OPEN A BEEHIVE WITH ME | BEEKEEPING 101 | Easy Beekeeping

[@hillkid4mountains]

Excellent video. Nice wind break and plenty of capped honey for winter. I started numbering hives and carrying around a small note pad when in my 3rd year of beekeeping with 25 hives. Even stapled recipe cards 4" x 6"" to the front lower box to write on and in plastic sandwich bags when winter rain came in. After I got up to 50 and 100 hives it was just too hard to take down written notes on all colonies. You will laugh but I started to put pennys, nickels, dimes, and quarters on the lids for hive strength. Dollar store bought netted bags of dime size colored glass beads for marking things I'd done or needed to do. Even after a year of collecting orange Gatorade lids I put on hives that needed to be split or swarmed. Even red clay bricks I got from demoing a old building from a job I would use. Keeping the long side parallel or 90° across the width of the lid to explain the need to feed pollen patties or sugar syrup. Some day a hundred years from now somebody will find the coins with a metal detector and wonder what the and smile. I once planted a 1" inch apple tree seedling and grafted a green granny smith stein onto it to only have it burst to height in two to three to four years. And too much fruit from growth and over pollination I had to thin extensively. Guess I found where the old hand dug outhouse was built 50 feet from the old ranch home still standing. I have gathered and collected many things in my life over the years. Square nails from old barns, green, blue, purple, clear depression glass bottles from homestead behind the house dumps, arrowheads from walking animal and cattle trails in the winter, crevicing and sluce boxing gravel, coarse sand, and broken rocks in a stream in the canyon after it got to hot to fish. Black sand, little flakes and specks, pickers, and pocket gold in the river. Even bottle caps at one time. My grandmother had an old pine needle indian looking wide flat half bowl with 200 to 300 old buttons in it. When I started to make beeswax candles hand dipped and in polyurethane rubber molds it was short, tall, colred candle sticks. The green Jade one, the light pink rose one, and the brass scrooge flat one with the finger hold were my favorites. Amazing all the different things and hobbies we do in life like beekeeping! Fun :) 🐝

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

Thank you for sharing!

[@hillbillyman52]

Thank you Laryssa; the passion and love you have for what you do is plain to see in your presentations. You are a great instructor 😊

[@dcsblessedbees]

Tech doesn't like being sticky, ya it makes ya grumpy when they fly off.🤣 Have a great weekend Laryssa.

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

You too! What do you do to keep track of your bees? when I talked to Michael Bush, he said he uses a brand on his hives and puts pins in the boxes. I just write it down on paper.

[@dcsblessedbees]

@@BeekeepingMadeSimple First year mostly nothing. I wrote on my lids the 2nd year and I kind of use my videos as video logs and notes. I just post them so family and friends can see what I'm doing with all the bees. I think my older brother think I'm nuts for keeping honey bees, they didn't enjoy when we live on the farm. I have seen videos on the push pin method may use seems easy, I like easy systems. A friend came up with a new product I'd like to check out. Brain at Castle Hives, he and another beekeeper Jason at Bohemia Bees teamed up and came up with they call a "Queen Right Dial." Think I'll give that a try to help keep track of queens easier this next season. I love keeping bees but I am kind of what ya might call a bit lazy.😂I call it energy conservation, so I like anything that makes record keep easier. I do see the need of records if I am wanting to run in the 30 to 50 size range. After I got up to over about 20 last summer it started becoming more difficult to keep track of. So I figured it was time to start doing better on the notes this next season. Have a great weekend, thanks for making videos and talking bees.😁

[@lynleykerrhogan8969]

Your last comment was priceless. One can definitely hurt their back when working with the frames. They can be very heavy. Be cautious and support your back.

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

So true!

[@elayneb7543]

This is brilliant , Laryssa. Thankyou🥰

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

Thank for watching!

[@prospectingwithdisabilitie8288]

Thanks for sharing

[@QueenBamBEE32724]

One concern I have is that I'll accidentally drop a frame while inspecting-have you ever had this happen? I'm a beginner, haven't even received my boxes, yet, will get my first colony in April. Thank you for doing this-it's helpful to see what to expect.

[@hillkid4mountains]

A sting usually always hurts at first. When I just started out and began to use no gloves, I remember getting stung in the cuticle of my index finger. I dropped the frame and felt silly afterwards for reacting like that. You will learn with experience. Now after 30 + years I don't feel anything like that anymore. Season of year, is there a nectar flow on, and the weather or time of day is something to take in consideration. If you were by my side to watch me inspect my hives nowadays you might not even notice I got stung. A simple scrape with the 90° end of my hive tool and the stinger is removed. The quicker the better too. And over the years you build an immunity to any kind of reaction. Though anything to the face or head will probably swell a little more than anywhere else on your body. I have seen pictures of children from our club with a swollen eyelid and with the biggest grin the next day as if they are proud to show everyone. We're your gloves, veil and I bet someday you will be running your bare fingers across a frame of nurse bees without a second notice. 🐝

[@edithmorrison574]

why do you replace the dark comb?

[@caz4523]

Will you just trash the dark frames? Is there any use for dark comb after you replace them?

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

I put the dark comb in my solar wax melter. The wax that comes out is pretty light colored, actually. A lot of the propolis stays with the debris in the basket.

[@caz4523]

@@BeekeepingMadeSimple Ty

[@sandradraus9]

What is meant by dark comb?

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

Here's a video where I show you how to make a solar wax melter. However, you need a lot of sun.

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

Dark comb is the comb in the frames in the video. Honeycomb is almost white when it is first created by the bees, but it gets darker as it gets walked on and covered in propolis. Frames used for the baby bees, especially, get really dark because they line the cells with propolis, plant sap, because it has anti-bacterial properties.

[@AngelaLamb-n5f]

Why are you taking out the dark frames to begin with?

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

I've found that the bees start to ignore the frames with really dark wax. The cells get smaller and smaller as they are covered more and more with propolis and therefore get darker. As you saw in the lower box, some of those frames of dark comb were already abandoned. It is also a lot harder to spot eggs in the dark comb.

[@utuber13x]

hello, I always hear that a queen must be replaced every 2 years or the hive will become HOT meaning vicious, and hostile, is this correct?

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

I have not experienced that. It is very common to replace your queen after 1-3 years but this is because the older she gets, the less eggs she lays, which means the smaller the hive population and less honey to harvest. I do not pinch my queens unless the hive is really struggling and I have not found that the hives get aggressive. I've just seen them become less productive. They don't abscond, they don't die, but they don't bring in much food either. If you live in an area with a cold winter, it's more important to requeen every two years or so in order to make sure the hive survives until spring. Older queens have been known to not start laying again come late winter and if this happens, the colony will collapse by spring.

[@mvmsurfer]

why do you replace the black frames?

[@BeekeepingMadeSimple]

You don't have to, I usually do once the bees start to ignore those frames. They get full of propolis. The cells start to get so caked on so much with the stuff that the cell size is considerably smaller. I'm assuming that's why they start to abandon those frames, but am not positive.