I respect your opinion; however, I’d love to see your hive’s Mr. Fred Fable and see what a non-rookie like you keeps. Beekeepers may disagree and some may even claim to have decades more experience than another beekeeper but when it comes down to it, the proof is in the quality of their hives… and I don’t mean the fancy paint jobs on the outside - I mean the bees in them. I’ve got several apiaries full of healthy colonies brimming with bees right now. I keep my colony numbers under 100 because I also keep a full time job. If I just focused on bees, I’d simply produce in more abundance because I can. I don’t refer to books or watch videos like you just did about beekeeping. I post my experiences. I do read scientific journals about any new developments as well as old journals from before Varroa as there is great knowledge there. I listen to my mentor Eugene Killion. But in the end, I work with my bees. That’s what I do. I’d also post more well thought out videos instead of random ones like I’ve done with this channel if I just had the time. I’m definitely a rookie video guy. Maybe one day that’ll get better. And for the record, there are A FEW (if you think I’m implying they are the greatest thing ever you are wrong) advantages to plastic excluders aside from being cheap- one big one is WEIGHT savings. I’ve got a hundred metal excluders sitting in the shed right now and can’t pick them all up at once with out breaking a sweat and those are just for 8 frame boxes. I could easily pick up 100 plastic excluders. You can debate me all you want with your implied infinite beekeeping experience on that one but in the end physics will side with me. It’s the same reason why I can easily carry 20 plastic nucs stacked inside of each other vs maybe two or three 5 frame wooden nuc boxes in one go around. Assuming that you have bees, I wish you the best of luck with them. I just logged into the channel after being gone over a year and you reeled me in on that one 🎣

@@BeeLife AND !!!!! You forgot to mention ,he does not have to watch your channel as I am sure there are plenty of others to watch ,....if you cannot say anything nice ,..don't say anything at all ....

Cells that have been uncovered are left that way with a small rim of wax capped round the very edge of the cell containing the developing bee. If the cell is badly infected by foundress mites (female mites that can produce offspring) the cell content is removed completely which leaves a cell empty and no wax rim round it's edge. Finally some bees will recap a cell after the mite has left which they sometimes do because of the disruption caused by the bees uncapping and the cell is slightly proud of the others on the comb face. Hope that helps.

Maybe you could share how you managed that l am treatment free and l have lost so many bees l have lost count of how many hives have died. Queens are only able to mate in the sky so unless all the hives in an area are surviving stock dilution takes place and the bees lose the resistance they have and they die. That's my experience so far and l have resistant bees but increasing the number of resistant hives is really hard because the queens mate with whatever drones they meet with. Small cell is a thing l have tried but it makes no difference that l can tell the bees are either resistant or they aren't size is completely irrelevant. Lastly l now believe that treatment free is pointless if you are within 9 miles of other beekeepers hives because diluted stock cannot survive so a treatment free operation must be in complete isolation from other bee colonies otherwise failure is litrally inevitable. The only other way would be artificial inseminated queens from your resistant hives on a rotational basis breeding from an unrelated queen each year. America is a much larger country than the U.K. so that may help in the success of beekeepers like Michael Bush. I don't think l can achieve the impossible myself and l dislike the business of lots of dead hives it's distressing and not a feel good factor. But there is absolutely no doubt some hives can survive without treatments for varroa mites but it is totally hit and miss on a scale of any kind, at least at present.

@@JM-nd4kt When I say "small cell", I mean natural drawn comb. I never use foundation. I think it's important. Also, I will fill you in on a couple of tips that I believe make a real difference. Every month I dust my frame with 1 tablespoon of Strong Microbial's Probiotics. Also, early spring and last fall I feed my feed liquid sugar feed with "Host Defense Longevity Extract--its my Reishi Mycelium Extract that strengthens the bees defense system. I swear by it. All the best.

@@bradgoliphant l don't use foundation either, the bees get to build their own combs in prewired frames. I have tried small cell plastic foundation from la Palma and small cell wax foundation from Thornes here in the U.K. but it is a genitic trait that decides if a colony survives or not as far as l can see. Also l find that the surviving stock l have are fairly moderate in size they are also not very swarmy and tend to supersede queens. I feel unsure about continuing down the treatment free path it's much harder than people make out but l don't feel happy about putting chemicals in a hive it just seems wrong. I am going to try and do queen frame trapping to help manage mite numbers but l don't mind owning its a hard path to try and tread. I have learnt a huge amount however and l am not worried about huge honey harvests it is a fascinating thing to my mind that some bees can survive without any interference from me while others just die no matter how much care they get. Thankyou for your reply. Regards Jason

@@JM-nd4kt Jason, if you will just consider trying those two tips I swear by, I believe it will make a huge difference. A girlfriend of mine in Texas has four failing hives and within two months of adding these suggestions they make a full recovery into a booming hive. I wish you all the best. Oh, one other thing I believe helps the bees out a lot--its to limit your hives visits to only once a month.

Very good Borden. As shown in the video. Give them frames of food and your grafted cells or nicot with plenty of nurse bees. That's all they need in the box. Best of luck this season.

Great question. Breeder queens are typically artificially inseminated, potentially inbred to some degree to stabilize traits and in some cases have too much of one trait (i.e. early efforts by Dr. Harbo produced some queens with progeny that were hygiene obsessed and colonies could never build since they would keep tearing out brood). So to your questions I will base my answers on what I remember seeing from the daughters of these breeder queens. The pol-line vsh daughters had no issue with brooding up or honey yield. Nothing amazing and no red flags either. The mite biters were introduced the year that Dr. Hunt was retiring from Purdue and my breeder queens got superseded fast so look to graft as soon after you get them. The daughters were very frugal and overwintered with small clusters. That next year one of the queens looked very behind compared to her sisters but ended up producing an impressive honey crop to number of bees ratio. It was amazing really. She did produce wet cappings which can be an issue if you are making prize comb honey but not so much for liquid honey. Saw a lot less consistency in behavior from those queens and they all kind of ran hot. They do a variety of tests depending on the line of “mite resistant” queen to determine heritability and over time the traits always get diluted or recombined into a random blur of traits that they acquire from mating with dozens of drones over the years. The recommendation is to introduce a new breeder queen every 4 to 5 years. I tend to not rely on any one trait or line and mainly do this for genetic diversity with the ultimate goal of the health of the hive/queen.

It is entirely possible that hives in the US still carry tracheal mites at low levels but are not tested for them / are not the main cause for a colony to go down. I haven’t checked but now that you mentioned this I’m going to do just that out of curiosity. That said, the suppression or elimination of tracheal mites in beekeeping operations in the US may also come as a side effect of the modern methods we use for treating varroa (i.e. organic acids like oxalic and formic, phytochemicals like thymol etc). The issue with Varroa is complicated and in many ways we are crippling our hives by treating for mites. What I mean by this is there is still a trade off, albeit small compared to the stuff they once recommend to beekeepers (pyrethrum and organophosphate based!), we are still in a trade off. Synthetic or organic it does not matter (side note: sometimes organics can be far more toxic than any synthetic alternatives), a miticide is a type of poison tested and designed to kill an insect that lives on another insect without killing the Insect it lives on.... the risk for not treating for varroa leads to disease and disease spilling over into healthy neighboring Honey bee hives through drift, robbing or visiting the same flowers in their ~3 mile foraging radius. I do not want to be responsible for getting other bees sick and especially mine. Next time you see headlines about honey bees making bumble bees sick know that it is true and the reason is simply that a beekeeping operation near by is running with high mite counts. Mites = virus. Honey bees share at least two (might be 4 but 2 for certain ) viruses with bumble bees (DWV;BQCV). I know the stakes and do not want my bees to get wild bees sick that are already struggling with low populations and probable extinctions due to habitat loss and an imported bumble bee specific disease (nosema bombus - thanks to the USDA allowing for the importation of European Bumble bee colonies for greenhouse pollination in the US). I also do understand the idea of letting honey bees find their way out of the problem of varroa mites. The truth is that the honey bee has already done this. It’s just that the version they came up with is something I do not think you are going to like.

Yeah! There are migratory species which fly in swarms.

If the fighting is constant it will absolutely change their behavior. Last year, I did notice some fighting in my case at the entrances from drift. As that year progressed, the fighting stopped on its own and they cycled out defensiveness. I’m still running this hive in 2019 and haven’t seen any issues this year. If the fighting keeps getting worse a queen will be killed. Before things get to that point, you can always nuc a queen with a few frames and pull the divider (give it at least 24hrs). This will lower defensiveness and you could keep this configuration. Or, you could also let the original colony settle back in and then hit the reset button a week later. Divide egg and brood frames on one side with the queen on the other. If all goes well they’ll raise another queen and you’ll be queen-right again with a queen mother / queen daughter colony and workers that are related with less chance of fighting. You’ll also have the nuc. So, if you are worried about losing out on a flow - you won’t if the nuc acts as a brood support and you’re harvesting brood frames go place in the double colony for production. Hope they tame down for you. Have a good one, Matt

I know it is pretty off topic but do anybody know a good website to watch newly released movies online ?

@Darian Mohammad i use flixzone. Just google for it :)

@Eugene Quincy yea, I've been using Flixzone for months myself =)

@Eugene Quincy Thank you, I signed up and it seems like they got a lot of movies there :D I really appreciate it !

Hello Charles thank you. I’ve seen this happen twice now at this apiary of around 40 colonies and find the behavior interesting. I do wear a suit with my larger colonies but I guess they were just more interested in fighting each other. Was able to bee line a colony three years ago that has set up inside of a giant oak about one football field away. They are there every year now and I wonder if they may have cast the swarms. Btw I’m growing hops this year too. Mainly cascade. I’m in Florida so it might be asking too much. Take care fellow beekeeper and thanks again

Hello Joe Kozak, thank you for sharing that bit of information. It’s terrible that a fire took place. However, it is wonderful news that the bee hives remain and are a symbol of hope that more of the structure is undamaged. Thanks again and hope that you have a great day

Hello L.K. Powers thank you my friend. Yes I see what you mean. Queens are very important to the colony and it can be nerve racking handling them. With a little practice you’ll be doing the same in no time. Thanks again and I wish you all the best

Hello Christine, I wish you and your bees the very best

Funny thing is the video is a second take because the other other one flew away lol. Thank you personally I really dislike like having to find the dark ones but they do seem to be tuned-in better for some reason.

Thank you my friend