As usual, your video has a huge amount of valuable information for any beekeeper. I recently performed my first inspection of the Layens Horizontal Hive (video is on my channel) the bee colony survived the winter without any problems. I do not use any treatment or supplemental feeding for my bees. I am very happy that the family of backyard beekeepers is growing thanks to beekeepers like you.
Located in NWLA with three Layens hives. I did a split a week ago from my hive that had 16 frames over winter. (Their 2nd winter, and i left them all their stores) At least one of the other two will probably be split this year too. (Their 1st winter) Still going to swarm catch too, so a big built up year. 😊
From what we're seeing in our area I think this is going to be a big swarm year - as last year was. Last year I pre-emptively split hives and some of those splits still swarmed. I ran out of boxes to keep swarms in; hopefully I'll be more ready this year. If you have similar fortune you may, certainly, build up quickly.
Mug up from central NH where we are still waiting for natural pollen to come in. I lost a colony mid-winter...my bad. 10 still surviving. All bees were flying a couple days this week and they will get out today. Still have some ice and snow behind the house and some frost in the ground. Cleaned pest trays in 2) 25 frame Layens hives and checked 1 of them for mite drop. I examined the mites for signs of bee chews but came up inconclusive...need younger eyes! I will check the other for a 2-day mite drop today. NOAA says high of 49 degrees today, and a high of 43 degrees for the next 5 days.I would love to open them up, but I feel it too early here. Thanks for sharing, have a great day!
All beekeeping is local, and we've been fortunate with some early warm weather. This morning we woke up to 27F, so not quite done with winter. It sounds like your hives are doing well so far - I hope that continues into the spring for you.
@SuburbanSodbuster Good day, Sir. I'm a new beekeeper that caught a late swarm last fall. I had previously purchased a nuc hive with 5 frames in two boxes. I over wintered in a single hive box with success. I want to move these bees into my new horizontal hive I built. My problem is the nuc hive is on short frames! Dr. Leo shows combining the nuc frames into the longer frames - I'm just not sure if I can manage that successfully. Any thoughts? Thank you for all your helpful videos. ❤
@@dwarfhernandez6636 Monty might have a better suggestion, but you could just keep your nuc small, keep a close eye on them, if they are strong, they will want to swarm when resources are coming in. Leave 2 or 3 of the nicest queen cells in the nuc, tear down the others unless you can give them to someone when they are capped. Remove the queen before swarm cells are capped and put her in your Layens hives with foundation and drawn comb if you have it. Make a shook swarm; take 3 or 4 frames of nurse bees from your nuc and shake them into the box with the queen. Some folks would even put a push in queen cage on some comb so she could lay eggs or have a queen excluder on the entrance to keep her in until she starts laying eggs. Is short , aside from cutting the frames to fit, the shook swarm works...you will end up with a colony in each style of box ... maybe you could pass on the colony in the lang, id you didn't want to have both. As
@lambbrookfarm4528 Thank you so much for the qwik reply. I certainly will try this. I'm just excited my small swarm made it through winter. I'm in Milford, Delaware, so our winter wasn't too terrible...just windy. 💓
Thanks for the video! Did you keep a gap in the divider board when you winterized with the foam on top? I'm interested in how you insulate your other covers
Yes, I leave the gap year-round unless I have reason to keep the colony contained, such as if I'm splitting and have two colonies in the hive. The next time I'm building hives I'll try to remember to record how I insulate the lids.
Appreciate the look inside your hives. Glad to see them doing well for the most part. Can you tell what is blooming that might be the yellow and orange pollen?
I really don't know. I've paid more attention to plants and bloom schedules since I started keeping bees, but am still learning. I look at charts of different pollen colors but sometimes subtle shade differences are very similar to my eyes. If I remember correctly, dandelion pollen is orange but at the time of these inspections I hadn't seen many dandelion blooms. It's also very possible these are from some early blooming trees.
Faced with a colony too small with a failing queen going into winter: what if one removed all these frames into their own section of one of your other boxes, next door to a stronger colony, and eventually removed both the excluder/divider board and the old queen. Would the queenless bees merge in?
Great Video! Where do you place your frame feeders when feeding? Are the feeders behind the follower board in the position they were when you opened the hives and the bees access them from under the follower board? I noticed on the space themed hive the follower board had a slit entrance in it when you removed the feeder, what was the purpose of that slit?
Yes, I put the feeders on the opposite side of the follower board from the frames, with a gap below the follower board. The bees have never seemed to have a problem finding the feeder there and there's less chance for the bees to build comb on the feeder. As for the slit entrance on the board, I had to go back and watch that portion of the video to see what you meant. I see what looks like a slit entrance on the board but, for the life of me, I don't recall what that is. It might be some sort of mark or defect on the plywood but I don't actually have a slit cut through the board. The next time I'm into those hives I'll have to check that board to see what it actually is.
When I winterized last year I had some extra layens frames with just wax comb and a tiny strip of capped honey at the top. Stored them in the basement this winter, in an open topped box. I noticed a thin layer of mold on them... if I give them back to the bees, will the bees clean them up?
Light mold shouldn't be a problem; the bees will clean it up. As you can see in the video, I like to use the open ends of the hives for storing extra frames; it's much more convenient than moving frames back and forth to a storage location, and they kept very well over winter.
I need to split my layens . I can’t find the queen. I’m able to acquire new queens for splits. Since I can’t find the queen and know she’s there based on seeing eggs. How long should I leave split to determine which side needs the new queen?
If you check the colonies the day after the split, the queen-right side should have a normal temperament while the queenless side may be noticeably louder. If you can't tell from that, then check 7 days after the split; looking for queen cells to confirm a queenless state or eggs/young larvae to confirm the presence of the queen.
Sometimes I'll scorch the inside of a deadout hive, especially if there are potential disease issues or a wax moth infestation. If the colony died of American Foul Brood the box and frames should be burned. In this case it sounds like the bees either starved out or got too low in population to maintain cluster temperature. For these there's not really a need to do anything with the box and new bees will clean out the old.
As usual, your video has a huge amount of valuable information for any beekeeper.
I recently performed my first inspection of the Layens Horizontal Hive (video is on my channel) the bee colony survived the winter without any problems.
I do not use any treatment or supplemental feeding for my bees.
I am very happy that the family of backyard beekeepers is growing thanks to beekeepers like you.
Located in NWLA with three Layens hives.
I did a split a week ago from my hive that had 16 frames over winter. (Their 2nd winter, and i left them all their stores)
At least one of the other two will probably be split this year too. (Their 1st winter)
Still going to swarm catch too, so a big built up year. 😊
From what we're seeing in our area I think this is going to be a big swarm year - as last year was. Last year I pre-emptively split hives and some of those splits still swarmed. I ran out of boxes to keep swarms in; hopefully I'll be more ready this year. If you have similar fortune you may, certainly, build up quickly.
Great stuff! Looking forward to SUMMER!
Mug up from central NH where we are still waiting for natural pollen to come in. I lost a colony mid-winter...my bad. 10 still surviving. All bees were flying a couple days this week and they will get out today. Still have some ice and snow behind the house and some frost in the ground. Cleaned pest trays in 2) 25 frame Layens hives and checked 1 of them for mite drop. I examined the mites for signs of bee chews but came up inconclusive...need younger eyes! I will check the other for a 2-day mite drop today. NOAA says high of 49 degrees today, and a high of 43 degrees for the next 5 days.I would love to open them up, but I feel it too early here. Thanks for sharing, have a great day!
All beekeeping is local, and we've been fortunate with some early warm weather. This morning we woke up to 27F, so not quite done with winter. It sounds like your hives are doing well so far - I hope that continues into the spring for you.
@SuburbanSodbuster Good day, Sir. I'm a new beekeeper that caught a late swarm last fall. I had previously purchased a nuc hive with 5 frames in two boxes. I over wintered in a single hive box with success. I want to move these bees into my new horizontal hive I built. My problem is the nuc hive is on short frames! Dr. Leo shows combining the nuc frames into the longer frames - I'm just not sure if I can manage that successfully. Any thoughts? Thank you for all your helpful videos. ❤
@@dwarfhernandez6636 Monty might have a better suggestion, but you could just keep your nuc small, keep a close eye on them, if they are strong, they will want to swarm when resources are coming in. Leave 2 or 3 of the nicest queen cells in the nuc, tear down the others unless you can give them to someone when they are capped. Remove the queen before swarm cells are capped and put her in your Layens hives with foundation and drawn comb if you have it. Make a shook swarm; take 3 or 4 frames of nurse bees from your nuc and shake them into the box with the queen. Some folks would even put a push in queen cage on some comb so she could lay eggs or have a queen excluder on the entrance to keep her in until she starts laying eggs. Is short , aside from cutting the frames to fit, the shook swarm works...you will end up with a colony in each style of box ... maybe you could pass on the colony in the lang, id you didn't want to have both. As
@lambbrookfarm4528 Thank you so much for the qwik reply. I certainly will try this. I'm just excited my small swarm made it through winter. I'm in Milford, Delaware, so our winter wasn't too terrible...just windy. 💓
@@dwarfhernandez6636 It was a suggestion. I know Monty has some experience with 'the conversion'. He may have a video on it.
Thanks for the video! Did you keep a gap in the divider board when you winterized with the foam on top? I'm interested in how you insulate your other covers
Yes, I leave the gap year-round unless I have reason to keep the colony contained, such as if I'm splitting and have two colonies in the hive. The next time I'm building hives I'll try to remember to record how I insulate the lids.
Great display of hive inspection and explaination of what what we were looking at on the frame and inside the hive. Going to save this one. Thanks
Appreciate the look inside your hives. Glad to see them doing well for the most part. Can you tell what is blooming that might be the yellow and orange pollen?
I really don't know. I've paid more attention to plants and bloom schedules since I started keeping bees, but am still learning. I look at charts of different pollen colors but sometimes subtle shade differences are very similar to my eyes. If I remember correctly, dandelion pollen is orange but at the time of these inspections I hadn't seen many dandelion blooms. It's also very possible these are from some early blooming trees.
Faced with a colony too small with a failing queen going into winter: what if one removed all these frames into their own section of one of your other boxes, next door to a stronger colony, and eventually removed both the excluder/divider board and the old queen. Would the queenless bees merge in?
Great video!
Thank you for watching!
Great Video! Where do you place your frame feeders when feeding? Are the feeders behind the follower board in the position they were when you opened the hives and the bees access them from under the follower board? I noticed on the space themed hive the follower board had a slit entrance in it when you removed the feeder, what was the purpose of that slit?
Yes, I put the feeders on the opposite side of the follower board from the frames, with a gap below the follower board. The bees have never seemed to have a problem finding the feeder there and there's less chance for the bees to build comb on the feeder. As for the slit entrance on the board, I had to go back and watch that portion of the video to see what you meant. I see what looks like a slit entrance on the board but, for the life of me, I don't recall what that is. It might be some sort of mark or defect on the plywood but I don't actually have a slit cut through the board. The next time I'm into those hives I'll have to check that board to see what it actually is.
When I winterized last year I had some extra layens frames with just wax comb and a tiny strip of capped honey at the top. Stored them in the basement this winter, in an open topped box. I noticed a thin layer of mold on them... if I give them back to the bees, will the bees clean them up?
Light mold shouldn't be a problem; the bees will clean it up. As you can see in the video, I like to use the open ends of the hives for storing extra frames; it's much more convenient than moving frames back and forth to a storage location, and they kept very well over winter.
@@SuburbanSodbuster thank you! I saw how you stored the extras... I'm doing that from now on! Way less hauling back and forth!
I need to split my layens . I can’t find the queen. I’m able to acquire new queens for splits. Since I can’t find the queen and know she’s there based on seeing eggs. How long should I leave split to determine which side needs the new queen?
If you check the colonies the day after the split, the queen-right side should have a normal temperament while the queenless side may be noticeably louder. If you can't tell from that, then check 7 days after the split; looking for queen cells to confirm a queenless state or eggs/young larvae to confirm the presence of the queen.
@@SuburbanSodbuster thank you for all you do
Dear Sodbusters,,, What dose one have to do with the woodwhere of a deadout ,,, lots of bees headfirst in the cells brushed off what I could???
Sometimes I'll scorch the inside of a deadout hive, especially if there are potential disease issues or a wax moth infestation. If the colony died of American Foul Brood the box and frames should be burned. In this case it sounds like the bees either starved out or got too low in population to maintain cluster temperature. For these there's not really a need to do anything with the box and new bees will clean out the old.
@@SuburbanSodbuster Do I have to pick out the dead bees out of the cells ?
@@SuburbanSodbuster It was a starve out
You can try holding the frames horizontally and gently shaking to get some of the bees out. But new bees will clean out the old ones.
how to stop cross combing.