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Nucs & Wax Production with Anne Frey (277) · Honey Bee Obscura Podcast

• 0:02
  Jim Tew: Good morning, podcast listeners.
• 0:04
  Jim Tew: Here at Honey Bee Obscura.
• 0:06
  Jim Tew: I'm Jim, and today is kind of a special day because on a regular, irregular basis
• 0:13
  Jim Tew: Ann Fry visits and she's here.
• 0:15
  Jim Tew: Good morning, Ann.
• 0:16
  Anne Frey: Hi, Jim.
• 0:17
  Anne Frey: This is gonna be fun.
• 0:19
  Jim Tew: She came in with a great topic.
• 0:21
  Jim Tew: We want to talk about nucs, wax production in nucs
• 0:25
  Jim Tew: caloric needs to produce wax and just generally enjoying nucleus beehives.
• 0:32
  Jim Tew: So we're going to ramble through all that
• 0:34
  Jim Tew: Anne's been practicing night and day reviewing the literature.
• 0:38
  Anne Frey: Oh, Jim, I just did a quick review
• 0:42
  Anne Frey: I'm supposed to know this stuff.
• 0:43
  Jim Tew: Well that's yeah, w wish w you right, right, right.
• 0:48
  Jim Tew: Don't don't challenge me too much now.
• 0:51
  Jim Tew: Listeners, I'm I'm Jim Tew and I come to you here once a week at Honey Bee Obscura where I try to
• 0:57
  Jim Tew: talk about something you do with plain talk beekeeping and today Ann Fry from Betterbee is here.
• 1:03
  Jim Tew: Hello Ann again.
• 1:05
  Anne Frey: Hey I'm glad to be here.
• 1:07
  Jim Tew: So let's tune up this program and see how it goes.
• 1:11
  Introduction: Welcome to
• 1:12
  Introduction: Honey the Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
• 1:20
  Introduction: Join Jim 2, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the
• 1:27
  Introduction: Challenges of managing honeybees.
• 1:29
  Introduction: Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees.
• 1:36
  Introduction: Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk.
• 1:42
  Introduction: That'll delve into all things honeybees.
• 1:45
  Jim Tew: And when I contacted you and asked to do this, I thought you had a very clever idea because I've freely admitted that I like working nucleus hides.
• 1:54
  Jim Tew: Not the baby nucs, they're a pain.
• 1:57
  Jim Tew: The four-frame nucs, the five, six-frame nucs, you know, they're just small bee colonies that are starting out.
• 2:04
  Jim Tew: They don't sting me so badly.
• 2:06
  Jim Tew: They're easier to pick up.
• 2:08
  Jim Tew: You can see more B biology.
• 2:10
  Jim Tew: It was a good topic.
• 2:11
  Jim Tew: W what where are you coming from on this?
• 2:14
  Anne Frey: Well, I'm starting to think more and more that a beginner should always we always say have two colonies, but I always I kind of am turning to think that the beginners should have
• 2:25
  Anne Frey: two colonies and a nuc.
• 2:27
  Anne Frey: Or maybe one of their colonies could be a nuc and they could just use it to uh stay a nuc and just continually pull a little bit away from it and put in the big hive so they could still have a nuc.
• 2:40
  Anne Frey: You know they wanna grow, grow, grow, but they don't have to grow into a hive if you just keep using them as a resource
• 2:48
  Anne Frey: like to make more comb from foundation and then you get to visit them and pull out the comb that's done and slip in another foundation and you learn more
• 2:59
  Anne Frey: with the little nucs and you're not as overwhelmed when you're a beginner.
• 3:02
  Jim Tew: That's actually beautifully said.
• 3:04
  Jim Tew: You're not as overwhelmed as a beginner.
• 3:07
  Jim Tew: And I'd like to add that you're not as overwhelmed as an old man, too, on the other extreme.
• 3:13
  Jim Tew: Because it's so much easier.
• 3:15
  Jim Tew: Either you can probably be very gentle, no smoke, which is always kinda risky, but
• 3:21
  Jim Tew: Do you read the bees if they're okay?
• 3:23
  Jim Tew: If there's a good nuctar flow on, you probably don't even need smoke to get in.
• 3:26
  Anne Frey: Yeah, quite.
• 3:27
  Jim Tew: But I wouldn't open big colonies that way.
• 3:29
  Jim Tew: Right.
• 3:30
  Anne Frey: Right, yeah.
• 3:31
  Anne Frey: We always have the smoker nearby.
• 3:34
  Jim Tew: Yep.
• 3:34
  Anne Frey: But then it seems like after the five, six minutes spent lighting the smoker that quite often it just sits there.
• 3:41
  Anne Frey: And it it's a rarity that we need to grab it when we're doing nuc nuc work.
• 3:46
  Jim Tew: Well, I like those nucs very much.
• 3:48
  Jim Tew: So I and I you were talking about putting frames in for foundation.
• 3:52
  Jim Tew: I think it works both ways because later in the season
• 3:56
  Jim Tew: When those bees are clearly going to swarm, I could split colonies out.
• 4:00
  Jim Tew: In this in a sense, that's a nuc, but I'm going the other way.
• 4:03
  Jim Tew: I'm taking
• 4:04
  Jim Tew: equipment and resources from big colonies to make up the nucs.
• 4:10
  Anne Frey: The person could certainly not start the year with a nuc, but maybe they could
• 4:16
  Anne Frey: create a nuc in June, you know, something like that when their new nuc is starting to m get rambunctious
• 4:24
  Anne Frey: I mean their new nuc that grew into a hive is beginning to be big.
• 4:28
  Anne Frey: They could boom create another nuc and they'd be back to having a nuc and they'd have their big hive.
• 4:34
  Jim Tew: Well a a nuc is actually a a very pleasant thing to do and and and they're frequently called a toolbox because you can you know you got a queen that's gone.
• 4:45
  Jim Tew: Well you got a queen in the nuc.
• 4:46
  Jim Tew: But here's the truth, and
• 4:48
  Jim Tew: I really hate to go to that nuc that's nicely balanced, got a good queen in it, really showing growth and potential, and take the queen out of it.
• 4:57
  Jim Tew: to go put into a big colony.
• 4:59
  Jim Tew: I bet you if I possibly could that even though I said I had that nuc there to use for reasons like that
• 5:06
  Jim Tew: I would probably still go see if I could buy a coin.
• 5:09
  Anne Frey: Oh yeah.
• 5:10
  Jim Tew: And just and just let the nuc stay in balance.
• 5:12
  Jim Tew: It seems unfair
• 5:15
  Anne Frey: Well I guess that might be a money issue for some people, 'cause by the time you get a queen shipped to you it's probably
• 5:23
  Anne Frey: um like the price of the queen might be forty five and the price of shipping might be forty, you know, and uh overnight.
• 5:30
  Anne Frey: So if a person just could absorb the rest of the frames and that queen into a
• 5:37
  Anne Frey: colony that needed a queen, then they just saved eighty dollars by having the new Well, you just talked me out of that.
• 5:44
  Anne Frey: Sorry.
• 5:45
  Jim Tew: I would hop in my car.
• 5:47
  Jim Tew: And drive the 40 miles to the closest queen provider that is around me.
• 5:52
  Jim Tew: And that that would mean that my cost would just be about $70
• 5:57
  Jim Tew: But you still No good point.
• 5:59
  Jim Tew: That that queens are queens are more pricey than they used to be.
• 6:03
  Jim Tew: One thing that's enjoyable about a nuc, especially in a s in a flow, is you get to really watch
• 6:09
  Jim Tew: The miracle of wax production.
• 6:12
  Jim Tew: It's it's just so heavenly when that snow white wax mysteriously comes up
• 6:20
  Jim Tew: Day to day when you go back in and have a look.
• 6:22
  Anne Frey: I was gonna say magically.
• 6:24
  Jim Tew: Magically and mysterious.
• 6:26
  Jim Tew: Okay.
• 6:26
  Anne Frey: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:27
  Jim Tew: It's it's tender and it's fragile and it's snow white.
• 6:32
  Anne Frey: Do you enjoy watching the wax production as much as you can and the swollen glands on the ventral surface of the bee and Yeah, I love it when I see the the bees with wax flakes coming off of or like you gotta see the
• 6:44
  Anne Frey: belly of the bee, the ventral surfaces, their belly.
• 6:47
  Anne Frey: And that's not something people see very often, but I actively like uh pick up a f some workers and try to find it.
• 6:54
  Anne Frey: Um, you know, I wanna
• 6:56
  Anne Frey: I wanna get pictures and video of that because I do a lot of that sort of thing too.
• 7:01
  Anne Frey: Um I wanna see the the bees like
• 7:05
  Anne Frey: chewing wax or passing little flakes from their abdominal area up to their mouths and it's surprisingly difficult to catch 'em at that.
• 7:13
  Anne Frey: But they build comb so fast when it has a big nectar flow or you're feeding sugar syrup.
• 7:20
  Anne Frey: It's surprising to me.
• 7:21
  Anne Frey: It's so hard to find this to catch on film.
• 7:24
  Jim Tew: Well I can see why it would be you gotta be right there and then when you pull the frame out, you know, you dis you disrupt things.
• 7:31
  Anne Frey: Right
• 7:32
  Jim Tew: I don't have any f I have photos of the sw of the swollen wax glands.
• 7:36
  Anne Frey: Mm-hmm.
• 7:37
  Anne Frey: With the flakes being pushed out.
• 7:39
  Jim Tew: With the flakes, but I don't have any photos of them actually m masticating it, molding it and positioning it
• 7:46
  Anne Frey: Maybe they're just more happy to do it when it's dark and humid and warm and they kind of stop it when you pull a frame up.
• 7:54
  Jim Tew: Well I read once that d that light inhibits the production of wax.
• 7:59
  Jim Tew: But I don't know if that's true or not because they they would build they build combs outside when they can't find That's true.
• 8:06
  Jim Tew: When they can't find a cavity source
• 8:09
  Jim Tew: But they normally build in in d in dark leafy areas, so at least it's deeply shaded.
• 8:15
  Anne Frey: True.
• 8:16
  Anne Frey: Or under a like an overhang or under a bridge.
• 8:19
  Jim Tew: So I f
• 8:20
  Jim Tew: think that that's something that I've d honestly read that I would have to know more about why that came up with.
• 8:27
  Anne Frey: Yeah, show me the paper.
• 8:29
  Jim Tew: I don't it was what paper and good grief.
• 8:33
  Jim Tew: I want to go to the source.
• 8:34
  Jim Tew: You read these things twenty-five years ago?
• 8:39
  Jim Tew: I have no idea where it was.
• 8:41
  Jim Tew: But it at the time it made perfect sense.
• 8:43
  Anne Frey: Usually when people are doing these kinds of studies, they're doing them in the lab, I I would think, you know, they're feeding
• 8:50
  Anne Frey: a bunch of bees some syrup or they're feeding 'em dilute s honey or something like that.
• 8:56
  Anne Frey: Um, you know, or weighing the frames and weighing the sugar
• 9:01
  Anne Frey: that went into the syrup and weighing everything afterwards and stuff like that.
• 9:06
  Anne Frey: And uh it's it's the kind of stuff that I respect scientists for doing, but I'm not gonna do it.
• 9:13
  Jim Tew: Yep.
• 9:14
  Jim Tew: And this is kind of a pivotal place.
• 9:16
  Jim Tew: Let's take a break and hear from our sponsor.
• 9:19
  Jim Tew: And when we come back, let's talk about wax production, comb production.
• 9:25
  Jim Tew: That doesn't turn into comb, but it turns into whiting.
• 9:29
  Jim Tew: Along the edges of all the frames, the old Burr comb gets that nice snow white edge.
• 9:34
  Jim Tew: Let's talk about that when we come back.
• 9:35
  Jim Tew: Okay.
• 9:36
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• 10:49
  Jim Tew: You know, I said we'd go right into whiting and discuss that, but I want to blindside you.
• 10:53
  Jim Tew: We've got a uh we've got a new sponsor starting up, Vita Bee Health.
• 10:57
  Anne Frey: They make a lot of things that are helpful to the bees.
• 11:00
  Jim Tew: And those products are available at Better Bee, aren't they?
• 11:02
  Anne Frey: Yeah.
• 11:03
  Anne Frey: We've got a good relationship with them.
• 11:04
  Jim Tew: So I would like to welcome them aboard.
• 11:07
  Jim Tew: Now
• 11:07
  Jim Tew: Tell me w about whiting or icing.
• 11:11
  Anne Frey: The whiting.
• 11:12
  Jim Tew: That is some t yeah, what's what's going on?
• 11:14
  Anne Frey: Well, that's a thing that
• 11:17
  Anne Frey: Mostly comb honey producers get excited about that, but it's a it's a sign that the bees are making a a lot of wax from their wax glands.
• 11:28
  Anne Frey: and they want to apply it somewhere.
• 11:30
  Anne Frey: They want to make s make comb with it, but if they're kind of just putting it on the top
• 11:37
  Anne Frey: burr comb edges of top bars and you notice it, that means, hey, there's a there's a big nectar flow on, there's a lot of wax being made.
• 11:46
  Anne Frey: You you better get a super on there.
• 11:48
  Anne Frey: You're a little bit late, you know
• 11:50
  Anne Frey: If they don't have the combs, the the f frames to draw out or work on, they're gonna just put new wax wherever they can and we see it up there on the top bars.
• 12:01
  Anne Frey: Would you agree with that
• 12:02
  Jim Tew: I do.
• 12:03
  Jim Tew: I do agree with that.
• 12:04
  Jim Tew: And some of that happens as those flake laden bees drag that abdomen around.
• 12:10
  Jim Tew: If when they drag it over those edges, they drag off parts and smidges.
• 12:15
  Anne Frey: Yeah, those little flakes, they they they're getting pushed out of the wax gland, out of that like crevice in the bees' bellies where every wax gland is, and then another flake is growing and pushing the other ones out and they just
• 12:29
  Anne Frey: They drop sometimes.
• 12:30
  Anne Frey: They get put pulled out.
• 12:32
  Jim Tew: Onto onto the mirrors.
• 12:33
  Jim Tew: It's called mirrors.
• 12:35
  Jim Tew: You know what drives me crazy, Ann, that the bees don't seem to go pick that up.
• 12:39
  Anne Frey: I know, they fall right to the state.
• 12:43
  Anne Frey: Right.
• 12:44
  Anne Frey: They won't pick it up.
• 12:45
  Anne Frey: They I've heard that they will um just like nibble away
• 12:49
  Anne Frey: chrome that's been made and use it again, but when they drop the wax flakes they just ignore them.
• 12:54
  Jim Tew: Well I always think it's wasteful.
• 12:55
  Jim Tew: I tr I always think about well, should I save this?
• 12:57
  Jim Tew: That'd be a third of a teaspoon of
• 13:00
  Jim Tew: of perfectly beautiful wax there, so it's not really that much.
• 13:04
  Jim Tew: No.
• 13:05
  Jim Tew: But there's this adage about how much honey it takes to produce that wax.
• 13:09
  Jim Tew: What's your opinion on that?
• 13:11
  Anne Frey: Well, I know people always say that it takes eight pounds of honey to make a pound of wax and it's like always bugged me that people say that 'cause you don't use honey to make wax.
• 13:22
  Anne Frey: The bees use nectar or
• 13:24
  Anne Frey: sugar syrup to make wax.
• 13:26
  Anne Frey: But I think what they're trying to say is if if this wax didn't have to be made, you could have gained eight pounds of honey from all the nectar that came in.
• 13:36
  Anne Frey: Mm and that that's kind of an equivalent way of saying it, but you know, they're they get sugar somehow, whether it's being carried in nectar or it's being carried in uh sugar syrup that you made, and they turn those
• 13:50
  Anne Frey: sugar calories into wax.
• 13:53
  Anne Frey: Um know how people eat too much sugar, they they end up getting fat.
• 13:58
  Anne Frey: So the bees are
• 13:59
  Anne Frey: The bees are converting sugar to a fat too and they're that's the wax that they're producing.
• 14:05
  Anne Frey: I wish I could make construction materials after eating a whole bunch of sugar.
• 14:09
  Jim Tew: Yeah.
• 14:10
  Jim Tew: Well, the thing I think happens is why don't bees produce wax all the time?
• 14:16
  Jim Tew: Why is it just during a nectar flow?
• 14:18
  Jim Tew: And you know, if they had enough comb
• 14:21
  Jim Tew: They probably wouldn't produce wax.
• 14:23
  Jim Tew: Isn't it a stimulus of them have being forced to hold nectar in their crop because there's no place to put it?
• 14:31
  Jim Tew: That they begin to unvoluntarily secrete wax?
• 14:34
  Anne Frey: Sounds like uh sounds like I gotta go back to class.
• 14:38
  Anne Frey: Are you teaching a class soon?
• 14:40
  Jim Tew: No, no.
• 14:41
  Anne Frey: No, I haven't.
• 14:42
  Jim Tew: No, I I thought that that was a the driving impetus for for wax production.
• 14:54
  Anne Frey: I didn't know that.
• 15:00
  Anne Frey: about twelve to eighteen days old they just made wax.
• 15:03
  Anne Frey: But of course there's always some bees that old until the queen stops laying eggs.
• 15:10
  Anne Frey: And they really are resistant to making comb
• 15:13
  Anne Frey: after m midsummer, you know, after late June goes by.
• 15:19
  Jim Tew: Yep.
• 15:19
  Jim Tew: I if check me out.
• 15:21
  Jim Tew: I'm using old, old information from an old mind
• 15:25
  Jim Tew: From a long time ago.
• 15:27
  Jim Tew: But something turns it on, something turns it off.
• 15:30
  Jim Tew: Or otherwise there'd be wax there'd be wax production going on all the time.
• 15:34
  Anne Frey: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:35
  Anne Frey: There's there's definitely a few things like there's the day length, but then there's the age of the bees, and then you're saying there's also this
• 15:45
  Anne Frey: Hey, there's not enough room to store this nectar, so it's sitting in these young bees crops for a while.
• 15:53
  Anne Frey: And then they're they're not just like depositing it, they're
• 15:57
  Anne Frey: digesting it and making more right.
• 16:00
  Anne Frey: They're metabolizing it.
• 16:02
  Jim Tew: Metabolizing it.
• 16:02
  Jim Tew: Right.
• 16:03
  Jim Tew: Right.
• 16:03
  Anne Frey: Hmm.
• 16:04
  Anne Frey: I like it
• 16:05
  Anne Frey: I'm gonna look uh I'm gonna do some reading.
• 16:18
  Jim Tew: If you leave if you leave four frames out and you put the inner cover on and you go back and you pull that inner cover up, you know what you're going to find.
• 16:26
  Anne Frey: Four nice combs.
• 16:27
  Jim Tew: Yep, but Anne, I want to tell you this.
• 16:30
  Jim Tew: Tear tear those combs off and see what happens.
• 16:35
  Jim Tew: That base is extremely tough.
• 16:38
  Jim Tew: So f while the while the bottom of the comb tears all to pieces, the base is really tough and rigid, that where they put the foundation of the comb.
• 16:47
  Jim Tew: Is that Propolis?
• 16:49
  Anne Frey: Well, it might be some propolis, but also I think that it's thicker comb.
• 16:59
  Anne Frey: I think probably as they're working if they detect that it's
• 17:03
  Anne Frey: detaching, they they quickly add some more comb, you know, so maybe it tends to become become uh stronger and thicker and reinforced where it's
• 17:13
  Anne Frey: the base, as you say, which is the ceiling part of for them up against the inner cover.
• 17:19
  Anne Frey: Um the anchor.
• 17:21
  Anne Frey: Yeah.
• 17:22
  Anne Frey: Yeah, no doubt.
• 17:23
  Jim Tew: It'd be like tearing an old sheet of foundation.
• 17:26
  Jim Tew: If you had medium brood foundation and you tore it, it gives you some resistance.
• 17:31
  Jim Tew: And that was what I was noticing.
• 17:32
  Jim Tew: And then when you scrape it off it kind of fights you.
• 17:34
  Jim Tew: And there is some propolis there, but the propolis is being added slowly and over time.
• 17:40
  Anne Frey: Yeah, externally.
• 17:41
  Anne Frey: Yeah, that's I I would definitely
• 17:44
  Anne Frey: not just tear those combs off.
• 17:46
  Anne Frey: I would cut 'em off really carefully with my sharp hive tool and lay them aside and
• 17:52
  Anne Frey: um like rubber band them into some wooden frames if especially if they had brood in 'em.
• 17:58
  Anne Frey: If they just have nectar in 'em and they're brand new, they're they get mushy really easily.
• 18:03
  Jim Tew: Yeah, they really get mushy.
• 18:04
  Anne Frey: Yeah.
• 18:05
  Anne Frey: So I would um
• 18:06
  Anne Frey: Uh, you know, this is probably in May that this kind of thing happened or June.
• 18:11
  Anne Frey: And I don't really worry too much about setting a comb full of nectar, you know, this crazy comb that they made.
• 18:19
  Anne Frey: And letting them rob that.
• 18:20
  Anne Frey: And at the end of summer I'd be worried about setting up something like robbing.
• 18:24
  Anne Frey: Um, but I would save the combs if they had any brood in 'em and just lay the ones with nectar in 'em out to be robbed.
• 18:32
  Anne Frey: I agree with that completely.
• 18:33
  Jim Tew: If they had any usable brood resources, I would try to give that back.
• 18:38
  Anne Frey: Yeah, and the green could be on any of them too.
• 18:41
  Jim Tew: You know, don't just go slice or tear, you know, the queen could be walking between any of those while is an excellent comment because that new comb is immediately attractive to that queen.
• 18:51
  Jim Tew: And so while you're shaking and bumping and cutting
• 18:55
  Anne Frey: Yeah.
• 18:56
  Jim Tew: There's a great chance that the queen's up there.
• 18:58
  Anne Frey: This is a is especially with like feeders, different kinds of feeders up above the inner cover.
• 19:06
  Anne Frey: Sometimes the bees just get wild and build comb around the feeder in that that um vacant space under the under the cover in that super that's hiding the feeder.
• 19:17
  Anne Frey: And people don't know what to do with it.
• 19:19
  Anne Frey: You know, it's just like it's just madness to a beginner beekeeper and it's like, you know, first
• 19:28
  Anne Frey: Give 'em some smoke.
• 19:30
  Anne Frey: Second, lay those combs portions out on the top bars of what you've got and probably smoke them more so that if the queen is on them she'll go down below
• 19:42
  Anne Frey: And then you can do your reconstruction with rubber bands and a empty wooden frame.
• 19:48
  Anne Frey: So it's like um
• 19:51
  Anne Frey: surgery, especially tough for a beginner, but if they get into it, then they're just like holding little combs with bees walking on their fingers and they start to go, Wow, this is so cool, you know.
• 20:05
  Anne Frey: It's like gotta gotta get in there with the nucs and and the hives and uh just kind of observe and have fun with the bees, especially in those first few months.
• 20:16
  Anne Frey: If you left the the frames out, you might even see them, you know, white if they weren't stuck to the uh inner cover and you just had them
• 20:24
  Anne Frey: built maybe from below, straight upwards, because sometimes they do that.
• 20:29
  Anne Frey: You might see a gap and see them dangling across the gap like rock climbers with their ropes.
• 20:36
  Anne Frey: Yep.
• 20:37
  Anne Frey: And and that's uh I don't know why people call it festooning, but I love that festooning.
• 20:43
  Jim Tew: Yeah, it does.
• 20:44
  Jim Tew: Sagging.
• 20:44
  Jim Tew: They're festooning.
• 20:46
  Anne Frey: I'm like, how do they do that?
• 20:47
  Anne Frey: You know, you see ants kinda doing that sometimes when they're trying to cross a gap, but it's like I'm just picturing them
• 20:55
  Anne Frey: piling into that area and clinging on to each other really thickly and then maybe for some reason they thinned out and just clung to both the combs.
• 21:07
  Anne Frey: And then there was like
• 21:08
  Anne Frey: three or four ropes of bees just stretched across the gap and and it's like, hey, what's happening?
• 21:14
  Anne Frey: I thought we were clumping up.
• 21:16
  Anne Frey: It's just like, I don't know.
• 21:19
  Anne Frey: Festooning.
• 21:26
  Jim Tew: So that they build their combs perpendicular to the gravitational force in the dark eye.
• 21:32
  Anne Frey: So dangling, okay.
• 21:34
  Anne Frey: And the gravity keeps 'em plum straight.
• 21:37
  Jim Tew: Because they they need that for the dance language to work, because they they need to know where their perception of north is.
• 21:44
  Jim Tew: But I'm talking like I know what I'm talking about.
• 21:47
  Jim Tew: These are all things that you just uh come up with while we're reminiscing here.
• 21:51
  Anne Frey: Yeah, I don't know how like I don't know if they do it
• 21:54
  Anne Frey: because I would say that the combs become plum and straight because of gravity and they festoon because of gravity, but they're
• 22:06
  Anne Frey: You know, there they're two s two things that happen because of gravity, not like they festoon and I wonder if on that new comb, that brand new comb
• 22:15
  Jim Tew: Tender, we talked about how fragile it is.
• 22:18
  Anne Frey: Yeah.
• 22:18
  Jim Tew: If just the weight of the bees on it pulls it perpendicular to gravity.
• 22:22
  Jim Tew: Ah, good one.
• 22:24
  Jim Tew: I don't know.
• 22:25
  Jim Tew: I'm just making this up as I go along.
• 22:27
  Anne Frey: Yeah, they make it they make it any way they want, like in waves that say their hive is facing north-south or whatever.
• 22:34
  Anne Frey: They might make some waves of it
• 22:37
  Anne Frey: if you messed up and didn't have your your frames in there.
• 22:40
  Jim Tew: Yeah.
• 22:40
  Anne Frey: Heading east west, you know, but it's always vertical.
• 22:44
  Anne Frey: They're they're uh
• 22:47
  Anne Frey: They can't they can't fight gravity.
• 22:50
  Anne Frey: It's a law, you know.
• 22:52
  Jim Tew: It is a law.
• 22:53
  Jim Tew: It is.
• 22:54
  Jim Tew: And we're out of time.
• 22:55
  Jim Tew: But I'd like to ask if we can come back to nucs again because there's a lot about nucs we didn't cover, you know, I'm making them up, using them.
• 23:03
  Jim Tew: We mentioned all that.
• 23:04
  Jim Tew: But the wax thing was so pervasive I enjoyed talking about it.
• 23:08
  Jim Tew: So maybe sometime in the next few months we can
• 23:10
  Jim Tew: Can visit this again, especially for hiving swarms and whatever.
• 23:14
  Anne Frey: Yes, springtime is uh nuc time.
• 23:17
  Jim Tew: All right.
• 23:18
  Jim Tew: Until we do this again, I'm gonna let you go.
• 23:20
  Jim Tew: Tell everybody bye.
• 23:22
  Anne Frey: Okay, bye everybody.
• 23:23
  Anne Frey: See you, Jim.
• 23:24
  Jim Tew: Bye everybody.
• 23:25
  Jim Tew: See you.
• 23:25
  Jim Tew: Anne, Thank you.