Plain Talk: Slipshod Beekeeping (259)

Episode 259 – Plain Talk:  Slipshod Beekeeping

Jim Tew: Hey, Honey Bee Obscura podcast listeners. Jim here. I had a really nice trip down to Kentucky just about a week ago. Talked to a lot of old friends, made some new friends, and happily talked to a lot of podcast listeners. Kentucky, thank you for being there and for welcoming me so royally and making me feel so good about my evolving place in life. Kentucky told me several times that they liked the sense of being there. The background noise and those kinds of things. I'm sure they meant beehives, so I'm probably taking this the wrong way.

I'm going to invite you to walk back to my bee yard for some beekeeping that I've named Slipshod Beekeeping because that's just really what it is, catch as cats can. Some of you know my situation, and I don't want to go back into it. Others of you who don't know my situation, just know this. I had to take about three years off from my beekeeping project due to family health reasons. I've got a bee yard that you will not be asked to tour. Now, here it is, late November, mid-November, and I'm already making New Year's resolutions. Next year, I will get my beekeeping act back together.

Right now, I'm just playing catch-up. I am practicing Slipshod Beekeeping. I'm going to walk back and do some really embarrassing procedures on my hives because they're not really ready for winter. I'll do what I can just so I can doze off at night and not feel totally guilty. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew. I try to come to you once a week just with a conversation about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenge of managing honey bees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.

Jim Tew: All right, I'm standing up. I want you to walk along with me. I'm here in my shop. It's nice and warm. It's not terrible outside. It's a nice blue sky day. Any day is a good day for me now. I'm going to go back here and pick up some duct tape. Does any beekeeper I'm talking to not have a roll of duct tape someplace close by? I'm going to go over here now and pick up a pair of scissors out of my desk drawer. No smokers, no protective gear. I'm forgetting something. I invariably forget something.

I'm going to walk back 75 yards or so to my beehive with some of the strangest beekeeping equipment that anybody has ever taken back here. What's going on here, listeners? I've got three or four beehives that still have the deeps slipped back. I don't really want that upcoming cold winter air to circulate through there too much. At the same time, I don't want to break that colony apart just to move those supers and deeps back together to close that slot. I used it for hot weather ventilation and for a potential upper exit.

Going through my small storage barn here. Got a little Kubota 18-horse tractor that serves to help me out as an old man. Got some junky beekeeping equipment. I got a back door. It's protected back here behind the fence, and the tree line. Whoa, there's a lot more bee flight than I was expecting. All those years ago, I used to tear down to the bottom boards and flip them over to the 3/8th-inch segment. I don't do that anymore. I just leave it on the 3/8th-inch opening all the time. In theory, a mouse can't get through that.

Now, the duct tape is going to be used to close off part of the upper entrance because you see, they've had these upper entrances now all summer. In that way, they're using those upper entrances. I had a student one time, Jerry Hayes. He's presently the editor of Bee Culture. He did a little quick, easy study. He gave the bees an entrance at the bottom, and then he gave them an entrance at every step along the way. He slept back every deep so that they had an entrance at every place there was a joint in the colonies between the deeps.

He was able to do a pretty good job showing that bees did not choose the bottom entrance, that they at least chose the next entrance up. I don't want to come out here and slip these things back and then have these bees trapped outside. I'm putting duct tape in a very slipshod way to close off those entrances down to just a crack. I want to keep the snow out. I'll make a picture, and I'll ask producer Jeff to post it on the page on what I'm doing. Listeners, I'm telling you the truth. I have never once tried to make myself anything more than I am.

I've given myself multiple names, desperate beekeepers, whatever. I just want these bees to stay alive until next year and let me get back to more traditional beekeeping. See, if you slip the entrance back from the front, then you have a lower entrance on the back, and I'm just going to cover that off completely with duct tape to keep the air from whistling through there. I've got a backup plan. This not working, I'm going to use some old wooden Venetian blind slats that I've got.

If this duct tape won't stay stuck as the rain and the snow comes, I'm going to come back and replace it with a more tedious job with those Venetian blind slats. Also, I'm going to put in the bottom covers. That one's already got it in. I'll just check that quickly, if I can get by all of last summer's weeds. Yes, it's completely full. I need to address that. Give me a minute. I want to go back here to the barn and get a hive tool. I knew I'd need something. I'm probably going to need some kind of bulldozer before this whole project is over. Now, I'm going to pull these bottom trays out. It's filled full of clutter.

There's an interesting thing that happens when all this stuff drops down to the removable metal pan, then there's degraders down there that eat that stuff and break it down. I'm pulling off whole sheets of bottom hive residue. I've talked to you in the past about this. I don't know anybody knows what kind of scavengers are in that bottom board residue, but I think they're doing a good job for us unintentionally. That was easy enough. That's Jim Tew-type beekeeping. I've got a 3/8-inch entrance on this colony. Got a clean bottom board. I've got my duct tape fix on this one.

This one has no pan in it. I want to step back in the barn and get a tray and slip in this. This one's already clean. That's in. I'll move to the next one. This one doesn't have anything but a lower entrance. They've tried to close off the entrance with propolis, but they didn't really finish it. That may need a bit of an entrance reducer at the front. On the one next to it, I'm just going to close off the whole entrance with this delightful beekeeping product, duct tape, and see if that helps stop the strong airflow from passing through the colony. What I don't know is how well the duct tape will stick.

I'll move to the back where the entrance is. There's bees coming out, not a lot. I'm going to just cover about half of it and leave a spot in the middle for them to continue to use the entrance they're accustomed to. See, I was afraid if I came out here, and I didn't have to use a crowbar, but I was afraid that if I came out here and broke this colony loose enough to move it back, I'm just going to cause the colony consternation. There's half of it. Even this much is going to confuse them. It's about 38 degrees here.

Oh, my stars. Listeners, this bee has pollen on it. I cannot imagine where they're finding pollen. We've already had two killing frosts. I don't want to get all sappy about bees, but they never lose their ability to amaze me. Somewhere, they're finding a very minor pollen flow. It has to be minor. I've left them a one-inch opening. They should run down the crevice of this and find their way back in. I'm going to watch them for a minute. Yes, first one's already checking it out. This is confusing to them.

I didn't want a mat of bees stuck on the back of the colony where I changed their entrance, but they found it immediately, listeners. They didn't bat an eye. They're going right to it. I left a small entrance in the back, rather than change the entrance for them. I told you this is slipshod beekeeping. I wrote an article for Kim Flottum years ago, a series of articles called One Minute Beekeeping. It was also a companion series I wrote called The Solitary Beekeeper. That's pretty much exactly what I'm doing.

There's amazing flight. I'm really caught off guard that at 38 to 42 degrees, I've got this much flight back here. I've got one here that is in an expanded polystyrene, the green box, Paradise Honey, the bee box, made in Finland. I don't know what I'm going to do with that one. The whole entrance is open. The bees are up top. There's three deeps on it. This one has a lot of bee activity, and they are correctly using the front entrance. I'm going to pull this out, scrape that off nice and clean.

There's that mysterious hive litter again with the degraders that compost everything down there. It looks like old-fashioned wax moth scales. This one has a dead-- I think it's the lesser wax moth. There's an adult dead, and here's a dead yellow jacket. In a way, these things are helping because any mite that drops down there, there's active larvae here, that'll be lesser wax moths. Any varroa mite that drops down into this mess is going to, I suspect, become lunch for those lesser wax moth larvae that are looking for any kind of protein anywhere.

That's back in. This one I swept back too far. This was actually a stack of equipment. How much truth do I want to tell you? It's in one, two, three deeps, and a super. When a swarm moved in, and they were going in the wrong entrance, I just left them with that entrance. They've got a tiny, tiny, tiny little entrance up top. They've cut everything down just to about a 2B entrance way up top, and then there's the lower entrance down below. There was a little bit of robbing activity there. I don't care a lot for that. Oh, while I catch my breath, can we stop and take a break and hear from our sponsors?

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Jim Tew: Listeners, I've got robbing activity going on here in this one. The one that has the deep upper entrance is between the two bottom deeps. I don't know if this is going to stick or not. It seems like it's sticking, but I'm asking tape to stick to a wax propolis surface. I don't know how long that's going to hold up. If it works, it's just got to work for a few months, as you know. Then next year, I'll be Billy Jim Beekeeper doing things correctly, and I won't have beehives this out of kilter.

I don't know if this helps. The tape stuck together. Let me try that again. Don't throw that down in the bee yard. Wind's blowing, and it caught the tape and twisted it together. I understand that duct tape never really was to work on ducts. It was always just general-purpose tape that could be used on ducts, heating ducts, but there's actually a better tape that those people use. That entrance ended up being a lot smaller, but I'm going to leave it that way. I'm going to close off the back. It's breezy out here.

Talked about wintering a lot in previous segments. It's always stunning that bees can survive back here in a wooden box. There's an upper entrance back here. Give me just a second. The tape sticks together before I'm ready for it to stick, with the wind blowing everything. I'm going to get stung here because even though it is cool, at least the stings don't hurt very much because I'm cool. Have you noticed that stings aren't as painful if you're cold? I wonder, can bees cut through duct tape? I bet they could.

Next spring I'll be here, though. I'm going to be here. I mean it. It's just as slipshod as it can get. Now I want to do the bottom tray. I don't know why I'm doing that, but it just-- Whoops, there is no tray. Oh, my, I'm sorry. Back to the barn. Now I probably won't be able to find one. I went right to one before. Oh, there's one. Nice and clean. I've told you in previous segments that I confuse myself. I've always ventilated. I've told people like you over and over again that you want that moisture-laden air to escape.

Now, there's some authorities who are saying that bees need that moisture-laden air for humidity, and that when I come along after they can't correct it and break the propolis seals, then I'm making them require winter water that they can't get because they've lost the condensation inside the hive. I don't know where I stand on that. I may have to go back, like I've done in so many other ideas and recommendations, and change all that. Can you believe that a bee just flew right out and stung me?

I saw her. I was looking at her, and I thought, "That bee is squeezing out of that hole." She didn't want me standing there. Probably while I catch my breath. I didn't expect any attack today. I'm not doing anything dramatic. I got the bee up my shirt sleeve. She's already stung me, but you just can't ignore that, can you? I don't know where she is. She went up my jacket sleeve. There she is. Now she's out. Now you know she's all annoyed. I'm going to pull out a piece of screen that I put here last summer when this colony was being robbed.

I'm going to see if I can use the Jim Tew slipshod method of putting duct tape on this big expanded polystyrene box. I got to tell you straight up, if this doesn't work, it doesn't hold up well enough, I got to come back out, cut those slits, and bring a saw back here and do all that. Can I just tell you the truth? I don't want to do that. That presses on nicely and cuts the entrance down. I got a bee sting on the back of my old hand. I got that real brittle old man skin now, where everything bruises me. I'll have a spot there.

Let me review what I've done here. I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight colonies here that I honestly have not done the work on that they should have done. How critical is it? I don't know. If you want to be a good beekeeper, do what others have recommended that you do. Most of these colonies have a 3/8-inch entrance, so if I don't put an entrance cleat in that. The others, I've just used duct tape just because I could rip it off, tear it off, and have a quick look at it and not have to invest vast amounts of time here and get something done and see if I could help break up that draft flow during the colony.

I've never done this. It's sloppy beekeeping. I know it. Why am I telling the whole world this? I'm telling the whole world because sometimes the best you can do is all you can do, minimal that it might be. There's always promise for the next year, right? Next spring, I'll be better situated. I put the tape on, and I've got their upper entrances closed. I got the lower entrances reduced. I put the pans in the bottom. They're cleaned up. I've never done this before, listeners. If I sound hesitant and disorganized, it's because I'm hesitant and disorganized.

That's all I plan to do for right now. I'll buy packages next year. Sometimes, old people's best form of mite control management is just to buy packages every spring. Let someone else who's more proficient control the mites, and I'll just buy my bees from them. I am happy to tell you that all the bees are instantly using the modified entrance that I gave them. They don't seem to be clustering out front and clustering over it. Those people in Kentucky, I enjoyed talking to you. I hope to see all of you again at the NABI meeting, the big meeting in Louisville.

I'm going to try to be there for part of it, at least, if not all of it. I'll talk to you again. Please come by and talk to me if you're there. For right now, I'm Jim, telling you bye until we can talk again next week.

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