April 2, 2026

Nucs & Wax Production with Anne Frey (277)

Nucs & Wax Production with Anne Frey (277)
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In this episode of Honey Bee Obscura, Jim Tew is joined by Anne Frey for a wide-ranging discussion on nucleus colonies, wax production, and the practical realities of working with smaller hives.

The conversation begins with a focus on nucs as both a management tool and a learning platform. Anne suggests that beginners may benefit from maintaining not just two full colonies, but also a nuc—providing flexibility for making splits, building comb, and maintaining backup resources such as queens and brood. Jim expands on this idea, noting that nucs are often easier to handle, less intimidating, and allow beekeepers to observe bee biology more closely.

From there, the discussion turns to wax production—one of the most fascinating and often overlooked aspects of honey bee behavior. Jim and Anne explore how bees convert incoming nectar or sugar into wax, highlighting the conditions that stimulate wax secretion, including strong nectar flows and colony crowding. They also discuss the commonly cited—but often misunderstood—relationship between honey consumption and wax production.

A particularly engaging portion of the episode focuses on “whiting” (or “icing”)—the appearance of fresh, white wax along frame edges and top bars. This visual cue signals active wax production and often indicates that additional space or supers are needed.

Throughout the episode, Jim and Anne reflect on the balance between scientific understanding and practical experience. While research provides valuable insights, much of beekeeping knowledge still comes from observation, experimentation, and time in the bee yard.

This episode captures the curiosity and hands-on learning that define beekeeping, especially when working with nucs and watching bees build comb in real time.

______________________

Thanks to Betterbee for sponsoring today's episode. Betterbee’s mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com

Vita-Bee-Health

We’d like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting the podcast. Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa—from Apistan and Apiguard to the new VarroxSan extended-release oxalic acid strips—helping beekeepers keep stronger, healthier colonies.

______________________

Honey Bee Obscura is brought to you by Growing Planet Media, LLC, the home of Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Music: Heart & Soul by Gyom, All We Know by Midway Music; Christmas Avenue by Immersive Music; original guitar music by Jeffrey Ott

Cartoons by: John Martin (Beezwax Comics)

Copyright © 2026 by Growing Planet Media, LLC

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.

00:09:19.180 --> 00:09:25.660
And when we come back, let's talk about wax production, comb production.

00:09:25.560 --> 00:09:29.400
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.

00:09:35.960 --> 00:09:36.680
Okay.

00:09:36.300 --> 00:09:39.339
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You know, I said we'd go right into whiting and discuss that, but I want to blindside you.

00:10:53.700 --> 00:10:57.060
We've got a uh we've got a new sponsor starting up, Vita Bee Health.

00:10:57.220 --> 00:11:00.260
They make a lot of things that are helpful to the bees.

00:11:00.260 --> 00:11:02.820
And those products are available at Better Bee, aren't they?

00:11:02.820 --> 00:11:03.140
Yeah.

00:11:03.140 --> 00:11:04.899
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

00:11:07.839 --> 00:11:11.279
Tell me w about whiting or icing.

00:11:11.279 --> 00:11:12.079
The whiting.

00:11:12.079 --> 00:11:14.880
That is some t yeah, what's what's going on?

00:11:14.880 --> 00:11:16.800
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.

00:11:28.540 --> 00:11:30.940
and they want to apply it somewhere.

00:11:30.940 --> 00:11:37.180
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.

00:11:46.380 --> 00:11:48.620
You you better get a super on there.

00:11:48.620 --> 00:11:50.459
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.

00:12:01.540 --> 00:12:02.740
Would you agree with that

00:12:02.839 --> 00:12:03.399
I do.

00:12:03.399 --> 00:12:04.360
I do agree with that.

00:12:04.360 --> 00:12:10.759
And some of that happens as those flake laden bees drag that abdomen around.

00:12:10.759 --> 00:12:15.560
If when they drag it over those edges, they drag off parts and smidges.

00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:29.840
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.

00:12:32.620 --> 00:12:33.740
Onto onto the mirrors.

00:12:33.980 --> 00:12:35.580
It's called mirrors.

00:12:35.580 --> 00:12:39.580
You know what drives me crazy, Ann, that the bees don't seem to go pick that up.

00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:41.640
I know, they fall right to the state.

00:12:43.480 --> 00:12:44.120
Right.

00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:45.320
They won't pick it up.

00:12:45.320 --> 00:12:49.560
They I've heard that they will um just like nibble away

00:12:49.660 --> 00:12:54.460
chrome that's been made and use it again, but when they drop the wax flakes they just ignore them.

00:12:54.460 --> 00:12:55.660
Well I always think it's wasteful.

00:12:55.660 --> 00:12:57.980
I tr I always think about well, should I save this?

00:12:57.980 --> 00:12:59.980
That'd be a third of a teaspoon of

00:13:00.620 --> 00:13:04.940
of perfectly beautiful wax there, so it's not really that much.

00:13:04.940 --> 00:13:05.180
No.

00:13:05.500 --> 00:13:10.140
But there's this adage about how much honey it takes to produce that wax.

00:13:09.700 --> 00:13:11.380
What's your opinion on that?

00:13:11.380 --> 00:13:21.860
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.

00:13:22.260 --> 00:13:24.260
The bees use nectar or

00:13:24.440 --> 00:13:26.120
sugar syrup to make wax.

00:13:26.120 --> 00:13:36.840
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.

00:13:36.660 --> 00:13:49.780
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

00:13:50.040 --> 00:13:53.560
sugar calories into wax.

00:13:53.560 --> 00:13:58.600
Um know how people eat too much sugar, they they end up getting fat.

00:13:58.600 --> 00:13:59.720
So the bees are

00:13:59.959 --> 00:14:05.160
The bees are converting sugar to a fat too and they're that's the wax that they're producing.

00:14:05.160 --> 00:14:09.480
I wish I could make construction materials after eating a whole bunch of sugar.

00:14:09.480 --> 00:14:10.600
Yeah.

00:14:10.900 --> 00:14:16.740
Well, the thing I think happens is why don't bees produce wax all the time?

00:14:16.740 --> 00:14:18.980
Why is it just during a nectar flow?

00:14:18.980 --> 00:14:20.820
And you know, if they had enough comb

00:14:21.700 --> 00:14:23.779
They probably wouldn't produce wax.

00:14:23.779 --> 00:14:31.459
Isn't it a stimulus of them have being forced to hold nectar in their crop because there's no place to put it?

00:14:31.520 --> 00:14:34.480
That they begin to unvoluntarily secrete wax?

00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:38.080
Sounds like uh sounds like I gotta go back to class.

00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:40.080
Are you teaching a class soon?

00:14:40.360 --> 00:14:41.320
No, no.

00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:42.040
No, I haven't.

00:14:42.200 --> 00:14:47.399
No, I I thought that that was a the driving impetus for for wax production.

00:14:54.500 --> 00:14:56.180
I didn't know that.

00:15:00.540 --> 00:15:03.899
about twelve to eighteen days old they just made wax.

00:15:03.899 --> 00:15:10.060
But of course there's always some bees that old until the queen stops laying eggs.

00:15:10.060 --> 00:15:12.700
And they really are resistant to making comb

00:15:13.760 --> 00:15:19.440
after m midsummer, you know, after late June goes by.

00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:19.840
Yep.

00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:21.520
I if check me out.

00:15:21.520 --> 00:15:24.720
I'm using old, old information from an old mind

00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:27.240
From a long time ago.

00:15:27.320 --> 00:15:30.040
But something turns it on, something turns it off.

00:15:30.040 --> 00:15:34.280
Or otherwise there'd be wax there'd be wax production going on all the time.

00:15:34.400 --> 00:15:35.520
Yeah, yeah.

00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:44.720
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

00:15:45.240 --> 00:15:53.240
Hey, there's not enough room to store this nectar, so it's sitting in these young bees crops for a while.

00:15:53.240 --> 00:15:56.840
And then they're they're not just like depositing it, they're

00:15:57.500 --> 00:16:00.540
digesting it and making more right.

00:16:00.540 --> 00:16:01.740
They're metabolizing it.

00:16:02.060 --> 00:16:02.940
Metabolizing it.

00:16:02.940 --> 00:16:03.339
Right.

00:16:03.339 --> 00:16:03.899
Right.

00:16:03.980 --> 00:16:04.620
Hmm.

00:16:04.620 --> 00:16:05.579
I like it

00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:07.900
I'm gonna look uh I'm gonna do some reading.

00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:26.720
If you leave if you leave four frames out and you put the inner cover on and you go back and you pull that inner cover up, you know what you're going to find.

00:16:26.440 --> 00:16:27.880
Four nice combs.

00:16:27.880 --> 00:16:29.240
Yep, but Anne, I want to tell you this.

00:16:30.760 --> 00:16:34.920
Tear tear those combs off and see what happens.

00:16:35.020 --> 00:16:38.700
That base is extremely tough.

00:16:38.700 --> 00:16:47.980
So f while the while the bottom of the comb tears all to pieces, the base is really tough and rigid, that where they put the foundation of the comb.

00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:49.660
Is that Propolis?

00:16:49.640 --> 00:16:59.560
Well, it might be some propolis, but also I think that it's thicker comb.

00:16:59.560 --> 00:17:03.320
I think probably as they're working if they detect that it's

00:17:03.960 --> 00:17:13.400
detaching, they they quickly add some more comb, you know, so maybe it tends to become become uh stronger and thicker and reinforced where it's

00:17:13.900 --> 00:17:19.740
the base, as you say, which is the ceiling part of for them up against the inner cover.

00:17:19.740 --> 00:17:21.260
Um the anchor.

00:17:21.260 --> 00:17:21.900
Yeah.

00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:23.600
Yeah, no doubt.

00:17:23.600 --> 00:17:26.160
It'd be like tearing an old sheet of foundation.

00:17:26.160 --> 00:17:31.200
If you had medium brood foundation and you tore it, it gives you some resistance.

00:17:31.240 --> 00:17:32.680
And that was what I was noticing.

00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:34.920
And then when you scrape it off it kind of fights you.

00:17:34.920 --> 00:17:40.120
And there is some propolis there, but the propolis is being added slowly and over time.

00:17:40.200 --> 00:17:41.400
Yeah, externally.

00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:44.120
Yeah, that's I I would definitely

00:17:44.500 --> 00:17:46.500
not just tear those combs off.

00:17:46.500 --> 00:17:52.179
I would cut 'em off really carefully with my sharp hive tool and lay them aside and

00:17:52.519 --> 00:17:58.279
um like rubber band them into some wooden frames if especially if they had brood in 'em.

00:17:58.279 --> 00:18:03.080
If they just have nectar in 'em and they're brand new, they're they get mushy really easily.

00:18:03.240 --> 00:18:04.840
Yeah, they really get mushy.

00:18:04.840 --> 00:18:05.240
Yeah.

00:18:05.240 --> 00:18:06.360
So I would um

00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:11.360
Uh, you know, this is probably in May that this kind of thing happened or June.

00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:19.360
And I don't really worry too much about setting a comb full of nectar, you know, this crazy comb that they made.

00:18:19.160 --> 00:18:20.440
And letting them rob that.

00:18:20.520 --> 00:18:24.760
And at the end of summer I'd be worried about setting up something like robbing.

00:18:24.760 --> 00:18:32.280
Um, but I would save the combs if they had any brood in 'em and just lay the ones with nectar in 'em out to be robbed.

00:18:32.120 --> 00:18:33.320
I agree with that completely.

00:18:33.320 --> 00:18:38.440
If they had any usable brood resources, I would try to give that back.

00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:41.080
Yeah, and the green could be on any of them too.

00:18:41.720 --> 00:18:51.640
You know, don't just go slice or tear, you know, the queen could be walking between any of those while is an excellent comment because that new comb is immediately attractive to that queen.

00:18:51.640 --> 00:18:55.320
And so while you're shaking and bumping and cutting

00:18:55.540 --> 00:18:56.020
Yeah.

00:18:56.020 --> 00:18:58.340
There's a great chance that the queen's up there.

00:18:58.420 --> 00:19:05.940
This is a is especially with like feeders, different kinds of feeders up above the inner cover.

00:19:06.280 --> 00:19:17.880
Sometimes the bees just get wild and build comb around the feeder in that that um vacant space under the under the cover in that super that's hiding the feeder.

00:19:17.660 --> 00:19:19.420
And people don't know what to do with it.

00:19:19.420 --> 00:19:27.740
You know, it's just like it's just madness to a beginner beekeeper and it's like, you know, first

00:19:28.340 --> 00:19:29.780
Give 'em some smoke.

00:19:30.179 --> 00:19:41.940
Second, lay those combs portions out on the top bars of what you've got and probably smoke them more so that if the queen is on them she'll go down below

00:19:42.040 --> 00:19:47.720
And then you can do your reconstruction with rubber bands and a empty wooden frame.

00:19:48.360 --> 00:19:50.280
So it's like um

00:19:51.260 --> 00:20:05.260
surgery, especially tough for a beginner, but if they get into it, then they're just like holding little combs with bees walking on their fingers and they start to go, Wow, this is so cool, you know.

00:20:05.560 --> 00:20:16.600
It's like gotta gotta get in there with the nucs and and the hives and uh just kind of observe and have fun with the bees, especially in those first few months.

00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:24.560
If you left the the frames out, you might even see them, you know, white if they weren't stuck to the uh inner cover and you just had them

00:20:24.919 --> 00:20:29.320
built maybe from below, straight upwards, because sometimes they do that.

00:20:29.320 --> 00:20:36.440
You might see a gap and see them dangling across the gap like rock climbers with their ropes.

00:20:36.560 --> 00:20:37.120
Yep.

00:20:37.120 --> 00:20:43.600
And and that's uh I don't know why people call it festooning, but I love that festooning.

00:20:43.600 --> 00:20:44.320
Yeah, it does.

00:20:44.320 --> 00:20:44.960
Sagging.

00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:46.480
They're festooning.

00:20:46.100 --> 00:20:47.539
I'm like, how do they do that?

00:20:47.539 --> 00:20:54.740
You know, you see ants kinda doing that sometimes when they're trying to cross a gap, but it's like I'm just picturing them

00:20:55.480 --> 00:21:07.160
piling into that area and clinging on to each other really thickly and then maybe for some reason they thinned out and just clung to both the combs.

00:21:07.160 --> 00:21:08.280
And then there was like

00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:14.640
three or four ropes of bees just stretched across the gap and and it's like, hey, what's happening?

00:21:14.640 --> 00:21:16.160
I thought we were clumping up.

00:21:16.560 --> 00:21:19.440
It's just like, I don't know.

00:21:19.620 --> 00:21:20.420
Festooning.

00:21:26.580 --> 00:21:32.340
So that they build their combs perpendicular to the gravitational force in the dark eye.

00:21:32.220 --> 00:21:34.380
So dangling, okay.

00:21:34.380 --> 00:21:37.100
And the gravity keeps 'em plum straight.

00:21:37.260 --> 00:21:44.460
Because they they need that for the dance language to work, because they they need to know where their perception of north is.

00:21:44.600 --> 00:21:47.000
But I'm talking like I know what I'm talking about.

00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:51.559
These are all things that you just uh come up with while we're reminiscing here.

00:21:51.639 --> 00:21:54.120
Yeah, I don't know how like I don't know if they do it

00:21:54.519 --> 00:22:05.080
because I would say that the combs become plum and straight because of gravity and they festoon because of gravity, but they're

00:22:06.340 --> 00:22:15.299
You know, there they're two s two things that happen because of gravity, not like they festoon and I wonder if on that new comb, that brand new comb

00:22:15.760 --> 00:22:18.000
Tender, we talked about how fragile it is.

00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:18.400
Yeah.

00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:22.320
If just the weight of the bees on it pulls it perpendicular to gravity.

00:22:22.320 --> 00:22:24.000
Ah, good one.

00:22:24.380 --> 00:22:25.260
I don't know.

00:22:25.260 --> 00:22:27.660
I'm just making this up as I go along.

00:22:27.660 --> 00:22:34.940
Yeah, they make it they make it any way they want, like in waves that say their hive is facing north-south or whatever.

00:22:34.940 --> 00:22:36.780
They might make some waves of it

00:22:37.179 --> 00:22:40.299
if you messed up and didn't have your your frames in there.

00:22:40.299 --> 00:22:40.620
Yeah.

00:22:40.860 --> 00:22:44.539
Heading east west, you know, but it's always vertical.

00:22:44.539 --> 00:22:46.299
They're they're uh

00:22:47.900 --> 00:22:50.380
They can't they can't fight gravity.

00:22:50.380 --> 00:22:51.660
It's a law, you know.

00:22:52.539 --> 00:22:53.419
It is a law.

00:22:53.419 --> 00:22:54.299
It is.

00:22:54.299 --> 00:22:55.820
And we're out of time.

00:22:55.960 --> 00:23:03.320
But I'd like to ask if we can come back to nucs again because there's a lot about nucs we didn't cover, you know, I'm making them up, using them.

00:23:03.320 --> 00:23:04.680
We mentioned all that.

00:23:04.680 --> 00:23:08.120
But the wax thing was so pervasive I enjoyed talking about it.

00:23:08.120 --> 00:23:10.520
So maybe sometime in the next few months we can

00:23:10.960 --> 00:23:14.640
Can visit this again, especially for hiving swarms and whatever.

00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:17.360
Yes, springtime is uh nuc time.

00:23:17.360 --> 00:23:18.160
All right.

00:23:18.160 --> 00:23:20.400
Until we do this again, I'm gonna let you go.

00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:22.000
Tell everybody bye.

00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:23.520
Okay, bye everybody.

00:23:23.520 --> 00:23:24.480
See you, Jim.

00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:25.200
Bye everybody.

00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:25.680
See you.

00:23:25.800 --> 00:23:27.000
Anne, Thank you.