Plain Talk: Hot Bees (289)

Summer heat brings a familiar sight to many beekeepers: honey bees clustered outside the hive entrance, hanging from the landing board, and covering the front of the colony. In this episode of Honey Bee Obscura, Jim Tew reflects on what beekeepers often call “bearding” and shares memories from decades of working bees in the heat of the Deep South.
Jim explains why colonies gather outside during hot weather and why this behavior is often a normal part of colony temperature regulation rather than a sign of trouble. From long days in Alabama bee yards to late-night pollination moves, he recalls the challenges of managing large colonies when temperatures remain high long after sunset.
Along the way, Jim shares stories about moving bees for pollination, dealing with protective clothing before modern ventilated suits existed, encountering rattlesnakes and black widow spiders in remote bee yards, and learning valuable lessons from commercial beekeepers about transporting colonies safely.
The discussion also turns to the many other creatures attracted to an apiary. Deer, raccoons, skunks, bears, spiders, and countless other animals often become part of the larger ecosystem surrounding honey bee colonies.
Part practical beekeeping discussion and part personal reflection, this episode offers a thoughtful look at how honey bees cope with summer heat and how a lifetime of beekeeping experiences can be triggered by something as simple as a cluster of bees gathered outside the hive on a warm evening.
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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

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.
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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

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Well hello podcast listeners.
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Honey Bee Obscura right here.
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Taking the walk back to the bee yard, I had a plan.
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That was just beautiful.
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Something I wanted to talk with you about.
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It was hot and sultry and humid and my bees were clustered outside and
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Some of them are hanging under the landing board.
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So I set up this presentation.
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It takes a couple of days to get a topic chosen and get everybody informed.
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And now I'm cursed with absolutely beautiful mild weather.
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So I want to go ahead and go through with it because I've had a lot of experience through the
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years with hot bees.
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Listeners, I'm Jim Tew.
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I come to you here once a week or so at honey bee Obscura where I try to talk about something to do.
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with plain talk beekeeping.
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Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
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Join Jim Tew.
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Your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees.
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Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
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You're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started.
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Get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
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Yep.
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It's like I expected.
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It is just a classically beautiful day.
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You know, I'm I'm totally caught off guard.
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There's been something going on in front of one of the hives.
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The grass needs cutting.
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And the grass is totally matted down
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So it's gotta be a raccoon.
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I don't know, now I'm completely caught off guard.
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I wasn't expecting to see that.
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Everything else looks normal
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Except for this depression area.
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There's been a deer sleeping back here in different locations.
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Still gonna stay on the hot hive thing, but now I'm surprised
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I don't see any more deer presses.
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Or what no there's one.
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What is back here?
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There's a large area that's all matted down and pressed.
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And there's another smaller one, I guess
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I guess deer.
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Alright, I'm off the subject.
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I want to talk about hot bees, but I'm caught off guard because
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Just yesterday I read that in the area of Ohio that I'm in and all the surrounding counties, we are being recolonized by black bears.
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And I have a personal story.
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Over in eastern Ohio, I had a beehive there at a friend's cottage.
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And Bears ripped into it two times.
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I wrote about it.
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I'm not sure if I was podcasting with Kim then or not
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But it what a mess those bears make.
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But this doesn't appear to be bears.
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because the hives aren't destroyed because in that paper I was reading put out by the Ohio Department of Agriculture, they specifically listed beehives
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as a target of bears.
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And they told me to put up an electric fence
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Well, electrofences have been suggestions for years and that's just does so much for whatever.
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It's not
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a perfect fix plus it's hard to maintain and it's expensive and you gotta whatever but I guess an electric fence is better than nothing
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What I did down in Tuscarores County, Ohio, is I lashed my colony to a tree and then I lashed it with ratchet straps.
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So at least if the bear was going to get into it, and a big bear still would be able to do it, it would want to have to work for it.
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I haven't had anything happen down there in a long time.
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So I came out here to tell you that my bees have been clustering out front.
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They're hot.
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And I don't know that that's a d uh the wrong thing to do.
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I think it's a very normal thing to do, in fact.
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Because if they're getting out of the nest to provide some kind of safety and security and to temperature control,
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And the only way to do it, when I was just a little guy in s South Alabama all those years ago and air conditioning had not yet become totally common
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People would sit on the front porch.
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I've always had that analogy that bees hanging out on the front of the colony is
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equivalent to us sitting on the front porch when the house was hot at night at my grandmother's.
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Maybe it's a silly analogy.
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I don't know
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I think it's common knowledge that I grew up right on the Alabama-Florida line, not too far from Georgia.
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Dothan's my hometown.
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I haven't been there now in years.
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But it's my hometown.
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It's what's left of my accent all these years later.
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And it was hot there.
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All across the southern tier of Alabama and then across the southern tier of the U.
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S.
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It was hot.
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And I got used to it.
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And now I don't know if I if I went back and worked bees there, I don't know if I could still do it, to tell you the truth
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because of the heat.
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Sitting down, knees hurt.
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You know you wore the at the time the Walter T.
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Kelly Company sold
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a little elastic strap that went around your brow that was supposed to keep the sweat out and it did until you sweat it wet
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And then you just had this wet piece of whatever above your brow.
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They're long gone now.
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I actually went to a hazmat company when I was still working at Ohio State
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And under those hazmat suits they have air conditioning or cooling devices.
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It's a battery-powered vest that went over your torso
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And on the back and your belly, it had ice packs and some kind of coolant, and then there was a
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a pump that would circulate water and I thought this is just going to be perfect under a bee suit
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But it was not perfect and I can't explain why.
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Because you felt so weird for your arms and head and legs to be hot and sweaty in a bee suit.
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and your torso to have cold water circulating over it.
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So comfortable that I thought it would be, indeed, it was really more weird.
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than comfortable.
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And I have no idea what happened to that gadget.
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It didn't work.
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But through the years, heat has been
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A major factor.
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In fact, I would tell beginning beekeepers that we're all worry at worrying about stings, and stings are something to be worried about if you get too many.
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But a sting here and a sting there, that's just beekeeping.
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and you burn waves to tolerate it and then life moves on.
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But w once those uh stinging things became issues you got to suit up and once you suit up
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If the weather is hot, then there's just no way to get around it.
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You're going to be blistering hot.
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We have some really nice protective gear available to us now.
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That's ventilated and air can get through
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We have veils that the front unzips so you can drink water and maybe get the occasional bee out.
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That none of that used to exist.
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We used to wear modified painter outfits.
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that the bee companies would would adapt a zipper on so you could zip a veil on it or just tie a veil on it
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And then that was it.
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So once you heated that up, if you needed to get a drink of water, because believe me you wouldn't pour water through that old screen wire grid that used to be in front of the veil.
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You had to go over
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Find a safe spot, get all the bees off of you, disrobe, as it were, and then take a drink of water, rest for a while, and then soup back up
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And I tried to tell people politely that that is much worse than the occasional sting and that the issue would become trying to prevent that occasional sting.
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Putting on all those protective clothes is going to be something that's going to cause you significant discomfort
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Used to sweat those painter suits wet, just totally wet, when I was in South Alabama
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And then there were there were the bees all around you and then add that smoker.
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I mean you had to take a shower for 30 minutes just to get clean back up and get all the smoke smell off and salt perspiration
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and get all freshened up.
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It was a young man's, a young woman's job to do all that.
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It's not something that I could do now.
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It was a distracting thing to go through.
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And why am I talking to you about it?
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Why am I walking down memory lane like this?
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Because when I would come out and see my bees hanging out front, I would have all these flashbacks.
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I would have all these issues.
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that would occur in my mind about all the hot times that I had lived through looking at
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working bees, moving bees, taking honey off.
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It had to be something that was really in your psyche because otherwise it was hot work.
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Got a plank going over.
00:11:13.860 --> 00:11:17.779
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healthier colonies.
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Some of the most troublesome uh ordeals.
00:12:23.900 --> 00:12:25.900
Why why am I s is this negative?
00:12:25.900 --> 00:12:27.020
I hope it's not negative.
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I hope it's just plain talk
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But it was so difficult at night when you had to move bees for whatever reasons.
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And they were nice populous populated colonies.
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Two deeps, maybe sometimes a super, I don't know.
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It was rarely
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a single deep.
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So in those hot climates you bumble up at night and it's sultry and humid and dark.
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And you'd go out to find that every one of those hives had three or four pounds of bees amassed out front.
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or they're out front for a reason.
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And under those conditions, could I say without any science that smoke doesn't act the same way
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If I tack on the caveat in my opinion, smoke doesn't act the same way, would that be okay to qualify that this is not science?
00:13:23.760 --> 00:13:35.839
Alright, when you smoke the bees out front and there it's dark, they're out front because the hive is hot, their inclination is mostly not to go inside
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Their inclination is just to scatter everywhere.
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So there's bees all over the place.
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They're just all over the hive now because you've gotten that front cluster broken up and the heat
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I don't know of a of a good way to actually get around that.
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I suppose if I had plenty of time and I knew that I was going to be moving bees, I would put a dot a deep
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empty super up top that was screened to give them more space to maybe stay in the colony
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Now I'm having a thought.
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How much harm is it for the bees to be outside?
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I mean they they're they're wild animals.
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They live outside.
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They need to be inside during the winter when it's
00:14:21.100 --> 00:14:26.540
clustered up, but I don't know that it's greatly harmful to have the bees masked out front.
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They would do it in natural nest too.
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I've have seen this in all down through my life as a beekeeper
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where you know there's a bee tree someplace and on occasion you'd go by and they're doing it in that tree too.
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So it's it's a procedure that happens in the wild depending on the dynamics of the cluster size and what's going on inside there.
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I don't know that it's all that bad for the bees to be clustered out front so long as it lets them maintain the brood population temperature inside.
00:14:58.860 --> 00:15:11.019
But if you're having to take bees to watermelon or some kind of pollination project and you got to pick up those bees at night and move them out, it was it was just ugly, ugly work
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The bees crawl everywhere and they're all over you.
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So let me tell you that all that business about I've been keeping bees for years and years and I d I don't have to have that have that protective gear.
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You do that night.
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You gotta have the full suit.
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You gotta have on a top quality veil and probably some duct tape stuck on you somewhere and a good set of gloves
00:15:34.339 --> 00:15:37.540
and it's clumsy and it's hot.
00:15:37.540 --> 00:15:42.420
You gotta light a smoker and keep it going with gloves on because you've got bees all over you.
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They're scattered everywhere.
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And you finally get them picked up and moved.
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So nothing about this is good for the bees.
00:15:51.580 --> 00:15:54.380
But I'll just choose watermelons.
00:15:54.220 --> 00:16:08.140
but there's a lot good for watermelons to get those bees to those plantings for supplemental pollination for those big watermelon fields in the south, apple orchards in the north, but the climate's not quite so bad and the bees are not so
00:16:08.339 --> 00:16:09.620
testy.
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But I've had some long nights picking up bees, moving bees at night as a young man to different locations, making splits, having just what I thought was a good time.
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I was a real beekeeper doing real bee work.
00:16:23.220 --> 00:16:25.380
and it really was work.
00:16:25.380 --> 00:16:37.620
And there was always other things to think about in the south where I was then, because at night rattlesnakes come out of the dens and lay outside where it's cooler.
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So you had to be aware of the fact that some of these snakes are active at night and all my life.
00:16:43.620 --> 00:16:50.180
I can only think of two separate occasions that I actually came across the rattlesnake in one of my southern yards.
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I gave it a lot of room.
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No, I didn't I didn't run try to assassinate the thing.
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I was never armed.
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It was always too much bee stuff to carry.
00:16:59.820 --> 00:17:05.660
to also have some kind of firearm there so I didn't have anything to t attack it anyway.
00:17:05.660 --> 00:17:09.100
But you better know that I never felt secure about that yard again.
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I always knew that
00:17:10.740 --> 00:17:17.699
Somewhere there's a snake and I've got some folklore that those snakes usually are paired.
00:17:17.699 --> 00:17:19.220
So if you see one
00:17:20.019 --> 00:17:27.220
Back out the way you came because somewhere close by there's probably its mate and you haven't seen it yet
00:17:27.740 --> 00:17:38.060
Secondly, and in a peculiarity of some of the yards I had, at night, with those bees clustered out front and these moves that I'm doing,
00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:51.059
I had to remember that underneath every one of my beehives was probably at least one, if not several, beautiful, glossy, clear black widow spiders.
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I was never bitten by one, I was never attacked by one, but I wore gloves.
00:17:57.060 --> 00:18:04.020
So I'm telling you that there are times even experienced beekeepers, especially the more experienced you are
00:18:04.260 --> 00:18:12.740
And the more bees you're going to be coming in contact with, the more equipment you're going to have to have on to make this work.
00:18:13.019 --> 00:18:24.139
When I see these bees clustered outside in Ohio, I pleasantly flash back to youthful years when I had energy and stamina
00:18:24.900 --> 00:18:27.460
And I was able to deal with these things.
00:18:27.460 --> 00:18:32.020
Indeed, listeners, I wanted to deal with these things.
00:18:32.020 --> 00:18:33.220
Not now.
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I have no interest in picking up these beehives and moving them
00:18:37.220 --> 00:18:41.540
I have no interest in all the work that would go in with that.
00:18:41.540 --> 00:18:43.860
I had a nice time.
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I do have a short story that has nothing to do with anything
00:18:47.100 --> 00:18:53.900
I'm an entomologist, and spiders are not insects, but they get kind of lumped in with entomology.
00:18:53.900 --> 00:18:58.220
I thought those black widow spiders were the neatest things I'd ever seen.
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So I captured several of them and coffee creamers, you know, those little plastic coffee creamers with the lids at the time.
00:19:04.980 --> 00:19:07.380
I don't know what's available now, but they were clear.
00:19:07.380 --> 00:19:09.380
They were about an ounce and a half
00:19:09.980 --> 00:19:16.380
And I brought three or four of those spiders back to Ohio and I put them in an aquarium in my office.
00:19:16.380 --> 00:19:19.100
And I would drop in the occasional house fly.
00:19:19.100 --> 00:19:23.340
At the time we had plenty of flies because we had open turkey prairies
00:19:23.280 --> 00:19:25.440
for research projects.
00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:28.240
Flies were never in short supply.
00:19:28.240 --> 00:19:36.000
And so I would feed them flies and any other insects I'd come along with and then just watch them do their black widow thing inside.
00:19:36.019 --> 00:19:47.220
And one of my neighboring professors got wind of my unique hobby that I had in my office and he filed an official complaint.
00:19:47.380 --> 00:19:54.340
that I was keeping venomous animals in my office that would be a danger if they escaped.
00:19:54.340 --> 00:19:56.660
And I suppose they would have been.
00:19:56.980 --> 00:20:04.100
I suppose they would have been, and I was politely but firmly instructed to break that system down.
00:20:04.100 --> 00:20:05.940
My story kind of peters out there.
00:20:05.940 --> 00:20:08.180
The spiders didn't live that long anyway.
00:20:08.180 --> 00:20:09.300
They died
00:20:09.540 --> 00:20:17.460
I broke that yard down and moved it to Ohio all the way from South Alabama all those years ago.
00:20:17.460 --> 00:20:19.700
And that's one of the times that
00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:22.080
I had to go out and do this move.
00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:24.480
It was a commercial beekeeper that was doing it for me.
00:20:24.480 --> 00:20:25.760
He was making the move.
00:20:25.760 --> 00:20:27.200
And what a child I was.
00:20:27.200 --> 00:20:30.080
I had about 25 colonies there.
00:20:29.940 --> 00:20:33.139
There were two deeps in the super on most of them.
00:20:33.139 --> 00:20:38.179
They were totally heavy and they hadn't been opened in quite a while.
00:20:38.179 --> 00:20:43.139
And so I, with confidence and with authority, explained to the commercial guy
00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:49.280
that there was no need to strap them up, that they were totally propolized together.
00:20:50.240 --> 00:20:54.320
He just barely laughed right out loud, and he went to his truck and got out of
00:20:54.740 --> 00:21:08.740
ten, fifteen pound box of hive staples and went around stapling every one of those things, they wouldn't have made it fi they wouldn't have made it five miles before those propolis bonds would have shattered and cracked and tops coming off and
00:21:09.540 --> 00:21:15.140
I realized what a childlike guy I was when it came to moving bees long distance at that point.
00:21:15.140 --> 00:21:17.540
He had to deal with the bees out front.
00:21:17.540 --> 00:21:22.180
They all loaded him up because I was paying them and even though I could help
00:21:22.419 --> 00:21:25.620
I basically stayed out of the way.
00:21:25.620 --> 00:21:31.860
I don't know where I'm at on time, but I've just got a sense that I'm kind of running out, but I want to go back to where I started
00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:34.240
One more time.
00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:41.120
I would try to but make pictures of these dened areas, but I don't think they'd show up.
00:21:41.120 --> 00:21:42.080
But something
00:21:43.980 --> 00:21:47.260
Has been attacking two of my hives.
00:21:47.260 --> 00:21:49.020
They seem okay.
00:21:49.020 --> 00:21:49.980
Yes, I do.
00:21:49.980 --> 00:21:51.260
I have a trail camera.
00:21:51.260 --> 00:21:54.940
And yes, I'm going to get it out, get the batteries charged up
00:21:55.460 --> 00:22:00.020
and see what is bothering my bees here.
00:22:00.020 --> 00:22:04.020
Some of you told me to put mulch in front of the colonies to keep the weeds suppressed.
00:22:04.020 --> 00:22:07.460
Others said to put down carpet remnants, pallets
00:22:07.820 --> 00:22:11.100
Anything else just to give the bees a clear landing feel.
00:22:11.100 --> 00:22:15.340
Well, another thing you can do is let skunks come in or raccoons.
00:22:15.340 --> 00:22:17.580
If it were skunks, I think I'd be smelling them.
00:22:17.580 --> 00:22:20.620
There is absolutely no odor, so it must be raccoons
00:22:21.120 --> 00:22:23.440
This is what I tried to tell you about.
00:22:23.440 --> 00:22:26.480
These bees cluster out front when they're hot.
00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:32.960
I don't know how bad that is because it's just another way of regulating temperature inside.
00:22:32.660 --> 00:22:37.220
I've half lightly misted them, hosed them down to see if they'd go back in.
00:22:37.220 --> 00:22:43.700
Nope, they just all faced uphill and shed the water off of them and they still stayed outside.
00:22:43.660 --> 00:22:53.020
So when I see these bees clustered out front, I go back and I have just copious numbers of memories of old times long gone.
00:22:53.340 --> 00:22:56.220
Go out some time and look at your beehives on a warm night.
00:22:56.299 --> 00:23:00.220
You'll probably be surprised at how many bees are sleeping outside.
00:23:00.220 --> 00:23:01.340
Secondly
00:23:01.820 --> 00:23:07.420
I've said before that an apiary is a lot like a the beaver pond.
00:23:07.420 --> 00:23:10.620
The beavers build the pond and then a lot of things come there.
00:23:10.620 --> 00:23:13.340
Birds, fish, toads.
00:23:13.040 --> 00:23:16.400
Predators come to that beaver pond and use it too.
00:23:16.400 --> 00:23:21.120
Well when you put a apiary in, bees are the things that started it
00:23:21.340 --> 00:23:23.660
But everything else wants to live here too.
00:23:23.660 --> 00:23:30.059
Apparently deer and one occasion in my life, two bears on two separate occasions.
00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:36.360
And then there's apparently raccoons that have dug down to the grass and beat all the grass down.
00:23:36.360 --> 00:23:40.760
So they're having a good time back here too.
00:23:41.260 --> 00:23:47.019
And lastly, it's just a nice, beautiful day to be out in the bee yard.
00:23:47.019 --> 00:23:55.419
I'm not doing anything, I'm not harassing anybody, I'm just watching somewhat of a natural ecosystem if my beehive bar
00:23:55.860 --> 00:24:00.899
offices can be considered natural ecosystems, watching them at work.
00:24:00.899 --> 00:24:02.740
I enjoy this.
00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:04.659
I enjoy talking to you.
00:24:04.659 --> 00:24:10.580
Thanks for being so patient and listening and letting me reminisce about times that are now gone.
00:24:11.100 --> 00:24:16.059
I'm Jim telling you bye until we can talk again next week.
00:24:16.059 --> 00:24:17.179
Goodbye.







