Flat Creek Bees

Going through the hives to find capped honey frames to harness.

When splitting a colony, the queen has to be put into the new box. This will simulate a swarm and hopefully prevent an actual swarming. In this case the queen was hiding from me and I had to bring out the secret weapon. That also failed, but I did finally find her in the original box after, this video ended.

On a hot day or when there are too many bees in a colony, some will come outside to help the inside of the hive stay cooler.

The hives that are low in honey are given granulated sugar as emergency feed. In this video, Charlie is re-filling sugar on a hive.

And while at it, getting rid of yellow jackets.

This is the brightest purple pollen I have seen on brood frames in the hive.

The ones bringing in pollen are obvious. The others that appear to be bringing back nothing likely have a tummy full of nectar.

In this short video I demonstrate my method of scraping the propolis (incorrectly said "wax" in the video) from the edge of the frames.

The drone--the male honey bee is recognizable by its large body and huge eyes. He has no stinger, so it is safe to handle.

This bee was checking out my hand on this beautiful September day. I'll give you one guess why my wedding band is cut.

Three colonies inspected. The first was very weak doe to few bees. The second is almost dead because the queen is only laying drones (male bees, drone layer). The third was very healthy.

Most of the pollen is a very pale yellow. Not sure what the source is, but I do know that pear and maple trees are in bloom here in Knox County, TN.

Two frames for you to practice spotting the queen. The second queen is actually laying eggs as we watch.

Another edition of spot the queen. See how long it takes you to find the queen on this frame.

In this video we see the beekeeper in training to increase his tolerance for stings.

Two of the colonies went queenless a few weeks ago and failed to raise a new queen from eggs I have provided. Now, I introduce a queen to each hive in a cage with candy plug.

Fall feeding 2:1 sugar syrup using quart jars on top of the hives.

A small swarm decided to make a tree branch their final home and already built 3 combs. Being the second half of September, they would most likely not survive in the open. I have a colony that needs a queen, so I decided to get this one out of the tree and after they settle in, I'll merge them with the other queenless colony.

Having a little fun while lighting the smoker, making choo-choo sounds.

There is a very weak colony in this nuc that was being robbed out. Made this simple robber screen from number 8 mesh and it is working well. The robber bees are piled up at the bottom because that is where they smell the honey. The local bees know to go up the channel to exist and to go back in. The mesh is stapled only to the front of the hive so that I can remove it from the bottom board, if needed.

After seeing my first Gas-Vap video, some of you wanted to see how much OAV the device puts out. So here it is just blowing vapor in the air.

Demonstrating my method of using colored push pins to mark hive boxes in storage to know what types of frames are inside.

I have recently purchased the Gas-Vap for applying OAV to the hives for varroa mite treatment. This is a much faster method compared to the electric wand, when you have more then a few hives to treat.