It's great that you still have Queen Balboa's progeny going strong. She was always my favorite queen, they know what to do and seem so chill. Taking things slow is not always a bad thing.
Wow, first time ever, I instantly spotted the Oak hive queen without you having to point her out to me! I was really looking forward to this video, I'm glad to see that things seem to be going well, and the bee barns appear to be working out great too. Here's hoping the good times continue.
Hey Jim, What I find noteworthy is comparing the start of this season with very few hives to the beginning of your first season with very few hives. The growth this year is legendary. A unique way to measure the beekeeping skills you’ve gained. It’s been fun sharing the ride with you!
WoW! I am now up to date on your "Bee Novela". I watched your saga like a Netflix's binge. God Bless you and thank you so much for sharing your experience. You have taught me so much in layman's terms. I want to start an apiary of my own. Keep making your videos I will stay tuned.
Wow! And here in Northern Alberta we haven't had a good rain for months (about 3" since spring) everything is bone dry and rivers are down to a trickle. Great to hear how well all your hives and queens are doing. Wishing you all the best!
Here in MN we are the same. The Mississippi river is just a trickle in St. Paul. Less than 5 " (2 cm ?) since the first of April. Wells are running dry but I don't have to mow the lawn. LOL
Here in Connecticut just below Mass, and we got even more rain starting from April. Probably have had close to four feet of rain. It's almost to the point, that my bee's haven't had enough time to go out and forage, and have been stuck inside. However when the good clear day comes, they bring butt loads of resources in even during what would usually be our dearth.
I think we are on the same timeline. Recently did the same, Mite wash on mine. Doing an OAV cycle now. Happy to see this season has been a polar opposite of last year. 🐝🐝
Those Bee Barns are starting to become Bee Towers. Surprised that 300-ish bees fit in only a 1/2 cup. Bet that harvest is gonna be fun this year. I'm feeling a friendly betting pool for processed honey volume. I say 100 lbs ! :) I'd be prepping for some Mead-shine - good spot to be in MA. :p Cheers!
Seeing as a honey super can weigh anywhere from 45-65 lbs and a deep can weigh upwards of a hundred lbs, I’d say when his fall flow hits he could easily break 500lbs and probably closer to 600. 😃
@@SpencerBrennan001 - I was by no means dogging on you sir. In my area I’m less than half the honey I got same time last year…. And we probably won’t see a fall flow…. Tough year on the west coast…. Good to see Vino doing so well. 😃
Awesome to see your new video. Bees seem to really like your new bee-barns!😎👍 I can’t wait to see how the rest of the season turns out. -Fingers crossed that all hives will do great.🤞
Always glad to see a new Vino video! Thanks for sharing Jim. Girls are looking great. Amazing that you’ve had that much moisture over there. We’ve been in drought conditions over here. No notable rain since April. Then a month of triple digits has really dried up the nectar flow. Even the plants that usually produce in the fall have already dried up. So no fall flow this year. My mite counts have been pretty similar to yours, 1’s and 2’s. But, right or wrong, I’m treating. I don’t want to give them any chance to get a stronghold and blow up in the hives. Love what you’re doing! Keep up the great content. 😃
New Sub here. I live in MN and have some land. Bee keeping interests me though I know nothing about it. Nice mod on your barn. I know I'd need something like it. Thank you for passing on your knowledge.
Do you have better success with metal Queen excluders? I have plastic and bees would rather fill up the brood frames instead of upper suppers! Always Worried about Getting honey bound
Only lower entrances. Like a bee tree. 😉👍🏻 If upper vents are sealed and upper insulation added, then they’ll be even more inspired to work all the way down to the bottoms of the frames. And queen cups are a sign of good health - not a sign of “things being tight” or preparing to swarm or needing another super. OAV during broodless periods is a very nice way to reset a hive’s mite load to near zero.
I d like to know what is your hat and suit brand please. And why did you choose these over others? As I remember you said that the hat and head veil needed to be away from your face and eyes to be able to work effectively. Please let me know when you get a chance. Thank you
I have not read that, but I have read and watched a lot about OTS queen rearing and July brood breaks. I basically did OTS splits this summer, but instead of killing the queens, I put them in resource hives.
The plan back in April was to have 6 main hives and 4-6 resource hives. The resource hives are storage banks. They will not be full hives unless something happens to a main hive. If any are weak, they will be combined with main hives or other resource hives. I’m going to try to overwinter everyone and any main hive losses can be replaced with resource queens. I am not splitting for growth, but for security.
I would have left the queen cells out if they want to replace her they will do another batch in short order. Had a emergency replacement queen start laying and she must have been made from old larva cause they wanted to replace her just after she started laying but if I let them there would be know bees in. Another month after almost two months with no laying. So I kept knocking them down. She layed up all the frames in a slammed pattern and now they have 4 supercedure cells capped so I’m gonna let them do it before it’s too late. Moral of the story is if they want to replace the queen they will keep trying
Ha ha… yup. I went in there a few days after I shot this and they already had larvae and jelly in a few new queen cells. So I went and put the nearly emerged queen cell frame back in anyway to give them a head start. Saved them a couple weeks!
I considered adding an upper entrance for bees coming and going into the supers, thinking that they could bypass a queen reducer that way. Based on what you found here, is that not such a good idea?
I used upper entrances for five years because everyone around here told me to. Told me it was essential. Then I started monitoring temps and humidity and noticed even a small upper entrance has a huge effect on how they regulate their temps. On a chilly night the hive temp fluctuated with outside temps. Not on the sealed hives, though. I’ve decided to NOT use upper entrances anymore. No ventilation at all up top actually. I’ll be doing a video about it when we get close to winter.
Upper entrance had nothing to do with them not building at the bottom yet. They like to build from the top down so all you had to do was give it more time and you would have had the same results regardless of if they were using an upper entrance or not.
Then why did all 5 other colonies with ONLY lower entrances build out their entire frames to the very bottom months ago? This was the only hive with an upper entrance. There was almost no traffic through the lower entrance at all until I plugged the top. Then after plugging the top, the frames filled in and the queen started laying to the bottom. Coincidence? Looking back at 5 years of keeping bees with upper entrances on every single hive, I always thought it was just normal that queens just hardly ever laid eggs in lower brood boxes. I was shocked with these new hives to see that the extra deep frames had brood all the way down to the lowest row of cells on the frame. There’s no way this was just a coincidence.
Six days without rain? Will trade you! Only six days of rain (maybe) all of 2021 up here! Glad for a video, every week I am sad when one doesn't come out. Hope your back is doing great!
Good news! Hope that the girls will be going strong through summer. Wondering how the barn is coming along. Could you give An update? Greetings from the Netherlands
Glad the walk away split worked out, good thing. If the new queen had failed you'd have a hive full of drones from laying workers again, lol. They're looking good!
We were extremely dry all of July and the first half of August, wildfires all over Montana. We pulled our last super this past weekend. We had 2 left but the bees cleaned out one of the supers. We ended up with 15 gallons of a really nice carmel colored honey for the year.
Those big frames look really beautiful, I thought you'd go for the Layens but this seems to accomplish the same sort of thing. Good luck. A ways back you recommended me looking into horizontal and I got started this summer and they seem to be doing well. Thanks much!
One thing you could do just as a preventative measure is to throw a round of oxalic acid at the low mite counts. Maybe it just keeps load down a little until your honey flow is over. It is cheap and well couldn't hurt.
Vino Farm... Have watched most of your new Wood (Tree Named) Hive Videos. How do you Extract your Honey on such huge Frames ? Know they are kind for the Bees, (but not I guess for a Centrifugal Extractor.)🤭 Guess the Honey Harvest can't all be Cut Comb !?! Can you do a Video on how you harvest these Hives ? Happy Beekeeping 2021. 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
@@Rrailroad3 There will be supers on through September because they have resources around all month. When the supers come off the older forager bees know their days are numbered and they make room in the hive for the younger winter bees. There is definitely die off, but they are the bees that aren’t going to survive winter anyway.
Two mites on the bees but are most of the adult mites under the capped brood? When you find mites try to take into account the amount of capped brood, actually go ahead and count it. Humm, I have a lot of capped brood so I probably have more mites than the alcohol wash suggest, or most of the brood has emerged so the alcohol wash is pretty accurate and I actually have a 2% infestation. The next generation of mites emerges 7 fold in less than 10 days.
This was the baseline test for August 1. I will do another test the same way on September 1. The tests are relative to each other. If I pull 300 bees and find ZERO mites, I can not assume there are a significant amount under the capped brood. It would be impossible to accidentally find 300 miteless bees and still have an infestation that required treatment. I know there are probably not ZERO mites in the hive, but it's not a level to worry about.
Sounds awesome glad I found a update I love the new hives, do you think there’s a way to help them reduce humidity in hive? Awesome mite results! Adrian queen rocks!!
They manage heat and humidity all on their own. These hives are water/wind/air tight. They make it so the bees can manage their Heating/cooling/humidity with minimal outside influence.
So what is your plan with all these resource hives/nucs/splits? I recall you said you wanted to reduce the overall number of hives you have to manage but it appears that they’re exponentially growing again. Are you going to try to sell Nucs or combine hives and nucs in the winter/spring?
They are storage banks. Weaker hives will be built up or combined this fall. Strong resource hives that make it through winter will be replacements for any losses of the big hives. I’m not selling anything or getting any bigger than I am right now. 6 hives and 6 nucs was the goal back in April.
What was the cause the brood breaks you mentioned? For what it’s worth, I pull all of my supers off at the beginning of the July dearth. I can achieve 17.5 Brix within 4 days by blowing a fan on the stack of supers next to which I run a dehumidifier using a 55% set point on the controls. With the supers off, I add 5 apivar strips to each colony. Usually 3 in the upper deep snd 2 in the lower deep. Then at the start of August I feed each colony a full patty and 2 gallons of 1:1 syrup. This keeps the brood laying going.
@@vinofarm I noticed in the video that some of the brood frames were not yet built out. I’ve had success in filling it out in August by giving the colony syrup with more water in the mix ratio. This however requires me to remove all of the mediums. In any event… good luck!!! Look forward to seeing some success with your proposed hive design.
@@keithdiaz8166 Yes, one colony had an upper entrance and was ignoring the lower half of my super deep frames. I closed the upper entrance off and within two weeks, they started working the lower half of the frames. They will be fine by fall. Thanks!
@@vinofarm hopefully there is enough nectar out there to allow the bees to build out the comb. Otherwise a watery high sucrose syrup does the trick! Best wishes.
Looking good. Your new hives are fascinating.Do you plan to leave all honey in their for the Winter and just harvest the supers? I expect your winter prep will be so much easier this year.
Yes. The lower part is the brood box. Whatever they put in there, they keep. I will remove all supers before winter. If they do not have enough stores in the brood box, I will just feed them. Winter prep this year is literally just putting on insulated lids!
Great to see your levels are low. I never had serious mite issues in August until this year. For 3 years I was able to skip spring treatments and just do a really good fall/early winter treatment. This summer (year 4) mine are out of control and regret not doing more frequently washes. Spring was super warm and I believe early brood rearing spiked levels. Never going to skip treatment/testing again. All hives with new queen and ones that had brood breaks are in decent shape but old hives with last year queens are in trouble.
Yes, I have an advantage that these were all new packages this year. (Except for the Cherry/Adrian hive that had zero mites coming out of winter.) Older colonies will have higher loads and that was my downfall last year.
Did you read the study that mites thrive in low humidity high ventilation? Your insulated brood chambers allow the bees to keep the humidity close to 98%
Yes. Big change this year. No ventilation and the bees seem to love it. I’m watching humidity and it’s hanging in the “normal” range for all hives. 50-75%.
@@KennethGriffith_International Exactly. I am always surprised at how few bees are on the frames when I do inspections. They used to be 2-3 layers of bees thick. Now they’re all spread out and the brood is exposed. Then it hit me that the hive temps are so easily regulated they don’t need as many bees to keep brood warm. The queens lay more and fewer bees are able to care for more brood. The rest are out foraging.
@@vinofarm The energy equations for bees are the same as profit-loss statements for a business. Every unit of energy they don't have to waste on air conditioning is a unit of energy they can invest in production.
The bees have maintained perfect brood temps all summer. 92-98ºF. And they are doing it with little to no bearding and fanning. We had three days last week that hit over 100º (heat index) and those three days were the first and only days I've seen beards on the big bee barns. And that was only on 3 of the 6 hives. The insulation is making a HUGE difference.
Low mite count would be zero, but tough to determine that accuracy with 1 frame being tested. Personally, I do not celebrate 2 mites coming out in a wash and consider the economic threshold at 1 for treatment - 3 is the old standard. If I have a lot of capped brood then it’s just a ticking time bomb and why wait.
If your threshold to treat is 1 mite in a wash, why even bother testing? 2 out of 4 of my hives were zero. The two biggest ones (the only 2 without brood breaks) were 2. I’m going to test in two weeks and compare. I’m on it.
@@vinofarm The mite test serves more so for timing, treatment type, and efficacy. I may treat the same time every year, but may have a high mite load and have to shift treatment types if I cannot use formic (temps above 90s). Also, it's helpful to know before and after...some folks still have high mite loads following treatments and may need to pivot to something different. For the readouts, I'm just saying you cannot definitively say you have zero since there is no equal distribution of mites across every frame of brood. Just means you don't have an infestation at that moment. With 2 mites, you still have hundreds that are feeding and vectoring viruses. Factor in you having multiple capped brood frames, let's say 3,000 pupae, then you're going to have potentially 9,000 mites that will emerge with that brood (per frame/~3 mites). You'll already have brood emerging that is significantly impacted so it's more of a why wait versus getting ahead of it.
@@lailaapiary I understand the point you’re trying to make, but to extrapolate a mite wash of 2 to 9000 emerging mites is completely nuts. That’s assuming every single capped cell has mites and with a wash of TWO mites, there’s no way every cell has mites in it. Again, not trying to belittle your point, but your example is way over the top. I will be testing again on Sept 1st. If I get another 2 or 3 in the wash, I can run another test on another frame. If it’s still 2, I can assume the bees are managing the load. I plan on doing oxalic acid in concentrated rounds over a period of weeks either way. I just don’t feel the urgency to hit them hard at the moment when I only saw 4 mites in 4 hives total. These were all packages and 4 of my 6 hives had brood breaks. There was a lot of “mechanical” mite control this year.
@@vinofarm All good. We’re fighting the same battles with these bastards 🙂 Probably good to do the check once you have a good amount of that brood out.
Have you noticed any difference between the frames that have the deep foundation on the top vs the medium on the top. I run my hives as a deep and a medium and I prefer to run the medium on top. I've tried both ways and they hives with a medium on top seem to be stronger.
Sounds like a good year VINO. No honey yet? I lost my very first queen the other day but the colony replaced her all on there own and she seems to be a excellent so far. Low mite loads so far here in sw Iowa and very few shb. Keep the updates coming my friend loving your new hives.
I have not pulled a single frame of honey. No frames are full capped yet. We had a cool July. Hopefully I can pull some and get frames back on the hives before September. Fall flow should be good this year with all the rain we had.
@@vinofarm I hope it works well for ya. We went from summer flow to fall flow here no real dearth. I've pulled several times so far and still have suppers on but I also only have one or 2 suppers per hive.
@@vinofarm I've had the heating on at night for the past week. The Harvest is in full swing here and it's glorious! A good Harvest to you and your bees!
That's horrible! I hope your environment gets what it needs. Seems like many states have been feast or famine the past number of years. Throwing my almanac out.
Happy to see things are going well! Here in CT is similar situation with varroa mites. The population is not the same as last year. This maybe related to other factors also. I like your new hive design but am I wondering how can you make a regular size nuc with Langstroth frame size if you decide to sell nucs? If you don't plan it then you don't have a problem.
@@vinofarm Still better than that russian bee hive. A bummer you lost it but at the same time I felt for you ever time you opened that thing up! Good luck this winter with the new bee barns, if they work half as good as they look you should have an amazing start on next year!
It helps to not have to many hives in one location, you get more honey and less work. All my bees had brood breaks and have low mite counts also. The highest was 3 mites. Keep up the good work.
I live in a forested area, 8, 16 or 32 hives in one location do not make more or less honey, can look at all the nearby flowers and you might see a bee or you might not, there's just that many flowers to go around. I had 100 hives on a 100 acre blueberry field this spring and the owner had 300 of his own there at the same time, my 100 made honey. When the "green up" begins in the spring and the flow begins there's not enough bees to worry about the carrying capacity of the land, the dearth is a different story but no honey is made in a dearth, 1 hive or 100 hives.
@@sidelinerbeekeeper True, and some good points. But not all locations have a nectar flow all year long. Many have a good three or four weeks and then the main flow is over. Then it will make a difference how many bees are in an area. In Mid-April I could have a 100 hives and they wouldn't gather all the nectar here but in June and July four or 5 hives is the limit here.
I would love some close up as you keep showing eggs but i can't see a single egg or im just not sure what i am looking for. Also where is the shed at? Didn't see progress on that in a long time.
Pause the video at exactly 8:19 and you should see a little white "grain of rice" in each cell. Those are the eggs. If you're on Chrome/Desktop you can watch in 4K and should have no trouble. A bit small to see on a mobile.
@@vinofarm Oh wow those are TINY. I was looking for more a tiny maggot size egg/larva. And yeah much better on 4k. i watch on desktop but generally in 1080p to prevent buffering and my screen is still 1080p. Hey at least after 4 years i can spot the queens without a curcle being drawn around them. Anyway keep up the good work. you bounced back fast with that many nukes already!
I will have a full build video later this year. I am trying to get through a season to see how they perform. I already have tweaks I want to make for version 2.0. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile Seattle is having record heat and dryness! We had a banner spring and early summer flow thanks to some late spring rain, and it hasn't rained since. Crazy how different our summers have been! Glad to see you with such low mite counts!
3:10 What is that strip you're placing? ~ That is an AWESOME job you're doing! I am SO glad the bees are doing so well. ~ I was born & raised in a desert, but I now live in New York. I am REALLY dismayed that summer {My favorite season} is almost over! If I had the funds & resources, I would be a snowbird!
@@vinofarm love to see the progress on your apiary adventures! 🐝❤️ The broodminder is awesome. I put three inside of hives this year, one under the hive stand for ambient temp info. It's fascinating to look at the information coming from the hives real time and the app is actually fairly user friendly. Love your vlogs, keep up the great work there 👍👏👏👏
It's great that you still have Queen Balboa's progeny going strong. She was always my favorite queen, they know what to do and seem so chill. Taking things slow is not always a bad thing.
Sounds so much better than last year already, really hoping August is good to you and you get some healthy bees and good honey for your effort 😁
Great info with all your vids. Keep cranking out the vids Jim. Big fan
Wow, first time ever, I instantly spotted the Oak hive queen without you having to point her out to me! I was really looking forward to this video, I'm glad to see that things seem to be going well, and the bee barns appear to be working out great too. Here's hoping the good times continue.
Hey Jim,
What I find noteworthy is comparing the start of this season with very few hives to the beginning of your first season with very few hives. The growth this year is legendary. A unique way to measure the beekeeping skills you’ve gained.
It’s been fun sharing the ride with you!
Always a great day when a Vino Farm video drops! Also great to see the low mite counts. Good luck the rest of the season.
WoW! I am now up to date on your "Bee Novela". I watched your saga like a Netflix's binge. God Bless you and thank you so much for sharing your experience. You have taught me so much in layman's terms. I want to start an apiary of my own. Keep making your videos I will stay tuned.
Wow! And here in Northern Alberta we haven't had a good rain for months (about 3" since spring) everything is bone dry and rivers are down to a trickle. Great to hear how well all your hives and queens are doing. Wishing you all the best!
Here in MN we are the same. The Mississippi river is just a trickle in St. Paul. Less than 5 " (2 cm ?) since the first of April. Wells are running dry but I don't have to mow the lawn. LOL
Same here in Iowa all the beekeepers around me are thinking they need to requeen their colonies. If you are not feeding queens ain't laying.
Here in Connecticut just below Mass, and we got even more rain starting from April. Probably have had close to four feet of rain. It's almost to the point, that my bee's haven't had enough time to go out and forage, and have been stuck inside. However when the good clear day comes, they bring butt loads of resources in even during what would usually be our dearth.
I think we are on the same timeline. Recently did the same, Mite wash on mine. Doing an OAV cycle now. Happy to see this season has been a polar opposite of last year. 🐝🐝
Those Bee Barns are starting to become Bee Towers.
Surprised that 300-ish bees fit in only a 1/2 cup.
Bet that harvest is gonna be fun this year.
I'm feeling a friendly betting pool for processed honey volume. I say 100 lbs ! :)
I'd be prepping for some Mead-shine - good spot to be in MA. :p
Cheers!
I'll say 500lbs
Seeing as a honey super can weigh anywhere from 45-65 lbs and a deep can weigh upwards of a hundred lbs, I’d say when his fall flow hits he could easily break 500lbs and probably closer to 600. 😃
@@LarryLeesBees beauty!! Guess I low balled it pretty hard.
I update my bid to 100lbs / hive on average
@@SpencerBrennan001 - I was by no means dogging on you sir. In my area I’m less than half the honey I got same time last year…. And we probably won’t see a fall flow…. Tough year on the west coast…. Good to see Vino doing so well. 😃
@@LarryLeesBees fo sho, all gravy. No worries
Varroa dan çok çektik bee
Awesome to see your new video. Bees seem to really like your new bee-barns!😎👍 I can’t wait to see how the rest of the season turns out. -Fingers crossed that all hives will do great.🤞
I dig your chann🐝🐝🐝💕💕🐝🤩😍😍😍
Thanks for the update. Always look forward to see the next video from you. Till the next one, bee safe.....
Always glad to see a new Vino video! Thanks for sharing Jim. Girls are looking great. Amazing that you’ve had that much moisture over there. We’ve been in drought conditions over here. No notable rain since April. Then a month of triple digits has really dried up the nectar flow. Even the plants that usually produce in the fall have already dried up. So no fall flow this year.
My mite counts have been pretty similar to yours, 1’s and 2’s. But, right or wrong, I’m treating. I don’t want to give them any chance to get a stronghold and blow up in the hives.
Love what you’re doing! Keep up the great content. 😃
Good to see you!
New Sub here. I live in MN and have some land. Bee keeping interests me though I know nothing about it.
Nice mod on your barn. I know I'd need something like it.
Thank you for passing on your knowledge.
Do you have better success with metal Queen excluders? I have plastic and bees would rather fill up the brood frames instead of upper suppers! Always Worried about Getting honey bound
Only lower entrances. Like a bee tree. 😉👍🏻
If upper vents are sealed and upper insulation added, then they’ll be even more inspired to work all the way down to the bottoms of the frames.
And queen cups are a sign of good health - not a sign of “things being tight” or preparing to swarm or needing another super.
OAV during broodless periods is a very nice way to reset a hive’s mite load to near zero.
I d like to know what is your hat and suit brand please. And why did you choose these over others? As I remember you said that the hat and head veil needed to be away from your face and eyes to be able to work effectively. Please let me know when you get a chance. Thank you
Thank you for Educating us.
Yay, always happy to see you and the bees! :)
Man you need to post more often
Last
Second to last
Third last
4th last
Love the last! 🤣
Almost @ 100k my man!
Thank you for chapters
Very good
Have you read the book A Ton of Honey? I'm half way through it and he is talking about an August requeen to create the brood break.
I have not read that, but I have read and watched a lot about OTS queen rearing and July brood breaks. I basically did OTS splits this summer, but instead of killing the queens, I put them in resource hives.
Man those bees are on fire. I got 2 hives blasting away too. I can’t wait to see how they all go through winter in those towers of yours
Me too! I suspect they’re going to be just fine!
That's a lot of splits for a keeper who started out the year planning to have a smaller apiary...
The plan back in April was to have 6 main hives and 4-6 resource hives. The resource hives are storage banks. They will not be full hives unless something happens to a main hive. If any are weak, they will be combined with main hives or other resource hives. I’m going to try to overwinter everyone and any main hive losses can be replaced with resource queens. I am not splitting for growth, but for security.
I would have left the queen cells out if they want to replace her they will do another batch in short order. Had a emergency replacement queen start laying and she must have been made from old larva cause they wanted to replace her just after she started laying but if I let them there would be know bees in. Another month after almost two months with no laying. So I kept knocking them down. She layed up all the frames in a slammed pattern and now they have 4 supercedure cells capped so I’m gonna let them do it before it’s too late. Moral of the story is if they want to replace the queen they will keep trying
Ha ha… yup. I went in there a few days after I shot this and they already had larvae and jelly in a few new queen cells. So I went and put the nearly emerged queen cell frame back in anyway to give them a head start. Saved them a couple weeks!
I considered adding an upper entrance for bees coming and going into the supers, thinking that they could bypass a queen reducer that way. Based on what you found here, is that not such a good idea?
I used upper entrances for five years because everyone around here told me to. Told me it was essential. Then I started monitoring temps and humidity and noticed even a small upper entrance has a huge effect on how they regulate their temps. On a chilly night the hive temp fluctuated with outside temps. Not on the sealed hives, though. I’ve decided to NOT use upper entrances anymore. No ventilation at all up top actually. I’ll be doing a video about it when we get close to winter.
i question upper entrances more and more every year. there's a reason big professional beekeepers prefer no upper entrance.
No more for my bees.
Upper entrance had nothing to do with them not building at the bottom yet. They like to build from the top down so all you had to do was give it more time and you would have had the same results regardless of if they were using an upper entrance or not.
Then why did all 5 other colonies with ONLY lower entrances build out their entire frames to the very bottom months ago? This was the only hive with an upper entrance. There was almost no traffic through the lower entrance at all until I plugged the top. Then after plugging the top, the frames filled in and the queen started laying to the bottom. Coincidence? Looking back at 5 years of keeping bees with upper entrances on every single hive, I always thought it was just normal that queens just hardly ever laid eggs in lower brood boxes. I was shocked with these new hives to see that the extra deep frames had brood all the way down to the lowest row of cells on the frame. There’s no way this was just a coincidence.
You never say what you're using for mites
All my videos are in series. Keep watching. ua-cam.com/video/ctq3C38L-FQ/v-deo.html
Six days without rain? Will trade you! Only six days of rain (maybe) all of 2021 up here!
Glad for a video, every week I am sad when one doesn't come out. Hope your back is doing great!
Which bee breed are you working with?
Buckfast and Italians.
Good news! Hope that the girls will be going strong through summer. Wondering how the barn is coming along. Could you give An update? Greetings from the Netherlands
What type of hives and frames are these hives
They are extra deep langstroth hives. They have Deep/Medium frame combo. Full video here: ua-cam.com/video/z768OIA3bMo/v-deo.html
I still don't know jack about bees, but I'm always happy to see a new Vino Farm. Thx man, love every video!
Glad the walk away split worked out, good thing. If the new queen had failed you'd have a hive full of drones from laying workers again, lol.
They're looking good!
We were extremely dry all of July and the first half of August, wildfires all over Montana. We pulled our last super this past weekend. We had 2 left but the bees cleaned out one of the supers. We ended up with 15 gallons of a really nice carmel colored honey for the year.
Looking good for fall. Happy to hear your hives are doing well. Thank you for sharing
Those big frames look really beautiful, I thought you'd go for the Layens but this seems to accomplish the same sort of thing. Good luck. A ways back you recommended me looking into horizontal and I got started this summer and they seem to be doing well. Thanks much!
Great to hear from you and the bees. Glad all is well. Here’s hoping the Fall months are good to you and the bees. Good luck
One thing you could do just as a preventative measure is to throw a round of oxalic acid at the low mite counts. Maybe it just keeps load down a little until your honey flow is over. It is cheap and well couldn't hurt.
It always amazes me how fluid a group of bees is. You said half a cup and you scooped them in a measuring cup like they were syrup
I will do mites treatment with oxalic vapor at least 3 times every five days apart. My idea…
Glad to see low mite loads in you apiary. Hopefully the fall will provide a bountiful harvest.
WOW! The new hive design is ROCKING! This is great news.
I was just thinking its been a while since your last post...
Hello it is good to see your updates on what is going on. An it is all looking great. Keep up the great work an keep these girls going strong Thanks
would be nice to km
would be nice to know what breed of bees where in the hives. happy to see you rebuilt successfully
Maple - VSH
Birch - Italian
Oak - Italian
Beech - Buckfast
Pine - Buckfast
Cherry - 5th generation Italian local mix
@@vinofarm thank you 👍
how are the bees doing
New video will be up later this week.
No need to stir up your bees. Roll your cup down the frame and the bees you need fall in.
You get a consistent 1/2 cup each time that way? I can’t.
@@vinofarm Takes 5-10 swipes downward. Takes practice, but worth it in the end. Here's an example at 5:20 ua-cam.com/video/1ZQlP1du_4A/v-deo.html
Great video! Nice healthy bees
Hope u release the Cherry Hive queen!!
Vino Farm... Have watched most of your new Wood (Tree Named) Hive Videos.
How do you Extract your Honey on such huge Frames ? Know they are kind for the Bees, (but not I guess for a Centrifugal Extractor.)🤭
Guess the Honey Harvest can't all be Cut Comb !?!
Can you do a Video on how you harvest these Hives ?
Happy Beekeeping 2021.
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
They will not be extracted. Those frames live in the brood boxes. I will only extract frames from the medium supers on top.
Whats your plan with your hives once you pull the supers off?
Make sure they’re as mite free as possible and fully stocked with stores. Then put on insulated lids and wait until about April.
@@vinofarm copy, no worries on reducing 3-4 supers full of bees into your brood boxes and end up with with hives wanting to swarm?
@@Rrailroad3 There will be supers on through September because they have resources around all month. When the supers come off the older forager bees know their days are numbered and they make room in the hive for the younger winter bees. There is definitely die off, but they are the bees that aren’t going to survive winter anyway.
Two mites on the bees but are most of the adult mites under the capped brood? When you find mites try to take into account the amount of capped brood, actually go ahead and count it. Humm, I have a lot of capped brood so I probably have more mites than the alcohol wash suggest, or most of the brood has emerged so the alcohol wash is pretty accurate and I actually have a 2% infestation. The next generation of mites emerges 7 fold in less than 10 days.
This was the baseline test for August 1. I will do another test the same way on September 1. The tests are relative to each other. If I pull 300 bees and find ZERO mites, I can not assume there are a significant amount under the capped brood. It would be impossible to accidentally find 300 miteless bees and still have an infestation that required treatment. I know there are probably not ZERO mites in the hive, but it's not a level to worry about.
Sounds awesome glad I found a update I love the new hives, do you think there’s a way to help them reduce humidity in hive? Awesome mite results! Adrian queen rocks!!
They manage heat and humidity all on their own. These hives are water/wind/air tight. They make it so the bees can manage their Heating/cooling/humidity with minimal outside influence.
Jim- Did Morgan from Gold Shaw Farm take you up on your mentorship offer?
No response. It's kind of amazing that he posted that and didn't reply to any of those comments. I feel bad for those bees.
So what is your plan with all these resource hives/nucs/splits? I recall you said you wanted to reduce the overall number of hives you have to manage but it appears that they’re exponentially growing again. Are you going to try to sell Nucs or combine hives and nucs in the winter/spring?
They are storage banks. Weaker hives will be built up or combined this fall. Strong resource hives that make it through winter will be replacements for any losses of the big hives. I’m not selling anything or getting any bigger than I am right now. 6 hives and 6 nucs was the goal back in April.
He back yea 😄😄😄😄😄😄😄😄
What was the cause the brood breaks you mentioned? For what it’s worth, I pull all of my supers off at the beginning of the July dearth. I can achieve 17.5 Brix within 4 days by blowing a fan on the stack of supers next to which I run a dehumidifier using a 55% set point on the controls. With the supers off, I add 5 apivar strips to each colony. Usually 3 in the upper deep snd 2 in the lower deep. Then at the start of August I feed each colony a full patty and 2 gallons of 1:1 syrup. This keeps the brood laying going.
I pulled queens to make walk away splits. Instant brood break.
@@vinofarm I noticed in the video that some of the brood frames were not yet built out. I’ve had success in filling it out in August by giving the colony syrup with more water in the mix ratio. This however requires me to remove all of the mediums. In any event… good luck!!! Look forward to seeing some success with your proposed hive design.
@@keithdiaz8166 Yes, one colony had an upper entrance and was ignoring the lower half of my super deep frames. I closed the upper entrance off and within two weeks, they started working the lower half of the frames. They will be fine by fall. Thanks!
@@vinofarm hopefully there is enough nectar out there to allow the bees to build out the comb. Otherwise a watery high sucrose syrup does the trick! Best wishes.
Looking good. Your new hives are fascinating.Do you plan to leave all honey in their for the Winter and just harvest the supers? I expect your winter prep will be so much easier this year.
Yes. The lower part is the brood box. Whatever they put in there, they keep. I will remove all supers before winter. If they do not have enough stores in the brood box, I will just feed them. Winter prep this year is literally just putting on insulated lids!
Great to see your levels are low. I never had serious mite issues in August until this year. For 3 years I was able to skip spring treatments and just do a really good fall/early winter treatment. This summer (year 4) mine are out of control and regret not doing more frequently washes. Spring was super warm and I believe early brood rearing spiked levels. Never going to skip treatment/testing again. All hives with new queen and ones that had brood breaks are in decent shape but old hives with last year queens are in trouble.
Yes, I have an advantage that these were all new packages this year. (Except for the Cherry/Adrian hive that had zero mites coming out of winter.) Older colonies will have higher loads and that was my downfall last year.
Did you read the study that mites thrive in low humidity high ventilation? Your insulated brood chambers allow the bees to keep the humidity close to 98%
Yes. Big change this year. No ventilation and the bees seem to love it. I’m watching humidity and it’s hanging in the “normal” range for all hives. 50-75%.
@@vinofarm The bees also have more energy that they are not constantly spending on heating and cooling.
@@KennethGriffith_International Exactly. I am always surprised at how few bees are on the frames when I do inspections. They used to be 2-3 layers of bees thick. Now they’re all spread out and the brood is exposed. Then it hit me that the hive temps are so easily regulated they don’t need as many bees to keep brood warm. The queens lay more and fewer bees are able to care for more brood. The rest are out foraging.
@@vinofarm The energy equations for bees are the same as profit-loss statements for a business. Every unit of energy they don't have to waste on air conditioning is a unit of energy they can invest in production.
What were your temperatures in these super insulated hives when temperatures outside were about 90F?
The bees have maintained perfect brood temps all summer. 92-98ºF. And they are doing it with little to no bearding and fanning. We had three days last week that hit over 100º (heat index) and those three days were the first and only days I've seen beards on the big bee barns. And that was only on 3 of the 6 hives. The insulation is making a HUGE difference.
Low mite count would be zero, but tough to determine that accuracy with 1 frame being tested. Personally, I do not celebrate 2 mites coming out in a wash and consider the economic threshold at 1 for treatment - 3 is the old standard. If I have a lot of capped brood then it’s just a ticking time bomb and why wait.
If your threshold to treat is 1 mite in a wash, why even bother testing?
2 out of 4 of my hives were zero. The two biggest ones (the only 2 without brood breaks) were 2. I’m going to test in two weeks and compare. I’m on it.
@@vinofarm The mite test serves more so for timing, treatment type, and efficacy. I may treat the same time every year, but may have a high mite load and have to shift treatment types if I cannot use formic (temps above 90s). Also, it's helpful to know before and after...some folks still have high mite loads following treatments and may need to pivot to something different.
For the readouts, I'm just saying you cannot definitively say you have zero since there is no equal distribution of mites across every frame of brood. Just means you don't have an infestation at that moment. With 2 mites, you still have hundreds that are feeding and vectoring viruses. Factor in you having multiple capped brood frames, let's say 3,000 pupae, then you're going to have potentially 9,000 mites that will emerge with that brood (per frame/~3 mites). You'll already have brood emerging that is significantly impacted so it's more of a why wait versus getting ahead of it.
@@lailaapiary I understand the point you’re trying to make, but to extrapolate a mite wash of 2 to 9000 emerging mites is completely nuts. That’s assuming every single capped cell has mites and with a wash of TWO mites, there’s no way every cell has mites in it. Again, not trying to belittle your point, but your example is way over the top. I will be testing again on Sept 1st. If I get another 2 or 3 in the wash, I can run another test on another frame. If it’s still 2, I can assume the bees are managing the load. I plan on doing oxalic acid in concentrated rounds over a period of weeks either way. I just don’t feel the urgency to hit them hard at the moment when I only saw 4 mites in 4 hives total. These were all packages and 4 of my 6 hives had brood breaks. There was a lot of “mechanical” mite control this year.
@@vinofarm All good. We’re fighting the same battles with these bastards 🙂 Probably good to do the check once you have a good amount of that brood out.
Have you noticed any difference between the frames that have the deep foundation on the top vs the medium on the top. I run my hives as a deep and a medium and I prefer to run the medium on top. I've tried both ways and they hives with a medium on top seem to be stronger.
No difference. They fill the gap and then it’s all continuous comb.
here's hoping henri doesnt mess things up
That is awesome
Sounds like a good year VINO. No honey yet? I lost my very first queen the other day but the colony replaced her all on there own and she seems to be a excellent so far. Low mite loads so far here in sw Iowa and very few shb. Keep the updates coming my friend loving your new hives.
I have not pulled a single frame of honey. No frames are full capped yet. We had a cool July. Hopefully I can pull some and get frames back on the hives before September. Fall flow should be good this year with all the rain we had.
@@vinofarm I hope it works well for ya. We went from summer flow to fall flow here no real dearth. I've pulled several times so far and still have suppers on but I also only have one or 2 suppers per hive.
On the hives that tested a 2 would test again. The honey bee Heath coalition says to treat when you have three mites
I’m going to test in less than 2 weeks.
Midsummer he says....
Meanwhile, in Scotland, autumn has arrived!
Leaves are turning here now. Goldenrod is blooming. (This video was shot 2 weeks ago!)
@@vinofarm I've had the heating on at night for the past week. The Harvest is in full swing here and it's glorious! A good Harvest to you and your bees!
That's insane. We've gotten about 3/8" of rain since the beginning of May. Northern idaho is on fire😥
That's horrible! I hope your environment gets what it needs. Seems like many states have been feast or famine the past number of years. Throwing my almanac out.
I really hope the west pulls through all that heat and fire. It's very sad to watch that.
Happy to see things are going well! Here in CT is similar situation with varroa mites. The population is not the same as last year. This maybe related to other factors also. I like your new hive design but am I wondering how can you make a regular size nuc with Langstroth frame size if you decide to sell nucs? If you don't plan it then you don't have a problem.
I will just sell nucs to other bee barn owners. In a year, they’ll be everywhere!
@@vinofarm Now, that's the spirit! "... build it and they will come!" [Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella. 1982; Field of Dreams, 1989]
Oh man, he shook that first frame in that green box and I'm like, 'might have been a good day to wear the gloves!" they did not sound happy. ;)
After that inspection, you'll notice I'm wearing the full jacket! That was definitely a pissy day in the bee yard.
@@vinofarm Still better than that russian bee hive. A bummer you lost it but at the same time I felt for you ever time you opened that thing up! Good luck this winter with the new bee barns, if they work half as good as they look you should have an amazing start on next year!
It helps to not have to many hives in one location, you get more honey and less work. All my bees had brood breaks and have low mite counts also. The highest was 3 mites. Keep up the good work.
I live in a forested area, 8, 16 or 32 hives in one location do not make more or less honey, can look at all the nearby flowers and you might see a bee or you might not, there's just that many flowers to go around. I had 100 hives on a 100 acre blueberry field this spring and the owner had 300 of his own there at the same time, my 100 made honey. When the "green up" begins in the spring and the flow begins there's not enough bees to worry about the carrying capacity of the land, the dearth is a different story but no honey is made in a dearth, 1 hive or 100 hives.
@@sidelinerbeekeeper True, and some good points. But not all locations have a nectar flow all year long. Many have a good three or four weeks and then the main flow is over. Then it will make a difference how many bees are in an area. In Mid-April I could have a 100 hives and they wouldn't gather all the nectar here but in June and July four or 5 hives is the limit here.
I would love some close up as you keep showing eggs but i can't see a single egg or im just not sure what i am looking for. Also where is the shed at? Didn't see progress on that in a long time.
Pause the video at exactly 8:19 and you should see a little white "grain of rice" in each cell. Those are the eggs. If you're on Chrome/Desktop you can watch in 4K and should have no trouble. A bit small to see on a mobile.
@@vinofarm Oh wow those are TINY. I was looking for more a tiny maggot size egg/larva. And yeah much better on 4k. i watch on desktop but generally in 1080p to prevent buffering and my screen is still 1080p.
Hey at least after 4 years i can spot the queens without a curcle being drawn around them.
Anyway keep up the good work. you bounced back fast with that many nukes already!
Do you have plans or dimensions for your bee barns?
I will have a full build video later this year. I am trying to get through a season to see how they perform. I already have tweaks I want to make for version 2.0. Stay tuned.
Very exciting
Wayne seems very excited.
Thank you for your reply, didn’t know that happened, they call these things smart phones lol
I looked for a new video this morning, I was like what is taking this guy so long.
Meanwhile Seattle is having record heat and dryness! We had a banner spring and early summer flow thanks to some late spring rain, and it hasn't rained since. Crazy how different our summers have been! Glad to see you with such low mite counts!
That was our reality last summer. Total opposite this year. Hope you guys are hanging on out there.
3:10 What is that strip you're placing? ~ That is an AWESOME job you're doing! I am SO glad the bees are doing so well. ~ I was born & raised in a desert, but I now live in New York. I am REALLY dismayed that summer {My favorite season} is almost over! If I had the funds & resources, I would be a snowbird!
Broodminder temperature and humidity sensor.
@@vinofarm Awesome! Thank you for answering
@@vinofarm love to see the progress on your apiary adventures! 🐝❤️ The broodminder is awesome. I put three inside of hives this year, one under the hive stand for ambient temp info. It's fascinating to look at the information coming from the hives real time and the app is actually fairly user friendly. Love your vlogs, keep up the great work there 👍👏👏👏