so a lot of people have been asking questions about the storm swarm
how are they doing how's it going we collected them back on august 10th and here they are just
over a month later a month and a day in fact here's a landing board we always like to look
at the landing board ahead of time i've given them a little identification tag there number six
and look close here and see that they're bringing lots of pollen in there's not a bunch of guard
beads on the front so they're not too defensive we're gonna get in here and do a frame by frame
inspection we're gonna do the whole thing in 17 minutes so hang out with me for a while and we'll
see everything so the other thing is we put them in here we had no drawn comb so we put in heavy
wax acorn frames which are my favorite we tested some new ceracel heavy wax one-piece plastic
frames i did not feed them because we have lots of resources coming in from the environment so
part of the evaluation here is to see how they do on their own without any help we are smoking them
today even though it is 76 degrees fahrenheit which is 24 celsius i'm doing the inspection
at 3 pm so the sun is still nice and high we're going to pry this insulated inner cover off here
which is something else i'm testing this year so we put that on there and this is a 10 frame deep
so we give them no help we give them a box heavy wax frames and here we are you can see the bur
comb connecting the tops of these frames to that inner cover and uh they're pretty calm in here
i'm gonna put some light puffs of smoke in there just to keep them that way we're gonna go through
them frame by frame it looks here like they've got four frames that are not yet completely drawn out
but all the wax that we're going to see in here is brand new made by the bees so again
they're nice and calm we're going to pull these out of the way so that we can pull the frames
sideways i always like to make space there there are a few stragglers here and that is the cirrus
l one piece heavy wax plastic frames and uh looks okay to me they're not working those yet
and again we're gonna look at every frame so i'm going to leave nothing to your imagination
question is can we find the queen in here today you're going to have to watch and find out
so when we look at these frames we're hoping that they've got some start there you can see
that it's light yellow where they are starting to work it just a little bit
so the population isn't bad population is on the rise that's evidenced by the fact that we've got
lots of pollen coming in and i expect to find brood over here in the next few frames and the
wax workers are doing okay considering this is a swarm a lot of people would have passed up so they
were way high in a tree question as to whether or not he could even get up there to reach them
and then i figured what the heck we have nothing to lose let's just go ahead hype them up see how
they do so we shook them into a hive butler box carried them over here and dumped them into this
box these frames had arrived on the exact same day i collected the swarm so it made hiving
possible because i was honestly out of equipment nothing's cooler than to look at brand new comb
inside your hives so these are workers here we've got some capped honey and lots of open nectar here
in the process of being dehydrated down and the resources coming in are from several varieties
right now cosmos they're they're getting their pollen from the cosmos flowers sunflowers are
making a showing the asters are in bloom and we have goldenrod so feeding them isn't necessary
they're getting more than enough resources out in the environment and again we're just going
to leave them like that for a while because we've got several weeks of nectar flow ahead of us so i
think they're going to do fantastic and given how they're looking right now i'd say they're going to
do just fine on their own i'd like them to fill this box and then we might get a super on within
a couple of weeks here because they do build pretty fast faster than you might think and if
we have some brood going in here you're going to see an increase in the workforce which of course
will bring more resources in a shorter amount of time even though our days are getting shorter
here we go more capped honey down lower left there we've got a small collection of capped brood
and surrounding that we've got some shallow cells with nectar stored in
them and little spots of pollen that's the orange stuff that you see there
and i've marked the ends of all the frames so i'll be sure to put these back the way they
were taken out and they're concentrating a lot of their production of course to the
east side and to the southeast single entrance as we showed in the beginning here and we are
not using the heif gates on these because we have to have comparisons between different hives
different colonies to see how they handle those entrances just a light smoking here and that's to
get them down and off the backs of these frames so i don't put my finger on any of them and get stung
i really like to get through just one hive inspection without getting my thumb stuck
and that happens because i always put my thumb on top of some b and look at all this brood here
that's pretty good and we've got some empty cells there that have well they're not empty
cells they've got nectar in them we've got some empty cells in the field there so a little spotty
and that uh brood is concentrated towards the front of the hive which faces south and
then the top parts of course this is capped honey resources for the bees now considering
that they've been in for a month now i would say they're doing pretty good i like this brood here
that is worker brood not drones
and again they're staying calm they're just going about their
business here we do have some wind gusts that you can probably hear
this is the only wooden frame in here and it's got that acorn insert that i cut the corners
off of and that's so they would have their own little pathways through it that's a practice
that i'm going to continue doing so when i put these plastic inserts into these frames for the
foundation i'm going to cut all four corners because i found that the bees leave them open
and use them for venting uh transit routes and everything else we have lots of uh capped honey
on here at the top and then we have more brood at the bottom and that's mixed in with nectar
and we've got of course the pollen stored which is great right next to where they're developing the
baby bees that's a good convenient location for them i'm going to try to get you in close here so
we can see all the cells and see what's going on in here and make guesses about the overall health
of the colony it's really important to look at the condition of your brood cells in particular
if they're greasy looking or they're sunken in or the bees are chewing them open for one reason or
another you might have problems but the brood in this colony is looking really good to me lots of
pollen there pollen of course is the protein that they need to raise their baby bees so during their
open brewed period that's when they're going to be fed and right here we've got what looks like
a queen cup now normally a super seizure queen cell might be built in the middle of the field
like that but it's just a queen cup and what's the difference between a queen cup and a queen cell
whether or not it has an egg in it and whether or not they're developing something
so this one's empty i have a nice nice light here about three o'clock in the afternoon
so we can still see into all these cells get a good look oh there's eggs so here we go if we see
eggs like this in the cells we can know for sure that the queen has been through here within the
last three days the other thing is are the eggs standing up on their ends or are they laying down
some of them are standing up on end that means they're really fresh
and there's some reflection here on that black background which can make
it look like there's more than one egg but there is just one egg in the cell
little reflections are deceiving sometimes i'm glad that showed up on the camera
i'm going to keep going through here because i'd really like to get the
queen today so we can get a look at her and uh if she's marked this was one of my bees
that's warmed if she's not marked we're going to catch her and mark her today
right there
and that's how you get stung on the thumb it was a little worker bee right under my thumb there
and i just felt the stinger go right in so once again failed stung every time just because you
touch a bee the wrong way and of course would be once they sting you they die so it's up to us to
try to keep from smooshing or stinging bees while we do our inspections although sometimes it seems
unavoidable lots of pollen here again nectar mixed in got some eggs some capped brood
that is finished honey on the top right there that frame
gonna smoke my hand a little bit here because remember once uh you get stung that little
threat pheromone goes with that stinger and of course we don't want to stir up any of the
other bees so smoke your hand a little bit smoke your arm make sure that you don't set off any
alarms when you're going through here because i would really like to not have to wear gloves
for this inspection because if you see the queen you're not going to grab her with your gloves on
more capped honey here nice and smooth at the top
got some bur comb down on the bottom there but there's no evidence of queen cells
so they're not looking to get out of here that's important to note too if there were some queen
cells going there then i've got another colony i could transfer those to lots of pollen again so
the environment is really providing well for them right now if the weather would just continue to
cooperate we've had quite a bit of rain recently and there's the queen right there and i got her
so she looks young to me actually and she's not marked so guess what
time to get out my one-handed queen marking cage
so we're gonna stick her right inside here she's a little scrappy
yeah there she is she looks good to me but that means that this did not come
from one of my heights or if it did it was an after swarm with an immature queen in it
because she was not marked so we're going to take care of that right now
and i'm going to show you the pen that i've been using this year probably used it last year too
but these paint markers mpd15 they dry really fast and notice that the bees have not been very
good at chewing off those uh thorax marks and uh so if you can find these they're pretty good
so i like to line her up until she's parallel with these little open slats here and i can get
her pin down now underneath of course it's spongy and soft so you don't harm the queen
and right there we're going to get her lined up and then i'm going to mark her thorax
so just really light there do some test marking on the wood next to you to make sure the paint's
coming out easy don't paint her head don't paint her wings if you can avoid it just get it on the
thorax enough so that she'll stand out and you'll know that that's your queen and you also know that
the white dot is for 2021. so this helps us gauge the longevity of the queens how old they are now
because that little cage is like a queen excluder the workers can actually get in with her you need
about 30 seconds for that to be completely dry and you can't rub off that paint so for them
to get in there they're not going to be able to groom off her mark while she's in that cage
so we're just going to get all these frames back together now
i'm satisfied that the colony is developing that they're growing that they're healthy
there are eggs there's larvae there's capped brood and now we have this queen who appears young
and of course she was unmarked so she's less than a year old
and so this looks like it's going to be a strong colony they just might build up enough resources
to get them through the coming winter so if they fill the rest of the frames here right now
in the single deep box 10 frame if they fill these up eight of those frames get full i'm
gonna put a super on there and uh we're just finished up with the first week of september
so i think we're pretty good because they'll have a good three weeks to four weeks
of nectar and pollen gathering going on so i think we'll have to revisit
this colony in another two or three weeks and see if we don't need to add that super
and we have to release the queen that's why i push the frames back together i'd
like to release her on the brood frame there where we collected her
and hopefully she'll go right down in between those frames
oh she just flew right over to the frame in the first position right there
so she actually flew out did a little loop and went down she could have just as easily
flown right off of the beehive so it's really important to keep your grass mode tight
if you're a queen or if she flew out and missed the edge of the box and went right down on the
ground you'd have to go and catch her quick so that was a pretty swift move on her part
anyway they should answer the questions uh that people have had about how that swarm that we
collected in the storm is fairy so they're doing really well i think it's worth the time that we
took to hive them up we know that they're using these carousel frames and the acorn frames equally
so one's as good as the other in my book right now they're both nice and firm heavy wax the bees are
cleaning them up they're not avoiding the plastic and i do like the wooden frames with the acorn
inserts in them because we can cut those corners and the bees can use those to transit through
don't forget to push all your frames towards the middle so the next time you come to do
an inspection you can pull them to the side and not risk rolling your queen so we get that frame
holder off of there don't need it today everything went pretty smooth other than a sting on the thumb
and we're going to put that insulated hive cover back on we're going to be testing through this
winter it's looking promising as well you have the option with this of having an open vent at the top
another entrance at the top or no entrance and no vents so that's a position i'm putting them on
no upper entrance noah prevent and it's an r10 insulator and i have that apis rapid
round feeder on there so if i do decide that i need to feed them let's say we get five days of
nothing but rain and cooler weather i definitely would put sugar syrup
in for this colony so thanks for watching i hope you learned something have a great day
mmm