so hello i'm frederick dunn and today we're snowbound
24 degrees fahrenheit it's january the 17th and i took this video sequence at 10 03
am and we're gonna go outside it's a little cut in from what's going on with the news
griping about stuck snow plows and how hard it is to shovel out of your driveway
and 74 degrees inside thanks to my wood fire feels good next 24 hours it's still going to stay cold
outside the bees the bees and the birds are challenged a little snow bird there
and i want to show you this hive tool that i've talked about before made by be smart designs
i'm going to take it outside and we're going to look at our beehives this is how i'm staying warm
defiant vermont castings wood stove i think we have enough to get us through the rest of winter
this is what it looks like out towards the east for my house and the snow is coming down steady
and there of course is my horizontal long langstroth hive out of focus
doesn't that just chap your drawers and of course the lay ins high super insulated locked up most of
the top vents there on it we have other hives and we're going to visit each and every one of them
we're going to look at their landing boards to see if they're cleared on their own or
if we have to help them out this is timely because someone wrote me just today and said
hey should we be out there clearing off our landing boards and my response to that was
watch the video tonight you'll see so the snow's deep these hives are 18 inches off the ground so
you can tell the snow is nice and deep there a lot of it is due to drifting and as i mentioned
even the snow plows can't get through today and that's a flow hive in the foreground there
and sometimes you can see just by looking at the landing boards that the bees are doing well
because they've managed to move enough air through there while the snow falls to keep things open but
i was surprised some of my strongest colonies are not open look at number nine here flow hive two
now i hot glued this little piece of wood on the front and that was supposed to stay there as an
entrance reducer we don't care so much about that now because robbing has subsided thanks to all
the snow and the fact that we're on in january right here clear this out a little bit see if
i can't scoop some dead bees out so yes very important to keep these little entrances open
remember that bees and trees they don't worry about snow building up on the front
because they have no landing boards on those natural entrances
so those are clear not a pile of dead bees there now this one
has no feeding super it's got an insulated inner cover on it it's got the high visor on the front
and going into winter we had a full super of honey in that second deep
but we're going to scrape it off look they did not vent it on their own hive number 11 here
and there's the entrance i don't necessarily have to scrape away the snow from the entire
width but i want to make sure that they have an air way there just like taking somebody
and laying them on their back and tilting their head back so they have a nice clear
airway bees can live with very little air actually and they can handle high co2 levels
but if you don't keep them clear let me tell you what
sad feeling it is if you come along in spring and you find there's a pile of dead bees against your
entrance reducer and your bees could not get out when they had an opportunity for cleansing flights
now normally what i do although i'm not doing it today i bring ziploc baggies with me
and if i get piles of dead bees i scoop them in and for example that was hive eleven i would mark
that baggy hive eleven then i'm gonna take them in and squish their guts and do nozema counts
so we have a feeder sham on top of that one insulated air cover we have the hive visor and of
course another little hot glued entrance reducer piece of wood there you want to scrape this away
now this hive tool is really handy this is my first winner with it they just came out
you might be wondering where you can get one of these
be sells them they're like four bucks under five bucks for sure
and uh they reach all the way to the back so scoop out as many of them as you can
but what i'm impressed by is the fact that there's only
a few dead bees on the bottom that's a very good sign because i know from the last warm day we had
that these bees were flying so things were good pan down from the top
bmx insulated outer cover feeder shim insulated inner cover medium super that was full of honey
deep brood box hive number 13 no evidence of them venting on their own now the snow is falling
just as quick as you can shovel your walk or your driveway and as i mentioned before even the snow
plows are stuck which so who's going to help anybody now that is the hive gate and they're
not blowing hot air through it so it is important there is a little peg inside there you could pull
the whole hive gate out but uh it's actually clear through the channel so i'm not worried
about the dead bees piling up in there i think what's happening though i haven't looked inside
is that the dead bees pile up on the outside of the hive gate towards the front of the box
and are not plugging the entrance here we are looking at the cornfield there just so you can
see how desolate it all looks like a scene from dr zhivago now that is a 10 frame feeder shim
on the insulated inner cover and of course an 8 frame box underneath of it and then the high
visor now these did manage to keep their entrance open so that's interesting to me
the other part is guess what direction this landing board faces it faces north
so no sunshine of course and the reason that the little
strings of aluminum wire are strung out there is because we had a skunk trying to
get in there before i finished elevating this up to that 18 inch magical number
and i was gonna bring my flir c2 camera out with me went to grab it and guess what
battery's dead i knew somebody's gonna ask why didn't you do a thermal now this one insulated
inner cover and that top box is full of honey and i noticed that they didn't seal it up very
well with their propolis so what i did was i actually wrapped this thing with a tree wrap
so i'm testing that out just for kicks and giggles and they have a hive gate on it and
they kept that one clear on their own so this is a handy little colony here keeping up with things
number one maybe because i put the number one tag on there they know that they're supposed to be
the best of course there's a slatted rack there as well that's what that two inch gray board is
again that landing board is facing north
here we are by the serbian spruce tree insulated air cover b-max outer cover
medium super full of honey deep brood box number 18 had a large bee population going in and they
did a great job of storing their honey now we have hive alive fondant on half of the hives
we're going to be interested in looking for that too and
i'm also happy to find that i'm not sweeping out piles of dead bees here just a few
so where are the bees clustered nice and tight up above the landing board looks clean too
just a couple of them there they don't look super starved either if you look at their abdomens
these are my noise makers i have them all over but look at this these insulated
outer covers wrapped with duct tape and they're on top of my two nucleus boxes
we don't have to clean them out because those entrances uh have no landing board for the snow
to pile up on and the last clear day we had every one of these colonies was flying and
they are five frames in lower box and five frames in the upper box and those upper boxes across the
board were wall-to-wall honey so that's going to be neat to see if they get through on their own
so we have a lot to look forward to in spring but those are just sleeves out of insulation
that someone else made for me many thanks to greg for that and now we have this insulated
inner cover there feeder shim on top hive live is on it this is a cedar box and it is a flow hive
and look okay we're not keeping up with theirs now this one faces south
hive number eight and it has wire screens to keep mice out keeps the entrance reduced
and just a little entrance opening in the middle there no robbing on this one this
year now that entrance is too small for this uh scraper to go so just bring it in from the side
and then turn it to the side and rake some dead bees out not many and of course there's
an aluminum screen on the bottom of that hive they call it it's green it's really a piece of aluminum
uh sheet metal with little cutouts look how tall the snow is piled up on top of this bmx cover
another feeder shim there insulated inner cover high of life fondant on top of it
no signs of life down on the landing board
so let's see if they died out right
there would be piles of dead bees at the bottom when we go to scoop them out and look what's
going on here just a few so the snow caught up and they weren't doing a lot of venting in there
so i will bet you this colony is still doing good
now we have a warm-up coming they promised
38 degrees fahrenheit down in the lower level areas which probably will translate to 32 for us
so i can't count on the weather to warm up and melt away the snow for me
we need to keep these things open ourselves the other question i got was
how often should we go out there and clear these entrances
every time you go out if we have a snow event like right now i would go out there every single day
see it won't fit just turn it sideways
all the way to the back now if i were pulling out
handfuls of bees i could pretty well guess that that colony's a loss
but they're all doing pretty darn good now you notice i didn't get into hive seven hive seven
is pretty much doomed so we did lose a colony this is the future site of my way to the academy
lengths throughout high nice thick material inch and a half thick it's five feet long
thick bottom nice heavy duty hinges thick top insulated cover this year and look at the entrance
it's open that's because there's no landing board for the snow to pile up on plus we
have this really cool copper flashing up above that keeps the snow from flying down and the
last clear day that we had they were flying this is an underdog colony because remember
earlier on this is the colony that had sac brood chewed brood varroa infestation and
everything else now look at the land's hive super insulated we don't have to clear it out the only
entrance that's open is the one all the way to the right we're going to get closer to that for you
i did close off the top vents and this thing does have insulation in the lid
and there's the opening and the last warranty we had they were flying too a lot of people have
asked when are you going to do an inspection of that lanes high for us and unfortunately i
ran out of time and the weather turned cold before i had a chance to do it this side is
painted with latex house paint the other side is painted with liquitex acrylic artist paints
feeder sham on this one insulated inner cover
full upper super and then of course a nice brood box down below and both of these hives
that we're looking at now have hive gates on them and i left both hive gates in place
once again look at what we're not seeing at the entrance of the hive gate a pile of dead bees
the other thing you'll notice that it has the metal plate that comes with them in the future
i will be removing those metal plates and uh i'm just going to custom cut out my entrance reducers
there's a slider rack on top of that one also and i'll use wooden entrance reducers and we'll
just stick the hive gates in through those openings here's another one with a galvanized
sheet metal plate two hive gates in it and they did not clear that themselves
now these landing boards are facing south but again we had no sunshine
and even after i plowed my driveway and had to replace two sheer pins on my snowblower
it's as if i never even cleared the drive and what good was it anyway because by the time we
look at the road the plows hadn't made it through so thank goodness it's martin luther king jr day
and uh no one had to really be anywhere they look through they're clear to the right on that one
clear to the left and as i mentioned before i think if there are dead bees
piled up inside they're on top of the hive gates rather than going down in
so those are clear
here we go insulated telescoping cover upper feeder shim with
hive alive fondant this is the hoover one of the uber boxes that's heavy waxed
and then the bottom box standard brood box 10 frame and of course another slided rack
and then we're going to clear that entrance and again these little vertical pieces of pine that
you see are just hot glued on with gorilla hot glue and that's because it's a great way
to temporarily place a uh entrance reducer and then later you can just pull it straight off
so it's an easy solution when you need to do things fast and this by the way is a heavily
populated colony so i'm not at all surprised that i'm probably getting 60 or 70 dead bees out of it
and as i mentioned before if you want to analyze your bees do nozema counts things like that
brings up like baggies and don't mix your hive dead bees together so that
way you'll able to you'll be able to figure out which colony had the highest eczema loads
and that's one of the reasons for the hive alive fondant other than emergency feeding
in winter time we are hoping that it also demonstrates a reduction in the zima sports
and that's mark time live 12 18 because that's when i put the fondant patty on
this video kind of makes it seem like it's cold outside doesn't it because it is this little
building's going to go away and this will be the future site of the way to be academy so i do not
have an observation hive this year and there of course is the lands hive painted by yours truly
bee hives on a beehive a little path just a little glimpse of the future when the
weather warms back up and things grow again but right now we're in the grip of winter
so yes clear your entrances i used to use chopsticks but now of course i have that handy
plastic hive scraper slant entrance cleaning tool and again that came from better b easy to find
i think we're in good shape look even my little shelf that i put there to hold my coffee cup is
covered in snow definitely not a day for sitting around sipping your hot chocolate or your coffee
and staring at your bees because nothing's going on the birds are around they've got lots of cover
lots of places to hide out coniferous trees protect them and it got a lot worse
after i made this video the wind blew stronger the snow got deeper
and i decided i would just make a video and share with you guys to show you what's going on
if you are under heavy snow right now i hope that things go your way
and please trudge out there with your snowshoes on and clear out your entrances
thanks so much for watching today enjoy the rest of your week