วีดีโอ

@@donches7637 good points for sure, and we saw some dead in a mannlake feeder from similar. He had gotten away with it thus far but it was concerning. The inners had open entrances too. That said, the dead weren’t resultant from robbing.

@@MadhavDhruve it needs a seed stock. Some folks do use powdered sugar as the seed stock instead of a creamed honey or a set honey.

@@madchefskills blue sky bee supply

@@paulabowden if you start with a crystalized honey (which ultimately is what the seed is), it tends to replicate similar sized crystals. If your crystallizing honey has a real nice texture sure, but a lot of honeys that crystallize on their own have a pretty squelchy (big goopy crystals) texture. By starting with liquid honey, you have a lot more control on crystal set because the only crystals in it are the ones you purposely introduced. I specifically take buckets of honey that have started to set, and reliquify them in my warmer, then use THAT honey for creaming (as it wants to recrystallize)! I don’t expect the blender whipping to actually be a shelf stable product without some seeding.

@@framcesmoore all of this is answered in prior comments, but: you need to hold it pretty much AT 55°, how you achieve that is up to you and what you can achieve with your appliances. The containers I used here are from Blue Sky Bee Supply, but all the bee suppliers tend to have some iteration of creamed honey tub available. The seed stock I used it the Kroger creamed honey, it has a decent texture (but admittedly imperfect texture if you’re looking for ribbons) that remains spreadable (which the perfect creamed honeys tend to set too tight to do).

@@sleepersix lots of channels so to speak. Directly informed about bee trees/known locations through swarm collecting. Successful swarm trap hits with high quality stock. Years ago I started a regional swarm reporting and capture program, it has been very informative.

@@ericshipplett3517 that one is sold by Blue Sky Bee Supply in Ohio. Every bee-retail shop has some iteration of a creamed honey vessel.

@@MahyaqiaLana once the texture has set, it would be fine sitting at 25C, but you’d likely have it decrystalizing or melting at 32C. We run into that issue with farmers markets.

Thank you so much!

@@bligon11 swarm season/spring. In my area I’d want my traps up by 3/15.

@@leehillard2841 believe it or not, that is a luggage scale purchased off the shelf at my local Walmart. www.walmart.com/ip/559995509

@@danlieter5673 Thank you so much!

@@donches7637 TY!

@@MiryamsApiary it won’t cause the amount of crystallization to reverse, but it WILL slow down the process significantly. 55°F/12.8°C is the ideal temperature because of rapid and UNIFORM crystal set relative to the seed stock. Anything that interrupts that process can also cause the crystal set to be distorted, might lose or pick up some different or unwanted textural properties.

@@donches7637 thank you!

Great Q! A small fridge is a pretty ideal option, but the average fridge uses a nebulous 1-10 dial to set temps, nor is the average fridge controller made to target a range with 55º in it! The options are either get an appliance that CAN hold that temperature out of the box, like a wine fridge, or modifying a more pedestrian fridge using a separate temperature controller. Along those lines: I use a bunch on Inkbird thermostat products for heating applications. I have found them reliable and seemingly long lived (my honey dryer and now my large incubator run off of Inkbird ITC-306 units: the Inkbird was less than any of the individual temperature controller components that my incubator needed replaced). That said, the ITC-306 units are heater controls only. While I haven't used one, I'd gamble their cooling capable ITC-308 would prove a reliable tool, ~$35. You'd place the thermocouple (the actual sensor) into the fridge, near the center of everything: it has a thin wire and you can just close the door on the wire, don't need to drill it in or anything. You'd then plug in the Inkbird to house current, and plug the fridge into the 'cooling' receptacle of the Inkbird. You'd set cooling temps, maybe 54º +2º: that means 'whenever temperature exceeds 56º cool it down to 54º', and let it run. It would ballpark 55º that way, but may need tweaking. You'd want to set it up and let it run a few days to let everything normalize before adding the mixed honey. There are other manufacturers of these types of units too. I don't have a professional relationship with Inkbird or anything, they've just been really reliable for me. This can be a pretty mission critical component (especially when I'm banking dozens and dozens of queen cells) and they haven't failed me yet. I actually was referred to them by another queen breeder. You DO want it pretty dang close to 55º for proper rapid-and-fine crystal set, and that can be an issue because a lot of thermal controllers, and thermostats for that matter, are NOT well calibrated. I have admittedly not had this issue with my two Inkbirds, but I've seen temperatures vary as much as 5º between non-calibrated units. In a perfect world you'd have a traceable reference thermometer with 55º in the middle of its range. Traceable means it is referenced back to NIST calibration thermometers, and these things are pretty dang accurate. That said, these are expensive things to just make sure you're at 55º! I found some by Thermco that would work (B60600-0700, actually a thermometer for blood bank work! Ranges -5ºC to 20ºC +- 0.75ºC, 55ºF is ~12,7ºC), but they're $47! There are a number of digital traceable units too. I've actually found digital thermal sensors tend to have a much wider range of temperatures where they remain accurate. The old traceable glass units would have small ranges because of how much the glass and spirit can deviate above and below its calibrated temperature ranges, hence why they'd only have a small band they were calibrated for. Good luck!

@@jakebark23 Thank you for your lengthy explanation and suggestions. I’m going to go with the wine cooler. I’m seeing there are plenty of used ones out there. Hopefully, we can make our first batch of creamed honey this week. Thanks again.

I’ve been flooded with resource hive questions, which I consider good news, because it means I FINALLY GOT PEOPLE TO MAKE RESOURCE HIVES!

14 twelfths

I only used liquid honey and creamed honey in his one. You NEED a seed-stock to control crystal size. The most common alternative I know is doping the honey with powdered sugar. Several ‘bee stores’ sell kits that use powdered sugar as seed stocks.

I have seen it and have had peers use it. It absolutely works. I just use lemongrass oil out of cheapness and convenience! The manufactured lures are more ‘true’ to scenting smell, have some of the other compounds present that straight lemongrass lacks.

Thank you so much!

Great question/point. I don't really make a clear distinction between 'small' and 'weak' colonies, in my vernacular they are just different adjectives for the same condition: a colony that just isn't growing or with a smaller population that their neighbors. With these, you 'Robin-Hood' from the rich colonies and give resources to the poor. That said, we can and probably should note some distinctions among these colonies: WHY those colonies are weak, and if/how to address those problems, and certain contraindications for boosting! (I omitted these because this is a video about swarm control as opposed to being a video about boosting weak hives. Good subject for a future video though! Might literally be the next one I make, would be timely.) There are fundamentally 3 things that cause a weak colony with a small population in the spring: current disease, bad queens, and 'everything else.' We can call 'everything else' 'myriad population issues.' Lets work through that list backwards. 'Myriad population issues' are those caused by something OTHER THAN bad queens or current disease. These are colonies that respond really well to resource boosting. The colony might have just entered winter with a smaller population due to feed issues or a poorly-timed requeening late in the summer. They might have had higher overwinter-population-losses due to a disease vector that is no longer present, like a late bad varroa hit that was stopped with a winter oxalic application, but the past damage inflicted is still playing out. It might even just be a colony that was hit by winter weather worse than their neighbors: within any apiary, there are worser spots for weather exposure and colonies placed there will (to an extent) have worse winter losses. All of these are relics of PAST problems. The 'boost' these colonies receive is often enough for them to 'break out' and start growing independently and recover without further inputs. Weak colonies with bad queens respond well to resource boosting, but will start to go backwards again afterwards. Boosting these colonies doesn't lead to a permanent fix, because the fundamental cause (the bad queen) remains. To get these colonies on track and independently successful, the queen must be replaced. Lastly are colonies that are sick right now/currently. There are several potential disease conditions this time of year, particularly EFB and Vairimorpha (what we used to call Nosema). In my opinion these are colonies that shouldn't be boosted. The disease is either treatable and should be handled first, or it is terminal and you're throwing away resources. When a colony becomes sick enough to show Vairimorpha symptoms, they have a 100% mortality rate in my experience. Vairimorpha is here and killing colonies, but most beeks don't recognize it/it frequently goes undiagnosed. Around 1% of my colonies get Vairimorpha, so I expect similar for other apiaries in my region. That also means an apiary with 10 hives would on average see it once every 10 years, so it gives little opportunity for most beeks to become familiar with its signs (unlike Varroa kills, which are readily found in most apiaries in the spring). Theoretically a frame of capped brood will spike up this colony's population and buy them time to recover, but I just don't see it paying off. I think you're throwing good money after bad here. With EFB, the disease condition tends to persist until either treatment with increasingly-hard-to-source terramycin, or a brood break and/or requeening breaks the infection's reproductive cycle and the colony shakes off the disease. This is another case of throwing good money after bad: the colony is either weak enough it will fail, or the queen can be caged or something to instigate recovery from EFB FIRST. A colony in recovery is a fine candidate for boosting, but a colony that is still sick just ends up with more sick bees after boosting. You need to handle the disease first. I hope this hits the question you were asking! And if not, fire away!

@@jakebark23 . Well said Jake . Couldn’t have said it better myself. Lol. I think we have both seen people that keep dumping good brood frames on bad/weak colony’s

That is certainly an option, and is one I have done before. However, if they’re already heading out the door and you are still in your flipflops, sometimes it is easier just boxing them after! 😂 Balancing swarm control and colony strength is a rather difficult line to walk, and an apiary trying to maximize outputs always risks having some colonies getting away from them.

​@@jakebark23Well said. We all make plans but they don't all play out perfectly. This was a cool video. Video and audio clarity are critical and you get perfect marks there, the content quality was on pint as well. Well played, Now your on my radar and ill be curious to see what comes next. Ty btw

Give me a few days crack the whip at my webmaster, we'll get a copy available on my own website. Apologies for the access issues.

You are roughly 110 miles north of my latitude, so our schedules will be more similar than different. In a normal year I aim to do splits around 5/1, allowing me to send out my overwintered nucs and using the leftover parts to make my spring nucs. I would somewhat blindly assume you are about two weeks later in the spring and two weeks earlier in the fall. Even with the early spring, I'm still going to try and hit that 5/1 date for my splits. While the spring warmth is showing up early, it doesn't seem to negate risks for an extended cold blast somewhere in late April that chills brood and induces a virgin queen loss rate of 60%+. In a sense, speaking in terms of successful mating for your virgin queens, the longer you wait to split in the spring the more success you will have. IIRC queens need temps in the mid-60s for flight: it appears the workers can heat up their cores in ways queens cannot. Workers fly ~55, drones ~57 IIRC. They also need relatively good weather, no strong winds, rain systems, etc, or they are grounded. You are up near where Charles Linder operates. CL is a retired engineer who transitioned into commercial beekeeping, and is a VERY vocal representative of the ABF and has a related column in ABJ. I recall him saying there is a lot of sandy soil and melon pollination in central Illinois. Some of your key pollen and nectar flows may be very different than mine, though plants in the gourd family tend to offer starvation wages to their pollinators! And thank you for the reminder about the calendar! I need to get that on my own page still! Facebook had a major outage yesterday, you may find it accessible today.

If using a single unmodified 10-frame as a swarm trap, 1 drawn comb in the middle, and the rest foundationless frames.

@@jakebark23 thanks for responding. Should I use ether wire or line in the empty frames?

@@glennmartin8949 I often use nothing but I am lazy and am used to unsupported foundation-less frames! I find wire is the better product of the two. Bees often chew out fishing line.

@@jakebark23 thanks for the info!! Much Appreciated!!