so hello everyone today is Sunday October 13th and guess what's going on
I'm showing you the entrance of my observation hive and I'm also showing
you what's going on on my property here the landscape has gone to sleep the
flowers are not providing nectar or pollen anymore
is they've dwindled down to almost nothing so what happens well we have a
huge force of foragers flying around and what I'm showing you in this video is
something that for a lot of beekeepers is very controversial and I'm going to
explain some of my logic behind why I think it's ok to create a robbing
station well away from your bee yard and allow bees to clean up honey frames and
it's also where you can place sugar syrup this time of year because where I
live in the northeastern United States we are getting temperatures down into
the 30s and night so you cannot feed or should not feed one-to-one sugar syrup
anymore and it said we've dropped to a two-to-one concentration of sugar to
water and also I put out medium supers that I pulled off way back in the spring
and I let the bees Rob those out and I'm going to explain my logic behind that in
this video and we're gonna talk about some of the rationale behind whether or
not it's a terrible thing to open feed is it a high risk area is it something
that would provide a congregation area where the bees would join up and share
diseases and parasites I'm going to share my logic behind why open feed also
why I put out these robbing stations and put out supers like this I've capped
honey what the benefits of that would be and this is just my opinion and remember
we're small-scale backyard beekeepers this is not something you know I'm not
advising commercial keepers but I'm gonna give you a three minute break here
to go and get your coffee and watch some slow-motion bees rotting out this medium
super
and we're back so I'm gonna walk it through the bee yard and we're gonna get
an update here that first box I just showed was occupied automatically it was
in storage bees just moved into it these are some swarms that I collected sitting
on a be smart design stand there then we have the flow hive too that has a swarm
in it with my high visors on of course this is also a flow hive not the flow
hive - that's a standard it has a swarm in it this box has this for a minute
standard with a flat solid bottom board and it's a bee smart design freestanding
I've support also and that has a deep box and a medium super on it we tried to
get a deep and a medium on as many of these as we can but if they didn't
produce enough to fill that deep brood box there was no point in adding a
medium super so that first one there was a SAS Catrice bees this one was a swarm
these are SAS Katraj bees that did extremely well in this flow hive to
design they produced more honey than any hive in my apiary
here's another that was a swarm capture that came out of a hundred and fifty
year old house so those are feral bees in that one this one here these are bee
Weaver bees they made it through winter last year but they swarmed a couple of
times this year so we have new Queens going into winter these are also be
Weaver bees and that is a standard flow hive deep with a medium on top and over
here we have bee Weaver on the right that's what we pulled our pollen off of
this year's strongest colony and over here to the left we have Sask attract
bees looking strong again look at they have a medium super on top these hives
are chock-a-block with honey now here's also this open feeder look at this the
trough isn't even filling out because so many bees are piling up on where the
syrup comes out that it never even gets a chance to fill the trough so feeding
your bees this time of year what's that about and is it a good idea and why on
earth when I save back full frames of honey and put a medium super out for the
bees this time of year instead of joe uncapping it spinning it and harvesting
the honey well I'll explain what's really going on is winter in these parts
of the United States seems to catch everybody off guard so the bees have
built up to take advantage of the resources that were until very recently
in full bloom the last were the Maximilian's and the asters and the bees
had a huge foraging force that can go several miles from the apiary but now
guess what there's nothing for them to bring in and there are a few asters left
and that's about it so what would they normally do they
would turn their energy towards any resource they can find and they would be
robbing weaker colonies this time of year so I can take the pressure off
those smaller colonies and some of the swarm captures that I just showed in
their boxes we can provide these foragers a diversion so I put out capped
honey and in each of these medium frames there's about 47 pounds of honey what's
the payout well once they rip off the caps of that and they take honey back to
their parent colony guess how much processing has to be done almost none we
already know that it's capped we know that the water percentage is well under
20% and we noted it's ready to go immediately to storage so they'll pass
that on to the storekeeper bees inside and those bees will fill the cells right
away and that's immediately available to the bees inside the colony on these cold
nights we're gonna get snow very soon if you're putting out sugar syrup you're
gonna make that 2 to 1 as I already mentioned now I like to look underneath
of the robbing station here I like to see whose foraging through the grass
down here I like to see what species are around there's a yellowjacket queen see
the little dots on her abdomen there is a brown paper wasps their friend to the
B there is there are bumblebees all over the place but let's make no mistake
about it who's in charge of this area the honeybees the wasps are not
overwhelming the honeybees the bumblebees just come in
they're huge but the bees start biting their feet and pulling them out of the
way so most of the foraging bees like the bumbles are down here on the ground
under this medium super and that saves I'm having to fight with the bees and
what they do is they're picking up little bits of wax and propolis and
they're licking every little minut remnant of honey from each one look on
the right there there's a worker honey bee licking off of another bee so
sometimes they fall out of the robbing super and have honey sticking on them
and they clean each other up even wasps will clean off bees like there's a
bumble bee a wasp and honey bees on the same shot there so for me because I'm
curious about every kind of be every kind of wasp I want to see what's in the
area a feeding station gives me an opportunity to look at everything now is
this really such a huge risk when it comes to bees getting in close contact
with one another some people say well you know of Aurora it's very agile very
fast-moving they could jump from one bee to another alright so let's talk about
the options this is my thinking why would a varroa leave the abdomen of a
healthy bee that's a toast it's providing for it it is unlikely that a
verow is going to leave a healthy be a resource a guaranteed survival resource
and jump on another bee and take a chance that doesn't get groomed off on
the flipside if the bees are not fed this time of year in this way and
they're left to go and Rob out weaker potentially sick colonies what's the
risk there now they're entering a colony that is in decline that is unable to
defend itself that may have disease so in my opinion this is just you know an
opinion it's a far greater risk for those beads to be entering a small weak
potentially sick colony and robbing it out than it is to come here to my
feeding station and get their resources from medium supers that I pulled off of
healthy colonies and put out cab honey that I know the
history of and then by the time it gets really cold and the foraging ceases I
can stop putting these out so I have several of them stored and I put them
out one at a time I'm not gonna put a stack of three medium supers out there
so let me know what you think is that flawed logic should you not open feed
you just let weak your colonies get robbed out the environment has led them
down this is goldenrod not so golden anymore and the seeds are gonna blow
around this is Joe Pye weed it's kind of cool-looking but it's all texture now
there's no resources for the bees and again close-ups of goldenrod there are
birds that eat the seeds and of course the wind will blow it around and they'll
replant themselves for next year the few asters that are still in blossom now
obviously I have pollinators on the look this one's even got pollen on her legs
so that's a honeybee and there just isn't much going on I walked quite a
distance to find any of these blooms and there's a yellowjacket also getting some
nectar off of that and just look at it winter is gonna be here soon snows gonna
fly so my logic is to provide everything we can for the bees that we know is
going to benefit them and that is not transferring some kind of disease to the
bees and that keeps them home and keeps them from foraging the other thing is we
want to keep sure that we are putting out water drinkers and I keep the sea
salts out they are using the sea salt station and of course here at the pond
edge they are in the sandy soil and these are watering these by the way the
bees that fly out and collect water from resources like this that's all they're
doing they are not going to be collecting nectar they're not going to
be collecting honey they only collect water so it's a specialty and then those
bees fly back and they're going to paint their water over the surface of the
brood frames and they're going to keep them humidified and they're going to
cool the hive and if there are bees inside the hive they can't get out
because they're doing other duties you're going to transfer their water to
them and so they're gonna just deliver drinks it's kind of
the water bees at a football game they're gonna make sure that the players
stay in play and they're gonna come out there and bring the water to them so
they can hydrate on the job so they like the minerals here this is a springfed 14
foot deep pond so this is really good water resource for them we are away from
agriculture there's no runoff going into this water so we know it's good for them
and they also still go after pure water resources so provide them with as many
resources as you can I do feed the sea salt water at one teaspoon per quart in
the apiary the other thing I caution you about is if you're gonna open feed your
bees please do not put your feeders on top of beehives once that feeder is
empty and all those robbers are coming to that station they're gonna go after
the bees that occupy the hive that you put the feeder on there's another
another thing I noticed look at these two bees the one on the left is a light
tan see the legs see how golden it is someone once said
that it's only the color of the bees hair that's different that all bees are
black well this kind of looks different this is an amber colored bee I hope you
enjoyed this video feed your bees this time of year if you want to prevent them
from robbing one another out and feed responsibly keep that feed away from
your hives