Hornets, Ants, Mites & More / Beekeeping transcript

Okay. This colony is acting a little bit more defensive than the others and there's a reason for it. They're having to to defend themselves against ants. There's a continuous onslaught from ants. It looks like they're picking on some dead bees on the entrance or on the ground in front of the entrance. They've even tunneled over here to this area and the bees are having to to fight with the ants. They can also be more defensive if they have to fight a skunk every night.

So, just something to consider when you run across a colony that seems to be meaner than normal, you know, make sure it's not having to do battle with something. This is one of those times I think I would like to solicit in the comments from people what they do to combat ants in the bee yard. I know a lot of different homemade remedies are out there. I'd like to hear what people are doing for ants. You can always use ant bait, of course, but I'm sure there are a lot of homemade remedies for this problem.

So, put them in the comment section, please. Just got through giving this yard its second dose of Apiguard. I know I'm talking about mite treatments and mite counts and mite this and that a lot, but it's what we're into right now, so it's what I have to report on. There is a point or two here of interest. We did a thorough wash on this entire yard about a month ago and treated some of the colonies that had higher numbers and the zeros and the ones and the twos were left alone.

Did not treat them. Now a month later, we're finding that some of those zero ones and twos have risen a little bit, which of course makes sense because these bees have almost no brood in them at the moment. We've been in a pollen dearth and they shut down and now there's not as much places for the mites to hide as there was a month ago. And we've chosen to treat some of the ones that we did not treat the first time. And we did another little experiment in here.

Back in May, in fact, I put a video out on it back in May, we did mite washes and we compared the food frames or the frame in the second story to frames in the brood nest and we found that the difference wasn't huge on the mite numbers. Food frames totaled 64 total and 81 in the brood frames. Yes, there is a difference, but I was trying to figure out if we could just use the frames in the top box and not have to dig down into the brood box.

And at that time we were of the opinion that you know, it's not as accurate, but it was accurate enough to give us a good idea. Now, this time of year we're trying to get more particular. We really want to know what's accurately going on in these colonies. So, in this yard we just did the same routine on the double deeps. We took a frame out of the top and washed it and took a frame out of the brood nest below and washed it.

And here were the results. Top box, we got a total of 26 mites in our washes. In the brood box, open brood, we got 53. A little more dramatic of a difference than we had earlier this season. I can't say why. I don't know if it has to do with uh uh the month of or the weather. I really don't know. But this is enough of a difference now to where from this point forward for the rest of this season, we will be digging into the brood nest to do all of our mite washes to make sure we're getting a more accurate count.

And you can see how some of the numbers are different. And oddly enough, in some cases we got more mites in the top box than the brood nest, but um not a lot. So, again, I think the frames in the brood nest are giving us a more accurate count than the frames in the upper box on the double deeps in these colonies. And we do, at this date, still have some colonies that are not being treated. There's one There's several in here.

There's one over there. Uh those are colonies that are showing a zero or a one at this time. And we will check them one more time in September before the season is over. Right now, it's August 13th. I'll check them again in September to make sure we've not made a mistake, but we're still poking and prodding and looking for these colonies that are showing mite resistance. And we do have a bunch, more than I expected this year.

We've got uh many. I'm going to take a wild guess that 25% of our outfit this year will not need mite treatments. That's the way it's looking today. Might change that number a little bit as we go forward in September, but um I guess it's right now we got a lot of colonies that will not need any treatment. Still full of bees, even though there's no brood. These bee numbers will diminish continue to diminish with time.

By the time the Apiguard is over, uh they will be much smaller beehives. And that's okay. I'd rather try to put six, seven, eight frames of healthy bees through the winter than 10 or 12 that got a mite load on them. Another thing about using Apiguard is it has somewhat of an antiseptic influence. It's uh I think it's really actually healthy for the colony to get a little bit of that thymol in there for a while. And as can be seen, we fed again.

The double deeps are not light, but we are trying to start to gain a little weight. We'll have all of our feeding done by sometime in October. We're using one and a quarter part sugar to one part water at this time little thicker than one to one. They will not need stimulation in a few weeks when the Apiguard is over and the golden rod will be coming in in a strong way and that that pollen is very fresh pollen is very stimulating to a colony.

We can feed a little thicker syrup at that time and not try to stimulate with syrup. Pollen will do the job. Good good colonies all in all good yard of bees. It's warm today. It's a high of 90 which technically is a bit too warm to be applying Apiguard. And then over the next few days it's actually going to climb up to 93, 94, maybe 95 in about 5 days. So these colonies have already received one full treatment about 10 days ago and today we're giving them a half treatment.

And even that's questionable with these temperatures coming up but uh I think because today's only 90 I think we'll get away with it. If it was much warmer than that I don't I think we'd have to give them an even smaller dose than half like perhaps a quarter and then come back every two or three or four days with a quarter dose. In this case we'll be back in 5 days after giving them a half dose. Yeah. 25 grams. Bucket of food.

There's only one single in this yard and it actually got treated a couple days ago. And we're not going to touch it today. Swarms look at this. We are catching hornets. We got 1 2 3 4 5 6 a dozen in there. That is grape juice, brown sugar with a little bit of either cheap wine or malt liquor in there. Some people use apple cider vinegar to repel the bees. The bees don't go in there. We are catching hornets and we're so pleased to report that.

This yard only has three traps in it. We're now putting six traps. We got another one there. I told you I asked Clint to put six traps in every yard. Oh my goodness, look at that. We are catching hornets. So, I also told Clint to play around with putting protein bait in the top. What's he got in there? Is that the grape juice or the or the canned chicken? >> I think that would be canned chicken. >> That'll come out really easy.

What do you think? >> I think that's probably >> Does it look like paper towel? >> I don't know what that is, Bob. >> I think that's canned chicken wrapped up in paper towel. That's what's bringing them in and then the grape then they go down the hole into the grape juice. And we're actually these Vespa traps are working pretty good, too. Both traps are working. We carry two types of traps in our store. Yeah, that's got several in it, too.

Got one in that one? >> This one looks like it was just recently refilled. >> Just cleaned, okay. All right. On to the next yard. I hear thunder in the distance. I think we're going to get some rain again. This no treatment yard has still got a low mite numbers. Uh even some of the higher ones, which were only five or six, have gone down one or two. That's interesting. And we checked these nukes for the first time today.

They're 8 weeks old now, so I think we can start checking them. And the highest number in the nukes is a two in a mite wash, so I think we'll let them ride, too. Putting in a little feed. Colonies are in good shape. I sure like the idea that we don't have to treat these bees. That alone's almost worth all the labor of all this alcohol soapy water washing business, which is time-consuming. We just put out our last round of supers to be robbed out.

I like my supers to be dry for winter storage. I know a lot of folks leave them sticky. Of course, the bees jump right on them in the spring if they're sticky, but I think they come out in better condition if they're stored dry. Uh these are our medium Some of our medium supers. Our medium supers have had very little brood reared in them. They're 95 98% virgin comb. So, we won't have to do anything too drastic to store them for the winter.

We'll just wrap them up on pallets and stack them on under shed roofs and pole barns like you see over there. We just put these out. The bees have just found them. They've been robbing for a while this week. Done a lot of robbing of supers this year. When we made wildflower, we let we let them rob them out after the wildflower extraction, so that wouldn't get mixed in our sourwood. Try to do that every year. That's hard to do.

If there's a honey flow, they won't rob, of course, so got to catch them just right. Anyway, it feels good to have this almost over. This has been a long season as far as honey production and extracting and all that. It's been to be one, though. I'm happy with the volume we made this year. We lost our space at the freezer in town. We were renting space at the food bank. They had a lot of extra freezer space. But these days they started to use it for other things and told us we wouldn't be able to use that anymore.

This is just a very temporary stopgap right here. We got this very inexpensive used reefer trailer. We're going to keep supers that have had brood reared in the comb in this for a little while while we figure out a permanent answer to the problem. We might choose to put an electric driven uh cooler system in this trailer or maybe get a container to do the same thing with. I know they have containers that have reefers on them already.

They call them dock power. They have electrical plug-in power. That might be a good option. Or we might just build a cooler and you know, put a roof over or something like that. I really prefer freezing my rather than putting it under chemicals like moth crystals and poison bombs and all that stuff. It's uh It's hard to get them kind of sensitive to chemicals these days in my old age. The freezer, this is expensive right now.

That diesel bill's adding up, but we don't run it every day. We just freeze whatever's in there and then we shut it off. As long as the door doesn't get open, the bugs shouldn't get in there. We just uh turn it on for a day or two once a week. And it's going to be full by the time we're done. By the time we're done sorting supers and filling it up with combs that have brood reared in them, it will be full. We still have quite a few deeps and and a few mediums, not a lot.

A few mediums that have had brood reared in the comb. We'll put all of that in there. It's also nice to have a freezer just to stick something in that, you know, maybe the bugs are getting after and it's starting to go bad or go sour. Just Just stick it in the freezer and freeze it for a day two, and it's good for a while after that. Anyway, very temporary fix. We got it really cheap, so I can't complain about that while we get around to doing something more permanent.

Another truck fleet. I don't wear trucks out like I used to. Used to have to replace a truck every 5 years. Now I don't have to because we don't travel out of the region anymore. Just repair them and keep them. The wood shop's been really busy. We have a lot going on in that building. Almost seems like I need another employee. I've got three guys in there right now, and they're barely keeping up with orders and you know, our own needs and stock for the store and all that.

Philip's going back to college. He's been here all summer long. This was your second summer, right, with us? He did a heck of a lot of honey extracting this year, and a lot of woodwork in the wood shop, too. We're really going to miss you. This is a good kid right here. Good, clean kid, and he somehow seems to survive John and the rest, so we're just talking about that. A miracle, actually. He said, "Yeah, it's a good one." And all those people are really good, but uh uh Philip's just a clean person, and we've just loved having him around, and we're really going to miss you.

And he says he'll try to come back next summer. So, we're looking forward to that. So, he's learned every tool, every machine, every forklift, everything around here. Uh he's been busy building lids right today. He's been building nuke boxes, cypress nuke boxes with HDO bottoms and tops for the store. And uh a lot of tops and bottoms out of HDO. And he's learned all this equipment, and I think that's good experience for somebody that's uh going to college, come to a place like this for a summer job.

So, now I'm going to ask you, what's what's your uh what's your career choice? What are you shooting for? >> Uh so, I'm currently majoring in ecology and environmental science. So. >> Ecology and environmental science. What where's that going to take you? What kind of job? >> I I don't know like specifics yet, but I'd like to get in like the area of like field research and possibly like a a job in a lab or something like that. >> So, you've been at it for 2 years.

You got Do you get your degree in 2 years? >> Yeah, I'm so, I'm a rising junior. So, I'll be graduating >> Okay. >> in about 2 years time, so. >> All right, cool. We'll look forward to having you back next year. All right, thank you. Well, the old extracting system did a good job this summer. And the only thing we had to do during the whole season was replace a belt on the capping spinner there. This is an old machine.

I purchased it in 2003 and I've had it all this time with minimal work. We replaced the chains last winter and the bushings the year before and knives and hoses a time or two, but other than that, it's been a really good machine. 60-frame Cowan with a Cowan uncapper and deboxer. Cook and Beals spinner. Old. I bought it. It was old. And still working. We processed a lot of honey this year. It's been our best year for volume in a while.

It's probably been 4 or 5 years since I made as much honey as I did per colony this year. We had a really good sourwood crop. It's dark in color, which is very disappointing, but the flavor's good and we're selling the heck out of it. A lot of sourwood's left here in the last couple of weeks, so that's a good thing. People don't seem to be afraid of that darker color. We're really still not sure why it's darker. There's been lots of suggestions, but I'm not sure why it is.

Anyway anyway, I just wanted to report on our system. Worked really good. Of course, that's a Cook and Beals heat exchanger right there. Sump tank down there with a progressive cavity pump pumping all this stuff up. Yeah, it's been a good season. Happy with the results. Okay. Major Friday clean up. Do it every Friday, deep clean everything, wipe it all down. And this room's really clean otherwise. I often say you could eat off the floor and it's pretty true, really.

These guys take cleaning seriously and thankfully they do. So glad I don't have to harp on them about it. A lot of honey flows through this room. We're thinking of a extending our little short line there. And we've ordered a heat tunnel for the heat sensitive seals under lids. And we're going to be looking at a cap installer perhaps to go to it. This room's going to get pretty crowded. But uh we need to make things more efficient.

It's all about efficiency. >> [music] >> Doing more with less or perhaps more with what we already have. Yeah.