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Why do you need to put a new queen in a queenless hive? Won't ahive simply GROW its own new queen?

Puzzled: WHY should a hive only WANT one queen?

longer days than ga in the summer in The north

great presentation

I've never had a hive of any kind, but I'm in the barn building a few top bar hives this week. Let's say I misjudged how many honey filled combs I removed from the hive. But, instead of harvesting the honey from the comb, I stored the bar, comb and all, in the freezer. Could I take some of these frozen combs and put them back in the hive to make up for my miscalculation?

Being in my sixties and starting this be adventure I’m all about the easiest way. Great info. Plus. I will definitely be doing horizontal hives.

Awesome content!

Really appreciated this talk. Wonder if anyone still puts their nucs in a root cellar? Would they heat the room up too much? We're up in Northern Alberta and this winter we had 2 weeks of -40C!

Thanks from Ireland.

Just leave them enough honey for themselves to survive? This man is a genius.

You have hit the nail on the head on sooooooooooooo many marks. Congratulations!!!! This is amazing. Listen up Beekeepers around the world.

Michael Bush, what are you feeding new colonies and the bees in the winter? If you feeding them anything. Thanks.

I completely understand and believe everything you are saying. For 9 years I NEVER TREATED NOR FED my bees in Texas and they thrived!!!!!! I'm starting beekeeping again next year in NY and I will not treat again , nor feed. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We need a change. Our old ways need to change to save the bees. Listen up all beekeepers. This guy is on to something amazing.

You can not compare honey and sugar syrup the way Bush did. It is just not valid. Honey was processed by the bees from natural nectar and that is why it got a high ph. Natural nectar does not have such high ph neither. So open honey cells may not have that high ph yet since the bees may have not processed that nectar yet and the bees keep open nectar and honey cells around brood to raise them. Processing that nectar into honey by bees will get it that high ph. Suger syrup will get a high ph like real honey after the bees turn it into sugar honey or funny honey which looks like real honey with a slight different consistency and a different flavor. However, real honey has enzymes and vitamins and other elements that sugar honey or sugar syrup does not have, but sugar is still the closest thing that can help and keep bees alive if the bees need food. A bee can only survive about 3 days without food.

so Michael Bush does not do anything to treat varroa?

So do bees get high off bee bread?

We call those giant looking mosquitos mosquito hawks here in Alaska. 😂

The one guy who says “we’re hands off bee Keeper” what he meant to say is I’ve never had bees in my life and I have no idea what I’m doing. I say to him your not a bee keeper, your someone who has bees. I’m a “hands off bee keeper” is like saying I’m a hand off pet owner, I’m a hands off farmer. Bees are livestock. Your honey bees are domesticated they are NOT wild. The survival of your colony depends on you to practice some animal husbandry. You wouldn’t take a hands off approach to cows, chickens, goats or cats and dogs, all were once wild but you’d make sure they were fed, dewormed, have a clean stalls, have water. Nonsense if you think your gonna have bees and not do anything, then just don’t get them at all. These kind of people infuriates me and I really wish he’d not kid glove them and just call them out.

How do they move the dead bees out

sick power point bro

did he really recommend putting wood hives against each other to keep in warmth versus wrapping them in some random insulation?? makes no sense....

Very good video full of great information but I have to disagree with you on one point. Gravity does not get stronger - the earth sucks. Thanks so much.

I was trucking right along until this idiot proclaimed at around 30:00.. "if I could only get the farmers to quit spraying everything." If the farmers didn't spray, there would be no viable crop left to harvest. Pound your gums to the contrary, but the facts remain the same. The beetles and aphids and borers and caterpillars would consume the crop before the farmer could harvest anything. Everybody likes to fill their pot bellies and bitch with a mouthful of food about all the pesticides. Most haven't got a clue about what it takes to produce the food they gobble down like pigs. Bees don't become immune to mites. That's a lie. Have humans become immune to mosquitos? How about lice? Come on..you've got this crowd of quasi experts telling you that 30-40 years after varroa showed up in America, they've already developed mite resistant strains of bees by natural selection. If that was the case....why aren't humans resistant mosquitos and lice after 40,000 years? Why aren't bees mite resistant where the problem originated? Don't tell me they are....where do you think American bee keepers learned what to use against mites? If mites were brought here by contaminated bees....obviously the trek here began where the problem originated. If you don't treat your bees for mites, THEY WILL DIE. If you don't treat your children for lice they bring home from school, the entire family will soon have them. You can choose to be lousy or kill them. Same with mites. Back in the sixties, farmers used lots of pesticides no longer on the market.....and bees were abundant. Yes, they were! I'm 62 years old and grew up in the sixties....if you went barefoot, it was at your own peril! Especially if the white clover was blooming in your yard. The bees were everywhere. The change came somewhere in the 80s. What happened in the 80s? The varroa mite landed on our shores and bees began to die.....they coined a term for it; colony collapse disorder. It's no disorder! The bees were ate up by parasitical mites. Be the same if the school nurse sends a note home with little Susie.....your child has hygenic collapse disorder. Huh? Translated: your kid is ate up with lice....pour on Nix or Triple X or kerosene.....do not encourage them to chew the lice! And what do people do?They'll not hesitate to pour chemical treatment on their kids to kill the bugs. Yet they'll cry against treating bees and spraying crops. Explain the logic behind that while reading another chapter of Rachel Carson's lunacy.

Such a big entrance, how do they protect it all of that from wasps and robbers? Each hive stressor adds up, just like in humans

We need to be able to test our own comb to see how much contaminants are there. Changing out comb is ok, but if it bears out that Varroa D has lower fecundity on old dark comb and I swap my bees all over to foundationless, I'm going to want to hang onto that comb as long as I can. I just bought a bunch of wax foundation last year because my installation of bees were building so slow I thought it would speed them up, and now I've decided to get all that cycled out. Well, dripping with VD here, that knocks back aging comb and getting them past this phase. If I could test that foundation I bought and maybe it really is clean and not full of contaminates I wouldn't have to cycle it out so soon. Is there a way beeks can get our wax tested or do it ourselves?

Michael, Thank you for this very informative video. Really helpful!

So is chalkbrood not as dangerous as foulbrood?

If you are going through all the trouble to heat the hives in order to overwinter them, they how are they more valuable than a hive from georgia? I'm not getting it. If you are heating the hive, you are not getting "winter survivors", you are getting pampered queens....

Don't know if you have anything relevant to say. Started with a sales pitch for ALL your books...turned off!

Michael, how can we treat bees with vegetable (herbal) oil? Smoker? I hope the how-to can be shown, too. Thanks ~ ^_^

You said you do not use queen excluders, would you be so kind to explain to me as a new bee keeper, why you prefer not to use them . Thanks Craig from Virginia.

Is there a correlation between infestation of mites and drone populations increasing

Thank you for the WEALTH of information. This is my first hive. I have watched so many videos, read blogs and there are so many different answers. I just want my little babies to be safe and happy. I really connect with the simplicity of management and care.

What a great discussion Sir! Thank you for taking the time to upload this video.

But we did treat for varroa though. This is something that these treatment freeors, or thought freeors have trouble grasping for some strange and unknown reason. How could anyone go treatment free now-a-days when all or most of the drones flying around out there come from treated colonies? If an individual desires to go treatment free, and their neighbour is treating, they unfortunately don't have a chance in hell. If all the beekeepers around a treatment free beekeeper are not treating, then maybe, just maybe, they might have a chance but first they'll be going through some heavy losses and may even end up losing their entire operation. If beekeeping is your livelihood, this would be an extremely foolish decision. We, as rationally thinking individuals, need to focus on the here and now, in other words, we have to be realistic, what we should have done and didn't do years ago doesn't help us now. Now, in 2019, either treat your bees, or they're dead. What other choice is there? Sure you can decide not to treat, but your neighbours will most likely burn down your house since you'll be sharing your mites with them and making it more difficult for yourself and everyone else around you. Focus on reality people, that's all that matters now.

I appreciate his no BS attitude. Refreshing.

By changing the entrance to the top you will interrupt foraging everytime you inspect, the bees will get confused and look for the entrance, personally I use the Vivaldi board and so far so good.

Sounds nice, but when we return back to reality this philosophy has no place in the real world, yet. We all want treatment free bees, that is what researchers and scientists are striving towards but it unfortunately is going to take longer than we would like. In the meantime, our bees cannot handle varroa on their own, and as animal husbandry practitioners, we have to assume the role of care takers and insure our bees have low mite levels at all times to insure their health and well being, anything less is a form of neglect. Manage and control varroa people, or find another hobby.

Thanks for the video I am in Alberta Canada we see -45 below with a 50 plus wind so wind chill around -50ish early morning the coldest. Next year is my first year ay this I have 2 complete hives and hope to be around 10 in the fall cheers

This here should be taken as a grain of salt... new to bee keeping...learn whats been working for hundreds of years before trying to reinvent the wheel like this guy .. pic the pile of rotten dead bees and everything else without bottom entrance.. hive needs to breath one entrance at top not going to pull air thru ... 90 lbs to much then pull a few frames

Not sure where he gets 170 mites from, I've looked high and low and can't find 170 different kinds of mites in any of my hives, just one, the varroa mite. I think he gets a little carried away sometimes because there is no scientific evidence to support this claim. I've looked everywhere online for this fact, talked to several beekeepers throughout Canada and the U.S and still have no idea what he's talking about.

I bought a full functioning hive which was treated with essential oils. These bees are aggressive. I will be transferring to top bar hive (Corwin Bell design) and not treating for varroa and hopefully within a few generations they will be stronger and happier. Also, these bees are big which indicates the use of large stamped foundation. My intention is to be a holistic bee keeper. This presentation by Michael Bush is very helpful.

So I have a question. He says you don't feed your bees unless you have to because feeding is not as good as honey and you don't want them to die. OK makes absolute perfect sense!!!! But shouldn't folks be viewing the mite treatments the exact same way? I know a bee keeper that has done controls with equal mite counts in yards one yard they treated with oxelic acid late fall and spring hive loss count was 10% and spring mite count was 0. Non treated bees Spring hive loss count was 75% with a mite count identical to how they went into winter. Other than treatment conditions were identical and all hives wintered in the same location under the exact same conditions. I agree 100% that bees can eventually or hopefully kick varoa mites issue on their own. But, their survival is totally dependent on their learned response to the mite. Then the passing of that learned response over time until it becomes basically hereditary or in other words evolution. I fail to see how the steadfast answer don't treat ever at all or "let them die"is the solution. Bees are the product of successful evolution but extinction is the product of non successful evolution. Death of your hive from a mite infestation is simply that your hive has not acquired the learned response to the mites. If you are willing to feed to keep them alive until they can fend for themselves then why would you not treat if absolutely necessary for the exact same reason. I fail to see how dead bee's or dead hives evolve. From all i'm reading on the issue the mites aren't that big of an issue for the bees The mites slightly weaken the bees making them susceptible to vectors. In humans it takes time and study to find causes for susceptibility to vectors. Yet I see this "let them die" mentality. Are bees expected to figure this out as quickly as we did? Why feed? Why not "let them die" With the same steadfast resolution? I am not trying to be combative about these issues but I see naturalists reaming the hell out of anyone that treats and yet when I see this video it seems like the "let them die" idea only applies where and when the naturalists say so. I don't look at bees as pets. I look at bees as livestock under my care. They are most certainly a substantial investment. I grew up on a farm with livestock. We didn't treat an issue unless we had to. But when we had to we did it. Like it or not it was a part of that job just as the slaughter was. But the idea was that the death of this animal that we put so much effort into raising and maintaining actually served a purpose. I do believe that bees can learn to deal with varroa but I believe the key to that learned response is the survival of the hive first and foremost. Just like ticks or anything else. Infestation kills without treatment even in a natural environment and animals evolved to deal with the issue. I scratch my head and roll my eyes over the entire argument on both sides. The problem is not treatment as I see it. It's unnecessary and incorrect application of treatments when it's absolutely unnecessary or improper to lack of treatment when it is necessary for the hive to survive. Both of these arguments are for our beliefs and agenda and both sides harm the bees. Making the argument to not treat bees at all so they evolve to handle a large varroa infestation or die is the same as me saying pesticides and herbicides are an issue so you should visit your hives with a spray can application of raid and round up once a week. Good to have that in the honey also so we build tolerance also. Weak hives we micromanage with chemicals won't survive but neither do hives that are infested with issues we don't manage at all. What they both have in common is in both cases the hives are dead and DEAD HIVES DO NOT EVOLVE! A dead bee does not learn and does not pass on knowledge. Why is this comment this long? Because the issue is a lot bigger than a one liner.

I like Michael Bush's presentations. I always learn a lot. I agree that science can be oversimplified and conclusions drawn from one experiment are a classic mistake to make. Lab experimentation has to field trial before you apply results broadly.

Heaters might be excessive.

Michael, such a great presentation. concise and to the point with the right amount of explanation. Thanks

❤

Best spring greetings from beekeepers in Ukraine!

what is a "hot hive"?

Very helpful ... thanks!