Splits gone wrong | The bees threw away my plan and made their own.

For more frequent updates in between videos please visit the Bug Farmer Instagram page: / thebugfarmer
About this video:
This Channel:
Although this beekeeping channel is primarily about beekeeping I am also a quasi pepper who believes in becoming self-sufficient. With that in mind, I have started a garden, planted fruit trees, replaced the hedges in front of my house with blueberry bushes, and have recently built a chicken coop. In short, I will share a lot more than beekeeping on this channel.
A little about me:
I am a person who believes you are never to old to learn something. Be it beekeeping, farming, raising chickens, painting, filming and editing video, making wine, beer, bread, cheese, and other fermentation consumables, play guitar etc... If I see something I want to try I start it immediately. If there is one thing I could choose to pass along to my children this would be it. Never be afraid to try. My wife famously told me once that if you are not willing to be bad at something, you will never be good at it. I am bad at quite a few things.
I hope you find my beekeeping videos fun and entertaining as well as get something out of them. I hope I inspire someone to get out and try something new. If you do enjoy my videos, please take a moment to spread the word about this channel and help it, and myself, grow. Have a great day and BEE Happy!
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The gear I use:
Primary Camera: Sony FDRAX53/B 4K HD
Secondary Camera: Sony FDRAX53/B 4K HD
Primary MIC: Sony ECMXYST1M Stereo Microphone
Secondary MIC: Sony ECMXYST1M Stereo Microphone
Tripod: GEEKOTO Camera Tripod
Editing Software: Adobe Premier
Graphics Package: Adobe Photoshop
Learning Final Cut Pro

[@tomcrynock37]

Great video!

[@BugFarmerBees]

Thanks Tom. I'll get those bees soon. Still putting out fires in the bee yards :-)

[@honigtrailapiary4341]

LEMON SQUEEZE: juice of lemons, persimmons, oranges, carrots, ginger, blended together, served over ice or blender with crushed ice.

[@BugFarmerBees]

I was working the bee barns yesterday in 102F. I could have used a Lemon Squeeze :-)

[@BobStecker]

Easy Peasy lemon squeezy = extremely easy, very simple.... you're welcome! Great Videos as always!

[@BugFarmerBees]

Thanks :-). I appreciate you stopping in to have a look.

[@woodlandharvesthoneycompanyllc]

You can get 2 or even more queens in demaree fairly easy. The bees are good at hiding queen cells and if you miss one when you are inspecting the top box you will have one emerge or maybe more. Then if you have an upper entrance she will go out and get mated and come back. The queen in the bottom won't even know it unless the virgin queen goes down in the bottom and kills your queen there. If you don't have an upper entrance that is what usually happens. Virgin queens can go through a queen excluder. Some people put an upper entrance on the top box, let bees make queen cells, get a mated queen back and just pull the top box off and you have a new hive. If you don't want or have an upper entrance you must carefully inspect the top box every seven days if you are moving brood up. You can leave the 2 queens in the hive if you want and produce a lot of honey just by moving brood up and supering in the middle and also removing full honey frames from the top which you replace with brood from the bottom, replacing that with drawn comb or foundation. It's a lot of heavy lifting though.

[@BugFarmerBees]

You are 100% on the money. I have experienced multi-queened hives all season with the Demaree method. The whole process was a lot of work.

[@woodlandharvesthoneycompanyllc]

@@BugFarmerBees Yes it is a lot of work and those deeps are really heavy when full of honey. Some people pull the honey frames out one or two at a time and extract them as they go. Either way you will produce more honey doing it.

[@Backyardfuzzybee]

The best of your videos are when you are the most real. Putting out perfect videos for perfect people has to be a short list of people, considering no one is perfect and no one can relate to perfect. But I can relate to imperfect, Great job.

[@BugFarmerBees]

Thanks. If there is one thing I am not it's perfect. I am always real but apply as much polish in the edit as I have time to do. Kind of like trying to polish a turd :-)

[@KajunHomestead]

Busy Day👍👍👍

[@BugFarmerBees]

Yes, it seems they are all getting busy lately. :-)

[@egb131980]

I appreciate your videos. I finally got two nucs after watching your videos. After first inspection turns out first nuc either I killed the queen or there never was one. Second hive is going gangbusters. At what point do you decide to stop supporting the weak hive? Or just combine the hives and attempt a split later on?

[@BugFarmerBees]

Thank you for watching. First, you were smart to start with two colonies. Now you have the resources to correct an error in a second hive. As far as when to start or stop supporting a week hive, well, that's up to the beekeeper. As for me, if I have time in the season to correct a hive before winter, I will do what I can. If you have a strong queen in the second box and the first box is weak I would gram at least two, maybe three frames of brood, eggs, larva capped and uncapped and install it in the weak hive. The strong queen will recover quickly as long as she has a couple of frames of capped brood herself. The weak hive will now have an infusion of eggs from which to make a new queen, new larva to be capped by the nurse bees, and new brood to hatch and bolster the population throughout the process. It may also n=be a good idea to give both hives a pollen patty and some syrup throughout this process.

[@SMButler]

Lemon Slush: 1 lemon (remove yellow skin but keep the white). 5-1/2 cups ice, 3 cups of water, 1 cup of sugar. Place all in heavy duty blender and run for 60-90 seconds. I haven't tried using honey in place of sugar.

[@BugFarmerBees]

Awesome! I=s that the recipe for a lemon squeeze? I will be making it this week. Thanks!

[@SMButler]

@@BugFarmerBees. Vitamix calls it a Lemon Frosty. I updated the recipe as it is 3 cups water with 5-1/2 cups of ice. There are mechanical devices to squeeze a lemon -- but why through the pulp away? The VitaMix grinds it all up nice and smooth (and cold -- we know we have brains -- they got the brain freeze headache!

[@paulahello7435]

Donald Rumsfeld?

[@cliff8675]

From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns Rumsfeld's statement brought attention to the concepts of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, but national security and intelligence professionals have long used an analysis technique referred to as the Johari window. The idea of unknown unknowns was created in 1955 by two American psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in their development of the Johari window. They used it as a technique to help people better understand their relationship with themselves as well as others. The term was also commonly used inside NASA.[5] Rumsfeld cited NASA administrator William Graham in his memoir; he wrote that he had first heard "a variant of the phrase" from Graham when they served together on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States during the late 1990s.[6] Kirk Borne, an astrophysicist who was employed as a data scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center at the time, said in an April 2013 TED talk that he had used the phrase "unknown unknowns" in a talk to personnel at the Homeland Security Transition Planning Office a few days prior to Rumsfeld's remarks, and speculated that the term may have percolated up to Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials in the Defense Department.[7]

[@BugFarmerBees]

Yep! You got it. :-)

[@LittleRiverBees-or6qp]

An extended form of easy peasy, coined either in the 1950s in a commercial for Sqezy (a British detergent brand which was sold in a squeeze bottle and had a lemon scent),[1] or else not until the 1980s when it was first used among British children as slang.

[@ellsworth1956]

@@JawandoOokomondo-cb7fm try watching the video?????

[@BugFarmerBees]

Nice. All of he best stuff comes from Britten :-) I also got a recipe for something similar to a lemon slush. The recipe is in the comments above.

[@kh7794]

@JawandoOokomondo-cb7fm why are you so consistantly an ass? How about just shut up if you have nothing worthwhile to say.

[@snmwildness1]

SecDef Donald Rumsfeld said the quote.

[@BugFarmerBees]

You got it!!! You are the winner! :-)

[@beverlysteen]

As I am watching you check the hives, I just kept thinking to myself ‘he is not zipped up and he is going to get stung’.

[@BugFarmerBees]

I really don't know how in the world I managed to dodge that bullet. Right when I notices there was a bee about to enter at the zipper. It could have turned out bad :-)

[@carlsledge3868]

Al🎉ways make splits during a flow or feed em 2 gallons of light syurp, makes better queens plus she'll be stronger to mate and return, remember from day 1 of a split you're looking at 30 days eggs and small larve.

[@BugFarmerBees]

Thanks. That is all helpful information.

[@Farlomous]

great video, I wonder if the queen in that top box was actually the queen from the first hive that took a mating flight and got lost. going to be interesting to see the update on them

[@BugFarmerBees]

It is entirely possible. I waited to long to split those hives after the harvest and they were packed with bees just a few weeks ago. I am pretty certain they swarmed. I am just hoping I am not too late to save the colonies.

[@clarkkent7973]

Seems to me that you had two hives swarm.

[@BugFarmerBees]

That is entirely possible. After I tore down the Demaree's at harvest the hives were packed with bees. I should have gotten around to splitting the front row sooner to give them space. Chances are pretty good they split themselves :-(

[@20quid]

The bees are just reminding you who's really in charge.

[@apveening]

And they've got the royalty to back it up ;)

[@BugFarmerBees]

All I can do is coax. They can always resist :-)

[@LittleRiverBees-or6qp]

no plan survives contact with the BEES!

[@BugFarmerBees]

So true :-). They have their own plans.

[@TriciaatFunksGrove]

So your top box made a queen so there must have been queen cells you missed in your Demaree top box inspection. I don’t use a top entrance in the Demaree swarm control.

[@BugFarmerBees]

it seems that is the case. It has happened many times this season.

[@TriciaatFunksGrove]

@@BugFarmerBees happened to me too!

[@zulikkowalski3547]

Maybe the queen from the hive that was requeening flew into the wrong box

[@BugFarmerBees]

That is entirely possible. It may be a Demaree or upper entrance thing. I will be inspecting Bee Barns today and hope to have the ability to inspect hives and talk about my Demareee experience.

[@SylantBill]

I thought a Lemon Squeeze was a British lemonade drink??

[@marcusm4271]

It was an English dish soap in the 60’s the phrase was a TV advert.

[@SylantBill]

@@marcusm4271 Nice, thanks for the correction I will add it to my library. My wife always says I am a fountain of useless knowledge.

[@BugFarmerBees]

I think it may also be a drink. Check the comments above. Someone provided a recipe. :-)

[@salembeeman370]

Okay one of two things. You are getting senile and forgot that you split these hives already and hey haven't requeened yet. Or two you have too many hives for a working man. You have a family and lots of responsibility. Maybe you need to scale back until you have more time. Thanks for making the videos. You always do a good job.

[@BugFarmerBees]

I suspect it's a bit of both. I have had so much happening this summer it has been hard to keep up. I hope I will be caught up in the next few weeks and be able to stay on top of everything. Thanks for being out there and stopping in to have a look at my videos and taking the time to comment. Much appreciated.

[@apveening]

Maybe (OK, definitely) not fun, but interesting none the less (and I am only at 12 minutes).

[@BugFarmerBees]

It was a long day an d the bees threw my plans out the window in favor of their own. The good news is the hives are all in good shape now. It was a close cal though.

[@apveening]

@@BugFarmerBees No plan ever survives contact with reality, at least not unchanged.