The NRCS has a program that pays landowners to convert farmland to pollinator habitat. Check with your local county NRCS office for details. A couple tips on using Grub Ex. 1) Don't be disappointed with your results this fall because you're already infested and don't let your results this fall prevent you from applying it again next April or May, it really works. 2) You must treat the area around the hive with a heavy application and especially the area under the hive between the cinder blocks. I use a small cup and "sling" the material under the stands.
I second your comments about Grub Ex. I applied it to my bee yard in June this year, hoping that it wasn’t to late to knock down hive beetle larva, so far, it seems my hive beetle numbers are significantly lower this year. One thing I noticed with my application, it takes a lot of water to “water in” the crystal so, try to do it before a significant amount of rain is expected. Watering in a large area with a garden hose isn’t very practical.
I would recommend to drill a 1/4 hole in the back side of the bottom board. Then insert the barrel of the vaporizer into it, and seal the front entrance with a rag. You will have less loss of product which leads to higher coverage in the hive.
Please don't ever change your intro music... it instantly calms me. I don't need any dramatic enhancements in beekeeping. You deliver a straight forward genuine look at life , and that's much appreciated. Thank you for sharing the successes and struggles .... we all relate even if its on different levels....
I do not know if you have tried peppermint candies or not , But I have had good luck with them . I place one candy on top of frames in each corner in each box . It really seems to work on the Hive Beetles
Try putting 2-4 1” wood screws through the plastic container and into the wood cap on your feeders. The rubber o-rings will eventually fail. If you have drawn comb, I wonder if it might be good to move frames of emerging brood from your strongest colonies into your weak colonies that are having beetle issues. Can probably also feed protein to the strong colonies to make-up for the removed brood
A friend of mine did away with the front entrances and put a couple of holes in the bottom board. No problem for the bees. Hive beetles have trouble flying up.
Thanks for answering my question. We use honey robber and you're right, it smells like vomit on asphalt on a hot day!!! The only thing we hadn't done this season was use the blower at the yard before putting the boxes on the trailer. We pulled and immediately covered the boxes on the trailer to limit the robbing still a lot come home with us... Again. I appreciate the answer and we'll keep trying!! Love the channel... keep up the great work!!
August and September our little angels change. Beekeeping a little different then. Getting mine queen right for winter has been a challenge for sure. You have grown your colonies and accomplished a lot this year. Anxious to see next years results. Thanks for the videos. Take care
I'm a waiting for a "fun" weather week with the bees but won't happen til next week. Going to bee 97 tomorrow here in Pennsylvania. So I'm making salsa indoors ! Yeah later in the season nucs need to be made super strong. Dealing with 4-5 weeks of drought here. Goldenrod blooming and asters about to bloom but doubt there is any nectar in those flowers. Feeding sugar syrup, applied another round of mite treatmetns (before the current heat wave) and twiddling my bee thumbs and making runs for sugar. Always wondering these days... are the hives getting plugged up with pollen/syrup and will I have healthy winter bees. Need to inventory the number of capped honey frames in the freezer and determine how many hives I can load up to avoid some feeding. Such a tight rope we beekeepers tread. I'll be hosting some gardening group ladies in the apiary next week... will be encouraging them to plant for the honey bees... I doubt it will be a hard sell! LOL
I dumped the generator for a inverter smaller than a shoebox that clips onto my truck battery and plug my vaporizer in and go. Works great, nothing fancy, got it a harbor freight, just make sure that the watts of the inverter is more than the vaporizer can draw and you are good to go.
Thank you for putting these videos up for us to watch! Its good to see the wins and the losses, and to see what you'll do different. I've had a hard time with hive beetles this year in more colonies than previous years. Seems like bare ground and shade is my trouble so I'll have to reconfigure my setup this fall. I'm giving the swiffer sheets a try for now. Keep up the wonderful content! 😊
Watched this video to the end , I strongly recommend you try Guardian entrances on a few of your hives , hive beetle cannot hover to enter the guardian entrance with your hives they just fly in the front entrance , you mention an Australian way mixing yeast etc , to much sugar and bees will come and drown , have tried it not much success, try Guardian on a few hives i think you will be impressed, all my hives have them , have very little trouble with hive beetle .Peter 🇦🇺
Lol Aug beekeeping I always tell my friends beekeepers have an attitude change from March to August. March we are all chomping at the bit can't wait to get into the bees and by Aug we are all waiting for winter hoping winter will hurry up and get here.
Still loving your intro music!! I hate that you’re having such a hard time with the hive beetles. I’m so glad I don’t have any so far. I love my instant vap it’s sweet !
Hi Nathan. I have landscape fabric below my hives. Not a controlled study or anything, but does seem to help limit the hive beetle reproduction to a manageable level. Appreciate this May not be practical for larger operations.
I have second hand roofing iron under all my hives. Seems to dramatically cut down the hive beetles, and stops the stands from sinking into the ground when wet. Here in North Queensland, Australia we have to have our hives about 16 inches/400mm off the ground to keep the Cane Toads from eating all the bees.
Granted it is a lot more work, I have done all my outyards with roofing iron, also keeps the weeds away from the hives. I lay down 2 sheets wide so about 5ft wide. Also use bullet oil traps that sit between the frames for beetle control, The Bees chase the beetle into the traps. Again more work as I get more hives. It appears here in Australia we are going to have to deal with Varroa since our government has utterly and miserably failed to contain the current incursion. @@DuckRiverHoney
You will love the Instavap. You will probably want to get a couple 12 amp hr batteries though. The 5 amp hr. batteries don't last too long especially if you a using higher doses like say 4 grams.
I have tried all kinds of deterents to stop raccoon problems. I feed with buckets and they soon learn how to get the tint plug out and lap up the syrup. Of course they don't stop with one bucket either. They will get them all once they learn the trick and they come back every night. The best thing I have found is a baited 5 gal bucket with a conibear set in the open end. That will stop the ones that have figured out how to make raid on the buckets. It will last until a new one or two moves in and figures it out. They can work around concrete blocks and ratchet straps too so the bucket trick has worked best for me.
@@DuckRiverHoney Yes I understand that and they are illegal here on dry land as well. My bee yard is way back at the edge of my crop land along the woods edge. I tried concrete blocks, ratchet straps, different scents to deter them but once they found out how to get into the buckets, there no stopping them. They even knocked over a hive to get at a frame feeder. I didn't try a shorter version of a bear fence which may have stopped them but you being a farmer know it's just a matter of time until a weed shorts out the fence and it doesn't work. If my yard was anywhere near the house or other people's property I wouldn't use the bucket method. Once I got rid of the ones that were doing the damage I able to remove the set.
Now that you have my two wishlist oxaclic acid tools with the ez vap and the instantvap. Do you think knowing what you know now, would you be able to treat a whole yard with the instant and increase productivity if you could only have one?
It would be good if we could use Farm Bureau to influence the road maintenance to only cut the medians once a year in the late fall or early winter after a frost to allow bees full use of flowering weeds on road sides.
@@DuckRiverHoney Maybe you don't have deer down south but up here in the north those deer can hide down in them ditches and you never see them until they are on the road. MN has like 120,000 deer vs car collisions a year and mowing that first strip of grass next to the road allows you to see the deer down in the ditches. I know our ditches are deeper than yours which helps us with snow issues in the winter. But mowing all the ditches in the middle of summer is a shame and waste of money. Thanks guys for letting me share my view.
a question: older brood comb from over winter dead out of a 3 year old hive. Contains bee bread and dark capped honey. If I freeze that to use for spring nukes, will bees consume the old pollen and hone? , I've heard different opinions(imagine that) with most common being scrape it off and let them rebuild. Hate to waste resources.
Also, (in the colony that was requeened with a nuc) how long was the queen caged for? Why not allow them to release her with a candy plug or newspaper combine the nuc into that colony? They were probably building emergency cells because not enough of the queen’s pheromone was getting through the screen of the cage. AirTag for the string trimmer? 🤔
@@DuckRiverHoney FWIW, it’s pretty easy to pre-fill some of the black plastic tubes with fondant and keep them handy for when you need them. Marshmallows will also work.
The honeybees are not native in america they are that in europe. There are other native pollinater that will be exstingquised for the honeybees. Your own plants doesnt feel as good from honeybees as they are not native. Those native pollinaters are the best för your plants, those pollinaters as the best, with those who were ment to be there in the first place,
Next time you see Bob personally look him in the eye and ask him what it takes to become a beekeeper. If he smerks with almost a smile that’s what I call mileage. I had a half semi load of bees coming and the local authorities of edu told me a strong hive will control shb. Ya ok sure. Your young the reason there’s no wild flowers etc in lawns is the treatments because they solved the pest issue. Trade off or a choice. Making a law and your promoting a old issue. Nice in theory but your looking at the after. Like admiring a rich man. The struggle and the answers to that struggle is the real wealth. Only responded because I heard politics. Your answer is grubx and peppermint and traps. Take a handfull of grub x in a infested hive and smash it into the moving larva. Each larva is a new problem. The proz understand off label answers but then your treading into legal territory. Bee use to be a 4 letter word here because of the thoughts of new laws. Habitats is fine but don’t force. Balance don’t bring back old problems that are forgotten. Consult Bob. August is always brutal here. Fight the good fight young man. If it happened there’s a reason meaning proof is in the action not in the book that generalizes. How the pie is sliced. The answer comes in pulling it from the unknown. Look for that grin in Bob. Your yeast recipe inside the hive might be creating more issues with being young you’re going to find out if it works or not, somebody experience might not do it. Not a insult but the way God designed the young and old. Only reality will tell you the answer.
The NRCS has a program that pays landowners to convert farmland to pollinator habitat. Check with your local county NRCS office for details. A couple tips on using Grub Ex. 1) Don't be disappointed with your results this fall because you're already infested and don't let your results this fall prevent you from applying it again next April or May, it really works. 2) You must treat the area around the hive with a heavy application and especially the area under the hive between the cinder blocks. I use a small cup and "sling" the material under the stands.
I second your comments about Grub Ex. I applied it to my bee yard in June this year, hoping that it wasn’t to late to knock down hive beetle larva, so far, it seems my hive beetle numbers are significantly lower this year. One thing I noticed with my application, it takes a lot of water to “water in” the crystal so, try to do it before a significant amount of rain is expected. Watering in a large area with a garden hose isn’t very practical.
Thanks!
Peppermint and dixie sheets work as well as beetle bee gone pads. Hit them hard
About bought walmart out of peperment but also peperment essential oils work if used right
Nathan you can use diatomaceous earth sprinkled under hives.
Yay, Im #4. Maybe a simple wooden turn nob to "lock" the oil trays in will keep the Racoon from opening the tray.
I’d prefer not to add extra work unless it’s necessary.
@@DuckRiverHoney sure, a risk analysis, cost benefit analysis would answer that for you.
I would recommend to drill a 1/4 hole in the back side of the bottom board. Then insert the barrel of the vaporizer into it, and seal the front entrance with a rag. You will have less loss of product which leads to higher coverage in the hive.
I’ve done it that way in the past, but going in the front is quicker and doesn’t stress the tube.
Check inside that feeder for the beetle nest.
Please don't ever change your intro music... it instantly calms me. I don't need any dramatic enhancements in beekeeping. You deliver a straight forward genuine look at life , and that's much appreciated. Thank you for sharing the successes and struggles .... we all relate even if its on different levels....
Thanks!
"Bee brain" tired, just the time of the bee season. 😮💨I's been a lot of work this year.👍Thanks for sharing your time.
Thanks DC!
Holler at me. I’ve got a homemade beetle trap for ya.
I use Walker Bee Ranch "Honey Rustler " on my fume boards. Works great in chasing the bees down. A sunny day helps too.
I do not know if you have tried peppermint candies or not , But I have had good luck with them . I place one candy on top of frames in each corner in each box . It really seems to work on the Hive Beetles
So glad we are too far north for any significant hive beetle pressure, that looks like a tough battle.
It’s no fun!
Once you get and use the Pro Vac, I'm sure you'll go to it as your #1 tool vs your current set up.
Try putting 2-4 1” wood screws through the plastic container and into the wood cap on your feeders. The rubber o-rings will eventually fail.
If you have drawn comb, I wonder if it might be good to move frames of emerging brood from your strongest colonies into your weak colonies that are having beetle issues. Can probably also feed protein to the strong colonies to make-up for the removed brood
I’ve equalized into the ones with promise already.
@@DuckRiverHoney
👍🏻👍🏻
A friend of mine did away with the front entrances and put a couple of holes in the bottom board. No problem for the bees. Hive beetles have trouble flying up.
Heard about that idea on bottom hole entrance
The guardian entrances may help too.
Thanks for answering my question. We use honey robber and you're right, it smells like vomit on asphalt on a hot day!!! The only thing we hadn't done this season was use the blower at the yard before putting the boxes on the trailer. We pulled and immediately covered the boxes on the trailer to limit the robbing still a lot come home with us... Again. I appreciate the answer and we'll keep trying!! Love the channel... keep up the great work!!
August and September our little angels change. Beekeeping a little different then. Getting mine queen right for winter has been a challenge for sure. You have grown your colonies and accomplished a lot this year. Anxious to see next years results. Thanks for the videos. Take care
Thanks Garry, I always look forward to your comments!
I’m glad we don’t have beetles in Ut feel bad for you guys.
They’re nasty!
I'm a waiting for a "fun" weather week with the bees but won't happen til next week. Going to bee 97 tomorrow here in Pennsylvania. So I'm making salsa indoors ! Yeah later in the season nucs need to be made super strong. Dealing with 4-5 weeks of drought here. Goldenrod blooming and asters about to bloom but doubt there is any nectar in those flowers. Feeding sugar syrup, applied another round of mite treatmetns (before the current heat wave) and twiddling my bee thumbs and making runs for sugar. Always wondering these days... are the hives getting plugged up with pollen/syrup and will I have healthy winter bees. Need to inventory the number of capped honey frames in the freezer and determine how many hives I can load up to avoid some feeding. Such a tight rope we beekeepers tread. I'll be hosting some gardening group ladies in the apiary next week... will be encouraging them to plant for the honey bees... I doubt it will be a hard sell! LOL
Sounds fun Nancy!
I dumped the generator for a inverter smaller than a shoebox that clips onto my truck battery and plug my vaporizer in and go. Works great, nothing fancy, got it a harbor freight, just make sure that the watts of the inverter is more than the vaporizer can draw and you are good to go.
Great video I really enjoy watching you work 😊and all the things your doing to help us bee keeper. Thanks for making the videos I appreciate them
Thanks Brian!
Great video, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Tommy!
Thank you for putting these videos up for us to watch! Its good to see the wins and the losses, and to see what you'll do different. I've had a hard time with hive beetles this year in more colonies than previous years. Seems like bare ground and shade is my trouble so I'll have to reconfigure my setup this fall. I'm giving the swiffer sheets a try for now. Keep up the wonderful content! 😊
Thanks!
There must be some nasty bitter flavor you could add to the vegetable oil to keep mammals out. Epsom's salts or maybe acetaminophen?
Plant Interstate through ways!
👍
I wish you talked more about the Money\business side of things.
That's a lot of beetles. A friend of mine mixed honey am boric acid and put in beatle jail. Seemed to work for him. But bee careful
Watched this video to the end , I strongly recommend you try Guardian entrances on a few of your hives , hive beetle cannot hover to enter the guardian entrance with your hives they just fly in the front entrance , you mention an Australian way mixing yeast etc , to much sugar and bees will come and drown , have tried it not much success, try Guardian on a few hives i think you will be impressed, all my hives have them , have very little trouble with hive beetle .Peter 🇦🇺
Thanks Peter!
Lol Aug beekeeping I always tell my friends beekeepers have an attitude change from March to August. March we are all chomping at the bit can't wait to get into the bees and by Aug we are all waiting for winter hoping winter will hurry up and get here.
👍 🤣
Thanks for Hive Beetle devastation clip.
Cheers!
Thanks Barry!
Hive Beatles? Hydrogen peroxide!!
Bob Binnie just posted a video about hive beetle treatments
Still loving your intro music!! I hate that you’re having such a hard time with the hive beetles. I’m so glad I don’t have any so far. I love my instant vap it’s sweet !
Thanks Clay!
Glad you are doing a rundown on the start up of your business
I use a johno with a harber freight predator 2000 suitcase generator
And use a good resperator
Pollen patty brings beatles too the gardstar over couple years have worked for me in Darlington s.c
Peppermint is the fix too
Use plaint water bucket to spread around hive
The insta vap very handy I treat my 3 apiary’s totally with it in one day there’s always a but I have to take 5 5 amp batteries
Yeah, I think I’ll use my generator unit when I’m treating everything.
Hi Nathan. I have landscape fabric below my hives. Not a controlled study or anything, but does seem to help limit the hive beetle reproduction to a manageable level. Appreciate this May not be practical for larger operations.
I’ve got some hives on roofing metal, and I put roofing felt paper under a bunch more as weed barriers. It’s still a terrible year for them.
I have second hand roofing iron under all my hives. Seems to dramatically cut down the hive beetles, and stops the stands from sinking into the ground when wet. Here in North Queensland, Australia we have to have our hives about 16 inches/400mm off the ground to keep the Cane Toads from eating all the bees.
I’ve got old metal under a bunch of mine. It works well but isn’t really scalable to outyards.
Granted it is a lot more work, I have done all my outyards with roofing iron, also keeps the weeds away from the hives. I lay down 2 sheets wide so about 5ft wide. Also use bullet oil traps that sit between the frames for beetle control, The Bees chase the beetle into the traps. Again more work as I get more hives. It appears here in Australia we are going to have to deal with Varroa since our government has utterly and miserably failed to contain the current incursion.
@@DuckRiverHoney
You will love the Instavap. You will probably want to get a couple 12 amp hr batteries though. The 5 amp hr. batteries don't last too long especially if you a using higher doses like say 4 grams.
I’ve got several of the 6 amp hour batteries.
If you smell something that smells like stinky feet it's goldenrod nectar.
I have tried all kinds of deterents to stop raccoon problems. I feed with buckets and they soon learn how to get the tint plug out and lap up the syrup. Of course they don't stop with one bucket either. They will get them all once they learn the trick and they come back every night. The best thing I have found is a baited 5 gal bucket with a conibear set in the open end. That will stop the ones that have figured out how to make raid on the buckets. It will last until a new one or two moves in and figures it out. They can work around concrete blocks and ratchet straps too so the bucket trick has worked best for me.
Try lead to the head. Works every time
@@daverowden-RowdyBeeFarms True but you have to sit and wait for them to show up and usually it's at night.
I can’t use conibears on dry land in TN. I’ve done a bit of trapping.
@@DuckRiverHoney Yes I understand that and they are illegal here on dry land as well. My bee yard is way back at the edge of my crop land along the woods edge. I tried concrete blocks, ratchet straps, different scents to deter them but once they found out how to get into the buckets, there no stopping them. They even knocked over a hive to get at a frame feeder. I didn't try a shorter version of a bear fence which may have stopped them but you being a farmer know it's just a matter of time until a weed shorts out the fence and it doesn't work. If my yard was anywhere near the house or other people's property I wouldn't use the bucket method. Once I got rid of the ones that were doing the damage I able to remove the set.
The dog proof traps work well on coons.
Now that you have my two wishlist oxaclic acid tools with the ez vap and the instantvap. Do you think knowing what you know now, would you be able to treat a whole yard with the instant and increase productivity if you could only have one?
I dunno, I don’t have enough time on the InstantVap. I may need to get bigger batteries to unlock it’s real potential.
It would be good if we could use Farm Bureau to influence the road maintenance to only cut the medians once a year in the late fall or early winter after a frost to allow bees full use of flowering weeds on road sides.
Agreed
@@DuckRiverHoney Maybe you don't have deer down south but up here in the north those deer can hide down in them ditches and you never see them until they are on the road. MN has like 120,000 deer vs car collisions a year and mowing that first strip of grass next to the road allows you to see the deer down in the ditches. I know our ditches are deeper than yours which helps us with snow issues in the winter. But mowing all the ditches in the middle of summer is a shame and waste of money. Thanks guys for letting me share my view.
We’ve got a lot of deer. I think you can balance road safety with smarter habitat management, at lower public cost.
What do you think about catching a small swarm in August 25 will they make it. I caught 2 one left. Like your podcast good luck with the Beatles.
It’ll be tough to get them going.
Have you looked at nematodes for the beetles? I have been interested in that as well.
I’ve heard they can work.
a question: older brood comb from over winter dead out of a 3 year old hive. Contains bee bread and dark capped honey. If I freeze that to use for spring nukes, will bees consume the old pollen and hone? , I've heard different opinions(imagine that) with most common being scrape it off and let them rebuild. Hate to waste resources.
Im with you on trying to save pollen bound frames. Useing freezer. Certan and ice crystals. We will see
If you freeze it I’d have no problem reusing.
The ants on the bottom tray???
I wonder if the eat the mites that fall on it? Reduce the number you can visually see…
Possibly but it would take time.
Also, (in the colony that was requeened with a nuc) how long was the queen caged for? Why not allow them to release her with a candy plug or newspaper combine the nuc into that colony?
They were probably building emergency cells because not enough of the queen’s pheromone was getting through the screen of the cage.
AirTag for the string trimmer? 🤔
She was caged for 4 or 5 days. I didn’t have a candy cage with me, nor newspaper.
@@DuckRiverHoney
FWIW, it’s pretty easy to pre-fill some of the black plastic tubes with fondant and keep them handy for when you need them. Marshmallows will also work.
I keep candy cages in the freezer, but not in the truck. They get too hot in the truck.
Are you useing gardstar or grub x around your hives?
Use gardstar with a plaint watering can. Takes time but got to start sometime
Do you happen to have a video of your syrup feeder and pump set up?
Not yet!
@@DuckRiverHoney you should make one!
👍
Have you heard about bacillus thuringiensis I don’t know what the effects are with honey bees. I have heard it will kill wax moths. Any advice?
Certan is the trade name. I have heard good things about it.
Nathan please don’t tell me you are a Tennessee fan?
I'm a double graduate from UT, but haven't followed football closely in years. (Kids limit hobbies)
The honeybees are not native in america they are that in europe. There are other native pollinater that will be exstingquised for the honeybees. Your own plants doesnt feel as good from honeybees as they are not native. Those native pollinaters are the best för your plants, those pollinaters as the best, with those who were ment to be there in the first place,
More pollinator habitat helps all pollinators.
August beekeeping blah
😂
Next time you see Bob personally look him in the eye and ask him what it takes to become a beekeeper. If he smerks with almost a smile that’s what I call mileage.
I had a half semi load of bees coming and the local authorities of edu told me a strong hive will control shb. Ya ok sure.
Your young the reason there’s no wild flowers etc in lawns is the treatments because they solved the pest issue.
Trade off or a choice.
Making a law and your promoting a old issue. Nice in theory but your looking at the after.
Like admiring a rich man. The struggle and the answers to that struggle is the real wealth.
Only responded because I heard politics.
Your answer is grubx and peppermint and traps. Take a handfull of grub x in a infested hive and smash it into the moving larva. Each larva is a new problem.
The proz understand off label answers but then your treading into legal territory.
Bee use to be a 4 letter word here because of the thoughts of new laws.
Habitats is fine but don’t force.
Balance don’t bring back old problems that are forgotten.
Consult Bob.
August is always brutal here.
Fight the good fight young man.
If it happened there’s a reason meaning proof is in the action not in the book that generalizes.
How the pie is sliced.
The answer comes in pulling it from the unknown.
Look for that grin in Bob.
Your yeast recipe inside the hive might be creating more issues with being young you’re going to find out if it works or not, somebody experience might not do it. Not a insult but the way God designed the young and old. Only reality will tell you the answer.
Thanks
treat the apiary with grub x
I picked some up yesterday.