My mix is a cup of white vinegar 4 cups of salt in a 2 gallon sprayer. This is a Barnyard bee mix. It works thank you. I use pool salt. Keep up with the great videos thanks again.
I am so fortunate I’ve an entire acre of 🍀 clover. I am fortunate too to live in the country, although winters are harsh and often long. Richard it’s my understanding your temps seldom fall below freezing. This will b my 1st winter with my honeybees, I am very lucky to have assistance of a very experienced honeybee keeper helping me through our 1st winter. The best to all, looking forward to our combined love and help with one another. Richard, I am new to your videos, how many hives do you have? Blessings to you and your Precious Honeybees and thank You.
Hi Lou and sorry for the late reply. Nice to hear you have bees, I have around 200 production hives, about 100 nucs each year and around 40/50 mini mating nucs. Its a lot of work but as you know bees more and more experience tells you what to do and when, but here's the big secret, I still haven't got a clue what I am doing lol 🤪🐝👍
I took your advice from last week on banking queens Richard, with 100% success👍 Every queen has now been introduced into a nuc, thank you. I like your idea of introducing a banked queen underneath the plastic cover too and I’ll try this in future. I’ve been misting them as they emerge from the cage with a fine spray of light syrup which stops them from taking to the air and also helps with acceptance, but it concerns me that her wings might be permanently stuck together if the bees don’t clean her up immediately. Do you have experience on this? Many thanks Kim By the way I totally agree with your comment about luck. As my old man used to say “You make your own luck”.
@@richardnoel3141 thanks for the reply, I know it’s been a full on year for you and I’m amazed that you find time to film and edit as much as you do never mind responding to your many subscribers, it’s much appreciated. All in all it’s been a good year over here although like you I’ve have difficulty with mating my last batch of queens due to poor weather. The ivy is in flower here too now and looking good for winter stores. I’m feeding too to try and slow the crystallisation or we could end up with brood nests full of inedible stores which is a concern. Do you have any tips regarding this?
@@kimberesford2444 Difficult to to say Kim, many people have very strong views on IV honey personally I absolutely love the stuff I don’t see a need to feed liquid feeds during the IV flow even though I actually do because most the time I’m trying to get some thermal at this particular period and in most years they prefer the final solution because there’s not much I’ll be coming in anyway but in years we’ve had good IV flow I never have a problem with the bees starvation all them being able to access the IV during the winter as far as I’m concerned I love it it may be because we have such wet humid winter is that the IV absorbs a lot of moisture and That helps the bees. With this particular question is very much a case of if it works for you you carry on doing it I personally really don’t see an issue but as I said “horses for courses” best of luck
@@richardnoel3141 thanks I recon I’ll suck it and see this winter then. Some of the colonies aren’t taking syrup down anyway the ivy flow is that good. I’ll add fondant or sugar blocks in winter (belt and bracers) and see if they’ve cleared the ivy honey when spring arrives. All the best for now Richard, I hope your winter losses are minimal and 2022 brings a good honey harvest. 👍🐝
Great video, i am going to paint all my nucs with crosses, dots, strips and arrows. Good to see a serious bee keeping video with real tips intelligent tips.
I have found that if you put a pollen substitute feeder at the yard. It gives them something to forage on and the robbing is pretty much stopped for me. Thanks Richard.
I too do a central feeding. Drawbacks are you don’t know how each Individual hive is doing an I feed my neighbors bees also . But I have virtually no robbing between the hives. Lol like everything their is always good an bad ;-)
I was watching a guy from Tennessee the other day and he used green metal roofing sheets under his hives. It keeps the grass down and kills beetle larvae. Hot tin roof ya know. Gonna put some in next year.
Richard, are there other colors besides blue and green that can be used? Brilliant idea with the cage under the plastic cover! I had one fly off and it stinks. In 2 of my 10fr nucs I had forgotten Apivar strips in there all winter. Just for laughs, I tested every 3 weeks. Zero mites each test. Just an FYI.
Thanks yes this worked just great. I seem to be looking at good fall fed colonies this week so very happy. not out of the woods ever until next spring is upon us!
I am curious, how do you feed and sustain your virgins when banked, and how long can you bank them? How soon do you move them out of the incubator? I am working through this now and am loosing them before I can get them into their mating nucs.
They can recognize number and letters. I use sheep ear tags on my minis and definitely had an increase in return success. The weather and other things this year have been bad, lots of drone layers :(
Hi David, yes it was, I do it often if the colony os Hopelessly queen less and the bees are well fed. I pour sirop on to the queen too. seems to work well.
Caging mated queens stops pheromone production, bad for the colony, a likely attempt to get supercede cells and unhealthy queens. An alternative would be move the queen above excluder on an empty comb, keeps her in laying condition. Treat the lower half with OA after 14 days of moving queen, mites entered the lower brood 10 days ago before capping, all has hatched out 14 days later, drones too. The frame above excluder won't hatch for another 7 days so there is some allowance to treat the colony for a week. Remove the brood frame from the colony above excluder and put the queen back down. The capped brood frame that was above excluder will have mites, that frame will hatch in 7 days approx, you can make nucs with that brood. Once hatch treat the nucs with OA while they are broodless and the virgin queen is mating, which can be a two to three week window to mate and have brood again. What I say might be a large work load in a commercial operation but possible, easy for a hobbyist is why I mentioned it incase any are reading. Our OCD causes patterns, patterns cause drift. Put those mating nuc entrances in every different direction possible and the return goes way up. A flow, real or artificial gets the bees active, gets the drones up in the air and excites the colony to raise brood, the queens mate and lay faster on a flow. Banking virgins more than four days and they start pheromone, acceptance gets harder. Cells are much easier but require timing. Making nucs by moving brood above excluder aids to timing and lessons work load, adds a degree of queen-less-ness for better queen acceptance. By mastering the timing with everything I mentioned above, one could have a management strategie to mite treatments and nuc production all in one fluid motion.
These cages allow access to the queen the bee can come and go as they Please still spreading her pheromones around. That’s the reason for using these .there will be losers but we’re talking commercial amount of hives in a professional set up! The material you would need to put the queens above an excluder makes it not worth it. I have to find a workable compromise
@@richardnoel3141 smarter people than I explain it here, part 2 of Bob Binnie's new three part video series. It actually doesn't require extra equipment, most commercial keepers already have extra equipment. The excluders if used are already on the colony, one empty comb per hive is all thats needed. ua-cam.com/video/4Sy5fNDvxgg/v-deo.html
Well it seemed to work really well for me here. I dont think ive seen any superscedure at all , only in two colonies where the queens were already in the colony because the brood was laid a few days after the original queen was caged. These queens remain in pheromone production during most of the confinement period. good access to the queen helps distribute this,.She cant lay but is kept well by the bees. as soon as she is released its all systems go. laying everywhere. You should try these cages and see what you think. Can send you 1 if your interested to have a good look at them) The vertical split you mention is great for making nucs (as per Bob Binnie method ) but using it to cage queens in a commercial operation is a huge undertaking. I was expedcting to see more issues than I did but it really was a very simple procedure.
Aren't there much fewer drones this time of year for the mating process? I'm in the western US and the air is full of smoke from fires (no reason to even smoke the bees its that thick some days), does that effect the mating process, my bees are all really pissy?
Hi John, yes possible less drones by this time in most years, but we do a couple of things to augment the drone population. Bring back home any drone laying queens to the mating area and also dry putting in some drone comb about a month ago, it all helps. We all seem to have at least lots more drones still in the colonies right now probably because most bees haven't been flying much, i dont know!! Best drones are usually early summer late spring drones, but in a year like this year its difficult to say as everything has been a real struggle.
The new standard in USA is 2 grams per deep box. We use 2 deeps for brood. I did the conversion for you. Our deep box is 24.5 cm tall x 10 frames wide.
Had 10 NUCs and they all got robbed out. The moment I took off the honey the whole yard went into insane mode. Even large NUCs got killed, 3 solid frames of bees getting rushed. Got a couple of 6 frame NUCs remaining, but building 6 frame strong colonies knocks my production hives down too much.
@@badassbees3680 I'm making the switch from normal bees to buckfast, but it's hard to make a switch if all gets killed. Had 6 Queens Hatch today, put them in as a backup plan. Glad I did!
@@rogierdikkes I used to grow, grow, grow and then when Dearth hit my big hives killed all my hard work..it was very irritating.Michael Palmer said something that really hit home about his Carnis going to work while Italians went and robbed..now I have Carnis, feral hybrid carnies and just enough Italian mixed to brood like crazy and I have very little robbing,I'm really glad I switched,they are amazing in so many ways, for me at least...Buckfast supposed to be really good too,I never had any...
Richard. Ive been watching your videos and incorporating a few of your methods into my growing operation. Just curious, what do you do with all of your queens? I don’t recall you every discussing that?
Hi Richard, I'm new to your channel & I love the set up bud. Could you tell me where you get your queen marking paint from please? I don't get on with the pens at all. Thanks Josh
Hi Joshua sorry for the late reply, its just a simple Acrylic car touch up paint, sold in individual pens. their better than Poscha pens because the paint it really strong once its dried. the weather based paints dont seem to last very long on the thorax.
Richard, good vlog. But for me, all that initial work with all the safe guards to put the nucs too close together is a pity. Hope you have better success than I anticipate!
It’s work in progress. This winter i will be build ing more permanent structures to support different nucs I.no a more spread out area the ground I very soft and they really need to be higher off the ground. but as always it’s the best I can do for now! Thanks for your comments!! 🙌
Hi Dag Not sure if I answered you on Instagram, but for others interested at the moment I mostly keep all my queens for myself as if they get mated and successfully given support staff, their invaluable in there following spring for gains and sales.
@@richardnoel3141 Depends on the conditions during their development - even in cold conditions, on day 24 all cells will have hatched. Under normal conditions they hatch mostly on day 23. Sounds like a compromise, doesn't it? 😊😅😉
sorry for not replying sooner bin it out and give them some fresh. they dont really like the fermenting stuff unless their desperately hungry, then they often get disentry (bad guts ) if they take its down! consider thymolised Sirop. it helps stop it fermenting.
My mix is a cup of white vinegar 4 cups of salt in a 2 gallon sprayer. This is a Barnyard bee mix. It works thank you. I use pool salt. Keep up with the great videos thanks again.
I am so fortunate I’ve an entire acre of 🍀 clover. I am fortunate too to live in the country, although winters are harsh and often long. Richard it’s my understanding your temps seldom fall below freezing. This will b my 1st winter with my honeybees, I am very lucky to have assistance of a very experienced honeybee keeper helping me through our 1st winter. The best to all, looking forward to our combined love and help with one another. Richard, I am new to your videos, how many hives do you have? Blessings to you and your Precious Honeybees and thank You.
Hi Lou and sorry for the late reply. Nice to hear you have bees, I have around 200 production hives, about 100 nucs each year and around 40/50 mini mating nucs. Its a lot of work but as you know bees more and more experience tells you what to do and when, but here's the big secret, I still haven't got a clue what I am doing lol 🤪🐝👍
Try painting random shapes with black on the entrances. I like to use the vowels AEIOU
I also use a random color along with it.
I took your advice from last week on banking queens Richard, with 100% success👍
Every queen has now been introduced into a nuc, thank you.
I like your idea of introducing a banked queen underneath the plastic cover too and I’ll try this in future. I’ve been misting them as they emerge from the cage with a fine spray of light syrup which stops them from taking to the air and also helps with acceptance, but it concerns me that her wings might be permanently stuck together if the bees don’t clean her up immediately. Do you have experience on this?
Many thanks
Kim
By the way I totally agree with your comment about luck. As my old man used to say “You make your own luck”.
sorry for late reply Kim, great news, just use water, then the queens dont fly but they dont have their wings glued together. regards, Richard
@@richardnoel3141 thanks for the reply, I know it’s been a full on year for you and I’m amazed that you find time to film and edit as much as you do never mind responding to your many subscribers, it’s much appreciated.
All in all it’s been a good year over here although like you I’ve have difficulty with mating my last batch of queens due to poor weather.
The ivy is in flower here too now and looking good for winter stores. I’m feeding too to try and slow the crystallisation or we could end up with brood nests full of inedible stores which is a concern. Do you have any tips regarding this?
@@kimberesford2444 Difficult to to say Kim, many people have very strong views on IV honey personally I absolutely love the stuff I don’t see a need to feed liquid feeds during the IV flow even though I actually do because most the time I’m trying to get some thermal at this particular period and in most years they prefer the final solution because there’s not much I’ll be coming in anyway but in years we’ve had good IV flow I never have a problem with the bees starvation all them being able to access the IV during the winter as far as I’m concerned I love it it may be because we have such wet humid winter is that the IV absorbs a lot of moisture and That helps the bees. With this particular question is very much a case of if it works for you you carry on doing it I personally really don’t see an issue but as I said “horses for courses” best of luck
@@richardnoel3141 thanks I recon I’ll suck it and see this winter then. Some of the colonies aren’t taking syrup down anyway the ivy flow is that good. I’ll add fondant or sugar blocks in winter (belt and bracers) and see if they’ve cleared the ivy honey when spring arrives.
All the best for now Richard, I hope your winter losses are minimal and 2022 brings a good honey harvest. 👍🐝
Great video, i am going to paint all my nucs with crosses, dots, strips and arrows. Good to see a serious bee keeping video with real tips intelligent tips.
Thanks for your videos.
Thank you!
Thank you Richard ❤️❤️❤️❤️👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Well done . This attention to detail with a flow of ideas and practice is just splendid. Great teaching for sure.
Thanks for your kind words. there is always room for improvement
Very informative thank you.
I have found that if you put a pollen substitute feeder at the yard. It gives them something to forage on and the robbing is pretty much stopped for me. Thanks Richard.
I too do a central feeding. Drawbacks are you don’t know how each Individual hive is doing an I feed my neighbors bees also . But I have virtually no robbing between the hives. Lol like everything their is always good an bad ;-)
@@kat2641 Pick your battles like I do.
Thanks for the tip, will try this coming season. (2012)
Love the art work on nuc fronts 😅
nice apiary
Thank you.
I was watching a guy from Tennessee the other day and he used green metal roofing sheets under his hives. It keeps the grass down and kills beetle larvae. Hot tin roof ya know. Gonna put some in next year.
Which TN guy did this? I ask because I live in TN... anyone local to me I like to pay a little attention to.
This is the video I watched: ua-cam.com/video/F2i6gL4khSk/v-deo.html
Kamon Is in Tennessee as well: ua-cam.com/channels/koAuqRakc1TtvXxL4Kr76Q.html
Richard, are there other colors besides blue and green that can be used?
Brilliant idea with the cage under the plastic cover! I had one fly off and it stinks.
In 2 of my 10fr nucs I had forgotten Apivar strips in there all winter. Just for laughs, I tested every 3 weeks. Zero mites each test. Just an FYI.
Thanks yes this worked just great. I seem to be looking at good fall fed colonies this week so very happy. not out of the woods ever until next spring is upon us!
I wish you success in God's care and protection
thank you!
I am curious, how do you feed and sustain your virgins when banked, and how long can you bank them? How soon do you move them out of the incubator? I am working through this now and am loosing them before I can get them into their mating nucs.
The sugar solution is fermenting, what do I do?
They can recognize number and letters. I use sheep ear tags on my minis and definitely had an increase in return success. The weather and other things this year have been bad, lots of drone layers :(
Was that a direct release virgin introduction? I had good luck with it, hope more people try it.
Hi David, yes it was, I do it often if the colony os Hopelessly queen less and the bees are well fed. I pour sirop on to the queen too. seems to work well.
@@richardnoel3141 Tres Bien!
Caging mated queens stops pheromone production, bad for the colony, a likely attempt to get supercede cells and unhealthy queens. An alternative would be move the queen above excluder on an empty comb, keeps her in laying condition. Treat the lower half with OA after 14 days of moving queen, mites entered the lower brood 10 days ago before capping, all has hatched out 14 days later, drones too. The frame above excluder won't hatch for another 7 days so there is some allowance to treat the colony for a week. Remove the brood frame from the colony above excluder and put the queen back down. The capped brood frame that was above excluder will have mites, that frame will hatch in 7 days approx, you can make nucs with that brood. Once hatch treat the nucs with OA while they are broodless and the virgin queen is mating, which can be a two to three week window to mate and have brood again. What I say might be a large work load in a commercial operation but possible, easy for a hobbyist is why I mentioned it incase any are reading. Our OCD causes patterns, patterns cause drift. Put those mating nuc entrances in every different direction possible and the return goes way up. A flow, real or artificial gets the bees active, gets the drones up in the air and excites the colony to raise brood, the queens mate and lay faster on a flow. Banking virgins more than four days and they start pheromone, acceptance gets harder. Cells are much easier but require timing. Making nucs by moving brood above excluder aids to timing and lessons work load, adds a degree of queen-less-ness for better queen acceptance. By mastering the timing with everything I mentioned above, one could have a management strategie to mite treatments and nuc production all in one fluid motion.
These cages allow access to the queen the bee can come and go as they
Please still spreading her pheromones around. That’s the reason for using these .there will be losers but we’re talking commercial amount of hives in a professional set up! The material you would need to put the queens above an excluder makes it not worth it. I have to find a workable compromise
@@richardnoel3141 smarter people than I explain it here, part 2 of Bob Binnie's new three part video series. It actually doesn't require extra equipment, most commercial keepers already have extra equipment. The excluders if used are already on the colony, one empty comb per hive is all thats needed.
ua-cam.com/video/4Sy5fNDvxgg/v-deo.html
@@sidelinerbeekeeper thanks haven’t got around to watching that, it’s going to be a lot of catching up this winter!!
Well it seemed to work really well for me here. I dont think ive seen any superscedure at all , only in two colonies where the queens were already in the colony because the brood was laid a few days after the original queen was caged. These queens remain in pheromone production during most of the confinement period. good access to the queen helps distribute this,.She cant lay but is kept well by the bees. as soon as she is released its all systems go. laying everywhere. You should try these cages and see what you think. Can send you 1 if your interested to have a good look at them)
The vertical split you mention is great for making nucs (as per Bob Binnie method ) but using it to cage queens in a commercial operation is a huge undertaking.
I was expedcting to see more issues than I did but it really was a very simple procedure.
Aren't there much fewer drones this time of year for the mating process? I'm in the western US and the air is full of smoke from fires (no reason to even smoke the bees its that thick some days), does that effect the mating process, my bees are all really pissy?
Hi John, yes possible less drones by this time in most years, but we do a couple of things to augment the drone population. Bring back home any drone laying queens to the mating area and also dry putting in some drone comb about a month ago, it all helps. We all seem to have at least lots more drones still in the colonies right now probably because most bees haven't been flying much, i dont know!! Best drones are usually early summer late spring drones, but in a year like this year its difficult to say as everything has been a real struggle.
@@richardnoel3141 Thx for the reply, my swarm cells (10) never produced a mated queen, I think the smoke filled air effected the process.
What what the honey tonnage last year, and the expectation for this summer?
3.1 if I remember correctly. around 4 would be me expectations. but it will be more like 0.5 tonne the way its looking.
How many grams oxcilic do you use per Nuc?
Hi Justin, 1.5 for the nucs, 2.5 for the Production hives.
The new standard in USA is 2 grams per deep box. We use 2 deeps for brood. I did the conversion for you. Our deep box is 24.5 cm tall x 10 frames wide.
Had 10 NUCs and they all got robbed out. The moment I took off the honey the whole yard went into insane mode. Even large NUCs got killed, 3 solid frames of bees getting rushed.
Got a couple of 6 frame NUCs remaining, but building 6 frame strong colonies knocks my production hives down too much.
Get yourself Carnis,I used to have same problems...not anymore
@@badassbees3680 I'm making the switch from normal bees to buckfast, but it's hard to make a switch if all gets killed.
Had 6 Queens Hatch today, put them in as a backup plan. Glad I did!
@@rogierdikkes I used to grow, grow, grow and then when Dearth hit my big hives killed all my hard work..it was very irritating.Michael Palmer said something that really hit home about his Carnis going to work while Italians went and robbed..now I have Carnis, feral hybrid carnies and just enough Italian mixed to brood like crazy and I have very little robbing,I'm really glad I switched,they are amazing in so many ways, for me at least...Buckfast supposed to be really good too,I never had any...
Richard. Ive been watching your videos and incorporating a few of your methods into my growing operation. Just curious, what do you do with all of your queens? I don’t recall you every discussing that?
Andy I never really have any spare. My colleague uses a lot and any I have spare either go in to requeening a production hives or in to nucs.
Hi Richard, I'm new to your channel & I love the set up bud.
Could you tell me where you get your queen marking paint from please? I don't get on with the pens at all.
Thanks Josh
Hi Joshua sorry for the late reply, its just a simple Acrylic car touch up paint, sold in individual pens. their better than Poscha pens because the paint it really strong once its dried. the weather based paints dont seem to last very long on the thorax.
Richard, good vlog. But for me, all that initial work with all the safe guards to put the nucs too close together is a pity. Hope you have better success than I anticipate!
It’s work in progress. This winter i will be build ing more permanent structures to support different nucs I.no a more spread out area the ground I very soft and they really need to be higher off the ground. but as always it’s the best I can do for now! Thanks for your comments!! 🙌
1queston: Do you sell queen's this year?
Hi Dag Not sure if I answered you on Instagram, but for others interested at the moment I mostly keep all my queens for myself as if they get mated and successfully given support staff, their invaluable in there following spring for gains and sales.
If you cage your queens for that long, dont you get a higher rate of supersedure cells
Possibly yes but most queens within the cages should still be alive! Nothing is perfect against Varroa!🤷🏼♂️
Drones hatch after 23 days, not 28 days. 😊😅😎
Mine says 24 days, yes thanks! Correct
@@richardnoel3141 Depends on the conditions during their development - even in cold conditions, on day 24 all cells will have hatched. Under normal conditions they hatch mostly on day 23. Sounds like a compromise, doesn't it? 😊😅😉
The sugar solution is fermenting, what do I do?
sorry for not replying sooner bin it out and give them some fresh. they dont really like the fermenting stuff unless their desperately hungry, then they often get disentry (bad guts ) if they take its down! consider thymolised Sirop. it helps stop it fermenting.