@DuckRiverHoney in my situation, i am surrounded by commercial bee keepers that blanket treat. Lots of wild bee colonies. No point in doing mite count. The only thing you can do is treat ti keep the mites at bay. The wild hives to have mite tolerance since no one is treating them. 💁🏽♂️
You have commercial beekeepers who never treat ? Somehow I don't believe that. Or they do a lot of bees buying every year
@@researcherAmateur wrong... Do a Mite wash.. this is what they do.. read what i wrote before and you will find your comment strange.
@@3Beehivesto300 you mean it is like being surrounded by them. English isn't my first language. Sometimes is difficult to see the little things.
I'm from a country that has 4.5 million people and 1 million hives. Nobody here does beekeeping because it's modern to have them. I have to do brood breaks and treat that way because if I split too much I have problems to sell 50 ... l usually keep and over winter two queens under one cover to save space and make more honey. Or 3 in 6framers under 2 covers. The money is in bees products not in selling colonies. So we're used to keep them at the border of swarming all the time.
A lot of opinions here from people who never tried what they are talking about. The opinionist.. great occupation. I always wanted to be one and get paid for it
I appreciate hearing your opinions. European beekeeping is a very different game than here in the US.
@@DuckRiverHoney thanks. I won't write you opinions if I already didn't try something about it.. or l will write immediately it's just an opinion.
Yeah, it's much more difficult to sell nucks here. That's why we started to use 6 or 7 frames in the brood box. With the right timing it gives more honey and less swarming. Or the queen caging method.. it would be easier to sell the brood.. but who will buy it.? I can't keep growing all the time
Didn't he get glass cutting his ear from the teleprompter being hit by a bullet, close anyways from a kid that just wanted to be famous.
I think your off a month on some of your comments
How so?
Mite drop… waste of time…
Mite wash gives you the correct information… think scientific beekeeping. 👍🏻
So do you wash every colony multiple times per year?
@@DuckRiverHoney mite drops don’t tell how many mites you actually have.
I do blanket treat. Wild hives in my area tend to infect my yards randomly throughout the year.
Blanket treating is how we lose amitraz.
@ClintWaldron-w1o
36 minutes ago
If you have only been growing bees for only four years. What makes you able to teach someone about growing bees. And also how much have you invested out of pocket not from donations received since you have started with you tube. A business degree does nothing keeping livestock alive.