so here we go we're taking another look inside this observation hive which is
occupied by hygienic varroa resistant bees and what you're looking at here on
this frame are eggs from the Queen and we have a black background there and you
notice that there's eggs with no fluid around them and then you'll see that
there are tiny worms which are the larvae and they have fluid around them
that is because the moment that those eggs hatch a nurse bee will get right in
there and fill that basin with royal jelly and the amount of royal jelly that
we're seeing here shows us that this hive is just doing extremely well
they're very healthy if you see that you have larvae in the bottom of those cells
and a very sparse amount of royal jelly around them being your hive is probably
not doing so well now what we're showing is often as early morning comes along
the interior of your hive will have some condensation in it a lot of people think
that the entire interior space of the hive is regulated by the colony and they
dehydrate they heat it they cool it but that's not the case as you see here we
have the population of the bees a little higher up and you'll see there's a
definite line where that condensation follows this condensation is held down
and below the brood frame and it's insulated by the bees so it's really a
cluster op and of course concentrate their efforts on heating and protecting
brood frame over everything else but they certainly do not thermo regulate
the entire interior of the hive now what we're looking at here is a
pollen forager and this bee has brought in little pouches of pollen on its hind
legs and doing the waggle dance to explain to the others exactly where it
got the pollen and I want you to notice something else about these bees when
they bring in pollen you'll never see multicolored pollen packs on the bees
hind legs and that is because they go after a single pollen source during
their foraging efforts other bees may come in with different colored pollen
but it is never mixed and they will put it directly into pollen storage now what
we're looking at it are cells where the pollen has been dropped off by the field
Bee directly and these are pollen workers inside the colony that do not go into
the fields and what they're doing is they're mixing that with some nectar and
they're sealing up these pollen stores and it will actually ferment and if you
sometimes open up your pollen frames and you're looking at it and it smells funny
that's because there is yeast and it is fermenting and it does put off a
scent in fact I've found that the bees really go after consuming pollen it is
about 48 hours old or they'll take the brand-new stuff as well in some cases
they'll just take old pollen seal it off and not use them at all and you'll see
that out in the edges pollen of course is the number one protein for the entire
colony and it is used to raise brood
so if you don't raise honeybees and you want to do something to support them
provide pollen sources in your garden in other areas now here we have the Queen
she's roaming around and she's inspecting cells and she is dead center
here and she's about to deposit an egg here in this cell that she's looking
over now we have this discussion all the time that Queens lay 1700 to 2000 eggs per
day but I'd like to share that that's actually limited by the number of cells
that are even available for her to lay in
in fact if she's over productive the bees will come along right behind her
and consume the eggs that she deposits if they feel they have enough or they're
running out of space if they run out of space you can count on your colony
swarming out soon but the Queen will lay her body weight in eggs each and every
day and that's what's going on here she's gonna find another cell and there
she goes she's gonna deposit another egg and of course the eggs take about three
days to hatch and then they are larval while their eggs they don't get fed as
soon as they hatch the nurse bees will get right in there and put some royal
jelly now again we're looking at the hygienic aspect of these bees and
there's part of the observation hive here where the field bees come in and
they seem to pause it's almost like a car wash and they're waiting for the
hygienic groomers to show up as this one is doing and they work over the
field bees from head to toe they clean underneath their wings they groom their
abdomens their thorax and they even as this one's about to do get a little
taste of the nectar that they've gathered while they were out so it's a
very interesting behavior and also why we've been unable to find any varroa in
this colony we don't treat for varroa if we can't find them so it's very
interesting hygienic varroa resistant bees demonstrate this grooming behavior
and they also will clean cells and they'll even remove a bee that's
developing in its pupa stage larva stage capped and they'll tear open the cap and
remove the bee itself before it hatches if they think something's wrong
now we're just looking at a brood area and these bees are ventilating it and
they're keeping the air moving over the surface of the brood and you'll notice
that you can see the abdomen some of the workers that are deep inside there which
are continuing to feed that are royal jelly to those developing larvae
now what you're seeing a little left of center there is a drone that's hatching
out drones do not hatch themselves the workers do it if you've ever seen a
worker hatch she hatches herself out and cleans her cell moves on and goes right
into cleaning duties this drone as it hatches out is just poking everyone for
food there's another one to the left of it that is completely out as well and
watch it a minute here and you'll see he pokes with his tongue the nurse bees and
he's demanding food all the drone does is sit around consuming resources in the
hive and wait for a Virgin Queen to mate with now you may think that that sounds
interesting but actually this time of year we're in November these drones have
already been pulled out of the hive and they have been ejected into the
environment to die the workers do not put up with drones through winter and
they don't want to feed them resources that cannot be replenished so here's an
overview of the actual observation hive again just a portion of it looking at
the outside frames of an eight frame observation hive and I hope you got
something out of watching this video and I appreciate it give it a thumbs up and
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