Listener Beekeeping Questions (369)

369 - Listener Beekeeping Questions (369)

[music]

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast, presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors, whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com.

Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast. Becky, it's been a long time. [laughs]

Becky: Has it been a long time?

Jeff: No. No, it just feels like a long time. How are you doing?

Becky: It's been maybe five days.

Jeff: That's right.

Becky: I'm doing very, very well. I'm crossing things off my list and getting things done. I like the productive start to the New Year. How about you?

Jeff: We've had a very busy start to the New Year with North American Honey Bee Expo and all the people we met there. We are working our way into January, which is always a chat-- December is the chat most difficult month for me, but January is always the one where I'm on the edge of the seat, ready to sprint, but not quite ready yet. This is when I start finding the deadouts and start cleaning those out. That's always a sad thing to do, but it's a necessary thing to do, get them ready for-- because I like to get them cleaned out before they get all mucked up with mold and everything else.

Becky: I think in a Minnesota dry winter, we don't have to worry about that as much. Jeff, I think there are a lot of beekeepers in the South who listen to us just to feel good about where they keep bees, and they just laugh at us because they know that both of us, I'm in Minnesota, you're in Washington, we're not really able to do that much, and they're just visiting their bees and checking them out, probably feeding them a little bit because they're brooding up. I'm a little jealous right now.

Jeff: Our friends and listeners, who are sideliners, and the commercial guys, they're all getting ready for the almond orchards, and brooding up, and doing all that. They're very busy right now. That's why I'm on the edge of my seat. Put me in coach. Put me in. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go.

Becky: I'm just hanging tight knowing that they're looking at their little watches or calendars, and that queen is going to start-- they're feeding the queen a little bit better food to get her to plump up a little bit and start producing eggs. They're going to start raising bees, if they're not, any minute now in my colonies.

Jeff: It's a very promising sign of the beginning of the spring season. Around here, we have the hazelnut blooms-- it doesn't really bloom, it has those fronds that come down, and the bees work those for the pollen on the warmer days. It's a great thing.

Becky: What month do you first see pollen?

Jeff: With those hazelnuts, I start seeing it in January.

Becky: Okay, now you're bragging. There's not fresh pollen going into any of my colonies until maybe late February, but it's really March, it's early March that we start seeing that pollen come in. Wow. It's just so different. I loved how Etienne, when we talked with him, talked about the season being pollen to pollen, first pollen and last pollen, and how that really should start informing your beekeeping.

Jeff: That is a great observation. I forgot that he said that, but I love it. It does really put it all into perspective.

Becky: Yes. I want to steal that from him. Maybe if I credit him, it's not stealing it from him, right?

Jeff: That's right. My good friend Etienne says. [laughs] Thanks, Etienne, for that. We mentioned North American Honey Bee Expo. In a few weeks, our listeners, anybody in the Midwest who's going to the Midwest Honey Bee Expo will be able to sit down and talk to us. You're doing a couple of presentations, aren't you?

Becky: I'm doing one. Don't ask me what it is, though, because I forgot.

[laughter]

Becky: It's going to be really good, I promise.

Jeff: You'll know what it is by the time you get there.

Becky: It's written down someplace, and I will absolutely know. Every time I do a talk, I always go through it. I update the slides and make sure that they're getting great information. I hope to deliver when asked to give a talk. Now I feel like we should edit this whole part out and I should look it up, but we're not going to do that. Let's just be real-life here.

Jeff: [laughs] Okay. No doubt you will have it all under control and well in hand by the time we get to Midwest Honey Bee Expo.

Becky: More importantly, maybe, I'm giving the talk, but you and I are going to be recording a podcast there about the business of beekeeping. I'm looking forward to that conversation.

Jeff: I like going to these expos and to the conferences and talking with the listeners. In this instance, we're able to do a recording live in front of an audience, and that's going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to listener participation and having that live interaction besides my parrot in the background.

Becky: Oh, I love the parrot, I love Frisco, but I will tell you, it is so much fun to talk to listeners. It really it's a lot of fun. We learn a lot about what they need. Of course, even though the podcast, it feels like such a treat because we get to talk to scientists and beekeepers, and it informs our own operations, but we really are here for the listeners. It's really nice to get that time with them and hear what they liked. I guess they could tell us what they don't like. Keep that at a minimum.

Jeff: It does happen, but not too often. We have a lot of great listeners. In the past, since October, we've been asking for listener questions. We have a sponsor, HiveIQ, who's running a promotion for the Beekeeping TodayPodcast listener question segment. In that segment, we've asked for questions from our listeners, and then we read them, or that we play them on the air, and then we answer them. They receive a HiveIQ and BeekeepingToday Podcast branded hive tool, which is a HiveIQ hive tool, which is really nice.

It's not your typical hive tool. It's specially made. It has a J-hook on it that's specially canted. It's not just a regular rounded J, it's canted so that it really does effectively lift up frames. It's really quite the tool. We've been sending those out. I'm happy to say, and I'm sure our listeners are happy to hear, that in December, I started actually sending them out. It was quite amazing. It was quite amazing. The post office was, "What the heck is in here?" Hopefully, listeners will start posting pictures of their tools.

Becky: They got them just right around the holidays. I'm sure they're very happy to have received them. It would be really fun, I think this is what we should ask them to do, if they would, they should take a picture of themselves with their hive tool, and then we could maybe share it on our Facebook page.

Jeff: Oh, that'd be great.

Becky: Would that be fun?

Jeff: Yes. Please do that. That's now a requirement. [laughs]

Becky: That you can't follow up on because they will have it in hand.

[laughter]

Jeff: That's right. We'll come take it from you.

Becky: No, but that would be fun. Even if we got some of them using their hive tools in the actual bee season. Some of them might have bee season now, so that could make us feel good.

Jeff: Speaking of the hive tool and the hive tool promotion and questions, today's episode, we will be answering four or five different questions that have been piling up here over the holidays and the expo season. When we come back from break, we're going to get into these questions, answer them, and all these folks will receive their hive tool.

Becky: Lucky them.

Betterbee: For more than 45 years, Betterbee has proudly supported beekeepers by offering high-quality innovative products, providing outstanding customer service, many of our staff are beekeepers themselves, and sharing education to help beekeepers succeed. Based in Greenwich, New York, Betterbee serves beekeepers all across the United States. Whether you're just getting started or a seasoned pro, Betterbee has the products and experience to help you and your bees succeed. Visit betterbee.com, or call 1-800-632-3379. Betterbee, your partners in better beekeeping.

Jeff: Welcome back, everybody. Our first question comes from a prior guest, Stephanie Slater. She was on episode 328 on our show about judging honey shows and learning how to become a honey show judge.

Becky: Stephanie is literally one of my favorite people and beekeeper. I have so much respect for what she does. She's an amazing, amazing advocate for beekeeping. I'm looking forward to hearing what her question is.

Stephanie Slater: Hello, Jeff and Becky. My name is Stephanie Slater. I'm a beekeeper in Wisconsin and coordinator of the Wisconsin Honey Producers Association Youth Scholar Program. Mentorship plays such a critical role in helping new beekeepers succeed, yet many associations are seeing declining volunteerism. Some groups use formal mentor programs, while others rely on more organic relationship-based approaches. As we work to connect young beekeepers with mentors, I want to make sure that the experience is both effective for the youth and rewarding, not overwhelming, for the volunteers who give their time.

From your experience, what key elements make a mentorship relationship truly successful for both the mentee and the mentor? How can programs like ours best support mentors while still providing a meaningful experience for youth beekeepers? I'd love to hear your insights on practical approaches that help mentorships thrive in today's environment. Thank you.

Becky: She's got another project.

[laughter]

Jeff: Yes, that's true.

Becky: She's working on youth mentorship in Wisconsin. That's fantastic. Good for her. Now, Jeff, you've been a mentor to beekeepers. Have you been a youth mentor?

Jeff: No, I have not. Not in beekeeping. I was a Boy Scout leader once, but that was a long--

Becky: There you go.

Jeff: There you go.

Becky: That's handling youth. I've been a mentor to a lot of beekeepers, and I think they've all been 18 or older, so, one, I was allowed to swear in front of them, which really helps when you're keeping bees.

[laughter]

Becky: Why don't we go ahead and take a stab at this?

Jeff: Sure.

Becky: I think that when it comes to mentorship and even recruiting mentors, it takes a lot to sign up to be that person because it is not on a schedule. Once that mentee starts keeping bees on their own, you really have to be on call for whenever they get into something in their yard or have an issue. I think that you really do have to be dedicated to helping that person learn how to keep bees, and then eventually helping them problem-solve on their own.

Jeff: It's a relationship you build between you and initially somebody you don't know, and your commonality or your common theme as bees. You really have to build on that and trust that that's going to carry you through the good things and the bad things about just working with another person. Then, you add on top of that the challenges, as a mentor, of receiving those phone calls in the middle of dinner, or in the morning, or late at night, whenever it comes in, saying that your mentee needs help.

There's a lot of ways you can work around that and establishing the guidelines in the relationship. I know some beekeepers who have gone as far as creating a mentorship agreement. It really spells out, "This is the grounds of what I'm going to help you, and this is when you can reach out to me," to just informal, saying, "Hey, if you run into problems, text me, call me. I may not be able to answer right away, but I will as soon as possible."

Becky: Yes, those are different ends of the spectrum as far as agreeing to take that responsibility on. I'll say my advice also for once you get in there and you're starting to teach them beekeeping, this is a hard one for, I think, beekeepers to do because it's fun to have somebody learn you keep bees, but it's so much better for the person who's learning how to keep bees if they're the ones with the hive tool. I actually purposefully do not have a hive tool in my hand when I'm teaching, so that I have to talk them through it. It's so easy to just jump in there.

If sometimes I have to get in there and do show them, I have to actually ask them to hand their hive tool over so that I can do something. It keeps me from having the experience be somebody watching me keep bees to try to learn, to having them actually keep the bees. Then, the other thing, too, is that if you are taking that responsibility on, do not be afraid to criticize. Because, oh my gosh, it's so serious if somebody's doing something that's going to get them stung, you have to establish that relationship and say, "I'm going to tell you what you're doing wrong. Never feel bad about it. It's just a matter of correcting you."

Do it gently, of course, no yelling, but do it gently, so that you're making sure that you're correcting them because it's a waste of time if you are in the yard together and they're either watching you or you're watching them do things wrong. Establish that upfront so that you're getting the most out of your time together.

Jeff: I like that, no yelling. What kind of mentors have you had? [laughs]

Becky: Let's just say I will never, ever, ever, ever stand in front of a beehive. If I do, I quickly move out of the way. I apologize to nobody around me. Sometimes yelling is effective, but yes. Anyway, you do have to set that up so that it's just a good relationship and they know you're just trying to help them succeed.

Jeff: With the youth, too, again, I haven't had a mentee that was a youth, but in working with the scouts and working with very beginning beekeepers, I always talk about, "What are we going to do before we even open hive?"

Becky: Oh, that makes sense.

Jeff: I have a plan and I discuss that plan with the mentee, and saying, "This is what we're going to do. This is what I'm expecting to see," and then we'll open it up and, of course, everything goes to heck in the hand basket because nothing's ever what you expect to see when you open it up, but it's a learning experience. Going in with a plan, with an objective. I like to set that habit up early on, and that helps guide their inspections later on as beekeepers, or later that season, or the next day when they decide to take a peek themselves, what are they taking a peek for?

Becky: I like that. That's great advice. Wow. We should mentor some youth. I think we've got it.

[laughter]

Jeff: We should write a book.

Becky: Hey, that's an idea.

[laughter]

Becky: Okay, we did write a book. I'm just going to put that out there.

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: Hasn't been released yet.

Jeff: Check back in Q4 this year.

Becky: [laughs] Okay. Are we ready for our next question?

Jeff: Here's a question that came in via email, or from the website, actually, from Mark Johnson. He writes, "Hi, Becky. Hi, Jeff." He has three questions. I'll read them all directly and then we'll answer them. His first question is, "What advice and encouragement would you give to beginning beekeepers who have had a rough season? Two, in the south of the US, small hive beetles seem to be a constant problem. What control methods do you recommend? Three, as a beginner, I have a hard time finding my queen even though she's marked. What methods do you recommend for the beginner who needs to find their queen and not just evidence of her productivity?

Thanks, Mark, for your question. Those are good questions since we're on this beginner track here.

Becky: They're great questions. Oh, the rough season.

Jeff: It's the same thing you tell somebody who's 30, 40 years.

Becky: I know. [laughs] Yes. It turns out that the rough season is something that is not new to new beekeepers. It's something that a lot of beekeepers experience. I will say that out of the worst things that have ever happened to my colonies, or to a management step or something like that, that's really how I learned. I didn't learn everything that I know about beekeeping because everything was perfect all the time. Try to take from your rough season, figure out maybe-- hopefully, you can figure out what went wrong.

I'm guessing you should treat Varroa. That's just a guess. Figure out what went wrong, and then learn from it, and then look for those successes next year. Also, look for successes, what did you do right, what can you be proud of? What's your advice?

Jeff: Exactly. It feeds onto what our earlier question was in that if you're having a difficult time and a rough season, you can always search for a mentor. Even if you're a second-year beekeeper, find that more experienced beekeeper maybe in a local club or an association, and say, "Hey. Geez, this was horrible. What did you recommend? What did you experience?" A lot of times, finding a beekeeper locally in the same region as you is key to success in many different ways. I would encourage Mark to also reach out to other area beekeepers to see what they're doing and what their experience is.

Just remember, sometimes bees just die no matter what you do.

Becky: You know what makes me sad is that I follow a lot of different things on Facebook, and I see a lot of people posting questions and they-- I forget what their wording is, but it's basically, "Please be nice to me when I ask this question," [laughs] which means to me that they're not always getting the nicest answers. That local in-person community, they're going to be nice to you. If you can find that, that's a great, great start, Mark.

Jeff: That feeds into a second question about the small hive beetles.

Becky: My suggestion would be that he moves to Minnesota because we really just don't have a big problem with small hive beetles. Although we have them in the colony, they just are not the problem that you have. That means like you were just hinting at, I'm not the best person to tell you what to do because I'm guessing that local information is going to give you, really, your best foot forward, or best hive tool into the colony. I was trying to throw something in there. That might not have worked.

Jeff: I like to try. That was good. I have no firsthand experience with small hive beetles, so I don't have a ready answer from Mark, but I would suggest that he reach out to local beekeepers who are also experiencing small hive beetles and find out what they are doing, what they're finding successful and what's not. You have to be careful, as always, when you listen to anything on Facebook or YouTube or anything else, you have to consider where that advice is coming from, what part of the country that person who's giving that advice is saying, that it may work for them and it may not work for you. It's not that they're telling you anything bad, it's just a lot of times it's regionally guided.

Becky: Feeding into the third question, I will say when you open your colony, you're stressing your colony and you're inviting hive beetles to visit. It's a signal to hive beetles, and hive beetles can fly far. I love that Mark wants to find his queen because it is a great skill to have, but recognize that the search for the queen is something that could additionally stress your colony. My best piece of advice is, if you are on a frame and you find eggs, you know she was there in the last three days. If you are on a frame and those eggs are straight up and down, she recently laid them in the last day. Really pay attention to what's on that frame. I love answering first, Jeff, because I'm taking all the best answers.

[laughter]

Becky: Search on those frames, and then be careful with smoke because if you're using too much smoke, you could be chasing her all the way to the sides of the colony or something like that. I've got more advice, but I don't know if we can go through all of it. Why don't you? [laughs]

Jeff: Yes. You answered it perfectly, Becky. Those were my answers, too. Actually, the only thing I would add is that sometimes you just can't find the queen. She will just, I don't know whether she's just watching me go from frame to frame and she's jumping from frame to frame either in front of me or behind me. I've gone through 10 frames, 20 frames and never found her, but I know she's there somewhere. I know I've probably missed her on the edge of a frame, or she's on the bottom of a frame and she's just spinning around as I'm turning the frame around. Sometimes it happens, and it's going to be harder mid-season when the colony is very populous and you have bees everywhere.

Get your practice in early in the season when there's fewer bees and you're working with maybe a 5-frame nuc or just a 10-frame one box. One last trick, or one other thing I would add, look for where the bees are centered in that frame, whether it'd be a nuc or a hive body. If you see most of them in one area in the center frames, she's probably in the center frame somewhere. She's not going to be found on the end frames, typically. Wherever the most population of bees are in a smaller colony, that's where she will be found, generally speaking.

Becky: I like how you keep modifying that. Honestly, the people who've gotten really good at finding queens are researchers, who you literally have to find every queen to do an experiment, and you do that multiple times in your career, you just get good at it, and commercial beekeepers, who are going through so many different colonies. Back to your first question, be easy on yourself because it is a difficult skill. I have mentored a lot of beekeepers, and there are a small number of them who can spot that queen just really easily. The rest of them have to learn how to figure out where she is and to find her, so you're in good company.

Jeff: Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break, and we'll come back and answer the rest of our questions.

[music]

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Hey, Jeff, do we have any more questions to answer?

Jeff: Yes, we have lots of questions. Robert Holdsworth phoned in and left a couple questions on our website, and we're going to answer them both here. He only gets one hive tool per the regulations.

Becky: Okay. That's going to encourage people from sending us multiple questions.

Jeff: That's right. Just one hive tool per person. The first question, let's listen to it, deals with finding a lost hive tool.

Robert Holdsworth: Hi, how do you stop losing your hive tool in the bee yard?

Jeff: This is a favorite question that everyone has to deal with. I personally currently use our sponsor for 2025 BeeSmart Design. They have a little magnetic tool holder that goes on a belt around your waist. It's there all the time. I like that because I'm one of those beekeepers who would put it on top of a hive and walk away to the next hive, and get to the point I would need it and it's not around for me. I love that magnetic tool holder.

Becky: The way I learned beekeeping is that you just literally never put that hive tool down because everything you need to do in beekeeping, for the most part, you can do with that hive tool in your hand. I like the fact that you're never going to be in a situation where you have to look for it because you never know when an emergency could happen. You might need to get moving very quickly, and having that hive tool at the ready is going to make you more efficient, it's going to make you be able to get through your inspections more quickly, instead of putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, losing it, looking for it, then trying to pick it up.

If I teach you beekeeping, if I'm like a hands-on mentor, literally every time that beekeeper puts it down, I take it. I take it.

Jeff: Whack their knuckles with it? Is that what you do?

Becky: No, there's no force used, but I take it from them, just to encourage the beekeepers to keep it in your hand. You'll be surprised, it might be awkward at first, but you can do what you need to do with that hive tool in hand, and it's going to really help limit that hive tool loss. Then, always have a backup, or more than one backup in your truck. That's important.

Jeff: I will correct myself, or further explain. When I'm working within a hive, I rarely put the hive tool down. Where I get into trouble is when I go to switch from one hive to the next, or I decide, oops, I need to go get some more smoker fuel, and I set the tool down to do something. It's just like, it's better if it's on my hip, but I agree with you. Everything I do within the hive, I have the hive tool in one hand-- no, my right hand, and I do all the hive manipulation, frame manipulation, everything with the hive tool. I used to like to hide a hive tool. We're talking about what do you do if you lose one?

Becky: Oh, goodness.

Jeff: I used to have the real flat hive tool, not one with it turned on the side. It's like the flat J-hook with the red handle or whatever.

Becky: Oh, sure.

Jeff: That would lay underneath an inner cover, or underneath the top on top of the inner cover. I always had one hive that I would leave a hive tool there.

Becky: I love that idea.

Jeff: That way, if I went to the hive tool, if I was driving down the road and said, "Oh, I want to stop at that yard," and I don't have anything with me, I can at least go to that hive, pop the top, grab that hive tool out from underneath the top and sitting on the inner cover, and do what I need to do.

Becky: Although sometimes you need that hive tool to pop the actual telescoping cover or something.

Jeff: I'm not saying it's foolproof.

[laughter]

Becky: I'm just throwing that out there. I love that idea. I think that's a really good idea. It's also for biosecurity. A lot of people will say, "I have a hive tool per apiary." You have to clean it, of course, but having it just stay within that apiary is not a bad idea. Onsite storage. I like that.

Jeff: Robert had a second question that deals with monitoring of colonies. Let's listen to his question.

Robert: What is the best beehive monitoring system for someone with 10 hives?

Jeff: Thanks, Robert. Hive monitoring, this is really something I really enjoy. You weren't really specific in whether you were talking about electronic monitoring or visual observation, but I assume, and we all know about assume, is you're talking about electronic monitoring. Here in the States, and I know in Europe, we have BroodMinder, that's-- I won't say inexpensive, but it's an affordable approach to electronic monitoring that can be as simple as a couple sensors and an app on your phone, or there are those folks who like to go all out and have multiple wireless or cellular connections so that they can monitor their colonies from home.

Whether you have 1 or 2 colonies, or 10 colonies, or 100 colonies, it all really depends on your level of detail and how much you want to monitor.

Becky: I like that answer. I do. I'm guessing that Robert was talking about the electronic monitoring, and not peeking, and hefting, and looking. BroodMinder, they're not a sponsor, but I think they're our friends. We just had a great episode where they were talking about their new directions and also the level of support that they have right now out there for beekeepers. They are really trying hard to make it affordable. I love that they participated in citizen science projects. They did some great eclipse work. I think that it's great to support companies in the industry that are working hard to support beekeepers, and oh my gosh, are they passionate about monitoring colonies.

Jeff: They're a great group. I will post a link in the show notes to my apiary, where anybody can go out and take a look at my dead colonies.

Becky: Hey.

Jeff: It's January.

[laughter]

Becky: Don't say that.

Jeff: I'm sorry, that's bad. To look at my apiary, and take a look at what you can see in a setup monitoring your hives. Becky, we have any other questions?

Becky: You know what? It's interesting how questions come into different themes. It looks like we've got a few questions that center around keeping your bees fed one way or another. The first is from Laura Toma. I love her question because she is doing her best to get her bees fed through the winter, but at the same time she was willing to sacrifice her honey crop. Let's listen to Laura's question.

Laura Toma: Hi, my name is Laura Toma, and I'm a new beekeeper in Saratoga County in Upstate New York. This will be my first winter with my bees. I have two deep brood boxes and one full honey super that I'm leaving on the hive for overwintering. I've decided to try a condensing hive setup with an R10 insulated cover and a mouse guard installed. As I understand it, the cluster will gradually move upward through the winter. My concern is that when the queen begins laying again in late winter or early spring, she might start laying in the honey super.

Is it possible to rearrange the boxes before winter so that the configuration is one deep on the bottom, then the honey super, and then the second deep, which is currently full of honey, on top? My thinking is that this way, as the cluster moves up, the queen will begin laying in a brood chamber rather than in the honey super. Once the dandelions bloom, I'd move the super back to the top to avoid brood in the honey frames. Does this strategy make sense, or is there a better way to manage this transition? Thank you so much for taking my question. I've learned so much from your podcast and really appreciate all the insight you share.

Becky: Okay, Jeff, who's going to break the news to Laura about her two deeps and her honey super, and the fate of that honey super over the winter?

Jeff: I'll let you do that.

Becky: Oh, thank you. She asked a great question as far as, is there a configuration that works? Honestly, the truth is that you really do need to keep that brood nest together. If you put that honey super on the bottom, it's not the direction the bees are going to go, and it's also too late now because of where we are in the winter. That honey super sitting at the top of those two deeps is the very best place for the bees. You do not want to inhibit or block their move into that super with a queen excluder.

You really do need to just leave it there and know that-- the good news is, is that if you get the colony through the winter, they're alive and you've got bees that are alive. The bad news is, is that you will very likely have brood in that super. You have the option of pulling out those few frames of brood once they've emerged and replacing it with frames of foundation, and then you can try to keep that honey super intact. At this point, the best thing to do is just to know that you made a great sacrifice. You wanted to make sure your bees were fed. If you get to March, April, and they're alive but they're not in that super, you can pull that super and put on some supplement feed.

The best thing to do would be, honestly, just to leave it on, and know that leaving any kind of a honey super on the colony for the bees is going to be for the bees, including that queen, and the brood that they're going to start rearing in the late winter.

Jeff: I definitely agree with that.

Becky: The truth is that, I've left honey supers on colonies just to say, you know what, it's easier to give them this super of honey instead of feeding them. I rotate it into my brood nest, so I'll have a colony that'll have a deep and a medium super, and it's just a different colony configuration in my operation. I've got mediums that are honey supers, a lot fewer of them because I'm going to just all deeps, but then also mediums that are brood boxes. It's not bad to have both.

Jeff: Question on that. Many beekeepers, and myself included, I don't like to have brood frames mixed into my honey frames. I just don't want to mix those. For those who keep a mixture of mediums and deeps for honey and for brood, do you color code your honey supers from your brood supers? Are your honey supers a different color?

Becky: They're not a different color. I just know because I'll use a queen excluder. You can tell because when the brood is in the actual honey frame, it's just the comb is darker. I just do it by look and know that, if I look at the comb and I can tell there's been brood in it, then that's definitely a brood box. If it's just that nice light wax, then that's a dedicated honey super. I don't do it specifically. I love that you asked the question that you think I'd have enough organizational skills to actually keep those things separated. [laughs] Sometimes we're lucky my boxes are painted.

[laughter]

Becky: No, but just the timing of it. Usually, I don't have a lot of empty brood boxes sitting around. They're just usually out of colony.

Jeff: I try to paint my honey supers a different color, just for quick visual checks. Even when I'm standing from the road and looking at the bee yard, I can tell, but it's not always successful.

Becky: I will say also, I've talked to a beekeeper, and I'm hoping we get to interview him in this year, but he has actually tried to keep honey supers painted as honey supers, but then, also, he's got a number of different apiaries. His ultimate goal is that each apiary has a different color super, so that when he extracts he knows he's extracting from this apiary here, this apiary there. That's fun just for the different varietals. Then, you can still do one extraction of the season, but you can maybe have that different floral taste of the honey based upon where those bees were.

Jeff: Oh, he's giving me a new idea. [laughs]

Becky: Right. Again, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to be happy if I get my boxes on and honey extracted.

Jeff: Honey extracted, yes. I got you. I get you. Continuing on this theme of feeding, Khalid Ansari wrote in a question for us. He was listening to a regional beekeepers roundtable from 2025, Episode 355. He noticed that a lot of the beekeepers were using a fondant as insurance feed. His question is, if one leaves a honey super on and adds a fondant as an insurance, is there a chance that the bees might store some of the fondant into the honey super? What if someone uses raw sugar instead of the fondant, would that end up in the super? Thanks, Khalid, for your question, and he's from the Greater Boston area.

Becky: Jeff, do you want to tell Khalid the bad news, or do you want me to do it?

[laughter]

Jeff: You know I don't like delivering bad news.

Becky: Okay. It's not really bad news, it's just a super important rule when you are keeping bees. What that means is that anytime you have a honey super on that colony, you are not feeding them anything because you do not want anything to get into that honey super except the nectar that they pull from flowers. That means that if you, and like Laura, are trying to really do well by your bees and keep that super on, and there's any kind of supplemental feeding that you do, like a fondant, it means that honey super is no longer a honey super because you can never know what is in that comb.

A lot of these feeds have additives in order to encourage feeding, and so they might have essential oils added to them. You just cannot have a honey super that has ever been in contact with the essential oils and anything that would stay in that wax. You have another medium box in your operation that you can either pull those frames out, put in frames of foundation and then reuse that, or you can incorporate that medium box into your hive configurations and become a brood box, essentially. You can't do both. I think you asked a great question, Khalid. I was nice, wasn't I, Jeff? I was very nice.

Jeff: That was a great answer. It didn't sound negative at all. It's a good question, though. It's a natural question.

Becky: Great question, yes.

Jeff: All right. Becky, for our last feeding question, or actually for our last question for this episode, is one that we receive fairly often, this question, but for today, this is the first question since we've been doing the hive tool, is from Joshua Bailiff. He writes in that, "Should we be going bananas for bananas? I read conflicting things about feeding hives bananas, and it sounds like something needs more discussion about a potential best practice." Thank you, Joshua, for that question. This is a great question we've received ever since we had someone on the show back in Season 3 with Katharina Davitt, and she wrote a master's beekeeper paper on feeding bananas to bees. It goes back way beyond that, doesn't it, Becky?

Becky: I love this question. I think it truly is bananas. No, I'm kidding. I love this question because I think that he's right, we need more discussion and we need more research. We definitely need more research. It is based on a practice of feeding bees bananas, especially in Africa, where they are plentiful. If you have the ability to have a really inexpensive feed for your bees when there's a dearth period, and you can put bananas in a colony and the colony is not going to be harmed and, indeed, would potentially thrive, I think that's super exciting.

On the flip side, I think we have to be careful when we're feeding any kind of supplement to our bees. We know we're feeding it to them at the right time. Bananas have a little bit of protein in them. I would be really careful about giving any kind of a supplement with protein to the colonies in the fall. We also know there are some data that show that they will increase brood rearing. Again, is that something you want to encourage in the fall, or is it something that you might want to encourage in the spring? Then, getting back to our previous two questions, I do not want to put bananas on my colonies and then have my honey customers say, "You know, I taste bananas."

Jeff: "This is banana-infused honey? I didn't see it on the label."

Becky: I know. That's so amazing. We have to get back to, if you do decide to supplement your colonies with bananas, make sure you're doing it well before any nectar is going to be collected for honey production. The reason why people like to feed bananas to bees is, one, because it's an inexpensive feed for certain locations, but also it has been shown to increase some brood production, and the bees do like it. They're very attracted to it. It's my understanding you feed both the peel and the actual banana.

Bananas naturally contain dopamine, which is pretty cool, and people are excited to give that to their bees. At the same time, we don't know exactly what it does. We just know that it's not harmful in the studies that have been done. Again, those studies are not going to be completed right before fall to see if it impacts winter bees-- that I know of, and there's so few studies out there. We do have a study we can link to, it's actually a study done in Africa, it does show some of the benefits of banana feeding, but there's just that warning there is, don't go bananas for bananas, but be careful.

I'll tell you, Jeff, though, I love the idea of having a use for all those bananas that ripen too quickly that end up in my freezer. Since I already have some wet protein patties and I have some formic acid in my freezer, I might as well have the bananas and then give them to the bees.

Jeff: I've never put a banana in the freezer. I have to admit that.

Becky: Oh, don't. That's what you do if you make banana bread.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Becky: Then, you can accumulate so many frozen bananas that you feel guilty that you're not making enough banana bread, and it's just this cycle. If you could split some for banana bread and some for the actual bees, maybe that's a good thing. Again, be really careful, don't feed your bees anything that would get into those supers.

Jeff: Don't feed it in the fall as they're getting ready for winter.

Becky: In the fall.

Jeff: Thank you, Joshua, for that question. Thank you, everybody, for your hive tool questions. Keep them coming. We have a lot of hive tools from Hive IQ. I know that our early hive tool winners are receiving their hive tools now. I actually got them out almost Merry Christmas Happy New Year to those folks who submitted questions in the fall. Thank you for joining us on this Question & Answer session with Beekeeping Today.

Becky: This was so much fun. Good beekeeping, everybody. Good beekeeping questions. I'm impressed.

Jeff: Remember, if you're going to the Midwest Honey Bee Expo, make sure you stop by our booth and say hi.

Becky: Perfect.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoy. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the Reviews tab on the top of any page. We want to thank Betterbee, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast. We also appreciate our long-time sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode.

Most importantly, thank you for listening and spending time with us. If you have any questions or feedback, just head over to our website and drop us a note. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, everybody.