Acclimating and Accessing Beneficial Organisms

7:00

13:06

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Learn Something Today: Honey Bees 101 How’s it all Work?

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What happens here

The presenter demonstrates calming the beneficial organisms (honeybees) before their introduction. He uses a spray bottle filled with lukewarm water to generously mist the bees through the mesh sides of their package. This makes the bees less agitated and heavier, causing them to cling together, which facilitates easier transfer and reduces escape. He then uses a hive tool to carefully pry open the access panel on top of the bee package, revealing a small tin can filled with sugar syrup (likely high-fructose corn syrup, which he notes is common but not ideal long-term) and the queen bee in her separate cage. The sugar syrup can is removed using a magnet, and the queen cage is carefully detached from the package structure using the hive tool to break staples. This step of organism acclimation is crucial for a smooth and successful transition, similar to pre-treating compost to encourage microbial activity before application.

Goal: This step involves using lukewarm water to calm the beneficial organisms (bees) within their package, then accessing their temporary food source and carefully retrieving the queen's separate cage for later introduction, ensuring minimal stress during transfer.

Tools and materials

Bee Jacket with Veil and Gloves
Hive Tool
Magnet Hook
Spray Bottle
Lukewarm Water N/A
Sugar Syrup Can N/A

What they say

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right there now we are ready for bees here so we'll put bees in we'll put the hive cover on we'll put the jar on and then we'll put the other super on top of that I do not do this without wearing the appropriate PPE I am not going to do this without a jacket some people do that I don't like it this is warm water okay just a squirt bottle of warm water here's what I'm going to do to tame my bees I'm going to hit them with some warm water not hot hot water just lukewarm okay want to calm them down a little bit we want to soak them up a little bit so when they fall they fall down into the hive there we go just like so we don't want the bees concentrating on stinging us we want the bees concentrating on getting that water off of them and also you can see how they're kind of bunching up to stay warm okay we don't want to kill them so you don't want to drown them and we're going to take this we're going to pop it see all those bees we're going to soak them again a little more okay good amount of water on those bees it'll be okay they'll be fine okay the demeanor of the bees just goes down to kitten demeanor once we do that with the uh water bottle I don't want to smoke them because I'd rather just use water if I can I'm going to test out my magnet make sure it's going to lift my jar out and it will see that okay now we're going to go ahead and we're going to free up our Queen cage which is right here all this is held together with staples there we go okay and I'm going to get my B jacket now our Queen is

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