Latest / Honey Bee Obscura Podcast / Installing Packaged Bees with Anne Frey, Part 2 (280)

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Installing Packaged Bees with Anne Frey, Part 2 (280) · Honey Bee Obscura Podcast

• 0:01
  Jim Tew: Hey listeners, if you listened in last week, Ann and I went on and on.
• 0:05
  Jim Tew: We had a nice time with various experiences about the package and queen world.
• 0:10
  Jim Tew: in the springtime.
• 0:11
  Jim Tew: Ann's still here with me.
• 0:13
  Jim Tew: That's a good time for you to say hi, Ann.
• 0:15
  Jim Tew: Hi Jim.
• 0:15
  Jim Tew: We're gonna do part two.
• 0:17
  Jim Tew: We'll try to see if we can ramble through more of it again.
• 0:20
  Jim Tew: I had a good time last week.
• 0:22
  Jim Tew: See if we can do it again.
• 0:23
  Jim Tew: But I we want to continue talking on that subject.
• 0:25
  Jim Tew: We had to cut it short because we don't really want to turn these things into long segments.
• 0:30
  Jim Tew: We'd love rather have short conversations and leave 'em wanting more.
• 0:35
  Jim Tew: About the length of a cup of coffee, would you say?
• 0:37
  Jim Tew: Say Ann.
• 0:37
  Anne Frey: 20 minutes, sure.
• 0:39
  Jim Tew: Yeah.
• 0:39
  Jim Tew: Listeners, I'm Jim Tew.
• 0:41
  Jim Tew: I'm here with Anne Frey.
• 0:42
  Jim Tew: We come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura where we just have a conversation about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.
• 0:50
  Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura.
• 0:52
  Introduction: Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
• 1:00
  Introduction: Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges.
• 1:07
  Introduction: Of managing honey bees.
• 1:09
  Introduction: Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
• 1:16
  Introduction: Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve
• 1:22
  Introduction: into all things honey bees.
• 1:34
  Jim Tew: Yeah
• 1:34
  Jim Tew: But can't you get some strange phone calls, man, with people trying to tell you what's going on with their bees?
• 1:40
  Anne Frey: Oh my goodness.
• 1:40
  Anne Frey: I don't work in the office and I rarely get the calls unless the office staff can't handle it, but I hear
• 1:48
  Anne Frey: about once every two years here they have gotten a call from a customer who never hived their package.
• 1:54
  Anne Frey: They just kept the bees in the package and they
• 1:58
  Anne Frey: thought that was the beginning of beekeeping.
• 2:02
  Anne Frey: And then they call up when the bees start to die and fall to the bottom.
• 2:06
  Anne Frey: and we tease the story out, you know, and we find out they never put them in a hive, they never released them.
• 2:13
  Anne Frey: It's just so sad.
• 2:15
  Anne Frey: These people definitely need a class.
• 2:17
  Anne Frey: They need a mentor.
• 2:18
  Anne Frey: They need, you know, not to jump into things so quickly without any learning.
• 2:24
  Jim Tew: Well, you know, if you don't know, you don't know.
• 2:26
  Jim Tew: It's easy to be critical.
• 2:27
  Jim Tew: I had a story once where we were raising queens at Ohio State and we had a guy at the time we tried to provide replacement queens because we weren't professional at this
• 2:38
  Jim Tew: So we definitely didn't make any money, but we had one guy when he finally called back to tell him that the Queen died again, I had to say, What are you doing?
• 2:45
  Jim Tew: How are you doing this?
• 2:46
  Jim Tew: On the phone.
• 2:47
  Jim Tew: You gotta be a detective
• 2:48
  Jim Tew: What's the technique?
• 2:50
  Jim Tew: And what the guy was doing was releasing the queen and the attendant workers in an empty hive body, thinking that was going to turn into a beehive, and instead they were just dying
• 3:01
  Jim Tew: Oh, so it was just about six workers.
• 3:03
  Jim Tew: Six workers and a queen, probably on foundation.
• 3:09
  Jim Tew: You know, at the time you just send the queen out.
• 3:11
  Jim Tew: We don't want to chat with everybody who was calling in all that much, but
• 3:15
  Jim Tew: Strange things happen when people don't know what they're doing.
• 3:18
  Jim Tew: When you're releasing the Queen, you've mentioned rubber bands several times, and I didn't quiz you on that because I thought I'd quiz you about it now.
• 3:26
  Jim Tew: What are you talking about with rubber bands in a queen cage?
• 3:29
  Anne Frey: Not when I'm releasing her, but when I'm moving her from the place she's hanging in the package.
• 3:36
  Anne Frey: to a frame and then I'm gonna put the package in the hive.
• 3:40
  Anne Frey: So her queen cage is held onto a frame
• 3:44
  Anne Frey: with say two rubber bands.
• 3:46
  Anne Frey: One rubber band I've noticed that the queen cage just kind of slides downwards
• 3:51
  Anne Frey: and it might even tip and slip out from under the rubber band just fall.
• 3:56
  Anne Frey: But it's it's a way of securing the Queen Cage to a frame, two rubber bands, make sure her screen is not facing a comb.
• 4:06
  Anne Frey: It could be facing down, it could be facing up, it could be facing sideways, as long as her screening is not facing the comb or foundation.
• 4:15
  Anne Frey: There's other ways of holding the queen cage up.
• 4:18
  Anne Frey: Sometimes the queen cage comes with a little metal kind of leash on the end of it or uh
• 4:25
  Anne Frey: There's other things that are done.
• 4:27
  Anne Frey: Press it into the comb if you have combs.
• 4:30
  Anne Frey: Just press the queen cage in without the screen getting pressed in.
• 4:35
  Anne Frey: What do you think is the best way to attach a queen cage to a
• 4:38
  Anne Frey: uh frame when you're installing a package of bees, Jim.
• 4:42
  Jim Tew: I don't know if it's the best way.
• 4:43
  Jim Tew: That's a clumsy way.
• 4:44
  Jim Tew: Clumsy way.
• 4:45
  Jim Tew: One of the ways I've always used that leash you said it's the little wire tie.
• 4:50
  Jim Tew: Yeah, a tab that comes on the queen, a tab that comes on the cage.
• 4:54
  Jim Tew: I put a thumb tack on top of a of a frame where I want it, and then I wrap that around the thumb tack with the screen outward.
• 5:03
  Jim Tew: I want the screen outward.
• 5:04
  Jim Tew: I want the candy plug up.
• 5:06
  Jim Tew: Okay.
• 5:06
  Jim Tew: In a perfect world everything goes all right, but on just a few occasions in my
• 5:12
  Jim Tew: Entire B life.
• 5:13
  Jim Tew: If the candy plug is down and they're eating it out, I've had workers die in the cage and then drop down and block
• 5:22
  Anne Frey: Yeah, and the Queen's not really interested in moving bodies.
• 5:27
  Jim Tew: That's not her job.
• 5:28
  Jim Tew: So these are all just picky yoon details.
• 5:31
  Jim Tew: I just use that.
• 5:32
  Jim Tew: Now there is one thing that only someone like me would do.
• 5:36
  Jim Tew: Somewhere in my life, I saw the plans for a queen introduction frame.
• 5:43
  Jim Tew: It's got a real thick top bar.
• 5:45
  Jim Tew: And then there was a slot cut in that thick top bar where you would lay the cage and put it in there.
• 5:53
  Jim Tew: So I've got two of those frames
• 5:56
  Jim Tew: And the problem is they're somewhere out in my beehives right now.
• 5:59
  Jim Tew: Next time I see them, I'll take 'em out.
• 6:02
  Jim Tew: I don't know where they are.
• 6:03
  Jim Tew: But you have to build a special frame and cut down the end bars and only a beekeeper like me would do all that.
• 6:10
  Jim Tew: But it was a good way to release a queen with this easy slot right on top.
• 6:16
  Anne Frey: I tend to like things that could be used in multiple ways, not really specialized things, but I hope when you find that you just like
• 6:23
  Anne Frey: nail it to the wall for the next time.
• 6:26
  Jim Tew: I've only seen two in my life and I've built both of them.
• 6:29
  Jim Tew: So I had the plans for it somewhere.
• 6:32
  Jim Tew: But that's just that's just examples.
• 6:34
  Jim Tew: Sometimes they come with metal tabs, but when you do that wire tie thing I was talking about, invariably
• 6:41
  Jim Tew: There's an extra frame you're stuck with.
• 6:43
  Jim Tew: So either you lean it against the colony and you leave it there for four days, or you take it back to the barn and hope the mice don't find it.
• 6:50
  Jim Tew: But you've got this one homeless frame
• 6:54
  Jim Tew: Because everything is too tight if you put ten frames back in there with that queen cage in there.
• 7:00
  Anne Frey: Yeah.
• 7:01
  Anne Frey: The other problem with the queen cage taking up kind of a
• 7:05
  Anne Frey: leaves an extra space between the frames where you've put the queen cage, if a person doesn't come back within three days or seven days and
• 7:15
  Anne Frey: see that she's out of her little cage and then remove her little cage.
• 7:19
  Anne Frey: They're gonna have some really crazy comb being built in that large gap
• 7:24
  Anne Frey: So coming back and getting the cage out and putting that saved tenth frame into its proper place, that's a thing.
• 7:31
  Anne Frey: Don't want to forget that.
• 7:33
  Jim Tew: That is a thing.
• 7:35
  Jim Tew: You are exactly right.
• 7:36
  Jim Tew: I can I can only here we go again, assuming.
• 7:39
  Jim Tew: I can only assume that we make the bees cluster around that queen
• 7:44
  Jim Tew: And even though they've got comb, in many cases they've got comb, if they cluster around that queen, they'll begin to build new comb in that space.
• 7:53
  Anne Frey: Yeah, it's the kind of thing that might really confuse a first year beekeeper, you know, this space, there's comb in it, took the queen cage out, don't know what to do now, but
• 8:05
  Anne Frey: You know, just use your mentor.
• 8:07
  Anne Frey: Get a mentor.
• 8:08
  Anne Frey: Get two mentors.
• 8:09
  Anne Frey: Please, everybody, try and help out some beginners.
• 8:12
  Anne Frey: Have you ever had like you just can't get the bees out of the cage and you're gonna
• 8:17
  Anne Frey: You can't get them to pour out and you're tempted to just cut that screen right off the side of it, Jim?
• 8:22
  Jim Tew: Well, I have torn the screen apart before, not in rage, but in a way to get stuck feeder cans out.
• 8:28
  Jim Tew: Sometimes that feeder can just would not come out.
• 8:32
  Jim Tew: So I would cut through the screen and push it up from the bottom.
• 8:35
  Jim Tew: But I've never had to cut the screen off just to get bees out.
• 8:38
  Jim Tew: Have you had to do that?
• 8:40
  Anne Frey: When it's chilly and we just can't seem to bop them through that circular center.
• 8:46
  Anne Frey: hole in the package.
• 8:47
  Anne Frey: I've I've sometimes resorted to just, you know, I'm tired of getting them to aim at that.
• 8:52
  Anne Frey: I'm just gonna
• 8:54
  Anne Frey: slice this and dump 'em out of the side of this rectangular hole now.
• 8:58
  Anne Frey: So it's okay to do that stuff.
• 9:00
  Anne Frey: It's not like there's a law that they have to come out that circular hole where the can was.
• 9:05
  Jim Tew: No.
• 9:06
  Jim Tew: The main thing is to get 'em out.
• 9:08
  Jim Tew: And I hadn't thought about the coldness that you would have to deal with.
• 9:11
  Jim Tew: I've had to release bees here several times when it was cold and rainy and I did that technique I told you about.
• 9:17
  Jim Tew: You mentioned taking frames out and then putting the package in the spot where the frames were out.
• 9:22
  Anne Frey: Yeah, it's the perfect size.
• 9:24
  Anne Frey: It's the perfect size if you take five out.
• 9:27
  Anne Frey: And it just fits in there, it's the perfect length.
• 9:31
  Anne Frey: I feel like they must have built the packages this long
• 9:35
  Anne Frey: It can't be a coincidence that it fits perfectly inside of a hive body.
• 9:40
  Jim Tew: Well, it can't be.
• 9:40
  Jim Tew: You know, I hadn't thought about that.
• 9:42
  Jim Tew: Well I wonder if somebody had that insight.
• 9:44
  Jim Tew: To make the packages fit inside of Deep High Body.
• 9:48
  Anne Frey: Maybe Wilbanks would know the answer.
• 9:50
  Anne Frey: Reggie Wilbanks or Patrick
• 9:52
  Jim Tew: Yep, I've met Patrick.
• 9:54
  Jim Tew: Of course I know Reggie well.
• 9:55
  Jim Tew: This is not a promotion, but they've been in the queen and package business a long time.
• 10:00
  Jim Tew: I'm sure they've had some stories, but
• 10:02
  Jim Tew: Not here, not now.
• 10:03
  Anne Frey: Not now.
• 10:04
  Anne Frey: But Wilbanks are great.
• 10:06
  Anne Frey: There are suppliers at Betterbee, I have to say.
• 10:08
  Anne Frey: They're very dependable.
• 10:10
  Anne Frey: I like that they use the wooden cages.
• 10:13
  Anne Frey: Have you ever experienced those plastic package cages?
• 10:16
  Jim Tew: There's one right here beside me.
• 10:18
  Jim Tew: I try to find something else to do with them.
• 10:20
  Jim Tew: They really want to be something else
• 10:23
  Jim Tew: as a secondary purpose, but I have not found it.
• 10:26
  Jim Tew: Could you pack one of those cages full of soil and raise orchids in it or something with
• 10:31
  Jim Tew: Orchids growing out the side of it.
• 10:33
  Jim Tew: Maybe.
• 10:35
  Jim Tew: I use it as a space between an amplifier and a turntable I've got to disperse heat.
• 10:43
  Jim Tew: So all it does is just so that heat the amplifier heat doesn't go right up to the turntable.
• 10:48
  Jim Tew: These things don't sit in the yard and rot, and if you don't if you don't have 'em, I mean once you've got a plastic package, you've got a plastic package
• 10:57
  Anne Frey: You can.
• 10:57
  Anne Frey: You can flatten 'em, but I like the wooden ones, you know, they're much more crushable and put it on the bonfire or you know, or it doesn't seem so horrible to have a pile of little
• 11:08
  Anne Frey: fragile wood things around than a big pile of plastic stuff that'll never be used again.
• 11:15
  Jim Tew: They are hardy boxes.
• 11:17
  Jim Tew: They
• 11:18
  Jim Tew: I really wish I could find something else to do with it.
• 11:20
  Jim Tew: Man, I do want to say this.
• 11:22
  Jim Tew: They dovetail together very rigidly
• 11:26
  Jim Tew: So you can pick up four.
• 11:27
  Jim Tew: You could pick up twenty of them if they dovetail them that far together.
• 11:31
  Jim Tew: Maybe you could build a wall.
• 11:32
  Jim Tew: But they are tough, tough, tough to get apart.
• 11:37
  Jim Tew: In mine, I figured out if you can get them down to about four packages and run a pipe clamp diagonally across that, you could put pressure on that and make those
• 11:47
  Jim Tew: dovetail connectors release those packages and pop them apart.
• 11:51
  Jim Tew: Otherwise you bang on them, bang on them, bang on them.
• 11:54
  Jim Tew: Well I got these in those packages.
• 11:56
  Jim Tew: That are getting all jostled around.
• 11:58
  Anne Frey: Maybe there's a technique we don't know about and it's just so obvious to the producers that they never mention it.
• 12:04
  Anne Frey: But we're using the wooden packages.
• 12:07
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• 12:37
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• 12:39
  Jim Tew: com Okay Anne.
• 12:43
  Jim Tew: So you got the queen stuck on the side of a cage and what?
• 12:48
  Jim Tew: On the side of a frame, on the side of a comb
• 12:51
  Jim Tew: For three days you said four at the most, maybe I would go for.
• 12:56
  Jim Tew: Would you agree with the fact that the bees are going to react to the cage the way they're going to react to the queen?
• 13:02
  Jim Tew: If you pull the frame out with the cage on it and the bees are just clinging to it like crazy and you can't brush 'em back and even one may have a stinger exposed
• 13:14
  Jim Tew: That's not a good time to release that queen.
• 13:16
  Jim Tew: But if you pull it and you brush them back and the bees move away from the cage and then they run back up and they're fanning and scenting
• 13:24
  Jim Tew: They probably agreed that she's the one for them.
• 13:27
  Anne Frey: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:27
  Anne Frey: They act to the cage the way they wanna act towards the queen inside.
• 13:32
  Anne Frey: I agree.
• 13:33
  Anne Frey: It's a pretty rare thing that there might be a queen loose with the bees in a package, but it could happen.
• 13:41
  Anne Frey: So there's a queen in the cage that the package producer has installed with each package.
• 13:46
  Anne Frey: But there's also a chance that the shaken bees that fell down the big funnel and went into the screened package
• 13:55
  Anne Frey: might have had a queen with them.
• 13:57
  Anne Frey: It's not unheard of for a colony to have two queens.
• 14:01
  Anne Frey: It's rare, but it's not unheard of, but really rare to be in the package.
• 14:05
  Anne Frey: They have their systems and it's pretty um systematic the way that they package up these bees.
• 14:12
  Jim Tew: I don't speak bee, but sometimes it's as though that a queen is just not
• 14:18
  Jim Tew: acceptable.
• 14:19
  Jim Tew: You know, the queen isn't from those bees.
• 14:22
  Jim Tew: In fact, the bees are probably not from the same colony, and the fact it's it's a it's a real Heinz 57 blend.
• 14:29
  Jim Tew: So everybody's probably somewhat strange to each other in that package and they have to get used to each other.
• 14:36
  Jim Tew: But I had a package last year
• 14:38
  Jim Tew: that from the get go.
• 14:39
  Jim Tew: The queen just was not acceptable.
• 14:41
  Jim Tew: She laid about a frame and a half of brood and then poof she's gone.
• 14:45
  Jim Tew: And did they raise a queen?
• 14:47
  Jim Tew: I did podcasts on it.
• 14:48
  Jim Tew: I had another queen.
• 14:49
  Jim Tew: I put her in and I got her established.
• 14:52
  Jim Tew: But the colony was set back.
• 14:54
  Jim Tew: It was sluggish.
• 14:55
  Jim Tew: It just gave me fits the whole year long.
• 14:58
  Jim Tew: And it was the first one to die this past winter.
• 15:00
  Jim Tew: So sometimes.
• 15:02
  Jim Tew: Packages just seem to be on the wrong square.
• 15:05
  Anne Frey: Well maybe those bees knew something about that queen and there was
• 15:10
  Anne Frey: some hatred or, you know, they rejected that queen, but I wonder why they rejected the second one.
• 15:15
  Anne Frey: Here's another thing about being set back.
• 15:18
  Anne Frey: We haven't touched on the idea that packages don't
• 15:21
  Anne Frey: advance for their first three weeks because even if the queen comes out of her cage in three days and begins laying maybe a day or so after that
• 15:32
  Anne Frey: That's probably four days, five days with no eggs being laid.
• 15:35
  Anne Frey: But then she starts laying eggs, and the eggs she lays, they're not going to grow up and become adult bees for another twenty-one days.
• 15:43
  Anne Frey: So for that length of time, the population is falling.
• 15:48
  Anne Frey: And then maybe twenty-one to twenty-six days after you installed it, they'll begin to grow.
• 15:55
  Anne Frey: And that's a point as well for package people.
• 15:59
  Anne Frey: It's like I did just recently hear a study that said that the packages people installed at the same time as a nuke.
• 16:08
  Anne Frey: they did catch up in population strength by the end of the summer.
• 16:14
  Anne Frey: But nucs, they start out strong and they go strong, strong, strong packages.
• 16:19
  Anne Frey: They start out slow
• 16:21
  Anne Frey: And then they're strong after a bit.
• 16:23
  Anne Frey: So there's that three week lag.
• 16:27
  Jim Tew: I understand what you're talking about.
• 16:33
  Jim Tew: You actually have fewer bees than you did when you shipped those bees in all those weeks ago.
• 16:38
  Jim Tew: Because the bees that died off have not been replaced.
• 16:41
  Anne Frey: Just natural death.
• 16:43
  Jim Tew: Yep, natural death.
• 16:44
  Jim Tew: Right.
• 16:45
  Jim Tew: So that happens too.
• 16:46
  Anne Frey: And then they start to get replaced because the new eggs have grown up into new bees.
• 16:52
  Jim Tew: So as we've talked now for two segments, basically it's not always obvious how to release the queen, pull the screen back, punch the candy plug.
• 17:01
  Jim Tew: Just take a technique.
• 17:02
  Jim Tew: By some means, be sure you get her out.
• 17:05
  Jim Tew: And
• 17:05
  Jim Tew: At the same time, there's different ways to release packages, but the main thing is to get the bees out, ideally on the comb, if not on comb, on foundation
• 17:15
  Jim Tew: If they're going on foundation, I really hope you feed them because they're gonna need all the help they can get.
• 17:20
  Jim Tew: How would you summarize these last two segments we've did now, Ann?
• 17:24
  Anne Frey: I think
• 17:25
  Anne Frey: that if the person is confused at all still, they should definitely try and meet up with someone from their club or get, you know
• 17:35
  Anne Frey: additional help before they go jumping into picking up their package.
• 17:39
  Anne Frey: They gotta learn before they go.
• 17:41
  Anne Frey: Usually, like you said, everything will be fine, but then there's those instances at the this end or that end of the spectrum where things are not fine.
• 17:49
  Anne Frey: Most of
• 17:50
  Anne Frey: time they're fine.
• 17:50
  Anne Frey: Everything's great.
• 17:52
  Jim Tew: That's a good way to end it.
• 17:53
  Jim Tew: Most of the time things are fine and everything is great.
• 17:56
  Jim Tew: And I'm gonna say bye.
• 17:57
  Anne Frey: This has been good, Jim.
• 17:59
  Anne Frey: Thanks.
• 17:59
  Jim Tew: I had a nice time.
• 18:00
  Jim Tew: I wanted to talk about this.
• 18:02
  Jim Tew: I mentioned in the first segment I've got spring fever, so
• 18:05
  Jim Tew: Goodbye and goodbye listeners till next week.
• 18:07
  Anne Frey: Bye everybody.