My biggest takeaway was that you want the population to peak after the start of the honey flow to prevent swarming. My other big takeaway was that old comb actually causes problems. Thanks for the info, Sir, I'll take it from someone who's made money at it for 40 years. Thanks for sharing. You earned a subscriber.
Great information on comb rotation and the time frame in which you need to phase out and rotate in new comb. Super helpful information swarm control and equalization. For swarm prevention. Peak prevention is a key point as well as timing on purchasing queens. Drone hatching is a good point. Commercial beekeeping is a goal of mine. All of your information is super helpful. Thank you.
I just found & subscribed to you. Very informative and learning some new things. I'm running about 300 hives & nucs combined in SC. Thanks for teaching & sharing your knowledge.
As a treatment free beekeeper that is selling nucs and queens, it’s a joy to here a long term pro that doesn’t bash treatment free beekeeping. Thanks for sharing your knowledge
As a treatment free beekeeper are you trapping drones or doing anything to control the mite loads? It looks as though your nuc and queen sales also control the mite populations never allowing them to go above the threshold. Nice
I’ve had the good fortune of not needing to pull drone frames or spilt for mite control. Only half of my six yards are good for mating yards, getting poor results with others but I try not to fight what doesn’t work. I seem to have more problems with queens producing appropriate brood to nectar flow.
Great information, in particular regarding the 4-5 frames of bees at 7-8 weeks before the main nectar flow. That information is so important, I have had a real hard time with bee colonies peaking just before the main honey flow ( N. Ireland). Last year I had a great honey harvest,my best ever. I did it by using overwintered nucs to be my main honey producers; normally I would sell the nucs; they peaked at just about the right time and I had the best honey crop ever. Regards Alan
I often do exactly the same thing. I sell a lot of colonies in the fall and in the spring use small colonies and nucs I established in late summer the year before.
There is a german commercial beekeeper that rotates most of his comb yearly, at most every other year. he removes all comb at the end of the honey year as a mite treatment and builds new colonys with the old combs, 10 days later. when most of them hatched those combs go into the melter.
Very good video Bob. Would it be possible for you to make a step by step video on producing nucs for resale? Talking about when to start making splits, how long it takes for the nucs to build up to be ready for sale, and the time you need to stop and let the hives being split build up for winter. Feeding schedules and do you let nucs make their own queens. Just a how to in general.
Would you mind elaborating on your "4 frames of bees peaking in 7-8 weeks" comment? Is this 4 frames of brood + bees? Or just bees covering 4 frames? I would love to know more about how you calculate the size of your splits based on your proximity to a flow. The last 2 years I have mistimed my splits and totally missed our main flow here in Alberta (canola). But to be fair, I have never thought about timing them to peak after the start. Thanks for your time.
Thanks for the great videos. I would love to see a video specifically on the peaking. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I am in Oregon and our BB flow usually starts the first week of June. Does that mean that if I want to hit my colony peak on the 7th of June I want 4 frames mid-April? Thanks again
Hello Bob...I love your TH-cam videos. Question. Why do you much prefer the Carniolan Bee ? Please give all of you reasons as I am very interested. Does the Carni produce as much honey as the Italians? Thanks Glenn R Campbell
Hi Glenn. I have to be careful not to say Carniolan bees are better than Italians but simply say they are different. They are more frugal. Their winter clusters are usually smaller and they overwinter on much less stores. In summer their brood nest is more defined and compact. I suppose it's because of where this race evolved, in colder climates. I believe they make as much honey as Italians but often you will some of it stored in the brood nest rather than in the suppers. I like these traits because there is less starvation problems. They tend to fly at a couple degrees cooler and do better in questionable weather. There are also drawbacks. Smaller winter clusters are not good for almond pollinators. This also can be a drawback for commercial queen and package producers in the south that need bulk bees early for mating nucs and such. Beware however, the smaller clusters will expand quickly after spring pollen begins to come in and they will catch up with Italians fast. This explosion catches some beekeepers off guard and swarming can sometimes be an issue if they are not managed properly.
Hi Bob...I very much appreciate your speedy and very courteous reply. I have, at different times, kept honey bees for 50 some odd years since age ten. Having said this, you are the only one that I know of in my life that has explained the timing of brood management, This one thing you have given us is plus balancing out the brood population makes our chances for success very likely. Keep up the professional teaching. We need experienced people giving the bee world this gift of knowledge. Glenn
@@bobbinnie9872 How do you know that you have carniolians , especially if the bees are open mated. I would think that after a while you just would have a mixed breed or a hi-breed to give it a fancy twist.
@@FloryJohann You're right in that it's hard to keep things pure. We purchase several artificially inseminated breeder queens from Sue Cobey ever year and graft from them. She is the founder of the New World Carniolan line. This helps a lot.
So u split,then basically you let them catch the foragers and that brood you left in their hatches, with the new queen,then as soon as she makes one cycle of brood you pull a Nuc outta it? or does she hatch out one cycle of brood and when she lays up another one you harvest a Nuc? please explain ..thanks for your knowledge too, thanks for sharing
When we divide the colony with the double screen board the foragers all return home to the original entrance which is where the old queen is. We wait approximately three weeks to harvest the nuc above the double screen board so we can judge the performance of the new queen. This is also close to the time that her own bees will begin to emerge but that's not the main reason we wait that long. We just want to see how she's doing. Once the brood she laid begins to emerge this nuc will expand fast so you can't wait to long before you do something with it. It really depends on how many frames of brood you start with. Remember a full frame of brood will turn into two frames of bees. Hope this helps and good luck.
There a ways in which 50% of all comb is removed from the hives and that's what we are told to do here in Germany. May be something for hobby beekeepers, I know, but 8-10 years old comb??? No way! Bees and bee health first in my humble opinion! 😊
I do respect Bob. I'm just questioning the moral of this slight dilemma. I feel that giving away old dark comb to customers doesn't seem right to me and I do see others giving very old comb. It's passing the problem to somebody else, especially new Beekeepers. They end up with toxic comb which they may end up keeping for years longer. When I buy a Nuc I get rid of the old frames asap which is not easy to do. My first year Beekeeping was almost making nothing as I didn't want to keep old frames. I won't be buying Nucs with very old comb ever again. I feel that selling old comb Nucs to new Beekeepers is a little unfair and it's not ending toxic frames until they can slowly replace them and maybe lose some bees. Just my opinion. Nothing against Bob as he does help many new Beekeepers. I just don't like this practice of passing toxic stuff to others.
I may not have explained very well. Although the comb in our nucs is used it is not old enough (my opinion) to be consider overly contaminated. Thanks.
@@bobbinnie9872 Thank you for clarifying. I may not have explained myself well either. I meant other Beekeepers. I heard you say if they were to old you got rid of them. And thank you for teaching me so much about Bee Keeping. I think Iv'e watched every video you made.🙂
a good queen can live up to 5 years, but in the third year of her live, you reach the point where it is only reasonable to raise queens from her to save the genetics, not to raise bulk queens. 850$ is actually not really expensive fir a good breeder queen, you always have to think of one fact, you can easly raise 20k daughters of her, compare that with the ammount of work you have to put into a queen to get a breeder queen.
@@kaistumer198 Does on take extra precautions with breeder queens compared to other colonies regarding overwintering and so on, to increase her chances of longer life than say 2-3 years of a non breeder queen?
So far the most we've been able to get out of an artificially inseminated breeder queen is 2 1\2 years but I do know that many people have done better.
these talks are real treasures. thank you!
My biggest takeaway was that you want the population to peak after the start of the honey flow to prevent swarming. My other big takeaway was that old comb actually causes problems. Thanks for the info, Sir, I'll take it from someone who's made money at it for 40 years. Thanks for sharing. You earned a subscriber.
He has an excellent video on splitting and equalizing the hive to keep it from peaking too early.
I love all of Bob's video's. Wish he was closer soni could go work with him for a season or two.
Great information on comb rotation and the time frame in which you need to phase out and rotate in new comb. Super helpful information swarm control and equalization. For swarm prevention. Peak prevention is a key point as well as timing on purchasing queens. Drone hatching is a good point. Commercial beekeeping is a goal of mine. All of your information is super helpful. Thank you.
Bob Binnie I am a huge fan. Your information is great simple to understand and always on point. Thank you sir
Hey Bob. I know this is an older video, but I just now watched it and gained a lot of new information. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Great information! Thanks for your perspective.
GREAT VIDEO, AN AMAZING
EXPLANATION. Super Clear and straight to the point, I loved the style too, keep up the great work.
Thank you
Terrific video. Thanks for posting these.
I just found & subscribed to you. Very informative and learning some new things. I'm running about 300 hives & nucs combined in SC. Thanks for teaching & sharing your knowledge.
Hi Jim. Thanks for your comment.
i have no intention of keeping bees but his voice is so calming i love these videos
As a treatment free beekeeper that is selling nucs and queens, it’s a joy to here a long term pro that doesn’t bash treatment free beekeeping. Thanks for sharing your knowledge
Thanks
As a treatment free beekeeper are you trapping drones or doing anything to control the mite loads? It looks as though your nuc and queen sales also control the mite populations never allowing them to go above the threshold. Nice
I’ve had the good fortune of not needing to pull drone frames or spilt for mite control. Only half of my six yards are good for mating yards, getting poor results with others but I try not to fight what doesn’t work. I seem to have more problems with queens producing appropriate brood to nectar flow.
Great information, in particular regarding the 4-5 frames of bees at 7-8 weeks before the main nectar flow. That information is so important, I have had a real hard time with bee colonies peaking just before the main honey flow ( N. Ireland). Last year I had a great honey harvest,my best ever. I did it by using overwintered nucs to be my main honey producers; normally I would sell the nucs; they peaked at just about the right time and I had the best honey crop ever.
Regards
Alan
I often do exactly the same thing. I sell a lot of colonies in the fall and in the spring use small colonies and nucs I established in late summer the year before.
Thank you for the video. It was very educational . I learned a lot from it.
Thanks.
There is a german commercial beekeeper that rotates most of his comb yearly, at most every other year. he removes all comb at the end of the honey year as a mite treatment and builds new colonys with the old combs, 10 days later. when most of them hatched those combs go into the melter.
Mr Liebig! Right he is! Keeps your bees healthy! But he looks after 200-400 hives, Bob 2000?
Very good video Bob. Would it be possible for you to make a step by step video on producing nucs for resale? Talking about when to start making splits, how long it takes for the nucs to build up to be ready for sale, and the time you need to stop and let the hives being split build up for winter. Feeding schedules and do you let nucs make their own queens. Just a how to in general.
Adding it to my list, Thanks.
Thank you for posting, I wanted to attend the meeting but was unable due to work. Please keep the videos coming.
See you at the next one
Bob Binnie at Blue Ridge Honey Company bh
Would you mind elaborating on your "4 frames of bees peaking in 7-8 weeks" comment? Is this 4 frames of brood + bees? Or just bees covering 4 frames? I would love to know more about how you calculate the size of your splits based on your proximity to a flow. The last 2 years I have mistimed my splits and totally missed our main flow here in Alberta (canola). But to be fair, I have never thought about timing them to peak after the start. Thanks for your time.
Bees and brood, but it's hard to be precise because of differences in locations and conditions each season.
I really enjoyed this video very informative Thank you!🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
Thank you for your comment, Bob
Bob where are you located? Are you in Texas, I really like your presentations.
Thanks Bob great info!
Thank you.
How do you know what a hives peak will be to know when they will get there?
Thanks for the great videos. I would love to see a video specifically on the peaking. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I am in Oregon and our BB flow usually starts the first week of June. Does that mean that if I want to hit my colony peak on the 7th of June I want 4 frames mid-April? Thanks again
It sounds like you've got it. What you described is perfect timing for the dates you mentioned.
@@bobbinnie9872 Thank you
Excellent, thank you.
Thanks.
Hello Bob...I love your TH-cam videos. Question. Why do you much prefer the Carniolan Bee ? Please give all of you reasons as I am very interested. Does the Carni produce as much honey as the Italians? Thanks Glenn R Campbell
Hi Glenn. I have to be careful not to say Carniolan bees are better than Italians but simply say they are different. They are more frugal. Their winter clusters are usually smaller and they overwinter on much less stores. In summer their brood nest is more defined and compact. I suppose it's because of where this race evolved, in colder climates. I believe they make as much honey as Italians but often you will some of it stored in the brood nest rather than in the suppers. I like these traits because there is less starvation problems. They tend to fly at a couple degrees cooler and do better in questionable weather. There are also drawbacks. Smaller winter clusters are not good for almond pollinators. This also can be a drawback for commercial queen and package producers in the south that need bulk bees early for mating nucs and such. Beware however, the smaller clusters will expand quickly after spring pollen begins to come in and they will catch up with Italians fast. This explosion catches some beekeepers off guard and swarming can sometimes be an issue if they are not managed properly.
Hi Bob...I very much appreciate your speedy and very courteous reply. I have, at different times, kept honey bees for 50 some odd years since age ten. Having said this, you are the only one that I know of in my life that has explained the timing of brood management, This one thing you have given us is plus balancing out the brood population makes our chances for success very likely. Keep up the professional teaching. We need experienced people giving the bee world this gift of knowledge. Glenn
@@glennrcampbell5431 Thank you
@@bobbinnie9872
How do you know that you have carniolians , especially if the bees are open mated. I would think that after a while you just would have a mixed breed or a hi-breed to give it a fancy twist.
@@FloryJohann You're right in that it's hard to keep things pure. We purchase several artificially inseminated breeder queens from Sue Cobey ever year and graft from them. She is the founder of the New World Carniolan line. This helps a lot.
So u split,then basically you let them catch the foragers and that brood you left in their hatches, with the new queen,then as soon as she makes one cycle of brood you pull a Nuc outta it? or does she hatch out one cycle of brood and when she lays up another one you harvest a Nuc? please explain ..thanks for your knowledge too, thanks for sharing
When we divide the colony with the double screen board the foragers all return home to the original entrance which is where the old queen is. We wait approximately three weeks to harvest the nuc above the double screen board so we can judge the performance of the new queen. This is also close to the time that her own bees will begin to emerge but that's not the main reason we wait that long. We just want to see how she's doing. Once the brood she laid begins to emerge this nuc will expand fast so you can't wait to long before you do something with it. It really depends on how many frames of brood you start with. Remember a full frame of brood will turn into two frames of bees. Hope this helps and good luck.
Hey Bob, when you say a four frame colony will peak in 7-8 weeks, will that be a single deep, or double? Thanks!
If conditions are right that would be a double.
HDL? Or HDF? I can get at Lowe’s or Home Depot?
HDO (high density overlay). You can't get it at Lowes or Home Depot. It's usually used by concrete wall contractors.
What do you think about the use of the Saskatraz Queen?
I have not personally used them.
What do you do with old dark comb?
Throw it away.
I bet this can lead to resistance if the dose in the comb is sun lethal
Can I ask you some questions I’m a new bee keeper
Yes, no problem.
very little wax from rendering it from old brood frames too.
There a ways in which 50% of all comb is removed from the hives and that's what we are told to do here in Germany. May be something for hobby beekeepers, I know, but 8-10 years old comb??? No way! Bees and bee health first in my humble opinion! 😊
I do respect Bob. I'm just questioning the moral of this slight dilemma. I feel that giving away old dark comb to customers doesn't seem right to me and I do see others giving very old comb. It's passing the problem to somebody else, especially new Beekeepers. They end up with toxic comb which they may end up keeping for years longer. When I buy a Nuc I get rid of the old frames asap which is not easy to do. My first year Beekeeping was almost making nothing as I didn't want to keep old frames. I won't be buying Nucs with very old comb ever again. I feel that selling old comb Nucs to new Beekeepers is a little unfair and it's not ending toxic frames until they can slowly replace them and maybe lose some bees. Just my opinion. Nothing against Bob as he does help many new Beekeepers. I just don't like this practice of passing toxic stuff to others.
I may not have explained very well. Although the comb in our nucs is used it is not old enough (my opinion) to be consider overly contaminated. Thanks.
@@bobbinnie9872 Thank you for clarifying. I may not have explained myself well either. I meant other Beekeepers. I heard you say if they were to old you got rid of them. And thank you for teaching me so much about Bee Keeping. I think Iv'e watched every video you made.🙂
do you sell any of your Caucasian queens
We will have some Caucasian queens available next summer through our store. That number is 706 782 6722.
$850.00 breeder queen??? Really?
Surprisingly yes. From Sue Cobey and the New World Carniolan Program.
@@bobbinnie9872 What is the life expectancy of a breeder compared to a production queen? How many years can you get daughters from her?
a good queen can live up to 5 years, but in the third year of her live, you reach the point where it is only reasonable to raise queens from her to save the genetics, not to raise bulk queens.
850$ is actually not really expensive fir a good breeder queen, you always have to think of one fact, you can easly raise 20k daughters of her, compare that with the ammount of work you have to put into a queen to get a breeder queen.
@@kaistumer198 Does on take extra precautions with breeder queens compared to other colonies regarding overwintering and so on, to increase her chances of longer life than say 2-3 years of a non breeder queen?
So far the most we've been able to get out of an artificially inseminated breeder queen is 2 1\2 years but I do know that many people have done better.