Honey Bee University: Creative DIY Ideas...Educational Beekeeping tips and tricks

hey there folks this is Josh stone orig farmer welcome back to the farm it is a beautiful sunny day here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and we're going to be getting into the beehives today so come along on the farm blog as we work with a couple swarms that we caught so honey bees swarm and we'll get into more detail about why they swarm and what they do in just a little bit but the honey bees swarmed we captured the swarm we put them in a box a smaller box and that box is getting too crowded form so we're going to move them to larger boxes we'll show you what the frames of bees look like we'll show you what healthy hives look like hopefully we'll find a queen bee we'll be able to show you that and we'll just have some fun working with the bees and a little bit of Education so come along today on the farm as we work with our honeybees and have a little bit of fun all right [Music] while I'm getting suited up I want to thank John over at triad V supply guys we get all of our B supplies from triad B supply or triad B supply.com John is a fellow that owns that business he's a good friend of mine he doesn't pay me to say that he's just a good friend he's just a great guy tried be supplied calms where we get all of our B supplies first thing let's talk about his preparedness I have one of these little baskets that I got from the farmers market and inside this basket it's pretty much everything I'll need for working my bees today my hive tool all the tools that I'll need for working my bees I've got my gloves in here so when I need to jump in the Beehive I can grab my basket and I can run with it I also have entrance reducers and all the small things that I think I might need also a little propane torch in here or this is actually map gas for lighting up my smoker if I need it now today we probably won't use a smoker because it's a high nectar flow time of year and that means that the bees are happy and happy bees normally don't sting so I guess you can kind of take this as a bit of a beginner beekeeping lesson - if you guys are seasoned beekeepers and you have any comments or any suggestions please leave them down there in the comment section or if you have any questions if you're new to beekeeping please leave them down there in the comment section there are a lot of things that we need to keep with us all the time consistently I always have a hive tool in the gaiter because it's super duper handy to have with me here on the farm so today we have an eighth frame and we have a ten frame and what we're going to do is we're going to take a five frame nuke that's stacked double high in other words there are ten frames and we'll go over there and show you we're going to turn that into a double stacked ten frame in other words we're adding ten frames to that hive and then I was rocking that's the first one we're going to get into and the second one we're going to get into is a five frame Newt that's a custom box that I built and we're going to put it into an eighth frame box pretty cool I use all medium supers because they're all interchangeable medium supers meaning the height of the box so some people use little short boxes which are good for honey some people use mediums which are good for honey and brood and some people use a brooder box which is a very large box that's very good for brood now when it comes to winter time you can exchange these boxes if the bees get in the wrong place in other words if the bees are all the way down in the bottom and you want them all the way up at the top then you can move your hives around and they're all interchangeable kind of like Legos that's why I use all mediums so looking at the bee yard there were only three hives here when we first started the three tallest hives one two three all the rest of these are swarms that we caught this year absolutely amazing we'll pop the top of this and these have screened inter covers so you can see down in there will pop the top of one here so you can see in there this is the most recent swarm that we captured and you can see there are a lot of bees rocking in there we have to make a run for more supplies because this is ready for another box to go on top these bees are getting crowded now the hives that we're going to give the most attention today are the most crowded hives this is the second most crowded hive and you can see how skinny it is compared to this one that's an eighth frame that's a five frame that's an eighth frame and that big wide one is a 10 frame so that's what we're doing we're going to turn this five frame into a 10 frame so why do we have blocks and rocks and heavy things on top of these hives because when the wind gets up it blows right up this hill and will blow the lid right off the top of these hives I've seen it happen and it actually killed one hive this winter the lid blew off it rained in it and the bees froze to death we're going to open this guy up and get into it so what I just did was stack two cinder blocks up here so we could take this five frame new hive and sit it right in front of where it's located so the bees will still continue to go in it as we replace the old hive with a newer hive this high probably weighs 40 pounds we've got it in position it is a bit tipsy this might get get a little funky here got a move kind of fast okay what I did was I had this on a metal table and the metal table needed to be turned this way in order for the tin frame hive to fit on here now I'm gonna check for stability it seems good for a minute I'm gonna take the cover off it should be purple eyes in other words sticky you'll hear that crunch a little crunchy sound no bees on the top we're going to get rid of that okay and then we're going to take the inner cover off these bees should be fine they shouldn't be very grumpy you should be fairly happy with the situation okay now there are five frames in here and they're absolutely loaded with honey what we want is we want that honey in what's going to be our future top super so I'm going to take those five frames out gently and place them into the new box nice and easy honey bees pick up on movement so if you're moving slow and gentle and easy try not to squish any bees when you squish it be it puts out a pheromone and you can see here that's a healthy frame of bees and they're just in there working there's a little bit of brood in there so we've got honey brood those little wormy looking things in there and then honey super awesome you see a little bit of pollen in there all of what we see here is capped brood and a little bit of honey on the outside edges very very cool yours your queen be right there great old big girl right there that is a queen bee isn't that beautiful we've got her in our new hive now we know we need to move fairly fast once we get our queen bee in her new hive these bees will notice almost immediately that their queen is not present now we're going to take our top box off set it to the side here just out of the way and then we'll pop the next five frames out set them in the bottom here these guys will sense that their queen is not here and they will get irritable at some point that is a successful move these are the bees that remain inside the box we'll take these bees and we'll give the box a nice love tap right over top of the new box like so just like that these bees will smell their Queen in the new box and go right to it it's in the same place that the old box was we'll move these cinder blocks out of the way and they'll have their new home awesome we just doubled their apartment size now it's the warmer months so we'll put a screen top cover on and then we'll put our regular top cover on it okay we'll set our cinder block back on the top of the hive now you can hear and see that there's a little bit of confusion going on right now because the bees notice there's a difference something's different here where do we go what do we do well it's going to take them a few hours to realize hey the hives changed we're still in the same spot but the hive looks a little bit different so just so you know it's gonna take them a day or so to figure out so there'll be a little bit of confusion for a while but they'll do just fine we're gonna go over to the next box before we go to the next box let's talk a little bit about the construction of a hive and what's inside so the first thing you get to is the top cover this is a commercial top cover very very simple that little mark is from where I had an inner cover inside there so the top cover is first then for the summertime we put a screened inner cover and that's what you're seeing there in the winter time this would be all wood and this sits right on top of the honeybee hive like this and then the lid goes on now inside here this is an eighth frame hive there would be eight frames and this is a frame and this is what they look like before the bees draw out the comb that is basically a frame with what we call foundation and you see these little stripes that's wire to hold the foundation in place and when you put it on your honey extractor it doesn't rip apart if it didn't have that little wire holding it in place when you put it in your honey extractor and it spins really really fast it would sling this apart and it would just fly all the pieces inside your honey extractor so eight of these are inside this hive basically at the front entrance of the hive when a hive is small and not very strong you can't leave that entire entrance open so this little block is in place so we'll shrink it down to this small small space for a brand new hive then for a older hive we'll rotate it to that size block and then as they get older and older we'll just take it all away so you've got a couple different options brand new hive a little bit stronger hive and then all the way away for a really really strong hive that hive is really really strong so we took the entrance reducer away pretty cool now on the bottom of the hive we're going to show you that this is called a screened bottom board the screen bottom board allows that varroa mite and any kind of invasive species such as high moss or high beetle larva or something like that it could fall right through the wire and get back into the hive and it helps ventilate the hive and keep it cool in the winter time flip it over there's a little slot right here and you slide a piece of corrugated plastic in here and basically that seals them off for the winter time you can see it's like a little drawer I guess pretty cool my plan is for our next honeybee video to show you how pollen traps work so we have some cool pollen traps we're going to put on three hives out here and we'll show you how pollen traps work we can actually harvest bee pollen from the bees they don't need a hundred percent of the honey they use or a hundred percent of the pollen they use so we can utilize that for us for our family and we can sell it awesome so let's get in this little hive it's a little bit different than the one we just got in so we're basically working off the same principle that we did before I'm gonna actually set this hive right here out of the way and we're gonna pop a cover off of this little guy right here and it's a tiny hive I'm gonna bring the camera in and let you see it real quick we'll pop the cover off of that it has five frames in there we'll just slip them right into the new hive and we'll have it done very very simple I have not checked these bees to see if they're laying eggs yet so this is going to be a discovery for me here's what the little hive looks like and this is a hive that I made for myself so this is bee jail right here I made this one myself very simple and this is from a swarm from a neighbor who is a subscriber he called me up the day that we caught three swarms out here and said hey man I got a swarm up here it must be from your bees so we went up and caught these guys so in this instance we're working with half as many bees as we were before we'll lift the cover off hopefully they're still in there looking good yeah fairly weak hive so you can see I've got this labeled number two number two you shake those guys down in there again this was a very small swarm so I don't expect it to be a rock star I want to pull out my Center frame here now these bees may be not doing so well looking in here I don't see a very good situation however I do see what I'm looking for and that is eggs little tiny white specks in there you probably cannot see there are eggs in there it look like rice look like little rice Chex so we're gonna set this over in our new hive we're gonna move fairly quickly here this time of day which are about High Noon right now this is when the bees are most likely the least active in other words they're out foraging they're the least active in the hive there'll be the fewest amount of bees in the hive at this time of day that's why we work them at this time of day this is not a strong hive this is what a weak hive looks like very very weak swarm trying to find the Queen here she's an older queen she's a big fat Queen she's right there right there right here big fat one let's get her head down in there well set our new hive down here in place hopefully these bees will do well it's gonna give them some time shake the bees down in there we didn't quite double their apartment size lid on so the bees are out of jail awesome guys awesome I hope this gave you a little bit of insight into beekeeping I hope you guys will take up beekeeping it's very very fun we'll be doing a whole lot more videos this summer on beekeeping we'll get into the hives a little bit more we'll be extracting some honey soon probably about June 15th this one will harvest so we've got yeah another month and a half or so something like that guys I want to thank you a whole lot for coming to the channel today please pound that like button subscribe to the channel and we'll teach you some more about honeybees and what all is going on here in the farm we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge bringing Wow [Music] sweet and some ways those may still be read [Music]