Thank you to everyone for watching and supporting our videos! If you have any questions about our videos, please check out our list of FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS on our website, which can be found at honeybee.uoguelph.ca/videos/frequently-asked-questions/
Just going to post here to say your videos and way to bee have helped me to be incredibly successful hobby beekeeper in my first 3 years. Went from 1 to 22 hives and enjoying the challenges.
thank you for sharing these videos, i love bees so much and want to learn about them and possibly become a beekeeper! i'm excited cause my friend is planning to get some soon and she lives a little out of the busy area of town so it works well :)
Hi there You are quite welcome. Nice to hear you are a bee fan and I hope you and your friend can get into keeping some. It really helps to have someone to talk things over with when making observations about what happening in a hive and deciding how to manage them. One word of advice - varroa mites need to be controlled for success . Good luck!
UoG Honey Bee Research Centre thank you I appreciate it and agree !!we need to help the bees as much as we can. my mom got sick before I was born from pesticides which made me sick..and those same pesticides hurt the bees ! we need to do as much as we can for them. I shall share that info with my friend thanks :)
Hi Zuni Good to hear you find the videos educational! We inspect our hives about once every two weeks during spring summer and fall. In the summer we are juts looking to see how much space they need fro honey and harvesting.
Managing single brood chamber hives is on our video to do list! Please see the comments on singles after our Feeding bees, Supering and Thorah Island videos. My preference is to keep hives in single brood chambers. We use queen excluders above the brood chamber and then add supers.
I notice that, during your inspection, you don't clean off the edges of the frames (burr comb, propolus) as I see other beekeepers do in other videos. Others say it is to make it easy to remove/replace frames by keeping the comb even. What would you say to cleaning up the frame edges?
We scrape excess wax off the top bars each fall as we wrap our hives for winter. In using 10 frames in a box there isn't much excess wax on the sides of the frames. Bees rebuild comb whereever they have space so I think it's futile to be scraping more than necessary. If a hive dies we cull comb and scrape all the frames we keep.
Many people say that you shouldn't open the brood chamber too often because you can tell the health of the hive in other ways... how often do you check the brood chambers on your hives?
We check in the brood chambers several times in the spring and then again in the fall. Once the honey supers are all on we don't get in the brood chambers unless we are making up splits.
How often is it recommended to go into a brood chamber? I’m only in my second year and like to get into my hives once a week or so, but I don’t always go into the brood chamber. Should I be doing a full inspection every time?
Hi Christopher It's good to check on them and your schedule seem about right. I like to look through the brood chamber two or three times in the spring/ early summer and once again in the fall. A bit more wouldn't hurt, especially when you are learning and want to see what's happening. Weekly checks on the honey supers is a good idea to see if they need more space.
Oh!!!! I was unaware you worked with Buckfast, and thats what I have been searching for in my apiary. Do you guys have a website where i could order a queen from you. What what I have read and heard about them, they are amazing bees to work with. And for you to work them with zero protection says a lot. Please let me know. I would be grateful. Brad
@@UoGHoneyBeeResearchCentre Oh, I was not aware you live in Canada. I'm in NYC. Oh well. I found one buckfast breeder in Maine, I'll reach out to him for a queen. I can't wait to have exceptional behavior back in my apiary.
Hi Thank you for all the educational videos I'm up north of you in the bush and don't have any mentor,s from around here and it's a bit tougher here. A question it looked like this particular hive had an excessive amount of drone brood ? & Really not that much worker bee brood. Is the drone brood a precusior to a potential problem ? Failed queen or something ? Looking forward to more videos I saw the link to your website I'll have to take a look Thanks again
Hi Brad There was a bit more drone comb than usual in this colony. It was an overwintered nuc that had been transferred into a full size box. There was a reasonable amount of worker brood too. As you can see in the video we have some older combs with a fair bit of drone sized cells in them and that's why you see more drone brood. Because the bees were confined to a five fram nuc in the aspring the queen was laying in whatever sized cells she could and that included quite a bit of drone sized cells. It's not a sign of problems in this case. You'd be more concerned if you see drones being reared in worker sized cells.
What if some of the frames are completely empty? No eggs, no pollen, or honey? But other frames are full of eggs, pollen, and honey. As if the bees don't like some of the frames?
When does a beekeeper open the hives without the suit? ~ 01:3302:4103:1705:2305:5906:5208:3809:1109:30 Shouldn't the burr comb be removed from the bottom of the frames to keep the bees from having the frame stick the the hive floor? ~ ~ 03:58 Why aren't the bees stinging you? ~ 04:19 What is the dark orange substance on the upper left of the screen? ~ 07:38 How do you handle the Queen Bee without her stinging you? ~ Why wasn't the frame closest to you inspected?
#1 depends on how friendly your bees are but a warm sunny day helps. #2 That's their ladder up to the frames. #3 They tolerate me because I work carefully so as to not disturb them. #4 Not sure but will have a look. #5 She only stings another queen - not us commoners. #5 This frame is almost always only honey so not much to see. Next time 1 question at a time please or it looks more like my unanswered email :) Go Bees!
Thank you to everyone for watching and supporting our videos! If you have any questions about our videos, please check out our list of FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS on our website, which can be found at honeybee.uoguelph.ca/videos/frequently-asked-questions/
Just going to post here to say your videos and way to bee have helped me to be incredibly successful hobby beekeeper in my first 3 years. Went from 1 to 22 hives and enjoying the challenges.
Hi Rstir
Feed back like that is very rewarding! We appreciate your generous comments and hearing about your success.
your videos are pleasant to watch and easy to follow
Thanks Greg!
Great videos! I like how the videos are broken out into individual topics.
Thanks Scott. I'm glad you appreciate the format of the series. Happy beekeeping!
I wish u make more videos u do a wonderful job and u have tought me a lot and I miss u
Hi Frances
Nice to hear from you again. We plan to do twenty more videos this summer but they won't likely be posted until early fall.
wonderful I will take that thanks
thank you for sharing these videos, i love bees so much and want to learn about them and possibly become a beekeeper! i'm excited cause my friend is planning to get some soon and she lives a little out of the busy area of town so it works well :)
Hi there
You are quite welcome. Nice to hear you are a bee fan and I hope you and your friend can get into keeping some. It really helps to have someone to talk things over with when making observations about what happening in a hive and deciding how to manage them. One word of advice - varroa mites need to be controlled for success . Good luck!
UoG Honey Bee Research Centre thank you I appreciate it and agree !!we need to help the bees as much as we can. my mom got sick before I was born from pesticides which made me sick..and those same pesticides hurt the bees ! we need to do as much as we can for them. I shall share that info with my friend thanks :)
Hi sir amazing and very educational videos.
May I know how often should we inspect our hives?
Hi Zuni
Good to hear you find the videos educational! We inspect our hives about once every two weeks during spring summer and fall. In the summer we are juts looking to see how much space they need fro honey and harvesting.
Do you always put supers over single brood boxes? We use double brood chambers to prevent congestion/ swarming.
Managing single brood chamber hives is on our video to do list! Please see the comments on singles after our Feeding bees, Supering and Thorah Island videos. My preference is to keep hives in single brood chambers. We use queen excluders above the brood chamber and then add supers.
Why don't you clean the comb off the bottom of the frames?
That's the bee ladder up to the comb and as soon as you scape it off they start to rebuild it (a good way to make them mad too).
UoG Honey Bee Research Centre that's amazing. Crazy little creatures.
Thank you for the info
I notice that, during your inspection, you don't clean off the edges of the frames (burr comb, propolus) as I see other beekeepers do in other videos. Others say it is to make it easy to remove/replace frames by keeping the comb even. What would you say to cleaning up the frame edges?
We scrape excess wax off the top bars each fall as we wrap our hives for winter. In using 10 frames in a box there isn't much excess wax on the sides of the frames. Bees rebuild comb whereever they have space so I think it's futile to be scraping more than necessary. If a hive dies we cull comb and scrape all the frames we keep.
Many people say that you shouldn't open the brood chamber too often because you can tell the health of the hive in other ways... how often do you check the brood chambers on your hives?
We check in the brood chambers several times in the spring and then again in the fall. Once the honey supers are all on we don't get in the brood chambers unless we are making up splits.
In a couple of questions up you stated that you do inspections every 2 week in the spring, summer and fall. Could you clarify.
How often is it recommended to go into a brood chamber? I’m only in my second year and like to get into my hives once a week or so, but I don’t always go into the brood chamber. Should I be doing a full inspection every time?
Hi Christopher
It's good to check on them and your schedule seem about right. I like to look through the brood chamber two or three times in the spring/ early summer and once again in the fall. A bit more wouldn't hurt, especially when you are learning and want to see what's happening. Weekly checks on the honey supers is a good idea to see if they need more space.
Oh!!!! I was unaware you worked with Buckfast, and thats what I have been searching for in my apiary.
Do you guys have a website where i could order a queen from you. What what I have read and heard about them, they are amazing bees to work with. And for you to work them with zero protection says a lot. Please let me know. I would be grateful. Brad
Hi Brad
We can only sell queens within Canada. In what country do you live?
@@UoGHoneyBeeResearchCentre Oh, I was not aware you live in Canada. I'm in NYC. Oh well. I found one buckfast breeder in Maine, I'll reach out to him for a queen. I can't wait to have exceptional behavior back in my apiary.
Hi
Thank you for all the educational videos I'm up north of you in the bush and don't have any mentor,s from around here
and it's a bit tougher here. A question it looked like this particular hive had an excessive amount of drone brood ?
& Really not that much worker bee brood. Is the drone brood a precusior to a potential problem ?
Failed queen or something ?
Looking forward to more videos I saw the link to your website I'll have to take a look
Thanks again
Hi Brad
There was a bit more drone comb than usual in this colony. It was an overwintered nuc that had been transferred into a full size box. There was a reasonable amount of worker brood too. As you can see in the video we have some older combs with a fair bit of drone sized cells in them and that's why you see more drone brood. Because the bees were confined to a five fram nuc in the aspring the queen was laying in whatever sized cells she could and that included quite a bit of drone sized cells. It's not a sign of problems in this case. You'd be more concerned if you see drones being reared in worker sized cells.
UoG Honey Bee Research Centre
Thank you for the video
I went back and watched again
Look forward to seeing more information videos
The wax/comb seems quite dark from what I've seen by others and myself. Is this because it is older or because of the plant in the neighborhood?
We've been keeping bees since the 1880's so some of our equipment is old! . We do replace some comb every year but it doesn't take long to get dark.
What if some of the frames are completely empty? No eggs, no pollen, or honey? But other frames are full of eggs, pollen, and honey. As if the bees don't like some of the frames?
Typically a colony will use the frames you provide as they need them,
Does the queen bee have a stinger?
Yes but she only uses it on other queens.
UoG Honey Bee Research Centre How interesting!
Hi UoG Hoeny Bee Research Centre, do you ship bee colony to oversea such as Malaysia and Singapore?
Hi ATD In SE Asia
Thanks for asking but no we can't export colonies or queens.
Thanks.
What hive system are you using
Not sure what you mean Kevin.
langstroth, by the look of it
Dnadabad I want to know one thing that this is the name of a species of honey bee please please
Apis Mellifera
We use a strain of bee call Buckfast which is mixed race.
Hello, why do you use a single deep for brood chamber ? Thank you
Hi Daniel
I find beekeeping more efficient and productive in one brood chamber. It's very common here. We are planning a video on this topic.
When does a beekeeper open the hives without the suit? ~ 01:33 02:41 03:17 05:23 05:59 06:52 08:38 09:11 09:30 Shouldn't the burr comb be removed from the bottom of the frames to keep the bees from having the frame stick the the hive floor? ~ ~ 03:58 Why aren't the bees stinging you? ~ 04:19 What is the dark orange substance on the upper left of the screen? ~ 07:38 How do you handle the Queen Bee without her stinging you? ~ Why wasn't the frame closest to you inspected?
#1 depends on how friendly your bees are but a warm sunny day helps.
#2 That's their ladder up to the frames.
#3 They tolerate me because I work carefully so as to not disturb them.
#4 Not sure but will have a look.
#5 She only stings another queen - not us commoners.
#5 This frame is almost always only honey so not much to see.
Next time 1 question at a time please or it looks more like my unanswered email :) Go Bees!