nucWEBVTT
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Good morning, podcast listeners.
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Here at Honey Bee Obscura.
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I'm Jim, and today is kind of a special day because on a regular, irregular basis
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Ann Fry visits and she's here.
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Good morning, Ann.
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Hi, Jim.
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This is gonna be fun.
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She came in with a great topic.
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We want to talk about nucs, wax production in nucs
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caloric needs to produce wax and just generally enjoying nucleus beehives.
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So we're going to ramble through all that
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Anne's been practicing night and day reviewing the literature.
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Oh, Jim, I just did a quick review
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I'm supposed to know this stuff.
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Well that's yeah, w wish w you right, right, right.
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Don't don't challenge me too much now.
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Listeners, I'm I'm Jim Tew and I come to you here once a week at Honey Bee Obscura where I try to
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talk about something you do with plain talk beekeeping and today Ann Fry from Betterbee is here.
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Hello Ann again.
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Hey I'm glad to be here.
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So let's tune up this program and see how it goes.
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Welcome to
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Honey the Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
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Join Jim 2, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the
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Challenges of managing honeybees.
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Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees.
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Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk.
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That'll delve into all things honeybees.
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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.
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Not the baby nucs, they're a pain.
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The four-frame nucs, the five, six-frame nucs, you know, they're just small bee colonies that are starting out.
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They don't sting me so badly.
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They're easier to pick up.
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You can see more B biology.
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It was a good topic.
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W what where are you coming from on this?
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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
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two colonies and a nuc.
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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.
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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
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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
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with the little nucs and you're not as overwhelmed when you're a beginner.
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That's actually beautifully said.
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You're not as overwhelmed as a beginner.
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And I'd like to add that you're not as overwhelmed as an old man, too, on the other extreme.
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Because it's so much easier.
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Either you can probably be very gentle, no smoke, which is always kinda risky, but
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Do you read the bees if they're okay?
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If there's a good nuctar flow on, you probably don't even need smoke to get in.
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Yeah, quite.
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But I wouldn't open big colonies that way.
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Right.
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Right, yeah.
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We always have the smoker nearby.
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Yep.
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But then it seems like after the five, six minutes spent lighting the smoker that quite often it just sits there.
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And it it's a rarity that we need to grab it when we're doing nuc nuc work.
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Well, I like those nucs very much.
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So I and I you were talking about putting frames in for foundation.
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I think it works both ways because later in the season
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When those bees are clearly going to swarm, I could split colonies out.
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In this in a sense, that's a nuc, but I'm going the other way.
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I'm taking
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equipment and resources from big colonies to make up the nucs.
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The person could certainly not start the year with a nuc, but maybe they could
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create a nuc in June, you know, something like that when their new nuc is starting to m get rambunctious
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I mean their new nuc that grew into a hive is beginning to be big.
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They could boom create another nuc and they'd be back to having a nuc and they'd have their big hive.
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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.
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Well you got a queen in the nuc.
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But here's the truth, and
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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.
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to go put into a big colony.
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I bet you if I possibly could that even though I said I had that nuc there to use for reasons like that
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I would probably still go see if I could buy a coin.
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Oh yeah.
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And just and just let the nuc stay in balance.
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It seems unfair
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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
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um like the price of the queen might be forty five and the price of shipping might be forty, you know, and uh overnight.
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So if a person just could absorb the rest of the frames and that queen into a
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colony that needed a queen, then they just saved eighty dollars by having the new Well, you just talked me out of that.
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Sorry.
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I would hop in my car.
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And drive the 40 miles to the closest queen provider that is around me.
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And that that would mean that my cost would just be about $70
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But you still No good point.
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That that queens are queens are more pricey than they used to be.
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One thing that's enjoyable about a nuc, especially in a s in a flow, is you get to really watch
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The miracle of wax production.
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It's it's just so heavenly when that snow white wax mysteriously comes up
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Day to day when you go back in and have a look.
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I was gonna say magically.
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Magically and mysterious.
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Okay.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It's it's tender and it's fragile and it's snow white.
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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
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belly of the bee, the ventral surfaces, their belly.
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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.
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Um, you know, I wanna
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I wanna get pictures and video of that because I do a lot of that sort of thing too.
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Um I wanna see the the bees like
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chewing wax or passing little flakes from their abdominal area up to their mouths and it's surprisingly difficult to catch 'em at that.
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But they build comb so fast when it has a big nectar flow or you're feeding sugar syrup.
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It's surprising to me.
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It's so hard to find this to catch on film.
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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.
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Right
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I don't have any f I have photos of the sw of the swollen wax glands.
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Mm-hmm.
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With the flakes being pushed out.
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With the flakes, but I don't have any photos of them actually m masticating it, molding it and positioning it
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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.
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Well I read once that d that light inhibits the production of wax.
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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.
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When they can't find a cavity source
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But they normally build in in d in dark leafy areas, so at least it's deeply shaded.
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True.
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Or under a like an overhang or under a bridge.
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So I f
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think that that's something that I've d honestly read that I would have to know more about why that came up with.
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Yeah, show me the paper.
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I don't it was what paper and good grief.
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I want to go to the source.
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You read these things twenty-five years ago?
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I have no idea where it was.
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But it at the time it made perfect sense.
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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
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a bunch of bees some syrup or they're feeding 'em dilute s honey or something like that.
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Um, you know, or weighing the frames and weighing the sugar
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that went into the syrup and weighing everything afterwards and stuff like that.
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And uh it's it's the kind of stuff that I respect scientists for doing, but I'm not gonna do it.
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Yep.
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And this is kind of a pivotal place.
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Let's take a break and hear from our sponsor.
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And when we come back, let's talk about wax production, comb production.
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That doesn't turn into comb, but it turns into whiting.
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Along the edges of all the frames, the old Burr comb gets that nice snow white edge.
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Let's talk about that when we come back.
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Okay.
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You know, I said we'd go right into whiting and discuss that, but I want to blindside you.
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We've got a uh we've got a new sponsor starting up, Vita Bee Health.
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They make a lot of things that are helpful to the bees.
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And those products are available at Better Bee, aren't they?
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Yeah.
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We've got a good relationship with them.
00:11:04.899 --> 00:11:07.140
So I would like to welcome them aboard.
00:11:07.140 --> 00:11:07.779
Now
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Tell me w about whiting or icing.
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The whiting.
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That is some t yeah, what's what's going on?
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Well, that's a thing that
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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.
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and they want to apply it somewhere.
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They want to make s make comb with it, but if they're kind of just putting it on the top
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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.
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You you better get a super on there.
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You're a little bit late, you know
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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.
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Would you agree with that
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I do.
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I do agree with that.
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And some of that happens as those flake laden bees drag that abdomen around.
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If when they drag it over those edges, they drag off parts and smidges.
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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
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They drop sometimes.
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They get put pulled out.
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Onto onto the mirrors.
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It's called mirrors.
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You know what drives me crazy, Ann, that the bees don't seem to go pick that up.
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I know, they fall right to the state.
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Right.
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They won't pick it up.
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They I've heard that they will um just like nibble away
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chrome that's been made and use it again, but when they drop the wax flakes they just ignore them.
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Well I always think it's wasteful.
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I tr I always think about well, should I save this?
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That'd be a third of a teaspoon of
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of perfectly beautiful wax there, so it's not really that much.
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No.
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But there's this adage about how much honey it takes to produce that wax.
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What's your opinion on that?
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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.
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The bees use nectar or
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sugar syrup to make wax.
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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.
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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
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sugar calories into wax.
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Um know how people eat too much sugar, they they end up getting fat.
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So the bees are
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The bees are converting sugar to a fat too and they're that's the wax that they're producing.
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I wish I could make construction materials after eating a whole bunch of sugar.
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Yeah.
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Well, the thing I think happens is why don't bees produce wax all the time?
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Why is it just during a nectar flow?
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And you know, if they had enough comb
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They probably wouldn't produce wax.
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Isn't it a stimulus of them have being forced to hold nectar in their crop because there's no place to put it?
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That they begin to unvoluntarily secrete wax?
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Sounds like uh sounds like I gotta go back to class.
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Are you teaching a class soon?
00:14:40.360 --> 00:14:41.320
No, no.
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No, I haven't.
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No, I I thought that that was a the driving impetus for for wax production.
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I didn't know that.
00:15:00.540 --> 00:15:03.899
about twelve to eighteen days old they just made wax.
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But of course there's always some bees that old until the queen stops laying eggs.
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And they really are resistant to making comb
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after m midsummer, you know, after late June goes by.
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Yep.
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I if check me out.
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I'm using old, old information from an old mind
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From a long time ago.
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But something turns it on, something turns it off.
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Or otherwise there'd be wax there'd be wax production going on all the time.
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Yeah, yeah.
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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
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Hey, there's not enough room to store this nectar, so it's sitting in these young bees crops for a while.
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And then they're they're not just like depositing it, they're
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digesting it and making more right.
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They're metabolizing it.
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Metabolizing it.
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Right.
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Right.
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Hmm.
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I like it