Secrets to Overwintering Bees - Plus Honey Bee Fun Facts

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May I have your attention please?

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The following is not the real Jeff Vox really.

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If you have ever put on a B suit with nothing but underwear underneath,

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you might be a beekeeper.

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If you have replaced the grass on your front lawn with clover,

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you might be a beekeeper.

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If you have more than one T-shirt with a B slogan on it,

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you might love bees.

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Welcome to Be Love Beekeeping Podcast presented by our good friends over at Man Lake.

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At Be Love we're all about the honeybees and of course the beekeepers.

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As I'm sure you know, there are a few different philosophies on how to best help bee colonies survive through winter.

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Today's discussion will be all about one path that focuses on high ventilation as a major key,

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and what you can do right now mid-winter to help your bees.

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But first, a few more tidbits and our fun facts about honeybees series.

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Did you know that bees are amazing navigators?

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We've seen their spiraling orientation flights,

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but additionally, bees use the position of the sun to navigate,

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and there's evidence to of their sensitivity to the Earth's magnetic field.

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Also, bees' eyes are sensitive to polarized light,

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which penetrates through even thick cloud, so they're able to see the sun in poor weather.

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Did you know the honeybee is the only bee to maintain a colony throughout the winter?

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The colony reduces its size in autumn and relies on its stores of honey to last through the winter months

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when it's too cold for foraging and there's no forage available.

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Speaking of winter, did you know that as honeybees cluster to keep warm,

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the queen remains at the center and the other bees take turns on the colder, outer side of the cluster?

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Sounds a little bit like penguins.

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Did you know that on warmer days, honeybees go on cleansing flights to relieve themselves of waste?

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And finally, do you know why bees have a hairy body?

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This makes it easy for pollen to get trapped in the hairs,

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as the bee flies, its hairs become positively charged.

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The pollen grains are negatively charged, so the pollen is attracted to the hair and sticks.

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Now that you're a honeybee genius, let's get to today's guest.

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Welcome, welcome to Bee Love Bee Keeping, everybody,

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and we have a very special guest with us today,

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Steve Stewart, and we're going to be talking all about overwintering.

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But first, how are you, Steve?

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I'm excellent because I'm in Mesa, Arizona at 70 degrees today.

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No, 60, it's in the 60.

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Well, you should have taken your bees with you because that'd be a great way to overwinter.

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I think they would make it, but you know, every time you change the environment, you change the beekeeping.

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So, I know the high Rocky Mountains, but I don't know anything about beekeeping in Arizona.

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We did have on an earlier episode, we had a beekeeper from the Tucson area,

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and we talked all about everything from Africanized bees to some days being so hot that everything starts melting and oozing out of the front of the hive.

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It just sounded like some kind of horror movie.

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But your background, you did grow up in Utah.

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You know what it's like beekeeping in cold weather.

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Give us a little bit about your background because I know your father was in beekeeping too.

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Tell us where you came from.

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I was raised in a little town called Spenish Pork,

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and I have like four generations of fathers that moved there back in the 1800s.

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And three of those fathers, there were four, my dad, my grandfather, and his grandfather were commercial beekeepers.

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So, we've seen the days, the hey days when beekeeping was really easy.

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And when I mean easy, they were.

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It was easy because it was the day of the insects before pesticides.

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And I saw those days and they were wonderful.

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I was young at the time, but and then the pesticides hit one of the big vegetable companies sprayed seven one day in Utah County just and killed 2000 colonies and my grandfather's bees.

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And in one shot, he lost half his bees and that was the downhill start.

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And so pesticides have been hard on bees.

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And I'll give you some clue to that when I was young, I had to clean the windshields of the bee trucks.

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Oh, yeah, insects everywhere.

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It was a gooey, rotten, dirty mess.

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And service stations, gas stations used to advertise they would have a services attendant cleaner and windshield.

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Well, that was a big deal because there were a lot of insects.

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And now I see a insect killed on my windshield.

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I go, Hallelujah.

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At least there's one or two survivors.

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I mean, the days of the insects, we declared war on them, Eric, and we want, but we want this one insect to live and it's taking all we've got to keep it alive.

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Yeah.

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You know, that is so true when I think about it.

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In the summertime, every time I used to fill up with gas, I would clean the windshield because it would need it.

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Yeah.

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There'd be gooey gunk on there and I hardly ever do anymore.

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No.

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And I hadn't really put that whole thing together in my head, but it really makes, wow, scarily makes a lot of sense.

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Yeah, it scares me.

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I have a neighbor.

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I have a friend.

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He's about a quarter mile away.

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He's been on a year on a pesticide, 20,000.

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Of course, he sprays alfalfa fields all around him for the weevil and and I've struggled every time you spray.

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So we have a deal.

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I have, I said, I said, what are you spraying with?

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And he gave me the three ingredients in there that most deadly pesticides to be.

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And I said, how about I give you, I'll give you three quarts of honey.

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I'll give you a hundred dollars of honey at the end of the summer.

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If you'll make a phone call to me and tell me that you're going to spray the next day.

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That way I can screen my bees in at the entrance and they won't be flying and they won't be sprayed.

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We've done that for four years and he just loves the honey and I just love that my bees aren't killed.

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It's a win-win situation.

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If you have a farmer in your area that sprays, make him your best friend and all he has to do is a phone call or two.

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And I remind him that it's about spray season.

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Yeah, he got, yeah, it's about spray season.

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I've got it on books.

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Yeah, he loves honey and I love to give it to him.

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And then the disappointment started to disappear as far as pesticides were concerned.

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Anyway, we are here today to talk less about pesticides and more about overwintering.

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You've had a lot of experience at it.

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And before we jump in, I just want to say I have read about, heard about so many different philosophies on overwintering bees.

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Some people think the best thing to do is to wrap those hives up and insulate and basically make them like an igloo.

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And then they're going to be, you know, be able to stay warm enough to be okay.

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Other people think other things.

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Tell us where you come and where your philosophy came from.

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I was an engineer from Mars Incorporated, but just not any engineer.

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I was an innovation engineer and they are engineers that are cross discipline engineers.

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You have to be at least three types of an engineer.

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You have to be a mechanical, electrical process engineer to really be an innovation engineer.

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And the last 12 years in my career was doing that.

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My company just gave me a free reign of a big budget and said, go make machines, Boris, make processes.

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And I did that.

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I knew I had to make three times of my salary every year to at least pay, make it worth their time.

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So I had to make them some big money every single year.

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And I set the time clock on January every year.

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I said, now I've got to start making, earning my keep with this company.

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And they were, they had a global empire.

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Okay, they had pet food companies around the world and I mean around the world.

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And I have machines in all over Asia, all over Eastern, Western Europe, all over South America and North America.

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The only place I don't have them is in Africa, only one in South Africa.

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But I had impressive skills and I knew when I retired, I had such a good career I could retire when I was 50.

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I've been retired 17 years.

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And I was going to use these skills to help the problem my family had for generations, winter kill.

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It was our biggest killer.

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I mean, it was, it was the elephant in the room.

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And we had it right down the percentage.

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And when bees were easy to raise, it was 18% winter kill every year.

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So we had to make up all those nukes every year, all that extra work and all those extra queens.

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I'm just, it was just, you know, because of winter kill.

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Well, I had a new set of skills when I retired.

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I was going to fix this problem and I had no doubt I could because my philosophy when I was working for Mars is everything.

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And I don't care what it is, everything can be improved.

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And the second thing is nothing's impossible.

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If you want it, you'll make it happen.

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And so I decided I'd do that.

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First thing I did was I got three beehives and I was going to make them get through winter.

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And I left him three high.

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They had two supers of honey and I made them basically an igloo.

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I put eight inches, eight inches on every side around and on the bottom.

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It was 16 inches.

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And I mean, on the top, it was 14 inches and 16 on the bottom.

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The bees had to walk through foam for eight inches before they could get out.

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So this was like R 30 or something?

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No, let's say you get about an R 20 for every 10 for eight inches of foam.

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I was 40, 40 to 50, something like that.

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And over 50 and on the lid.

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And I love electronics.

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So I put sensors in the top, humidity and temperature and put the read out on my desk and I went to work.

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I mean, I let them go to work.

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They were ready for winter and something happened.

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I didn't expect to happen.

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They kept the temperature in the hive straight 84 degrees every single day.

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Unless it got down into single digits, it would drop a degree or two.

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Go right back up during the day because at nighttime it was colder.

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And I was really astounded.

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They would just keep it at 84 degrees.

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I mean, perfectly.

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It never blabbered hardly ever.

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So that was good, right?

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No, this experiment was a failure.

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We'll get to that.

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So one, I think it was the first or second week in February.

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I'm looking at my hive because I love to look at the temperature every day.

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And I noticed that the temperature was starting to drop one or two degrees a day.

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And then the next day and other two or three degrees and the next day the same.

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And it got down into the low 70s and I thought, this hive is dying.

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I have to do something as high was dying.

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And I didn't want to do anything, but I knew I had and I had a box of honey, a couple of honey supers down below.

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And in my basement, so I took a frame out and wait about 10, 15 pounds.

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And I tore the thing open is snowing, took a frame out.

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They were empty, took a frame out, put this new one in, put it back together.

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I'm thinking this is the last thing you want to do in winter is rip open a high boy is snowing.

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And I was really worried.

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So I, but I got my, I got it back together, got myself cleaned up and went back to my desk.

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And I was really interested to see what the temperature was going to be.

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And it was 84 degrees.

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Amazing.

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But it was a failure because they had eaten themselves out of house and home in that amount of time.

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Well, that's a problem.

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That's not an answer.

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If they're going to eat so much honey, that's not tenable.

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You can't do that.

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That's, that's some failure.

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So I didn't know actually what to do.

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Here's an interesting tidbit.

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I left the, the insulation on during the summer thinking it would help them stay a little cooler because we have some hot days in Utah.

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That was another failure because those bees wouldn't wake up till one or two o'clock in the afternoon.

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I wouldn't have thought of that.

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And I had some other highs by that time and they're out flying early in the morning and I'm looking at my insulated hives and everybody's in there still sound asleep.

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This is why when you insulate, you isolate from the environment.

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When you insulate, you isolate from the environment.

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The last thing you want is your bees not to warm up when it gets warm early in the morning and summer.

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You're going to lose hours of beekeeping.

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Hours of having your bees collect honey.

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So I took that off and decided, you know, all that extra igloo insulation, it wasn't, it was a dead failure.

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I'm not used to failure.

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So I thought, I did that because we had winter kill, winter's cold.

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Must be a heat problem.

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Well, I'll just put insulation around them.

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I mean, a lot.

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I went to the extremes because I learned when I'm making machines, you go to the extremes, you'll always learn more than anywhere else.

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And so I knew that's not even going to work in a little bit of insolation the way I did it.

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I let it slide for 10 years, but I kept my bees.

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I was actually more than 10 years, about 12.

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I kept my bees and I suffered 50% loss or 60 every year and it was, it was a terrible thing, but it was my heritage.

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I wasn't going to give it up every time I went out in the spring to look at my bees.

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Then I would take the lid off and see them dead.

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It's just, it hurts.

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It's an awful feeling.

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Then you got to clean them out.

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Then you got to get everything ready and then you got to buy new bees.

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And it was a money loss.

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A hobby was put it that way.

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Yeah. And it is that heartbreak too.

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Oh God.

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It's no fun opening up a hive and they've died and then you blame yourself too.

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What did I do wrong?

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It's like a sucker punch the gut.

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I mean, it just hurts.

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So I had a 90s something year old mother.

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She said, stay with us, son, you'll get it.

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Stay with it.

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So in the meantime, I had another project.

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There's, I wanted to fix the bees and then I wanted to change the way the world eats

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and provides their food.

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And I wanted to do that in my backyard all year round without any additional heat source.

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And so I started, I started on that project.

225
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It took me about four years of research.

226
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And then I finally got some successful ideas that were out of the box and built it.

227
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It took me three or four years and now I can grow tomatoes in my backyard all year round

228
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without extra heat.

229
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And I've done that growing them 14 months straight.

230
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But the point is this, I wasn't equipped to fix the problem with all my engineering skills.

231
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I couldn't fix this problem because it was outside of my realm of experience.

232
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But one day I'm out of my greenhouse.

233
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It's winter.

234
00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:57,000
It was January.

235
00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:02,000
But it had single digits the night before, which means the sky was clear the next day.

236
00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:04,000
80 to 90 degrees of my greenhouse.

237
00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:06,000
I go out there just soak up the sun.

238
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I'm just loving it.

239
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Okay.

240
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:12,000
And then the light went on.

241
00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:15,000
I wonder if I could do something like this for my bees.

242
00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:21,000
And I thought, I've got, I've got four beehives right behind my house.

243
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:23,000
They're going to die.

244
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:25,000
They're probably dying right now.

245
00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:27,000
And here I am in the sun just enjoying this.

246
00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:31,000
And it took me, it only took me a couple of hours after the lights went on.

247
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:35,000
Before I put my first solar heater on a hive.

248
00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:40,000
I built it like I would out of greenhouse plastic and things like that.

249
00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:42,000
I had the perfect hive.

250
00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:50,000
I don't know what possessed me, Eric, but I had found a hive right behind my bee, my greenhouse.

251
00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:53,000
I have about 13 hives on my property.

252
00:17:53,000 --> 00:18:01,000
And I just was going to take off a box for it because get ready for winter, cut it down to two.

253
00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:03,000
And they had hardly any bees in it.

254
00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:11,000
They had half a frame and I'm looking at it and I figured out they'd just requeen too late in the season.

255
00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:13,000
They didn't have any honey stores.

256
00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:18,000
So I thought, I'm sick of buying new bees every year.

257
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:22,000
And so I just decided I'm going to try and keep this one alive.

258
00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:31,000
So I put a spacer at the top, put a bladder feeder in the top that I made and I fed it every day in late fall.

259
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,000
And they would eat every day and then they'd go down at night.

260
00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:41,000
And I had put a clear plastic, clear Duralar covering on the tops so I could see exactly what they were doing.

261
00:18:42,000 --> 00:18:43,000
I'd take the lid off.

262
00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:45,000
I could see what they were doing.

263
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:47,000
I could see if they were doing anything there or anything like that.

264
00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:52,000
Because of the clear cover under the lid.

265
00:18:53,000 --> 00:19:02,000
So I was quite happy until God called and they wouldn't come up and I was hoping I had given them enough feed to make it through the winter.

266
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:07,000
Which, you know, half a frame of bees, you know, that's a dead out.

267
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:14,000
So when I got this idea, I bet I can do something like this for my bees.

268
00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:17,000
It only took me a couple hours to construct one.

269
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:21,000
I put it on the hive in between the two boxes where the air could go in.

270
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:25,000
And then watched for a couple of days and they never came up to feed.

271
00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:30,000
So I thought, this one's a bad design.

272
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:39,000
So I went and redesigned it with acrylic and made the airflow more streamlined and bigger solar collection area and put it on.

273
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:41,000
And that day they came up to feed.

274
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:44,000
I thought, I can keep feeding these bees all winter long.

275
00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:48,000
And I did and they got stronger and I had a good strong hive.

276
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:54,000
The three really heavy hives behind my right next to them were all dead.

277
00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:56,000
And I thought, I've got to do something with this.

278
00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:00,000
I made 25 the next year for 25 hives.

279
00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:03,000
Actually, I made 30, but I only had 25 hives.

280
00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:14,000
And I put a mill on and that year I only lost one hive in winter, which was a miracle.

281
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:17,000
I never expected that.

282
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:19,000
And I had feeders.

283
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:21,000
I wanted to reproduce what I'd done.

284
00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:23,000
So I put feeders in tops of each one of them.

285
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:27,000
A lot of them just didn't eat the feed because they didn't have plenty of honey.

286
00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:29,000
I always prefer honey.

287
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:35,000
But one little teeny hive didn't want to come up to feed and they didn't have a corine.

288
00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:37,000
They just lost a will to live.

289
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:39,000
But it was a miracle.

290
00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:44,000
One hive out of all of them, 5%, I thought.

291
00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:50,000
And all the generations of my father's beekeeping in Utah, that just does not happen.

292
00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:53,000
Now, did I know what was going on inside with that?

293
00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:55,000
Heavens, no.

294
00:20:56,000 --> 00:20:59,000
Was it just a sheer dumb luck type of thing?

295
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:01,000
I tried something and it worked.

296
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:03,000
You bet.

297
00:21:04,000 --> 00:21:05,000
That's exactly what it was.

298
00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:09,000
Well, your engineering dumb luck in mind would be a whole lot different.

299
00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:11,000
That's for sure.

300
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:16,000
Did this have anything to do with moisture in the hive or just heat in the hive?

301
00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:19,000
At that time, I had no clue.

302
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:25,000
Just a quick break here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake.

303
00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:30,000
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304
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:34,000
So let's put our creative brains together and visualize spring.

305
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:38,000
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306
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:43,000
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307
00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:48,000
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308
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:52,000
and their experienced beekeepers will help every step of the way.

309
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:57,000
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310
00:21:58,000 --> 00:21:59,000
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311
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:04,000
And don't forget your discount code MLBLOV10, it's in the show notes,

312
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:07,000
for $10 off your first $100 purchase.

313
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:09,000
I'm feeling better already.

314
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:12,000
Now, back to the guest.

315
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:17,000
No clue.

316
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:21,000
So the next year I put the bees on.

317
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:23,000
I did the same thing again.

318
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:27,000
I'd written the patents in the meantime because I wanted someone to sell it.

319
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:30,000
And if they're going to sell it, they're going to put money into it

320
00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:33,000
and they're going to want to have ownership.

321
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:39,000
So I made a patent and found some people that wanted to sell my patent.

322
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,000
And they're working on it.

323
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:47,000
And they came out to my place to hot to film the bees that winter,

324
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:49,000
which is the next winter.

325
00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:53,000
And that was the winter of all time snow in Utah.

326
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:55,000
You remember that, Eric?

327
00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:59,000
My hives, it was just nothing but the top of my hives.

328
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:02,000
So there's hive stand, then there's hive,

329
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:05,000
then there's three feet of snow on top of that.

330
00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:09,000
I had to dig down to even see that they were there.

331
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:11,000
There was so much snow that year.

332
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:18,000
That was a horrible year to launch or to show this company about that they want to sell my hive heater,

333
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:21,000
a solar hive heater to boot.

334
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:24,000
And I was keeping track of the days of sunshine.

335
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:26,000
Hardly any.

336
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:32,000
We had two days of sunshine in November, two days in December, two days in January,

337
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:34,000
and two days in February.

338
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:37,000
And I'm thinking, what have I done?

339
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:39,000
Now that's not the killer.

340
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:48,000
The killer was since they didn't eat much feed because when I took the top boxes off of the solar heaters the next spring,

341
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:50,000
they were all heavy.

342
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:52,000
I didn't feed that spring.

343
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:55,000
So I decided I don't need to put a feeder in the top of the bee hives.

344
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:58,000
I think I'll just put some water and let them get a drink.

345
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,000
That is the stupidest thing I could have done.

346
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:07,000
Okay, so, I mean, it was utterly stupid.

347
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:15,000
I gave every single hive I have a bad, terrible case of no semen.

348
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,000
There was poop on everything.

349
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:21,000
And it wasn't just a little, it covered them.

350
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:26,000
And every time I'd look at them, I'd go, how could you have been so stupid?

351
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:28,000
What were you thinking?

352
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:31,000
And that's just from them having too much water in the hive?

353
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:33,000
I guess, because every single one of them.

354
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:38,000
I don't know what I did wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was related to that.

355
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:44,000
And the hives that died were just inside, they were just a mess, a pooping mess.

356
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:46,000
I just threw the frames away.

357
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:52,000
So I'm thinking, what kind of a, I have winter kill rate, am I going to have?

358
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:54,000
I had 20%.

359
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:57,000
And that was still a miracle.

360
00:24:58,000 --> 00:24:59,000
It was back to my grandfather stays.

361
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:01,000
So I thought, that's pretty good.

362
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:06,000
Well, the next year, I've decided to figure out what's going on in the hive.

363
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:14,000
So I bought a scale off of Amazon and it's about a foot square to weigh your vegetables and things on.

364
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,000
And that you would do at the market.

365
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:27,000
I tore it apart and put the load cells on two beams, cross beams, so I could take those two cross beams, put it under one side of my hive, tip it up and put it on the other side of my hive and I would weigh it.

366
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:29,000
And so I did.

367
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:33,000
I got my numbers and this is, this is what it looked like.

368
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:41,000
And there's a weight distribution that goes from about eight pounds up to 40 and the average was 17.8 pounds.

369
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:43,000
But a lot of them are right around 10.

370
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,000
And I thought there were the ones that were right around 10 would die.

371
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:56,000
And I was pretty discouraged to see, I'd never weighed my bees before and I weighed them every month.

372
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:03,000
And those that had only 10 pounds made it through till March and I didn't lose, but 5% again.

373
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:06,000
10 pounds of honey for the whole winter.

374
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:10,000
I'll show you.

375
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:13,000
In November, the average use weight was 1.8 pounds.

376
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:15,000
In December, it was 6.5 pounds.

377
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:18,000
And in January, it was three pounds per hive average.

378
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:21,000
And I'm thinking, God, this is a miracle.

379
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:26,000
Because they ate themselves out of house and home when they were totally insulated.

380
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:31,000
And now they're not eating much honey to get through the winter.

381
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:34,000
Well, I'm doing it again this year.

382
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:39,000
And in November, they 7.5 pounds and December, they ate 11.

383
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:41,000
So it's a little up this year.

384
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:44,000
You know, we had an Indian summer because you're in Utah.

385
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:49,000
You know, the bees got more honey during that fall than they usually get.

386
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:51,000
Mine were all heavy.

387
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:55,000
Now my average weight in my hives this year was 35 pounds.

388
00:26:55,000 --> 00:27:03,000
And so when you've got that much honey and you've got a lot of bees, you've got more mouths to feed, they seem to be eating more.

389
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:06,000
But it's really not exorbitant amounts.

390
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:13,000
So I'm used to leaving at least 60 to 80 pounds of honey in my hives for over winter.

391
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:21,000
And you're saying November, December, let's say January, February, so four months or so.

392
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:23,000
How much are they going to eat?

393
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:28,000
Well, if they're on track this year, they'll be around eight, they'll be seven and 11.

394
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:31,000
It'll be around 40 pounds.

395
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:37,000
But that's still half what they often eat.

396
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:45,000
But then you got to ask yourself, I had a good, I know it's all weather dependent and how many bees are in the hives this year.

397
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:50,000
Since they had a really good fall, the queen didn't stop laying and it was nice and warm.

398
00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:53,000
So they didn't reduce their numbers like they usually do.

399
00:27:54,000 --> 00:28:01,000
So I think that has something to do with why they ate more this year or they're eating a little more this year, but they've got it.

400
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:03,000
I'm not worried about it.

401
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,000
And they're never going to come close to eating at all.

402
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:09,000
So I ask yourself, what's the mechanism?

403
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:13,000
What's going on here?

404
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:15,000
Because I'm just telling you what I experienced.

405
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:19,000
It came to me that it really has to be the water.

406
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:24,000
Now let's get a perspective on what this water really is.

407
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:30,000
And at the North American Honey Bee Expo and Louisville.

408
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:32,000
Yeah, we were both just there.

409
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:39,000
I started to really ponder it and I stayed up late one night, did my research on the internet.

410
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:44,000
And because I monitored in chemistry, I kind of, I knew there was something going on here.

411
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:50,000
And there's a man by the name of Frank Linton who wrote an article in bee culture.

412
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,000
And he did this back in January 1st, 2015.

413
00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:04,000
And he went through all the chemical, all the chemistry that happens when a bee eats honey.

414
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:10,000
And how much water is generated in that.

415
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:15,000
And he said for each molecule of sugar, it produces six molecules of water.

416
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:25,000
And he came out to be about every, for every pound of honey, 67% of it will be turned into water.

417
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:29,000
And I found another article who said it was 68.

418
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:32,000
Another person found out it was 68%.

419
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:39,000
So if you've got 100 pounds in your hive, you've got 68 pounds of water, you got to get rid of.

420
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:47,000
So he said in this article that if you have a 40 pounds in your hive for winter, okay, you're going to get through with 40 pounds.

421
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:50,000
You're going to have 27 pounds of water.

422
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:58,000
And I tried to look up just where, how the mechanism was in the bees, where the water came from.

423
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:01,000
And I could, all I could get it from was respiration.

424
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:03,000
They must breathe it out.

425
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:05,000
What about condensation?

426
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:12,000
Well, it respired, they do it from respiration from the bee and then whatever it hits it condenses on.

427
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:18,000
But I did a few calculations and this is really surprising.

428
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:23,000
So okay, let's say you've got 40 pounds of honey, you're going to winter your bees in this year.

429
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:29,000
They're going to produce 3.6 gallons of water to do that.

430
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:34,000
The cubic inches of three gallons of water is 693.

431
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:41,000
And the cubic inches of one length strut hive deep is 1,330.

432
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:50,000
So actually that water will occupy 52% of the volume of that bee box is not just a little.

433
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:55,000
So let me give you another to bring this home, how much that is.

434
00:30:56,000 --> 00:31:01,000
If you've got 3.6 gallons of water, that's 432 ounces of water.

435
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:06,000
And if you're going through four months, you're going to have 120 days.

436
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:14,000
So you divide that amount by 120 days and you get 3.6 ounces.

437
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:16,000
They will produce a day.

438
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:27,000
Now, to give you some perspective, when you drink a water bottle, such as this, you get from Costco or whatever, that's about a pound of water.

439
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:32,000
They will make that water bottle in four and a half days.

440
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:40,000
That's like opening your hive and pouring that water in every four and a half days, that whole water bottle.

441
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:42,000
So where does it all go?

442
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:44,000
Good, very good question.

443
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:47,000
Well, the first thing you can, you can submise.

444
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,000
It's 100% humidity in there, 100%.

445
00:31:52,000 --> 00:32:01,000
When they breathe it out and it condenses on everything that's around them, it'll either drip or stay there.

446
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:04,000
You know, there's cells that will hold water and they'll just get moldy.

447
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,000
I'm sure you've seen moldy frames before.

448
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:12,000
The first time I did, I was shocked because we live in a place that is so dry.

449
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,000
There's no humidity, especially in the winter.

450
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,000
And I had a dead-out one spring.

451
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:25,000
I opened up, I'm like, what is this black gunk on the side of this box?

452
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:28,000
Yeah, I get it.

453
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:30,000
Yeah, it's there.

454
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:32,000
If they're going to eat it, they have to generate it.

455
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:37,000
And the only way they can get rid of it, they're equipped to get rid of that kind of moisture.

456
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:42,000
Even more so in the summer, they can fan it out while they're trying to take moisture out of honey.

457
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:45,000
But when they're in a cluster, they can't fan.

458
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:49,000
They can't, they can't affect their environment at all.

459
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,000
They're just trying to generate enough heat to stay alive.

460
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,000
So why did they eat less heat?

461
00:32:56,000 --> 00:33:03,000
I mean, why did they eat less honey to stay warm and a less insulated hive than an insulated hive?

462
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:07,000
And the only thing I could come up with, Eric, is they're dry.

463
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:09,000
They're much drier.

464
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:16,000
And their heat-generating mechanism must work a lot better when they're dry than when they're wet.

465
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:23,000
Because when they're wet, everything they generate evaporates water, which sucks heat out of their bodies.

466
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:26,000
So they got to eat, they got to eat more and generate more heat.

467
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:28,000
It's a downhill spiral.

468
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:39,000
It's like every day you get out of a nice hot shower and the first thing you do is get out and dry off because, dang, that water is evaporating off your hot body and it feels cold.

469
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:42,000
It sucks the heat out of your body.

470
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:47,000
And all I can say is I think the same thing is happening to the bees.

471
00:33:47,000 --> 00:34:00,000
And especially when they're in 100% humidity, it's really hard to vaporize the bees, which that moisture is right around them because they're generating it.

472
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:02,000
And not just a little.

473
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:05,000
It's a full water bottle every four and a half days.

474
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:16,000
The last article I read about this said that the bees, they take the oxygen, they need oxygen to oxidize the sugar and to get the energy out of it.

475
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:18,000
They produce CO2.

476
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:24,000
And this author said beehives need to breathe for that reason alone.

477
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:29,000
But I think it's, and you've heard this, I've heard it.

478
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:31,000
It's not the cold that kills the bees.

479
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:33,000
It's the water.

480
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:43,000
And I guess the moisture that does, you kind of see that all bees eat honey in the winter and they eat a lot of it.

481
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:48,000
And I think Eric, that they're in a survival mode.

482
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,000
I don't think clustering.

483
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:54,000
I don't think they enjoy it much at all.

484
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:56,000
They're in a dump stupor.

485
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:04,000
If you've had to open up a hive that's cold and in that dump stupor, they're just, they don't even know what's going on.

486
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:12,000
And I think they are circling the wagons and they're all get together and they're generating the heat in a big cluster trying to stay alive.

487
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:18,000
Eric, when I look into my hive, my clear tops, they're all walking around.

488
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:20,000
They're just thinking, God, this is great.

489
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:22,000
I'm fine.

490
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:24,000
This is good.

491
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:29,000
I look at them during the day, of course, and they're all nice and warm and they're walking around.

492
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:31,000
They're not clustered.

493
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:33,000
They can go anywhere they need to get honey or whatever they need to do.

494
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:41,000
And that gets cold again at night, but they're dry and they can generate heat really easily if they're dry.

495
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:43,000
This is full disclosure.

496
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:48,000
I know it drives them out in the hive because I've seen it try out sugar syrup.

497
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:56,000
But the next day, it'll dry out sugar syrup over time, but I know it's completely dry.

498
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:02,000
I can see there's no condensate anywhere, but the next morning I get up and I walk past my hives.

499
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:04,000
It's cold in the morning.

500
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:08,000
The solar heater on the outside is dripping water.

501
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,000
Again, we're talking massive concentrations of water in the hive.

502
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:19,000
And it's coming out that hole where the solar heater puts in warm air.

503
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:21,000
It works in reverse on cold days.

504
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,000
It actually takes the moisture out of the air by condensing.

505
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:30,000
And on the biggest hives, especially, they're all dripping water.

506
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:35,000
On the smaller hives, no, but on the bigger hives where they have more bees, more respiration,

507
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:41,000
the very next morning they're dripping water out of the out of this over here.

508
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,000
And on cloudy days, it happens all the time.

509
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:48,000
Go ahead and sum up what we're getting at here.

510
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:54,000
What we're getting at is we have to fix a biological problem to get our bees through the winter,

511
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:59,000
but we can't really see what's going on inside and they can't talk.

512
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:06,000
But the chemistry has showed us that when they eat honey, they generate water.

513
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:08,000
Huge amounts of it.

514
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:13,000
And you better find a way to take it out of the hive because bees, when they're wet,

515
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,000
are very inefficient at generating heat to stay alive.

516
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:24,000
However way you can find to do that, you're better off with a hive that breathes.

517
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:33,000
If you insulate, you isolate. I do insulate the top box of my hives now because they do get to

518
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:35,000
respire from the solar heater.

519
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:37,000
Biggest ventilated.

520
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:42,000
And so it's warm air stays in the top and I do like to insulate that hive.

521
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:48,000
I don't insulate it with our 50 just four inches of foam, not to eight.

522
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:50,000
Go ahead, Steve.

523
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:52,000
I don't mind if you mentioned your product.

524
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:53,000
Okay.

525
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:55,000
Because all of this engineering leads up to it.

526
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:57,000
Yeah.

527
00:37:58,000 --> 00:37:59,000
It's called hive heater.

528
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:01,000
Tell us what it does real quick.

529
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:03,000
Yeah.

530
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:05,000
You can go look at it on honey haven supply.com.

531
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:07,000
There's videos at my place.

532
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:10,000
The reason is for sale Eric is this.

533
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:13,000
If you find something that's impossible.

534
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:19,000
I mean that you never heard of before and you never seen them before and you've experienced it.

535
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:21,000
You want to share it.

536
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:30,000
And the reason you want to share it is because you want to make a difference and you know, there's going to be a big change for a lot of people.

537
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,000
And it's kind of dishonest just to keep it to yourself.

538
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:36,000
I mean, how do you live with yourself?

539
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:41,000
If you can help so many people, if you don't, how can you live with yourself?

540
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:43,000
I couldn't do that.

541
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:45,000
So this product is already in production, right?

542
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:47,000
I know it's quite new.

543
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:48,000
Yeah.

544
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:50,000
It's quite new.

545
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:53,000
They sold their first batch last fall and it went out really fast.

546
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:55,000
We went to the show with only two.

547
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:58,000
They only had two heaters left and they kept those for display purposes.

548
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:07,000
You still can't buy them because they're the new supply will be ready in spring or late spring.

549
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,000
But you can go there and put in a pre-order.

550
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:20,000
I can't conceive of a better way to make a high breathe and ventilate and dry out completely passive.

551
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,000
I mean, and so simple to use.

552
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:25,000
It's cool.

553
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:27,000
Can I ask you a couple of questions?

554
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:29,000
Sure.

555
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:32,000
I've had some people say, well, but bees need something to drink in the winter.

556
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,000
And so some of that condensation is good because they need to drink it.

557
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:38,000
What's your opinion of that?

558
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,000
They don't need buckets full.

559
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:45,000
They need a little and they generate a lot and they can generate that con.

560
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,000
Like I was telling you, they can generate enough to drink in one night.

561
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:51,000
Yeah.

562
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:53,000
And beyond that, it gets to be a problem.

563
00:39:54,000 --> 00:40:01,000
So as far as drinking water in the hives, that's not a problem because bees generate it 24 seven.

564
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:03,000
They don't sleep.

565
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:08,000
Now this interview is going to come out in early February of 2025.

566
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:10,000
So it's too late.

567
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:18,000
I mean, it's okay that you're out of the hive heaters for this year because it's really too late to stick them on for this winter anyway until next fall.

568
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:20,000
Yeah, it's too late.

569
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,000
Can you think of anything else that people could do right now though?

570
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:31,000
In the middle of towards the end of winter, if I'm worried about my bees, is there anything I could do?

571
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,000
Should I take insulation off?

572
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:39,000
Should I I've got entrances reduced because I want to keep it warm in there?

573
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:41,000
Should I open some of that up for ventilation?

574
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:43,000
Yeah, it's not about the heat.

575
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:50,000
The solar hive heater should be said it should be named as solar hive dryer.

576
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:57,000
It can only put in as much heat in there as can escape the hive through the cold entrance.

577
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:00,000
So you have your entrance blocked off.

578
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:05,000
You've even made it harder for those bees to breathe and get rid of that moisture.

579
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:07,000
Open up your hive.

580
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:14,000
Open up the entrance all the way or maybe halfway all the way all the way.

581
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:20,000
And I have a two inch hole in the bottom of my board for winter in case snow blocks that off.

582
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:22,000
And I have them on stands.

583
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:24,000
They'll have air from all that underneath.

584
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:26,000
This is what I would do.

585
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:41,000
If I were right now and I was worried about my bees, I would take the top box and slide it back three quarters to an inch and expose that much to the bottom of the hive.

586
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:44,000
That's gutsy.

587
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:46,000
People are going to be afraid to do that.

588
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,000
Well, then just try a quarter of an inch.

589
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:52,000
But I'll tell you what it does.

590
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:54,000
It's not going to steal heat from the top box.

591
00:41:54,000 --> 00:42:05,000
It's not going to because air rises, but it will give some air exchange into that box and let them get rid of that water.

592
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:10,000
I've seen it on a really good hive that a guy had.

593
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:13,000
He let his son, very rich man, let his son have bees.

594
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,000
He bought the best equipment, got bored with it and let him die.

595
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:21,000
There were all 20 hives and a nice and he wanted me to put hives near his orchard.

596
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:24,000
And I said, well, what about that bee art over there?

597
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:26,000
And he goes, ah, that was my son's.

598
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:30,000
I said, do you mind if I go take a look?

599
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:32,000
And he said, no, go take a look.

600
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:34,000
They were all dead, but one.

601
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,000
And the top lid was a half inch back from the top.

602
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:39,000
That is crazy.

603
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:41,000
Some people's minds are blowing right now.

604
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,000
I firmly believe it's the water.

605
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:47,000
They can generate all kinds of heat.

606
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:50,000
You've had heavy hives die in the winter.

607
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:52,000
I know you have, but we all have.

608
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:57,000
Well, that cold air, once they get cold, that thermal mass stays cold.

609
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,000
They can't generate any heat and they're wet.

610
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:03,000
So they die.

611
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:05,000
Let me add something to that.

612
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,000
The people could do right now if they need this.

613
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:13,000
And that is make sure that your hives are tilted forward slightly.

614
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:19,000
Because if they're even flat or tilted back, all that water you're talking about,

615
00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:23,000
it may run down to the bottom board, but it's still in the hive

616
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:25,000
and it's not doing anything good down there.

617
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:30,000
So if you tilt them forward even a little bit, if there's too much water,

618
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:34,000
And also think about this.

619
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:40,000
When I said move the box back, we're talking about a hundred percent humidity in that high.

620
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:45,000
When you push that box back, you're going to get some air exchange with the outside.

621
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:52,000
That water is going to be busting to get out because it's a lower percentage of humidity on the outside.

622
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:57,000
And you may get natural convection currents that just start taking water out of your hive

623
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:01,000
because of a concentration gradient, we say in chemistry.

624
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,000
I'm still worried about my bees freezing if I do that.

625
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:06,000
It's gutsy.

626
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:09,000
I'm speaking for the masses here.

627
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:14,000
I trust you, Steve, but at least make sure your entrance is snow free.

628
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:17,000
And open that up.

629
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:19,000
They need to breathe.

630
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:21,000
They really do.

631
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:24,000
Okay, Steve, before I let you go, I have one last question.

632
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,000
I'm sorry I didn't warn you about this ahead of time,

633
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:35,000
but on this show, all of our guests get to tell one wild and crazy beekeeping story.

634
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:40,000
And it can be something funny that happened, something painful or embarrassing that happened,

635
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:42,000
something out of the usual.

636
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:44,000
Oh, I see the wheels turning.

637
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:47,000
I just submitted to you my biggest mistake.

638
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:52,000
I'll tell you one of the wildest things that it was sad,

639
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:55,000
but it taught me a lot about bees.

640
00:44:56,000 --> 00:45:01,000
I had a couple of hives on a guy's place who wanted them and he had horses,

641
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:03,000
so he put an electric fence around them.

642
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:08,000
He moved and the guy that moved in didn't take care of the electric fence.

643
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:14,000
The horses got in there and just smashed them to the ground.

644
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,000
Now I use a BMACS Styrofoam hive.

645
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:25,000
So that they were just, there were no boxes left and the frames were down in the snow.

646
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:27,000
Just beaten nothing.

647
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:30,000
I mean, I was so mad.

648
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:37,000
So I know I'm going to pick up what I can stand and some frames.

649
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:43,000
The boxes are just in pieces and I mean, it was stamped flat and I'm picking up out of the snow.

650
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:49,000
And I pick a frame up from the snow and there's bees on the other side.

651
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:53,000
And I look really close and there's a queen.

652
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:59,000
And I quickly, well, I laid them in the back of my truck as good as I could,

653
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:04,000
but I put them in a box as soon as I got home, put them in a box, put them on another stand,

654
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:09,000
put a bottom and a lid on them and they survived that winter.

655
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:16,000
They survived that winter and they were down, beat down into the snow.

656
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:18,000
And stomped by a horse.

657
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:20,000
Stomped by a horse.

658
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,000
It's amazing how resilient they are.

659
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:27,000
All right, Steve Stewart, thanks a ton for being on with me today.

660
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:29,000
You bet. Anytime.

661
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:36,000
Thank you so much for joining us here on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake.

662
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:43,000
Please right now before you forget, hit that follow or subscribe button, rate and comment on the show.

663
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:45,000
Then be sure to share it with a friend.

664
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:49,000
We're building a community here and we want to hear from you.

665
00:46:50,000 --> 00:47:00,000
Send your crazy stories, guest recommendations, new gadgets or anything else that you'd like to hear about on the show to Eric at BeLoveBeKeeping.com.

666
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:05,000
And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love.

667
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:17,000
See you next week.