“Comb is gold.” Absolutely. Looking good Kamon. What a year it has been! I was on the “honey excluder” bandwagon but decided to try queen excluders again last year. I got so tired of having to go through every frame when harvesting honey. So I let the bees get into the supers and then add the excluders with the queen below. The bees just keep on working. Any brood will emerge and then they backfill and cap the honey. Absolutely makes things easier. Going to pull honey again this weekend and looks to be a record crop, all with excluders in place. Thanks for another great video!
SWEET!!! No pun intended. I used single hive management with queen excluder on 4 production hives and got an average of over 100lbs per hive. It works!!!
Great video and informative. Nee sub. 1st year with my bees. Just added a super. On my last check I found 7 queen cells. I removed all. I did not want to split the hive yet maybe next year when I'm ready for 2 hive lol. Thank you for your videos. You explain everything so well. Diana Garden Love Homestead
We used them for a while but we don’t now. I think we may go back to it. What you said made sense on having them draw the comb first snd then put the excluder on. Our hives are all fairly new. We let them keep some of the honey year round and extract what we need for our consumption. We just harvested 17 frames from our two strongest hives. We end up with 60lbs of honey. This is just our hobby and we are learning daily. Thank you for all the info you so generously offer! Wishing you a great harvest year!
We religiously use excluders and run single brood chambers. This year's production hives averaged over 100 pounds of honey each. One stand out colony's yield was (for real) 193.2 pounds. We retail @$16 per pound so that is a $3000+ hive!
Yes, COL is sort of high, but we're on the northern edge of the Metro Atlanta area so not too bad. Quality of the packaging, the way we present ourselves at the market and how we share the story of the bees and our operation online all contribute.
Hello there. I'm in debate right now. I hope you can help me as I appreciate it very much. I got my bees last Saturday. The bee place told me to add my 2nd brood box right now which I will tomorrow.. but I've watched so much of single Brood hives. Should I add my other brood box? Or keep it single. I'm really confused. Thank you for your time.
A queen excluder is almost always required on a single brood box hive. Here in the UK the vast majority of bee keepers use a single national brood box with a QE and the bees make honey just fine.
I used to be a honey excluder beekeeper and decided try them this year and am very pleased with the results. I will be using excluders going forward. Great info!!
Hey Kaymon , I live in Prince George, Virginia and for the first time I am seeing sourwood trees blooming good and are in full bloom now . I’ve pulled two supers off one hive and have two supers almost complete on the same hive . This honey this year is very light amber and some is yellow in color and very sweet . I’ve made almost $300 off the first six gallons. This is small compared to what y’all pull in . I haven’t been this excited in years .
Hey Christian I am glad to hear it! The weather has been great here for honey and it seems the surrounding region has done well also. Crazy how different this year is from last year
I’m pretty sure you’ve made $1,500 in ad revenue from me alone Kamon 😂. And you deserve every dime of it. Seems like I’ve watched pretty much every one of your videos already and I’ve only been subscribed for a few months. Keep up the awesome work!
One tip I heard from a guy at a beekeeping store was that when you buy metal excluders, you should wash them with a mild unscented soap and water solution to get the oil from the factory off, and the bees will go thru it with no problem.
You touched on all that I consider to be important points. I don't use them on my big yards unless I see rising brood. However at my smaller yards, one of my "honey excluded" hives yielded 3.5 full deeps which had previously been all undrawn except 2 frames. It can't be stressed enough that they need something above the excluder to pull them through it!
Awesome boxes of honey Kamon!!! We’ve been at about 115f up here. Stupid hot… keeping water out for the girls to cool the hives. We are sure needing the rain. Keep these awesome videos coming Sir! 😃
@@kamonreynolds - Thank you Sir! We’ve got about another week of triple digits according to the weather…. Hoping they are wrong and it starts cooling off sooner. 🤣
Kamon when I see you working with just a cheap vail reminds me of me, I don't fear the bees getting in the vail when they do get in they just want to get out again I tend to take it off there and then let the bee out then carry on. My Bees like yours are beautiful to handle very calm gentle not interesting in attacking as long as you show them respect and are gentle with them! I have carniolan, carpathian and Italians the Italians were the first to build queen cells with larvae in them, will admit my carpathian have less interest in swarming even now build queen cups that's it there also my best out of all for producing large amounts of honey and getting out even in the rain must have built in umbrellas on there bodies with wipers on there eyes but great dark bees not seen any down sides to these bees at all just good things. I bought these queens last year from Greece and Romania sent to the UK 🇬🇧 a lot of UK bee keepers use the small National hive which I'm not a lover of to small I love the Commercial 11 frame hive bigger brood then the National very much like a Langstroth but with more egg laying in the brood box.
Excluders only hinder honey production in supers in small hives....but those are the ones you shouldn't be taking honey from in the first place. With this year's outstanding honey production the only problem I've had is one queen managed to squeeze through an excluder and managed to lay at least some brood in all but one comb in the super. Since I was a little short in boxes/frames for this year's flow (never expected this much), I've already pulled multiple boxes, processed them, and put them back on. A note for newbies, use the metal wire excluders and not the cheaper plastic ones. Bees coat the excluders with wax that requires cleaning before next season. The plastic excluders are a pain to clean and if you damage one slot the queen will find it next year. My best hive this year has already produced 8 medium supers of honey and are working on 3 new supers. With the rain we are having and the acres of white clover in bloom, the dearth isn't going to be for a few weeks yet. I don't know what the total honey for the Spring will be......but it will be better than I've ever had.
This year our flow came in so fast that it just didnt matter what you did they were going to swarm. Hard to take but i ended up splitting production hives. You take what you get. It did not rain for about a month during prime honey time. 😢
"Voila" is French for "Here [it] is!" So that's pretty accurate. Think of it as meaning similar to "There ya go!" or "Here it is!" Viola, which i typoed originally, is a musical instrument. Whoops.
Excellent! And timely. We had trouble getting bees to draw comb in a super when using a queen excluder. Makes perfect sense that supers with drawn comb would be much more attractive to the them. This is just our second year so we have a lot to learn. I love practical tips like this. Thank you!
Thanks Teresa! I am excited to share. Took me several years to learn much of this myself and if I can help beekeepers learn it faster then that makes me happy
Great video. I always learn something watching your channel. I also like that what you are doing is current and you give information on what you are doing and why. My first year i would watch these guys and i was always a month 6 weeks behind. You have helped BUNCHES! PS. You have a beautiful family. It's always fun to see what Jimmy is into.
I just pulled our first honey supers today. Close to about 100 lbs each on 2 hives and about 70 each on 4 others. Great year in Northern New Mexico as well. And there still bringing it in but I ran out of supers and frames so I’m extracting to have drawn comb to put back on. Still waiting for my mann lake order of boxes frames and foundations to hopefully get new comb drawn if possible. I ordered the Vevor 3 frame motorized extractor let’s see how it works.
First year bee keeping here and I tried the queen excluder as soon as I needed to add my sec box and they would not move up there. I might go back to it next year though after I have some comb to move around.
Same here, my 1st year after a 20 year break. Kaymen is right. drawn comb is gold! But when your'e starting out you usually have to do with foundation. I've heard that if your adding a super above the QE (I would never super without a QE) a spray 1:1 sugar water solution on all of the super foundation can entice the girls to draw comb faster. I could be wrong, I usually am. Good luck for your beekeeping future. Mark.
You could always add a "Super Frame" into your Brood Chamber... Get it Drawn out a bit... And then take that to Seed the "Get Comb Made" pronto in the Super Box... When starting out. 👍 I only use x5 over x5 over, x5 Frame Nucs Boxes (Deeps) and in taking a regular Frame out of the Brood Box, gives the Queen space to lay (inhibits Swarming Tendencies.) And, you have a continuous supply of Frames for all Boxes... 💪 When taking Capped Honey, Extract, and return as Wet Frames, to the Brood Chamber.... Capped Brood up to Second Box, over QE. Once these have emerged, take up to Third Box... So Honey is Stored... Repeat, repeat .... Simples. 🤗 Happy Beekeeping 2021. 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
A simple "like" is too little - as usual, your videos are terrific. I bought two basic h ives, - each one deep and one super - based on the Dadant system which is popular here in France. Still hoping to catch a swarm on one of my swarm traps to get started. Thanks for everything.
I've started using some excluders this season on half of my hives. I'm wondering if you use an upper entrance to allow bees access to the supers without going through the excluder?
Last year I had 3 production hives, 1 with a queen excluder and 1 without an excluder. I got a lot of honey off the 1 that had an excluder. The other hive without an excluder had little bits of brood on every frame all over the the hive that had 4 boxes on it and I could not extract it. Lost the whole honey production on that one since I had to start treating instead waiting for the brood to emerge. This year I had excluders on all honey production hives and I got 3 times the honey so far than i got last last year and I should get 1 more harvest. I tried something different with 1 hive ...Let it fill up 2 boxes of brood first add the queen excluder, and let the bees fill the next super with honey until capped. Then I removed the queen excluder and left the super in place and then I added another super. There was no difference between the hive with excluder and the hive without excluder. Most of my hives ended up with five deep boxes 10 frame boxes. New colonies that are smaller or not production hives and nucs do not get an excluder.
Outstanding as always!!.I have a question though , If my neighbor down the road from me (1/4 mile)open feeds his bees , how do I know if my bees are not going down and bringing that back to my supers?? Just a crazy question from South Carolina ..
The plastic are harder to clean, harder to work with (they like sticking to the wrong box) and more prone to breaking (one little break in the mesh and the queen can go up); they work just fine and cost less.
Wow! That is so impressive. Thanks for your opinion on the queen excluders. I have about 7 of the old style metal with wood excluders left from my adventures during the 70's and 80's that I have had mixed emotions about using. I noticed that you are using medium supers, is that going to be a standard in order to save your back? I am 77 am beginning to experience lifting problems with the deep supers. I am thinking about going to the single deep super and then using mediums. I presently have 17 shallows but have focused on expanding my apiary from 3 colonies to 8 though right now I have 9. I have been using the double deep hive bodies so far. Your thoughts if you have the time. I know you are busy. Thanks for all of your videos, they are the best!
Hey John, hope you are doing well. We are going to mediums for back reasons. If I had a better lift system deeps would make since but I don't. Also, my wife helps alot and the kids will be more and more. I want to make sure I take care of thier bodies as well as we plan to do this the rest of our lives if possible. I think what you are proposing would work very good.
I thought I had lost my Queen. I wasnt seeing any new eggs, I couldn't find her. I used the queen excluder waited a week and found her, (she is unmarked). Also after putting in the excluder I started seeing progress drawing comb and storage in the top box. Not sure if it helped or not or if its all due to the Dutch clover going insane in my yard
So when adding new supers to a hive, do you always add the newest empty super to the bottom closest to the brood box and move the full honey supers to the very top? I added the empty one to the very top.
Great video, thanks. I've kept bees since 2018, and have used a queen excluder every honey season. My mentor said use it or not, its a personal preference. So far so good I think. OFF TOPIC I keep six colonies, two of those are hosted by friends. I try to inspect once a week. I feel like that may be to much. What do you think?
Run a couple without for comparison. I did that this year and yes my excluder hives made great honey but my hives without are working on their 5th deep supers beating the hives with excluders handily.
Kamon, just starting back into keeping bees after quit a few years off. We didn't have single brood management back then, it was believed that you needed two hive bodies for the bees to survive the winter. If you could, either give me a list of steps from package, split, or swarm from start to winter with single brood chamber management. I have worked real hard getting my first 5 hives started from May until now and don't want to lose them. I put queen excluders on two of the strongest hives yesterday with hive bodies with foundation on top. Naturally I don't have any drawn comb and am worried the bees won't draw them out. Any guidance will be much appreciated.
Good vidéo! Hi Kamon, here in the north (47th parallel...❄️) the nights are cold during summer and I noticed that the hives with plastic queen excluder do way better than those with metal QE. I always find this rusty water in the rims of the queen excluder (metallic) in the morning when I start my inspections. " VOILA". Carlos
Kamon, I heard that if you have a double brood box then you don't need queen excluder because the queen has so much space that she would not lay eggs on the honey supers. Did you have had any experience with that ?
Hey Mark! That is hog wash. I have seen queens 4 deep up. Sometimes if they plug up the top box she will stay down but often she will slip up without an excluder
You always add foundations as close to the brood as possible once they start filling the comb supers. If you have drawn comb you can just stick that on top but if you are going down you can just throw it down low.
I extracted already and I will get 1 more harvest if the weather plays right. So, for me I will extract one more time around august . I will take the excluder off after the last extraction, also I treat for mites at the time and will repeat treating for mites before winter again . I got double brood deep 10 frames as is and I use only deep 10 frame boxes even as supers and then I got 3 supers on top of the 2 brood boxes right now. For winter I will use 2 brood boxes and probably a super and no queen excluder since the queen needs to be able to move around .
Search a helpful video! So when you add a honey super with only foundation you put it above the queen excluder, but below your honey supers that already has honey?
Strong colony is great and all, but for just urban backyard hobby beekeepers like myself, too many bees is a problem... Recently my colony got too strong and I ran out of boxes to expand/split, and it got so crowded that crack opening the box is just like opening a pandora's box, lots of bees swarm out even the neighbors noticed. Any suggestion on maintaining the colony size for us hobby beekeepers that don't want to keep expanding every season? My city also as a ordinance on max 2 hives per property, and each time they swarm/split, I got to find people to give the colony away, I think I ran out of people to give the free bees to.
Peter Lee, You can control your Bee population, by taking out an odd Brood Frame, (maybe ones that are a bit hotch potch in lay, or are less laid / pollen / nectar combo's...) AND Freeze it ! Then, thaw it out (!) Add it back to the Colony.... 👍 1) You kill capped cells (stop them from hatching)....These cells are now 'protein' and can be fed back to the Colony at anytime. (If kept frozen...) And thaw them when bees could do with a pick me up ! (Nutrition Boost.) 2) The Pollen / Bee Bread, and Nectar can be fed back too... 3) Do you have Chickens ? Feed these Frames to your Birds as tasty "Snack" time. Works great on Plastic Foundation, (Wax might be pecked and mashed big time. But if you give them the old dark ones, it doesn't matter. Peck to pieces, and Melt afterwards.... Do this when you have to much population, and or more Drone Comb than you want. Or have Frames you want cleaned up, freezing stalls everything, and returns, to the Hive, become Food, Protein, and Nutrient Rich.. Win, win result. 👍 # Only do this every so often, mid season, not late season, as natural die back occurs, when eg Autumn (Fall) happens. Or you might want to donate a few Frames of Brood to a Local School (Bee Club) or a Growing Alloment (Market Garden) as beneficial pollinators. Correx Nuc Boxes aren't expensive. Or if you don't want to give your equipment away... See Sam "Comfort" Hives... These are x4 12" Board Sides, a Tile Roof and Floor, and Comb hangs off Bamboo Skewers ! (Guess you could cut out some of your Brood Cells in wide Strips and wire them onto Skewers... And add s few cups of Bees (!) Sure you would get a Newbie New Bee(k) wanting your spare Bees !?! Pass it On. 💪 Hope this helps. 🤗 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
If you can find the queen, you can cage her for two weeks for a brood break; release at two weeks, then one week later do an oxalic dribble. At that point there will be no capped brood, so the oxalic will be very effective. In the meantime there will have been some natural die-off of the older bees, so the hive will be less crowded.
@@paulchristu996 This idea did cross my mind... a smaller mating-nuc like habitat for the queen to "lay low" for few weeks before returning her. Maybe I will give it a try. Thanks!
Do you only run a single brood chambers? Do you think that might be a reason why some people have less luck with queen excluders? I run a double deep brood chamber in upstate NY and don't have as much luck with excluders.
Nice video. Couple things…where did you get that hive tool? I’ve been in the honey excluder camp but am considering switching. I’ve found and heard if the flow is slow the bees would jam out the brood nest below the excluder. What’s your experience?
Hi Kamon, I’m running a single deep brood box with a medium super on top that is nearly full. If I put another medium super with foundation on top of the medium super that’s nearly full and remove the excluder will they go up and draw comb quickly? Thanks!
Do you think their is any merit to the statement that bees are not as good at drawing comb above an excluder? I only have six hives so I have plenty of time to extract around supers if needed. Let’s say a hive has a drawn super they fill it with honey and then you add a super of foundation, will they drawn the comb?
What strain of queens/bees are you running? My bees aren't overly aggressive but I'd be eaten alive checking my hive without sleeves and gloves. Thanks. PS, flow wasn't near as strong here in SW Missouri as you appear to have where you are located.
With that much honey flow this year, looking excitedly forward to seeing your new extraction line tests! K would you mind adding one of those neck fans to your Amazon store? They seem like a useful tool in this hot summer. No worries to your pronunciation , getting corrected by the french is like being chewed out by a snail eating toy poodle :) Actually I admire those inventive frog eaters. For instance, who invented white underwear? The french, so they would always have a white flag handy. And speaking of flow". Who invented crotchless underwear? The french, So their white flags wouldn't have those annoying brown skid marks :)
In the UK, they had Red underclothes... Viva Revolution (not !) No flag waving for Blighties.... 🇬🇧 But Victorians thought "Red was Warmer" to wear, in the 1840's or so.... Dickens always had Poor, chilled, Characters in his Books.... Only with a Candle for Warmth.🕯️ (Think the 19th Century experienced many long cold spells, repeatedly.) 🤔 See Classic Movie... "The Railway Children"... Red under garments to the rescue... ! 🤭
I have a fan like that - got it off Amazon. Search "neck fan" and it should bring back some results. The ones I got ran about 18 bucks, but those, combined with the cool vest I got (glacier tek) have saved me this summer.
It's called "Bubble reflective foil insulation". You can find it at home improvement stores or Amazon the role is extremely cheap. They work great and a lot easier to work with and cheaper than the wood inner covers
Did you pyramid the frames and bring 3-4 frames from the center of the lower brood box up and put empty frames in to replace those? This saved me from any cross comb. 2nd Year bee keeper and i am sure there are 10 opinions on it just thought I would help.
I'm guessing you're using plastic foundation with your deep frames? I tried to extract deeps for the first time. They had wax foundation and I lost all of my comb. I'm going to cycle out every frame I have and replace with plastic foundation.
If you use wax foundation for deeps they will need to be cross wired by hand if they are to survive extraction. This is another reason why I use the plastic save tons of time
Think how much honey you would of got if you didnt use honey xcluder. Hahahah 🤣🤣🤣
Love it!
“Comb is gold.” Absolutely. Looking good Kamon. What a year it has been! I was on the “honey excluder” bandwagon but decided to try queen excluders again last year. I got so tired of having to go through every frame when harvesting honey. So I let the bees get into the supers and then add the excluders with the queen below. The bees just keep on working. Any brood will emerge and then they backfill and cap the honey. Absolutely makes things easier. Going to pull honey again this weekend and looks to be a record crop, all with excluders in place. Thanks for another great video!
Thanks Bruce glad you are kicking butt
@@kamonreynolds thanks man. Not sure if I am kicking butt or if the bees are kicking my butt lol!
@@brucesbees Same here just depends on which day it is!
SWEET!!! No pun intended. I used single hive management with queen excluder on 4 production hives and got an average of over 100lbs per hive. It works!!!
Great video and informative. Nee sub. 1st year with my bees. Just added a super. On my last check I found 7 queen cells. I removed all. I did not want to split the hive yet maybe next year when I'm ready for 2 hive lol. Thank you for your videos. You explain everything so well.
Diana
Garden Love Homestead
We used them for a while but we don’t now. I think we may go back to it. What you said made sense on having them draw the comb first snd then put the excluder on. Our hives are all fairly new. We let them keep some of the honey year round and extract what we need for our consumption. We just harvested 17 frames from our two strongest hives. We end up with 60lbs of honey. This is just our hobby and we are learning daily. Thank you for all the info you so generously offer! Wishing you a great harvest year!
We religiously use excluders and run single brood chambers. This year's production hives averaged over 100 pounds of honey each. One stand out colony's yield was (for real) 193.2 pounds. We retail @$16 per pound so that is a $3000+ hive!
Wow!
No way! Man, I have to up my game.
good for you. how do you get such a high price per pound? are you just in a really expensive cost of living area?
Yes, COL is sort of high, but we're on the northern edge of the Metro Atlanta area so not too bad.
Quality of the packaging, the way we present ourselves at the market and how we share the story of the bees and our operation online all contribute.
Hello there. I'm in debate right now. I hope you can help me as I appreciate it very much. I got my bees last Saturday. The bee place told me to add my 2nd brood box right now which I will tomorrow.. but I've watched so much of single Brood hives. Should I add my other brood box? Or keep it single. I'm really confused. Thank you for your time.
A queen excluder is almost always required on a single brood box hive. Here in the UK the vast majority of bee keepers use a single national brood box with a QE and the bees make honey just fine.
I used to be a honey excluder beekeeper and decided try them this year and am very pleased with the results. I will be using excluders going forward. Great info!!
Same here once I started using them I found they save me so much time!
Great video! I just extracted 10 Gallons of honey from a single hive with a "Honey Excluder"! Like you said it's all about using your tools correctly.
Hey Kaymon , I live in Prince George, Virginia and for the first time I am seeing sourwood trees blooming good and are in full bloom now . I’ve pulled two supers off one hive and have two supers almost complete on the same hive . This honey this year is very light amber and some is yellow in color and very sweet . I’ve made almost $300 off the first six gallons. This is small compared to what y’all pull in . I haven’t been this excited in years .
Hey Christian I am glad to hear it! The weather has been great here for honey and it seems the surrounding region has done well also. Crazy how different this year is from last year
I’m pretty sure you’ve made $1,500 in ad revenue from me alone Kamon 😂. And you deserve every dime of it. Seems like I’ve watched pretty much every one of your videos already and I’ve only been subscribed for a few months. Keep up the awesome work!
😂😂😂 so true!
Thanks Nathan you are too kind.
One tip I heard from a guy at a beekeeping store was that when you buy metal excluders, you should wash them with a mild unscented soap and water solution to get the oil from the factory off, and the bees will go thru it with no problem.
You touched on all that I consider to be important points. I don't use them on my big yards unless I see rising brood. However at my smaller yards, one of my "honey excluded" hives yielded 3.5 full deeps which had previously been all undrawn except 2 frames. It can't be stressed enough that they need something above the excluder to pull them through it!
Awesome boxes of honey Kamon!!! We’ve been at about 115f up here. Stupid hot… keeping water out for the girls to cool the hives. We are sure needing the rain.
Keep these awesome videos coming Sir! 😃
Man that is stupid hot. Hope you all get some nice weather your way soon thanks Larry
@@kamonreynolds - Thank you Sir! We’ve got about another week of triple digits according to the weather…. Hoping they are wrong and it starts cooling off sooner. 🤣
Great video brother. I like the single brood box. It makes it easier to find the queen and have more honey.
Kamon when I see you working with just a cheap vail reminds me of me, I don't fear the bees getting in the vail when they do get in they just want to get out again I tend to take it off there and then let the bee out then carry on. My Bees like yours are beautiful to handle very calm gentle not interesting in attacking as long as you show them respect and are gentle with them! I have carniolan, carpathian and Italians the Italians were the first to build queen cells with larvae in them, will admit my carpathian have less interest in swarming even now build queen cups that's it there also my best out of all for producing large amounts of honey and getting out even in the rain must have built in umbrellas on there bodies with wipers on there eyes but great dark bees not seen any down sides to these bees at all just good things. I bought these queens last year from Greece and Romania sent to the UK 🇬🇧 a lot of UK bee keepers use the small National hive which I'm not a lover of to small I love the Commercial 11 frame hive bigger brood then the National very much like a Langstroth but with more egg laying in the brood box.
Excluders only hinder honey production in supers in small hives....but those are the ones you shouldn't be taking honey from in the first place. With this year's outstanding honey production the only problem I've had is one queen managed to squeeze through an excluder and managed to lay at least some brood in all but one comb in the super. Since I was a little short in boxes/frames for this year's flow (never expected this much), I've already pulled multiple boxes, processed them, and put them back on. A note for newbies, use the metal wire excluders and not the cheaper plastic ones. Bees coat the excluders with wax that requires cleaning before next season. The plastic excluders are a pain to clean and if you damage one slot the queen will find it next year. My best hive this year has already produced 8 medium supers of honey and are working on 3 new supers. With the rain we are having and the acres of white clover in bloom, the dearth isn't going to be for a few weeks yet. I don't know what the total honey for the Spring will be......but it will be better than I've ever had.
It’s amazing to get that much honey from one brood chamber.
Thank you, Kamon! As an intermediate beekeeper, I find your videos invaluable!
This year our flow came in so fast that it just didnt matter what you did they were going to swarm. Hard to take but i ended up splitting production hives.
You take what you get.
It did not rain for about a month during prime honey time. 😢
Awesome. Thanks for videos and chats. Glad you are having a good year.
Wow! They have really packed it in this year!! Don't forget to save for the rainy days, cuz you never know when it will fall !! 😉🐝🌻🐝👍
You are by far the best, most entertaining, full of knowledge beekeeper I follow. Nice work kamon and you too Laurel.
Thanks 👍
Thanks great information for us new beekeepers!
"Voila" is French for "Here [it] is!" So that's pretty accurate.
Think of it as meaning similar to "There ya go!" or "Here it is!"
Viola, which i typoed originally, is a musical instrument. Whoops.
Well said Kamon.
Very nice! I've been running a single brood chamber with an excluder on and my bees have been doing great!!
Excellent! And timely. We had trouble getting bees to draw comb in a super when using a queen excluder. Makes perfect sense that supers with drawn comb would be much more attractive to the them. This is just our second year so we have a lot to learn. I love practical tips like this. Thank you!
Thanks Teresa! I am excited to share. Took me several years to learn much of this myself and if I can help beekeepers learn it faster then that makes me happy
Thank you. This is valuable information.
Thanks for watching Maggie!
Great video. I always learn something watching your channel. I also like that what you are doing is current and you give information on what you are doing and why. My first year i would watch these guys and i was always a month 6 weeks behind. You have helped BUNCHES!
PS. You have a beautiful family. It's always fun to see what Jimmy is into.
I appreciate it Pat! Happy 4th of July
Great video. Could not agree more!
Just got out of my hives today and sitting under shade tree here in NC. Bees are landing on my hand and i swear kamon they are watching you on UA-cam.
Well I bet they have a few pointers on what I could do better!
Good information about the undrawn comb above the excluder. Thanks.
Glad it was helpful!
C'est bon mon ami !
(That's good, my Friend !)
Voila... "Here is...
or, .... Veiled" 😆
🇫🇷 to 🇬🇧 👍
Happy Bee Keeping 2021.
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
I just pulled our first honey supers today. Close to about 100 lbs each on 2 hives and about 70 each on 4 others. Great year in Northern New Mexico as well. And there still bringing it in but I ran out of supers and frames so I’m extracting to have drawn comb to put back on. Still waiting for my mann lake order of boxes frames and foundations to hopefully get new comb drawn if possible. I ordered the Vevor 3 frame motorized extractor let’s see how it works.
Wow! Congratulations!
Hey Kamon...glad you are liking the fan!
Thanks for recommending them
Yet another great video! Thank you.
Got several good boxes off swarms this year that started on foundation only. It's been a great year for catching swarms and honey production. ❤🐝
The best advise I’ve ever received about queen excluders. Thx
how long did it take the bees to fill most of those suppers
First year bee keeping here and I tried the queen excluder as soon as I needed to add my sec box and they would not move up there. I might go back to it next year though after I have some comb to move around.
Same here, my 1st year after a 20 year break. Kaymen is right. drawn comb is gold! But when your'e starting out you usually have to do with foundation. I've heard that if your adding a super above the QE (I would never super without a QE) a spray 1:1 sugar water solution on all of the super foundation can entice the girls to draw comb faster. I could be wrong, I usually am. Good luck for your beekeeping future. Mark.
You could always add a "Super Frame" into your Brood Chamber... Get it Drawn out a bit... And then take that to Seed the "Get Comb Made" pronto in the Super Box... When starting out. 👍
I only use x5 over x5 over, x5 Frame Nucs Boxes (Deeps) and in taking a regular Frame out of the Brood Box, gives the Queen space to lay (inhibits Swarming Tendencies.)
And, you have a continuous supply of Frames for all Boxes... 💪
When taking Capped Honey, Extract, and return as Wet Frames, to the Brood Chamber.... Capped Brood up to Second Box, over QE. Once these have emerged, take up to Third Box... So Honey is Stored... Repeat, repeat ....
Simples. 🤗
Happy Beekeeping 2021.
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Got lots of happy bees in that hive making the liquid gold. They're not bother by the excluder, so the results speak for themself.
*Thanks for sharing good content Apiculture Kamon* 👍🇺🇲
A simple "like" is too little - as usual, your videos are terrific.
I bought two basic h
ives, - each one deep and one super - based on the Dadant system which is popular here in France. Still hoping to catch a swarm on one of my swarm traps to get started. Thanks for everything.
Thanks and good luck Michael
I've started using some excluders this season on half of my hives. I'm wondering if you use an upper entrance to allow bees access to the supers without going through the excluder?
Beautiful honey fully capped
Great video. The single brood box system works every time
Great video!!
Thanks Michelle!
Great work!!! Beautiful job 💯💪
Last year I had 3 production hives, 1 with a queen excluder and 1 without an excluder.
I got a lot of honey off the 1 that had an excluder. The other hive without an excluder had little bits of brood on every frame all over the the hive that had 4 boxes on it and I could not extract it. Lost the whole honey production on that one since I had to start treating instead waiting for the brood to emerge.
This year I had excluders on all honey production hives and I got 3 times the honey so far than i got last last year and I should get 1 more harvest.
I tried something different with 1 hive ...Let it fill up 2 boxes of brood first add the queen excluder, and let the bees fill the next super with honey until capped. Then I removed the queen excluder and left the super in place and then I added another super.
There was no difference between the hive with excluder and the hive without excluder.
Most of my hives ended up with five deep boxes 10 frame boxes.
New colonies that are smaller or not production hives and nucs do not get an excluder.
Great video. Thanks
Outstanding as always!!.I have a question though , If my neighbor down the road from me (1/4 mile)open feeds his bees , how do I know if my bees are not going down and bringing that back to my supers?? Just a crazy question from South Carolina
..
You don't know. Hopefully he isn't open feeding them during a dearth. This is another reason as soon as the flow is over we pull them quick.
so are you putting your supers on the bottom of the stack ?
We have plastic excluders. Do you prefer metal?
The plastic are harder to clean, harder to work with (they like sticking to the wrong box) and more prone to breaking (one little break in the mesh and the queen can go up); they work just fine and cost less.
I have both and I prefer metal but the plastic ones do work well for me also.
❤Do you clean the queen excluder? How?
Wow! That is so impressive. Thanks for your opinion on the queen excluders. I have about 7 of the old style metal with wood excluders left from my adventures during the 70's and 80's that I have had mixed emotions about using. I noticed that you are using medium supers, is that going to be a standard in order to save your back? I am 77 am beginning to experience lifting problems with the deep supers. I am thinking about going to the single deep super and then using mediums. I presently have 17 shallows but have focused on expanding my apiary from 3 colonies to 8 though right now I have 9. I have been using the double deep hive bodies so far. Your thoughts if you have the time. I know you are busy. Thanks for all of your videos, they are the best!
Hey John, hope you are doing well. We are going to mediums for back reasons. If I had a better lift system deeps would make since but I don't. Also, my wife helps alot and the kids will be more and more. I want to make sure I take care of thier bodies as well as we plan to do this the rest of our lives if possible. I think what you are proposing would work very good.
I thought I had lost my Queen. I wasnt seeing any new eggs, I couldn't find her. I used the queen excluder waited a week and found her, (she is unmarked).
Also after putting in the excluder I started seeing progress drawing comb and storage in the top box. Not sure if it helped or not or if its all due to the Dutch clover going insane in my yard
Kind of amazed you do that with a single brood box.
You and me both!
It is impossible for a queen to lay more egs than a she will lay in a single box Its pure math
So when adding new supers to a hive, do you always add the newest empty super to the bottom closest to the brood box and move the full honey supers to the very top? I added the empty one to the very top.
we do say voila dont worry
Great video, thanks.
I've kept bees since 2018, and have used a queen excluder every honey season. My mentor said use it or not, its a personal preference. So far so good I think.
OFF TOPIC
I keep six colonies, two of those are hosted by friends. I try to inspect once a week. I feel like that may be to much. What do you think?
Nothing wrong with once a week. Better to be pro active than reactive. Short little inspections of 2-3 min can tell a lot
Run a couple without for comparison. I did that this year and yes my excluder hives made great honey but my hives without are working on their 5th deep supers beating the hives with excluders handily.
Does the bee bread stay in the frame when you spend the honey out or does it comes out with the honey I have a few frame like that thanks
Hey Norma the Bee Bread pretty much stays in. What trace amounts that come out just makes the honey even better
Good to know my first year getting a honey crop did not know I could process the frames thanks
Sounds like a great idea for a video to explain it. Great video Kamon!
Kamon, just starting back into keeping bees after quit a few years off. We didn't have single brood management back then, it was believed that you needed two hive bodies for the bees to survive the winter. If you could, either give me a list of steps from package, split, or swarm from start to winter with single brood chamber management. I have worked real hard getting my first 5 hives started from May until now and don't want to lose them. I put queen excluders on two of the strongest hives yesterday with hive bodies with foundation on top. Naturally I don't have any drawn comb and am worried the bees won't draw them out. Any guidance will be much appreciated.
Makes up for last year.
Good vidéo!
Hi Kamon, here in the north (47th parallel...❄️) the nights are cold during summer and I noticed that the hives with plastic queen excluder do way better than those with metal QE.
I always find this rusty water in the rims of the queen excluder (metallic) in the morning when I start my inspections. " VOILA".
Carlos
Great video; interesting and informative. BTW what do you use for smoker fuel? thanks
I use pine needles, wood chips, hay, grass clippings and tobacco. Whatever I can get my hands of for free! Pine needles are my favorite though
Kamon, I heard that if you have a double brood box then you don't need queen excluder because the queen has so much space that she would not lay eggs on the honey supers.
Did you have had any experience with that ?
Hey Mark! That is hog wash. I have seen queens 4 deep up. Sometimes if they plug up the top box she will stay down but often she will slip up without an excluder
@@kamonreynolds Thanks Kamon.
Do you always add empty boxes below fuller boxes?
You always add foundations as close to the brood as possible once they start filling the comb supers. If you have drawn comb you can just stick that on top but if you are going down you can just throw it down low.
Would you remove the queen excluder and place a 2nd deep box for the winter and when?
I extracted already and I will get 1 more harvest if the weather plays right.
So, for me I will extract one more time around august . I will take the excluder off after the last extraction, also I treat for mites at the time and will repeat treating for mites before winter again . I got double brood deep 10 frames as is and I use only deep 10 frame boxes even as supers and then I got 3 supers on top of the 2 brood boxes right now. For winter I will use 2 brood boxes and probably a super and no queen excluder since the queen needs to be able to move around .
Kamon. Would you please show a detailed video of the fan? I use florida water to keep cool but I think I could use a fan like thay
Sure thing!
Thanks for another great video. Make it look easy. It’s not folks. Really cool looking colors in supers.
Thanks Burley!
Do you always add the new super just above the brood box? I have always added another super to the top.
I'm curious about the fan. About to melt to death here in south Alabama.
Man dude, what's your bicep workout? Just lifting supers?
Just beekeeping and wrestling with the kids.
Honestly just depends on the colony and excluder type. Some colonies do well with them and some do not.
Search a helpful video! So when you add a honey super with only foundation you put it above the queen excluder, but below your honey supers that already has honey?
Strong colony is great and all, but for just urban backyard hobby beekeepers like myself, too many bees is a problem... Recently my colony got too strong and I ran out of boxes to expand/split, and it got so crowded that crack opening the box is just like opening a pandora's box, lots of bees swarm out even the neighbors noticed. Any suggestion on maintaining the colony size for us hobby beekeepers that don't want to keep expanding every season? My city also as a ordinance on max 2 hives per property, and each time they swarm/split, I got to find people to give the colony away, I think I ran out of people to give the free bees to.
Peter Lee,
You can control your Bee population, by taking out an odd Brood Frame, (maybe ones that are a bit hotch potch in lay, or are less laid / pollen / nectar combo's...) AND Freeze it !
Then, thaw it out (!) Add it back to the Colony.... 👍
1) You kill capped cells (stop them from hatching)....These cells are now 'protein' and can be fed back to the Colony at anytime. (If kept frozen...) And thaw them when bees could do with a pick me up ! (Nutrition Boost.)
2) The Pollen / Bee Bread, and Nectar can be fed back too...
3) Do you have Chickens ? Feed these Frames to your Birds as tasty "Snack" time.
Works great on Plastic Foundation, (Wax might be pecked and mashed big time.
But if you give them the old dark ones, it doesn't matter.
Peck to pieces, and Melt afterwards....
Do this when you have to much population, and or more Drone Comb than you want. Or have Frames you want cleaned up, freezing stalls everything, and returns, to the Hive, become Food, Protein, and Nutrient Rich.. Win, win result. 👍
# Only do this every so often, mid season, not late season, as natural die back occurs, when eg Autumn (Fall) happens.
Or you might want to donate a few Frames of Brood to a Local School (Bee Club) or a Growing Alloment (Market Garden) as beneficial pollinators. Correx Nuc Boxes aren't expensive. Or if you don't want to give your equipment away... See Sam "Comfort" Hives... These are x4 12" Board Sides, a Tile Roof and Floor, and Comb hangs off Bamboo Skewers !
(Guess you could cut out some of your Brood Cells in wide Strips and wire them onto Skewers... And add s few cups of Bees (!)
Sure you would get a Newbie New Bee(k) wanting your spare Bees !?! Pass it On. 💪
Hope this helps. 🤗
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
If you can find the queen, you can cage her for two weeks for a brood break; release at two weeks, then one week later do an oxalic dribble. At that point there will be no capped brood, so the oxalic will be very effective. In the meantime there will have been some natural die-off of the older bees, so the hive will be less crowded.
@@paulchristu996 This idea did cross my mind... a smaller mating-nuc like habitat for the queen to "lay low" for few weeks before returning her. Maybe I will give it a try. Thanks!
Do you only run a single brood chambers? Do you think that might be a reason why some people have less luck with queen excluders? I run a double deep brood chamber in upstate NY and don't have as much luck with excluders.
I got that fan it’s great
What is the foil you are removing? Is it a foil, foam, foil insulation?
Nice video. Couple things…where did you get that hive tool? I’ve been in the honey excluder camp but am considering switching. I’ve found and heard if the flow is slow the bees would jam out the brood nest below the excluder. What’s your experience?
What’s the stuff you took off after you popped the lid. No one knows what I’m talking about. Thanks for all you’ve taught me!❤️✝️🐝
That’s his inner cover so the lid don’t get glued down to the frames and box. It’s reflective insulation.
@@Lonesomebees thank you so much
it is called reflectix at lowes
Hi Kamon, I’m running a single deep brood box with a medium super on top that is nearly full. If I put another medium super with foundation on top of the medium super that’s nearly full and remove the excluder will they go up and draw comb quickly? Thanks!
Awesome, if it will stop raining some day I need to add a box or 2.
Do you think their is any merit to the statement that bees are not as good at drawing comb above an excluder? I only have six hives so I have plenty of time to extract around supers if needed. Let’s say a hive has a drawn super they fill it with honey and then you add a super of foundation, will they drawn the comb?
What kind of bee’s are in this hive . Thanks for your video’s.
Hey Kathy, this was one of my carnies that we grafted last July from one of our breeders
@@kamonreynolds looking great . I need a few of those FULL hives
Bereketli olsun
What strain of queens/bees are you running? My bees aren't overly aggressive but I'd be eaten alive checking my hive without sleeves and gloves. Thanks. PS, flow wasn't near as strong here in SW Missouri as you appear to have where you are located.
These is a queen we raised last year from our carnie breeders.
🐝🐝
With that much honey flow this year, looking excitedly forward to seeing your new extraction line tests!
K would you mind adding one of those neck fans to your Amazon store? They seem like a useful tool in this hot summer.
No worries to your pronunciation , getting corrected by the french is like being chewed out by a snail eating toy poodle :)
Actually I admire those inventive frog eaters. For instance, who invented white underwear? The french, so they would always have a white flag handy.
And speaking of flow". Who invented crotchless underwear? The french, So their white flags wouldn't have those annoying brown skid marks :)
Haha! due to all the request I will do a video on the fans Saturday
In the UK, they had Red underclothes... Viva Revolution (not !) No flag waving for Blighties.... 🇬🇧
But Victorians thought "Red was Warmer" to wear, in the 1840's or so.... Dickens always had Poor, chilled, Characters in his Books.... Only with a Candle for Warmth.🕯️ (Think the 19th Century experienced many long cold spells, repeatedly.) 🤔
See Classic Movie... "The Railway Children"... Red under garments to the rescue... ! 🤭
Good video as usual. Do you ever use a top as well as a bottom entrance with the queen excluders?
Would love to see a link for where you bought that fan included in the description.
Had a couple people ask so I will make a video on it
I have a fan like that - got it off Amazon. Search "neck fan" and it should bring back some results. The ones I got ran about 18 bucks, but those, combined with the cool vest I got (glacier tek) have saved me this summer.
@@kamonreynolds thanks Kamon 😊
@@LazyDogsRanch do you have a link for that one? That would be handy in our climate
This is the one that we got and we really like it so far.
amzn.to/366zxt5
Ding ding ding!!! You got “VARIABLES” in there again!! Some of your videos would be great drinking games! LOL!
Kamon do you overwinter single deeps? I’m in GA, so if you do it I’m sure it’s ok here.
I do doubles and singles. Both can do well here
Curious about the top mat and where they can be found
It's called "Bubble reflective foil insulation". You can find it at home improvement stores or Amazon the role is extremely cheap. They work great and a lot easier to work with and cheaper than the wood inner covers
@@FelipeAdventures Thank you for the reply. I had looked at that insulation thinking that this was it but wanted to be sure.
Thanks again :)
Do you have any suggestions about cross comb we put a 2nd brood box on and they are building cross comb right away and also burr comb?
Did you pyramid the frames and bring 3-4 frames from the center of the lower brood box up and put empty frames in to replace those? This saved me from any cross comb. 2nd Year bee keeper and i am sure there are 10 opinions on it just thought I would help.
@@441bocaj thanks just pulled up a few when I checked it today actually! Hopefully it helps
Where do you get your excluders and that fan, show more of the fan tool!
Hey Michael, I will get to work on that video! I get my excluders from Kelleys bees in clarkson KY but they are sold at mann lake also.
I'm guessing you're using plastic foundation with your deep frames? I tried to extract deeps for the first time. They had wax foundation and I lost all of my comb. I'm going to cycle out every frame I have and replace with plastic foundation.
If you use wax foundation for deeps they will need to be cross wired by hand if they are to survive extraction. This is another reason why I use the plastic save tons of time
@@kamonreynolds Thanks Kamon. I'm definitely going to plastic. Great video by the way.
Do you seperate the darker honey from the lighter, or blend it all together?