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How does a beekeeper find a market for the honey?

What type of swiffer sheet do you use? I have two hives that have hundreds of those little bastards in them

What was the elevation of this yard?

What timeframe did you have your bees on the sourwood and what part of NC? I’m looking to try and get a crop next year.

Old School new

Did you cross reference the ubo scores with Harbo scores on any of these colonies you already tested twice?

I wish I had a mentor when I started! I wouldn't have killed as many bees! But that's the lessons I won't forget. Seems like you had a good one. Gave you a good start. Happy keeping "God Bless"!

How's them NQI queens doin? :D

Yes, it is true that in the fall you can't really judge by brood. What I look for is are they calm? Are they walking about in what looks like there is organization? Are there cells that are super-cleaned? If there is pollen available are they bring it in? If I see these things I am happy.

HA Ashby enjoyed the video. Glad every thing is going good for u. It was nice meating your mentor. Hope u both have a Blessed week.

It is always great to learn from someone that has already jumped that fence . A bee manual is great to prop your feet up on while you are lesson to a older beekeeper talk . But they do give you ideas of questions to ask . There is a right way to bee keep, there is a wrong way to bee keep . There is a older bee keeper way to bee keep AND then it is up to you to find out the way to go even though every month, week, day, hour is always different. Do not be afraid to get your feet wet or stung . Thanks

A rare year, not seeing much brood in the hives, but queens are there. I think the drought & lack of forage is playing into this.

I read hives from their sound. Makes you really wonder why no brood and bees are friendly and plentiful. Resourses rather man made is something to consider if broodless

DUCT TAPE IS OUR FRIEND FOR CRACKS

I'm in Darlington S.C. and have a few hives with good bees but no brood which is not S.C. style. 30 days no rain or resources i think played into it with me not feeding

Where do you source syrup?

Dang you’re cute. Wanna get married and manage chaos together?

Mentors are so useful ! Thanks for the video !

Nice video. Always great to see Mike.

Mentors are great to have. I'm seeing less brood than ever before. I was going to combine one and went through every frame and no queen. I took the last one out into the sun and there she was. I'm just going to let them ride until Spring.

Oh I have gotten 1 right there before those SUCK!😂Duct Tape a Beekeepers Best Friend. I was beginning to come to that conclusion from watching videos, More Hives does not always equal More Production. Thanks for sharing your time with us. Blessed Days you two...

Love your videos. How about a video on the business side of it or maybe 10 videos on that.

Also watching Bob Binnie and Greg Rogers most recent video. Gregg remarked how the Asheville area is awith bee keepers. Looking for property closer to west of Charlotte probably not much further.

Thank you for taking the time to work on this project. It’s certainly produce some interesting test results for sure. Did you happened to take mite washes pre and post test for each tested hive to see what their respective mite counts where for each hive? My thinking is even though there are inconsistencies in the percentages from when the first and second test were done did the hives still show consistent hygienic behavior by keeping the number of mites at or under the recommended thresholds between the first and second tests periods.

Thanks for sharing this, Ashby. Breeding for varroa resistance and enhancing hygiene is definitely a challenging task. I'm curious if you retested the 2023 colonies and how those results compare to 2024. In Australia, there’s a significant privately funded initiative where beekeepers and breeders are using ubeeo as a primary tool to boost hygienic behavior, even though there are some inconsistencies. We're seeing promising improvements in bee health. Early results with F1 open mated queens show an ability to maintain low mite levels. Our conclusion so far is that while results can be variable, colonies with high test scores can increase their defensive behavior when necessary.

Where do you purchase your unassembled frames?

Good stuff 👏

Thanks for the follow up. I have a couple that tested high this spring. Did you do mite washes on any of your high scoring colonies? Mine did pretty good with those counts as well. I haven't graduated to the Harbo assay yet, but that would be my next step.

Nice video Ashby, thank you for being willing to share your findings, I really appreciate the hard work you put in to this, and congrats on the nice score increase in your F1s. Your findings are similar to what has been reported for Harbo and FKB tests - hygiene seems to vary quite a bit even in the same colony, and we still have a lot to learn about why that is. I have heard some similar results from others using UBeeO - scores can fluctuate over the season in some colonies, yet in other colonies the scores remain consistent. You only shared results from 8 of the 35 colonies that started high - I know you said a couple swarmed or had issues, but I'm curious, were the other 25 or so relatively consistent over the two tests (as in, tested high both times)? We have found that colonies that score high once are reliably Varroa resistant (ie: it seems to be that there are sometimes false negatives, but there don't seem to be any false positives). There seem to be two main reasons for within-colony variation: application inconsistency and environmental effects. I think environment is the most influential of the two, but to address any effect of application variation, we've made two applicator improvements this year - a guide that standardizes the distance and angle of application, and a test ring that prevents run-off of any UBeeO that hits the inner sides of the ring during the application process. As for environmental effects - there are so many variables. So far we have found that colony size and screened/solid bottom board don't seem to have an effect, but smoker use and nectar flow do. I have a lot of questions remaining, like how do exposure to stressors (a "priming" effect), effects of mite treatments, pollen and nectar quality / availability etc etc affect test results. And there may even be other factors, like semen mixing, that we haven't tested at all yet. Like you said this is a new technology so there are still a lot of research questions to be answered - funding permitting, we are working to improve our scientific understanding of hygiene, these pheromones, and how they work. (As we've increased production we have also been able to lower the price substantially. Our primary goal is to improve honey bee health, and we believe the best way to do that is not to keep UBeeO locked up in university labs, but to get it into the hands of beekeepers. So we are trying to make it as affordable as possible...). Mondet's group in France has done some really interesting work with Varroa-associated odors but I don't think they've had much success in developing an assay that elicits a hygienic response. Hopefully they will come up with something that works, though I think there are advantages to using general stress odors rather than Varroa-specific odors... recent results out of Mississippi State, the University of Vermont, and Australia show that UBeeO scores are correlated not only to Varroa populations, but also virus levels (including DWV), Nosema levels, and Chalkbrood levels (publication submitted, hopefully it will be out soon).There's a lot to left to learn, but also a lot to gain from selecting for resistance, no matter which method folks choose to use. I'm just glad folks are moving towards breeding for resistance. Ten years ago almost no one was talking about hygiene. It's catching on, but the industry really needs more breeders like you that are focusing on moving things in the right direction. Keep up the great work, and thanks again for sharing your results! The more we share the more we know, and the more we know the better. =) Kaira

Imo it would make way more sense to measure the fat in the fall nest . Ubo wouldn't do anything in carnie nest this time of year.. measure the fat we know who was drug down by viruses... Virus causes weight loss .. it's not the virus causing dwindle it's the weight loss from the virus.. we should be picking our breeders by how much fat they have in the fall not by the response to a chemical. Measure the fat we can predict future deadout before they show signs.. I understand this is good for selling queens.. problem is vsh strains just crash in sick nest at a faster rate.. someone pays 60.00 for queen they expect miracles and will run your name in the dirt if doesn't happen.. almost need to sell them the bees and the queen...use broodless splits so we have a grace period to work with before they crash them so it's not on the breeder.. vsh has come and go over the years people feel scammed because they don't understand it . Vsh strains can't handle the virus levels like others and which really means they dwindle faster from the weight loss due to virus. We should be breeding bees that store more fat imo

I have done a few hundred tests now. On the same and differing colonies. You had one special breeder in there with more recombination in the 65535 possibilities. Remember you havent been breeding for ubeeo but your traits have increased positively, and it will increase in subsequent generations more in my experience as we have gone through generations the trait has increased positively but needs to be selected for - i guess thats much like the harbo version of mite resistance. I have colonies that consistently score the same no matter what and others that fluctuate more - to me thats a recombination thing. The colonies that scored high all scored 3 or 4 or multiple harbos at different times too - genuine question as i have seen many do harbos multiple times with a few weeks and go from 2 to 4 or vice versa? I have heard of much fluctuations happening with harbos assays at different times too which input down to recombination - which is why cory stevens inseminated lines have more consistency if that makes sense. Bees are complicated and variations exist in colonies but there is no doubt through my observations that this breeds a new or different level / type of pest and disease resistance.

Interesting, though not surprising to those of with some genetics experience. Perhaps put some of Randy's Golden West queens in that he has done many years of selection on?

Great information, a quick question, do you know if during the second testing on May 29 you still were in a nectar flow and if that could have played a part in the difference? I know that here in central GA we get a few weeks gap between a couple of flows in the spring.

I understand there was a flow going on with both tests. I wonder if the second test, maybe there was a heavier flow? Which might have had the bees more occupied with stores and less on vsh.

Are you still doing the Harbos? I was gonna do some of the UBO tests this year but decided not to. I did end up doing some Harbo tests & had some good results from those. Better yet, I'm finding the high scoring harbos make very good mite resistant daughters but it's a small sample size so far, will have more data next year. I think it's worth noting the pheromones in the UBO are associated with generally unhealthy brood signals and are not specific to varroa parasitization. The Fannie Mondet et. al group in europe have quite a bit of research out on this topic & are apparently working on a similar test that is specific to varroa parasitization.

I appreciate you showing us this, you are one of the few YT beekeepers that has followed up well with this. There was all the HYPE about UBeeO tests and then a bunch of the YT Beekeepers Testings it out.🤨Then everyone stopped talking about it and showing videos of results. 🤔The lack of Excitement made me wonder, why all the talk about UBeeO testing and then not so much after trying it out? Sounds like it's not ready for market as it was described. At the end of the day, from your tests it doesn't really appear to be giving you an consistent information. Same queen and bees yet different results, a single hive should not have that much in score swing in results. I'd be interested in 2 tests done on the same hive at the same time yielded the same results. If they differ there is to much inconsistencies in the test for it to be very useful in my opinion.

Bad builder, safety third , dang it Ashby! Thanks for the video!

Like you said, very little brood is expected in Nov because I normally do 2-rounds of OAV at Thanksgiving. Last month everything was broodless and I did a single OAV treatment and fed small pieces of patty hoping to expand some small colonies along with sugar at 1.6 to add weight.. My bees were neglected in late summer and it was a mistake to avoid feeding sugar even with honey left on the hives. Today, I saw a small patch of brood in a nuc and its a good sign with this warm weather. Another had a new queen and I found her cell hidden in the comb, not sure it its going to make it but OK to lose a few. I'm north of you with similar weather.

Just went thru 180 hives last week and only had two colonies with brood! Yeah! I started O.A. treatments this week. Killing mites, they have nowhere to hide! Good video, and I like that hat!

lol its a strange year we are having a warm spell today and tmw and it should be -10 by now nights lol 😅now we don’t see winters until Jan now we get cold September but we have warm spots until Jan then we freeze up until end of March it’s rough beekeeping in Canada

My hives are broodless now as well.

Thank you. This was very helpful. I’m seeing this currently in my hives.

Маската, която използвате за защита от изпаренията на оксаловата киселина от къде мога да я закупя? Какъв модел е? Благодаря.

Great video.

Great time of year to share this info. Side note, where did you get your hat made?

Thanks for this video. Like you said, bee school was a year ago, and mine was based out of Michigan State University and I'm about 2 hours south of you. Looking around tells me the environment isn't right for raising brood, but reassurance is always helpful. I'm only around on the weekends, so my practices have been a little different from the "normal". I've been doing OAV at 4g per deep body for the past 3 weeks. The bees seemed pretty calm when I opened the boxes yesterday. I'm feeding them 2:1 syrup right now. I'm perplexed that even my heavy colonies have empty combs. Should I keep on packing it in there? I've probably fed 20 gallons to 6 double deep colonies in the past week.

My two cents, no eggs, no brood, time to OA, and give them a heft for weight. good vid Ashby, nice and chilled..

So much rambling. I'm not sure what I just heard. Lol.

When beekeepers are broodless....why treat for mites? If there is no brood, doesn't that mean that the mites will have nowhere to grow? I was under the impression that one way to combat mites was to isolate the queen and create an articfical brood break. So, back to the question..... If there is no brood, why treat for mites?

Reassuring to first year keeper. It has been interesting to watch the life of the colony through this first season. ❤