OK.
Today, we're going to learn how to wash and dry your cocoons.
And so we're going to start with some cocoons that
need to be washed.
And you can see here a lot of cocoons that have
been scraped out of laminates.
And there's a lot of mud.
There's pollen.
There could be mites or [INAUDIBLE] spores in here.
And that's what the washing is going to take care of.
So I'm going to go ahead.
This first bucket is for just getting them wet
and allowing the mud to fall to the bottom.
And another thing about this, you
want to make sure you do this in the shade.
You never have the cocoons exposed to direct sunlight.
Today's a very overcast day so it's
perfect for doing this outside.
But you can see right away how the mud is
falling to the bottom.
That's what we want with this first rinse.
So we're just getting them wet and letting the mud fall
to the bottom.
OK.
So these cocoons have now soaked for a couple of minutes.
They're all wedded.
Most of the mud has fallen to the bottom.
And then you'll want one of these kitty litter scoops.
This is perfect for scooping up cocoons.
But first what I'm going to do over here
is going to add the bleach to this water.
This is about 2 and 1/2 gallons of water.
And I use about a cup of bleach per gallon of water.
So this is 2 and 1/2 cups of bleach.
You can go stronger, and some people go a little bit weaker.
But I find that this is a good ratio.
It cleans the bees really well and doesn't
cause any harmful side effects.
So now, I'm just going to scoop cocoons and put them
into the bleach water, like so.
Easy to scoop out this way.
And now you're just going to sell them
for a couple of minutes.
This is going to kill any chalk brood.
I mean, mites that might be on there.
You can, I would say, stir this occasionally but let
it sit for a few minutes.
Our cocoons have soaked in the bleach
water for a couple of minutes.
I've been stirring a little bit as they go.
And so they're really pretty clean and sterilized now.
So again, scoop them out and now you're
going to put them on your screen like so.
And it's going to take a few scoops to get them all.
And we'll get the very last one.
But let me show you how to rinse.
You're going to want a hose with a sprayer that
has a gentle shower.
Load on it.
And you're just simply going to come off.
You can kind of spread them as you rinse.
It's actually raining a little bit right now
but that's OK because we're just rinsing off cocoons.
OK.
So once they're kind of rinsed off pretty good,
give it a little shake to get some of that excess water off.
And then I set up some little spacers in here in my garage
and spread these out as best I can.
Turn a fan on them.
So after a couple of hours at least of the fan,
you can dump out your cocoons into a large box.
And then you can take a visual look at them
to see if there's any last things you
want to pull out of there.
But you can see they're much cleaner now.
There's no mud, very little pollen left,
and they've been sterilized.
And that's it.
That's how to wash your cocoons.