Is my QUEEN BEE ALIVE and laying? Brood frame closeup examination – beekeeping 101

We take a closeup view of a honeybee frame of brood removed during a beehive inspection from a beekeeper’s apiary. We briefly examine the difference between a drone and a worker bee, and talk about what went wrong when our queen escaped from the brood chamber into our honey supers. This is a continuation of a series of videos on this topic.

The video also shows in more detail the layout of queen eggs, larvae, pupae, both worker bee and drone cells, and how the bees design their layout on a typical brood frame. Honey stores, pollen stores and the brood itself. 

We encourage you to look at our earlier videos and specifically a short closeup of the honey bee queen eggs and larvae (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-2E76XaDYk), or alternatively our playlist of CLOSEUPS which has many related and interesting videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfE6cWwwWKoiXEp4xSACAmvTHSrweW0nU)

BUT, if the art of beekeeping interests you, the best place is to visit our http://www.mahakobees.com website for many instructional and HOWTO videos.

We invite you to subscribe, like, and share our content.

Have a relaxing day

MahakoBees

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CLOSEUP of Honeybee QUEEN EGGS and BEE LARVAE. Beekeeping 101

Take a closeup look at honey bee queen eggs and bee larvae. It is very important as a beekeeper to know what these bee eggs and larvae look like when doing a hive inspection in your apiary. If you can see these tiny eggs, it is usually a good indication that a healthy laying queen is present and is doing her job. A bee colony must have a healthy, fertile and productive queen bee to survive. However, it is often difficult to find the honey bee queen herself, and the presence of freshly laid eggs tells you she is there, and she is laying. 

For more advanced beekeepers, the density of the eggs, placement of them in the cell itself and more can provide further information about what the bees are up to. At times, there may be no queen at all, and a few honey bees will start laying unfertilised eggs themselves. Why is unknown, at least to the best of our knowledge. Please feel free to shed light ion comments below if you are better informed about this bee behavior. As the bees are not fertilized, only drones are produced, further expediting the demise of a dying colony. If this is the situation, there are certain steps a beekeeper must take, and very swiftly at that, if he/she is to save the colony. Certainly do not purchase and introduce a new queen at this stage, as the laying worker bees will most likely gang up on her and kill her. This is very interesting and may be a topic for another video in the future.

In the meantime, if you are a new visitor, feel welcome to look around our channel, share some our most interesting videos listed in our NEW PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs_Q7S3Rxkk&list=PLfE6cWwwWKojZCV0R_tJwDpZn4VoKluho

We appreciate all thumbs up, and please subscribe if we add value to your life. We will be uploading many more useful clips on things related to beekeeping that will be interesting and educational. 

Visit our http://www.mahakobees.com website/channel for many more videos.

Have a fabulous day!

MahakoBees

Hi Everyone

In this video, we show you how to solve a relatively large problem in a simple way – beekeeping 101. Although this relates to beekeeping as we dispose of old timber frames, it also applies to anyone burning anything (reused old timber perhaps) that may contain staples, nails or screws within it.

Beekeepers often have old frames that are no longer usable for what ever reason. So long as they are timber or wooden, they are fine to use as fuel for fire. HOWEVER, what about the steel or magnetic metals like the staples, nails, screws, eyelets and wires? Don’t they end up in the ashes? YES, they do, which means you can’t use the ashes in your garden or compost. Watch this video as it explains a simple way to overcome this problem. STEP by STEP. It can save you money and reduce your chance of a serious wound or injury or even exposure to a serious tetanus infection. Using a simple yet effective solution we remove all these risks. Find or purchase a strong rare earth neodymium magnet, relatively strong (easily available on ebay for a few dollars), and mount it onto a non/magnetic aluminium, plastic or wooden rod. After a few trials, I found it best to place the rare earth magnet into a small plastic cap, which protects it from getting dirty or damaged, and it makes it much easier to remove the metallic debris. Really simple, fast and cheap to make, yet it saves lots of time and money as you can re-use your ashes in the garden.

Hope this helps some of you. If you like our videos, please subscribe, comment, Thumbs up or share. We really do appreciate your help in making our channel rank a little higher so more people can use our tips.

Have a fabulous day

MahakoBees

Slow motion video of Australian Mahakobees Honey Bees (Apis Meliffera) flying in and out a beehive in an apiary and the guard bees close up. This video shows the honey bees entering and leaving the beehive in slow motion. It is interesting to see the guard bees checking each bee as it enters the hive. We have entrance reducers in place to reduce the potential threat of hive beetles, wax moth, competitive robber bees, or yellow jacket wasps entering and causing damage to our bees. You can also see that some hives have a landing strip and some don’t. We are trialing different configurations to see which is best, but at this stage, it seems to make little difference to the honey production, hive health and strength or the general daily activities. If anything, the landing strip would seem to spread the guard bees a little more, and perhaps opening up the hive to larger threat of unwanted guests entering. We will see what the long term effect may be.

Hope you find our video interesting and we trust you will subscribe, comment or share our video if you find it useful.

We invite you to take a look around our MahakoBees channel.

Have a great day

MahakoBees

Dear Beekeeping enthusiasts,

This is a short video showing the propane blowtorch we use and how to replace the propane handheld blowtorch cartridge, canister or bottle. We use it to heat treat our beekeeping equipment, tools, frames, hives and anything that will not melt but needs to be treated against viruses, diseases or to kill off any Wax Moth eggs that may be hiding in the cracks and around the frame wires. It also covers the self igniting torch head and some costs of replacement. We have a few more videos we are putting together now and will upload in the next few days, so check back soon. Please click the thumbs up, comment, subscribe and share this video if you find it useful or helpful or think others may. We very much appreciate it.

Have a great day.

MahakoBees

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák. You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

Also, a big thank you goes to Kevin McLeod for providing his royalty free music “Super Friendly”. We appreciate your kind contribution.

More usage information can be found throughout the web, but here is a brief summary from www.ehow.com.au I came across:

Dear viewers,

A new video showing a closeup view of raw pollen from an Italian Honeybee, still in its frame of foundation. You can see the different colors and where it is generally stored in the hive itself. 

We removed this frame from one of our beehives where our queen managed to get away into the honey supers during our last inspection. It wasn’t difficult to see there was a problem as soon as we opened the hive. For one, the bees were not as calm as they normally would be. They seemed overly excited. Once we removed the first frame for inspection, it was clear that we either had the queen in the honey super laying eggs, OR, possibly laying worker bees. The fact that there were hundreds upon hundreds of drones everywhere suggested the latter. We could see the eggs, the larvae and predominantly the capped drone cells. BUT, there were also worker bee cells, and the eggs were placed in the center and only one per cell. This suggested that perhaps the queen was still around and was laying well. So we had to remove several frames that were mainly drone brood, and moved the remaining worker cell brood back to the bottom brood chamber. Then the search continued to locate our lovely Italian Queen bee. If she has not been superseded, she should have been marked with a red dot. The entire hive had one brood box, steel queen excluder,  and 3 honey supers on top. So you can imagine how long this process took. 2 hours later, we finally located the queen, made sure she was migrated to the brood chamber, enclosed with the queen excluder, and then the honey supers were put back on top. However, as a result of the month or so the queen was in the upper honey supers, all the brood has hatched already, so we have removed half the empty frames, and replaced with new clean foundation frames. Thus the frame above was available for viewing, and so here it is. Now you know the story, and we can inspect what an empty frame of brood foundation looks like, still in tact with a ring of pollen, honey stores and the communication and ventilation holes.

As a matter of interest, you may also like to take a look at our Raw Propolis video. This is as RAW as propolis gets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znbIO6uTRME

We hope you enjoy this and all our other videos from our MahakoBees Youtube channel. If you enjoy our content, we invite you to subscribe, click the thumbs up, share or post your comments and feedback. We would love to hear from you. 

Have a great day.

MahakoBees

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/.

WASP CHEWS LEGS OFF LARGE HUNTSMAN SPIDER KEEPING HIM ALIVE.

Eat or be eaten is what we are talking about here. A little off the beekeeping topic we know, but this was so interesting, we had to share it. Its unique to Australia. This Australian Yellow Antennae Black Wasp, a “spider wasp“, first stings the fairly large spider, much larger than herself, which paralyzes her soon to be prey. She then brutally chews legs off this large rain spiders (HUNTSMAN’s) body, keeping him alive and fresh for her off spring to consume later. The Black Spider Wasp will then lay one egg on the the back of the spiders remaining carcass, usually only one per egg per spider. She then carries the spiders dismembered body to her nest. She can’t fly with such a heavy payload, so she uses her long legs to lift the spiders large body and drags him mercilessly away. Its a strange world out there, especially in the insect world. 

Hope you like this one. We invite you to SHARE it, SUBSCRIBE if you like what we do, and give us a thumbs up! We appreciate your visit.

Have a great day.

MahakoBees

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák. You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

Also, a big thank you goes to Kevin McLeod for providing his royalty free music “Ice Flow”. We appreciate your kind contribution.

Dear viewers, subscribers and visitors,

Our new raw comb honey video is all about that liquid gold, served in its most natural form. RAW COMB HONEY. It is untouched by human hands, unprocessed, unheated, unfiltered, without chemicals, sugar water additives or preservatives. Simply the healthiest natural raw food available for those interest in a healthy diet, all thanks to the hard work of Honey bees and the beekeeper taking care of his beehives and bee colonies. As colony disorder continues to cause much concern for beekeepers worldwide, few now dare to cut away the precious golden nectar with all that beeswax. It takes up to twenty kilos of honey to produce one kilo of beeswax. Keep that in mind when you purchase a true beeswax candle and appreciate all that hard work the bees put into it. Enjoy the smell, the beautiful honey aroma, and the long lasting burn.

Also, take the opportunity next time you visit your local fresh food market, and grab a sample pack of that beautifully fresh raw comb honey. You won;t regret it!

Hope you like our videos, and if you do, we invite you to subscribe to our MahakoBees or if you feel we deserve it, click the LIKE button below. We appreciate all comments and feedback so don’t be shy and let’s dive deep into the topic of bees, honey, beeswax and beekeeping as a hobby or in deed as a large and extremely important agricultural industry.

We appreciate all your support

MahakoBees

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/.

You can read more about what Raw Comb Honey is below. Information is from Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_honey

Comb honey is honey, intended for consumption, which still contains pieces of the hexagonal-shaped beeswax cells of the honeycomb.

Before the invention of the honey extractor almost all honey produced was in the form of comb honey.[citation needed] Today, most honey is produced for extraction but comb honey remains popular among consumers both for eating ‘as is’ and for combining with extracted honey to make Chunk Honey. Hobbyists and sideliners can best develop their beekeeping skills by producing comb honey, which they can easily sell for several times its value as extracted honey. Comb honey production is more suitable for areas with a prolonged honeyflow from dutch clover, alsike, and yellow clover. Wooded areas are not very suitable for comb honey production, as bees tend to collect much propolis, which makes the harvesting of comb honey much more difficult. This problem has been largely circumvented with the adoption of specialized frames which prevent accumulation of propolis on saleable units.

Hive management

Beehive with Ross Round style comb honey super and frames exposed

Populous honey bee colonies are usually reduced to single hive bodies at the beginning of the honeyflow when one or more comb honey supers are added. Comb honey can either be produced in wooden sections, shallow frames, or Ross Rounds. The successful production of comb honey requires that the hive remain somewhat crowded without overcrowding, which leads to swarming. Young prolific queens help rapid colony population expansion with less likelihood of swarming. Caucasian Apis mellifera bees are often preferred for their tendency to keep a constricted brood nest and for their production of white wax cappings, making more attractive honey combs.

A short video on how we sometimes resort to using a 600 degrees Celsius heat gun on old frames before we replace the foundation. This process not only wax coats the timber to protect it from rotting as easily and prolong its life in general, but it also kills Wax Moth and Hive Beetle eggs, and a host of other undesirable parasites. Its just one of many ways to do it, but this one is fast and relatively safe rather than using a blow torch or open fire on timber that is coated with wax, which is somewhat a fire hazard really. Hope you enjoy our videos, and if you do, please subscribe and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions about each video or the channel in general. All feedback is much appreciated. Thank you

MahakoBees

A great article and many more like it are online, but this is a nice summary on wax moth and beekeeping if you would like to learn more. It is published by http://www.beeworks.com/:

Wax Moth

Wax moths can be a terrible problem to bee hives if allowed to get out of hand and will destroy brood comb in a very short time if unchecked. There are some simple steps to prevent the damage, but first it might be simpler to discuss the life cycle to understand where the problem comes from.

A normal healthy hive will keep wax moth under control by ejecting the larvae, but weakened hives with small populations can be overcome by wax moth infestations destroying the brood comb, ultimately destroying the hive.

There are two varieties of moth which take delight in dining on wax the ‘Greater’ and also the ‘Lesser’ Wax Moth the greater wax moth is a mottled grey in colour approx 1 -1B= inches in length while the lesser is smaller and slimmer approx B= inch in length and white/silver. As all moths, they prefer night time to mate and lay eggs. (Photos are available in our picture gallery.)

Most wax moths are seen in early summer in our area, and we see them under the overhang of hive roofs, out of the daylight, when the hive is disturbed they take off quickly and disappear into the trees.

Preferring to work in the dark the moths enter the hive through top entrances left unscreened and unguarded by the bees, perhaps a sudden cold snap making the bees cluster, and lay eggs in cracks unavailable to the bees. These hatch in due course and the grey larvae begin feeding on wax and hive debris, tunneling just under the cell caps and feeding on the discarded cocoons left by the bees, leaving behind an extremely sticky white web, similar to spiders web but almost impossible to pull apart. So perhaps they are misnamed and should be called Cocoon moths?

With a little care wax moth can be outwitted and the damage they do can be prevented.

First, the practice of top entrances should be examined, provided they have screening then there will be no problem. Leaving a big hole in the inner cover, then a badly fitting roof, is just asking for trouble. Or even worse those holes drilled in the top of boxes allowing the bees a second entrance are a real problem. Apart from pollen in the honey, a cold evening and the bees pull down and form a cluster leaving that entrance unguarded, easy pickings for the wax moth, as they will fly in cooler conditions than bees.

They do say that prevention is better than cure. I have already given one way, using screening to prevent wax moth entering the hive top. The second point could be to use a trap to draw the moths away from the hive area. There are, to my knowledge, no commercial wax moth traps, but we use a country cure which works extremely well and I would recommend to all.

Take a 2 litre plastic pop bottle and drill a 1 inch hole just below the slope on the neck, then add 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, 1 half cup vinegar and finally 1 banana peel. Wait a few days till it starts to ferment, then tie it into a tree close to the hives. This trap will draw the wax moth, they enter the hole can’t get out and drown in the liquid, this will even draw in and kill the bald faced hornet.

Assuming you have followed the above instructions, then you should be able to prevent damage, but what to do if you have already a problem of wax moth?

Extensive damage, evidenced by the white webs, might be simpler to burn and start again. In cases of minor infestations pull out any larvae you can see and clean out all webs. Freezing is a very good way of killing larvae and eggs, so storage in an outside unheated shed during the winter can be useful. Boxes should have a screen top and bottom to prevent mouse damage and allow light to filter down as wax moth prefer the dark.

There are also preventative treatments to treat boxes of drawn brood comb if the above suggestions cannot be incorporated into your management regimes, there is no need to treat honey supers as they don’t normally hold brood cocoons. One is a product called Certan, mixed with water and sprayed on the comb with a garden pressure sprayer. This is the only biological larvaecide available for wax moth control, it has no effect on you, your honey, bees or wax. Used just before storage or before the comb is placed on the hive it is ingested by the larvae and kills from the inside out.

The second treatment is placed onto the stacked pile of boxes during storage and consists of ParadiChlorBenzene crystals. These are used over newspaper in the stack, needs airing out before use.

Contrary to public opinion wax moth can be controlled, but I stress that prevention is better than cure, and the simplest way is to prevent wax moth getting into the hive through gaps and spaces.

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

Welcome fellow beekeepers and honey bee enthusiasts,

This video is pretty simple, but you may find it fascinating none the less. Bees are such amazing creatures (insects), that go through metamorphosis, take on many roles in the relatively short life span, and manage to create so many useful natural and fully organic beekeeping products like bees wax, propolis, and raw honey. This video shows the many different types and colours of beeswax you can remove from your beehives. The colours range form perfectly clean and very fresh snow white to dark and almost black brood comb. The older it is, the darker it usually gets. Take a look. I am sure you will find the contract very interesting. 

It is worth noting, that beeswax has many uses, and we will elaborate on these in our future videos, but one of its main applications is off course in aroma therapy and candle making, as well as cosmetics. It is an essential ingredient that is organic, natural, and if collected and processed by a mindful beekeeper, many have indicated that it may also possess healing properties. The perfectly clean and white piece of burr comb, or wax cappings are the most valuable type of beeswax and it is used primarily by the cosmetics industry. We may elaborate on the ranging market value of bees wax in a future video as well. SO please, we invite you to support our growing channel that is aimed at the beekeeping industry as a whole but mostly targets the new, small, hobbyist or homestead style beekeepers that have only a few hives they manage.

Please hit the like or subscribe button, and comment or share the links if you find our content useful.

Have a wonderful day

MahakoBees

Please subscribe and or like the MahakoBees videos. We appreciate your help.

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/