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Stesso

Aborting Harvest and Planning for Expansion

8:33
13:40
20.6K views

At 8:33 in

WE MESSED UP BIG TIME! WATCH TILL THE END FOR HONEY BEE EDUCATION!

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What happens here

After discovering brood in the honey supers and noting the aggressive behavior of the bees, the beekeeper decides to abort the honey harvesting mission. He acknowledges that his current attempt is a "total fail" and attributes it to poor timing (late in the day) and not giving the bees enough space. He explains that the extreme number of bees on the hive exterior indicates overcrowding and a need for more room. He decides to add empty supers with already drawn comb to the hives to alleviate the overcrowding and encourage honey storage in designated areas. He plans to return the next day, around 11 AM to 1 PM, to attempt the harvest again under more favorable conditions. He also reflects on his own mistake of wearing improper footwear, which led to stings on his ankles.

Goal: Identify reasons for harvest failure and formulate a new plan for hive management.

Tools and materials

  • Beekeeping Suit Triad Bee Supply — Protection from bee stings
  • Empty Super — Providing additional space for honey storage
  • Hive Tool — Manipulating hive frames

What they say

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there go to the next one all right guys abort Mission we're aborting this Mission these bees are getting very angry very hot very mad at me there's a lot of brood in the honey chamber which is very strange this is a WR time of day to do this we're going to get on this again tomorrow probably sometime around 11: to noon 1:00 something like that we really don't want to work these bees after 3:00 okay these bees are starting to get a little bit sting happy and I've already sustained a sting I don't want to sustain any more stings I think this is the wrong time of the day to do this the wrong thing to do so we're going to wait until tomorrow so come back tomorrow and we'll be getting into these bees and hopefully harvesting some honey there's not a lot of honey in here which is very surprising to me I'm not real sure what's going on but we'll work at it so in the meantime these bees are very crowded in their hive that display of bees on the outside of the hive tells me that they need more room so we're going to add some supers on and we've got one two three four four supers on this one and we're going to add one onto this one and one onto that one make sure the bees have plenty of room to work any beekeeper watching this right now is thinking that I'm a total idiot because what we're doing is not the right thing right now okay that's why we're going to come back the bees will let you know when you're doing something wrong they get Sting happy and they start stinging you you know you're doing something wrong and you deserve to be stuned and that's what happened I think I'm going to title this video what not to do when attempting to harvest your honey what not to do just got stung again oh we're going on to the next Hive we got the lid off take you over here and show you how full this guy is crazy so this is really really full we'll smoke them and you get to see the immediate reaction these these bees appear to be doing what's right they've got their honey in the top of the hive this is the Swarm that we caught earlier and I'll post a link to it at the end of the video uh we caught a swarm earlier in the year and this is the Swarm and they are doing awesome awesome awesome really happy with that we'll pop out one of their frames the these ones seem really happy okay this is called a screened Hive top okay this screen Hive top allows for air circulation in the hive we'll go in here and we'll get out our very middle frame looks like our middle three frames want to…

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