July 9, 2026
Plain Talk: Hot Bees, Ants and Weeds (291)
As summer temperatures climb across much of North America, Dr. Jim Tew reflects on what extreme heat means for both honey bees and the people who care for them. Speaking from his Ohio bee yard during an intense July heat wave, Jim shares why years of experience—and a healthy respect for aging—have changed how he approaches midsummer beekeeping.
Rather than opening colonies simply to satisfy curiosity, Jim explains why strong colonies should often be left alone during periods of excessive heat, allowing the bees to maintain the carefully regulated temperatures they need inside the hive. He also discusses practical ways beekeepers can adjust their own work schedules by borrowing lessons from earlier generations who routinely worked outdoors before the day’s highest temperatures.
The conversation then shifts to an often-overlooked subject: ants. Drawing from decades of beekeeping in both Alabama and Ohio, Jim explores the surprisingly complex relationship between ants and honey bee colonies. While ants are commonly viewed as pests, Jim describes situations where they may actually provide ecological benefits by cleaning hive debris and helping suppress wax moth infestations in dead colonies.
Finally, Jim reflects on adapting both his beekeeping and his bee yard to changing physical abilities. Rather than striving for perfectly manicured apiaries, he shares his evolving philosophy of working with nature, maintaining accessible pathways through a more natural landscape while continuing to enjoy the bees that have shaped so much of his life.
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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
WEBVTT
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Hey listeners, you know the drill.
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I don't wear my windscreen anymore because the bees keep attacking it.
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I'm walking back to the bee yard.
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Listeners, it has been insufferably hot.
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I'll go ahead and tell you exactly where I am, even though when you listen to this, you won't be there
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It's July the 4th, and we've been under that heat dome.
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And everything has just been unreasonably hot.
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I felt like I was
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in my hometown in South Alabama again.
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I mean to see 87 at 9 o'clock at night is just unheard of in Ohio
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So I'm walking back and I want to talk about heat a little bit, but I want to come back with a more vibrant beekeeper to talk about how you can deal with heat if you're a bee guy working my way through the bar.
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So this will be kind of a two-part segment, I suspect.
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Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here about once a week where I try to talk
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about something to do with just 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 Jew Tew, 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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Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
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You know, I know I'm wearing you out.
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I am so sorry for that.
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But I know I'm wearing you out with this.
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I can't do it.
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I can't manage it.
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I'm old.
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I'm sick.
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I'm sad.
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I'm whatever
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I'm just a chronic excuse manufacturing system.
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But honestly, in this heat
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At my age, I cannot be out here alone running some kind of weed tremor to keep the grass down.
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I grew up in Alabama, and not just Alabama, I grew up in South Alabama.
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It uh not uncommonly snows in North Alabama, but it's rare.
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In my hometown, Dothan, right on the Georgia, Florida line inside of Alabama
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And that's where I grew up keeping bees.
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And I I can't imagine.
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No offense to Alabama beekeepers or southeastern beekeepers who might be listening or southwest beekeepers who have heat all the time
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I know you learn to live with it.
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I understand that.
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But right now the last thing I would want to do
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is to open these hives.
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There are several hundred bees on the landing board all fanning frantically.
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It thunderstormed last night, so I hope there's pools of water around for them.
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I used to put water out, and then it just got soggy and ugly, and then when I put it out, the bees didn't come to it.
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They've already found their own water sources
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I stopped doing it, even though years ago I would have hundreds of bees at these birdbath water sources
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Taking on water.
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And I even had bees doing it when it was stunningly cold.
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And I talked about all that, and that's not where I want to go today.
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Where I want to go today is
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This just would not be a good time to open these hives.
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Number one, my my physiology is all keyed.
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I'm hot.
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I'm sweaty
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I would fill the stings a lot more.
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The bees are very active.
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It would destroy the cooling system they've got going inside the hive.
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So, why would I open that colony?
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I'm not.
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I'm not.
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If I were a young beekeeper and had exuberance, I'd probably rip right into it
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But I'm not doing that.
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So in my late life form of beekeeping, I have to assume
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that the bees can fly about a half mile away to where there's a stream and it's never gone dry since I've lived here in 50 years, the Apple Creek.
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And I hope they can find water there.
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I'm just not trying to provide it for them.
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I know, I know, you're supposed to let a water hose drip
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You're supposed to put out containers.
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I know I know all of that, but there's so much now that I just don't do.
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More and more and more I become a natural beekeeper
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So I'm back here today.
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The bees are all vibrant, strong, healthy.
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I want to walk over in this tall grass
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Probably going to pick up a tick and look at one of those little hives.
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You remember I talked about it
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Several weeks ago, by now several months ago, and their bees are still coming and going, so they have a queen in there, and they're surviving okay
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That looks good.
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I'm not going to open them either.
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I want to go back to where we had the dreaded swarm where we Jason and I pulled the
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The vacuum way back here, I put a little swarm over there out of the way so maybe it wouldn't get robbed out by being too close to the big colonies
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I'm walking back there now trying not to fall.
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If I do, somebody dial 911 for me.
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And they're still flying
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Not a lot, there's just two or three bees.
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There may be a problem in that one, but just directly under the tree where Jason got the swarm down
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Let me ramble off the subject for a while.
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Jason has been a good friend of mine.
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He's about half my age.
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I've known him since the day he was born.
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His wife is Mexican.
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And last night I told Jason Bai he's moving to Mexico.
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So that's gonna be a loss for me.
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I'll go ahead and tell you that.
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He's been here several times.
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He was always a good
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A good podcaster to be here.
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Plus, he's far more agile than I am.
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I don't know how it's going to work out if he finds bees down there
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Certainly I'll log out on our program and capture something, but that's a change.
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So what little help I did have, I'm losing that.
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When I lived in Alabama, I remember it distinctly.
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You would just sweat yourself wet.
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I got to move back to the shade.
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I can't sit in the sun
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So if you had on those old style bee suits that all they were was modified painter clothes.
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and an old A.I. Root screen veil and you'd sweat right through it and then immediately the veil would begin to rust from your sweat and then after you used it for hardly a year
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Then that rusted spot would break out and then you got a hole right in the middle of your veil.
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And you put duct tape over it.
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Then you got to look around the duct tape until you buy another veil.
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So at least now with these ventilated suits and galvanized wire, I'm not galvanized, vinyl wire, vinyl screening, and the hoods has been a major improvement.
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And I have no interest in going back to the old hot cotton clothes.
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You'd sweat them wet, and then once they sweat once you perspired so much that the suit stuck to you, then the bees could much more easily sting through it.
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Especially at night.
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So I I understand you people who have to to live in high heat.
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My grandparents, you know, lived in a
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An old dog trot type house with the hall down the middle to go to Venturi pulling the hot air through the house at least at night, sometimes during the day too.
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Sometimes they would sleep out there if the weather was particularly hot.
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They grew up at a time with no air conditioning and the way the way they dealt with it is they started very early, an hour before dawn.
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They fed animals while my grandmother cooked.
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Then they'd come back and eat, and then they'd go work in the field until around 10.
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45, maybe 11.
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And in the heat of the day, long before daylight savings time, they would come back and sleep, nap during the middle of the day
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and then would not go back out to work until much later.
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I bet you that that philosophy would still work for hot weather beekeeping.
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Get up as early as you can when it's cool.
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Go outside.
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Get your bee work done as quickly as possible.
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And then leave the bees alone during the heated part of the day.
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And under those conditions that warm, you could actually open the bees late in the afternoon.
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afternoon and they can still have time to recover.
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They're not clustering.
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They're going to mostly be outside by then to avoid the heat inside the colony.
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I think that it's proper to say that a lot of my grandmother's grandparents' grandfather's techniques for heat avoidance would work for beekeepers and avoiding the same thing.
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I guess a lot of you people in colder climates, Minnesota, Dakotas, are kind of rolling your eyes right now because this is not a topic really related to you, but it's related to me right now
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I don't know what all this heat means, but the bees seem to be tolerating it okay.
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It just really, really
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reduces my entrance into putting on a full bee suit, lighting a smoker, and tearing into these colonies just to look.
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So my just have a quick look days of beekeeping.
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are pretty much gone.
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If I now at my age and this heat, if I open a beehive, there needs to be a crystal clear reason for it
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Let's move on to some other updates.
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The animal was a raccoon.
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The bedding and the
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The wearing down part seems to have subsided because the grass is regrowing.
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There is one over here that may still be nope, there's there's grass growing there too
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One of the cues that an animal is bothering it is that the front edge of the landing board will be bright and polished, where the animal has laid up against the landing board while it was eating.
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Clearly not a skunk because there's not a bit of an odor out here at all.
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I'm gonna walk over again to a different shade.
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Being from Alabama, you don't stand in the sun, you stand in the shade
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This is a swarm that I picked up.
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I didn't pick it up.
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It moved in by itself.
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They're washboarding
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I never know what that is.
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We'll talk more about that probably next week.
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It's just a weedy, natural beehive.
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Bee yard.
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Everything looks okay.
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I don't know what else to say about that that would be relevant.
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I want to talk to you for a few minutes about ants.
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Because I have ants in most of my colonies.
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If I had a bee suit on I'd start popping tops just to have a look, but I know what I would find.
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On top of the inner covers, I frequently have functional ant nest.
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of different species of ants that I can't identify.
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There's so many of them.
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There's carpenter ants and there's medium-sized black ants.
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And then in one of them there was really small ants.
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And I've tried to figure out how to ants and bees, both Hymenopterous insects, closely related, similar respiratory systems
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different lifestyles, how do they coexist?
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And my impulse, as I always do in so many cases, is to dump the ant nest and try to dis disrupt it.
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and see if that helps the bees.
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Well when you go back the next day, either the nest has reconstituted itself
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Or it's a different nest.
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I don't know.
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But it looks like that ants and bees coexist in perpetuity
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It's been that way as long as I can remember.
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I've already mentioned my southeast Alabama roots over and over again.
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Well fire ants were just just unheavenly common.
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And I know I've talked about it with Kelm and others in the past, but it was a peculiar situation when I would read
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At the time, it was books and pamphlets.
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It was not on the web.
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There really was no web then.
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People in Texas said that they actually killed beehives.
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And that was reported
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I am not arguing, I'm just saying that was not my experience with fire ants.
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Anytime I had an incubation mound piled up against
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A beehive, I had to to watch that nest, that mound, that incubation mound.
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Because if you stood at it while you're working bees, all of a sudden your feet and legs would be on fire, hence the common name given to these ants
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I dare say that in most cases strong colonies in some way, some fashion dealt with those ants because they seemed to coexist.
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I never actually found them in the colony.
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They cleaned up the front of the nest so all the dead bee detritus was eaten and foraged on by ants and whatever else wanted to forage on that.
00:15:05.940 --> 00:15:17.620
But the thing that I really want to jump to is when a colony did die for whatever reasons, I don't know, possibly fire ants, the wax moths never had a chance.
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Because when the wax moths began to kind of take over as that colony declined, the ants were on top of it.
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The fire ants were on top of it.
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And seeing this happening and seeing that in Alabama where wax moths were actually available all the time, to see that in a n a nest that should have been completely consumed by wax moths
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was not consumed by wax moths, those ants were doing it.
00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:47.460
They were foraging on those wax moth larvae.
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They seem to be, oh, someone may really want to argue with me on this, and that would be okay, because I'm I'm only know what I'm talking about from my experience in Alabama.
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I can't discuss
00:15:59.620 --> 00:16:02.899
ant predation in any other state.
00:16:02.899 --> 00:16:04.899
But they seem to be beneficial.
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There's the word.
00:16:05.779 --> 00:16:10.180
They seem to be beneficial to the bee yard basic operation.
00:16:10.180 --> 00:16:13.940
They suppressed wax moths, they cleaned up yard litter.
00:16:13.900 --> 00:16:17.020
They were they never nested inside the colony.
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They always nested around the hive stands that were down on the ground.
00:16:21.340 --> 00:16:25.500
While I give you a chance to chew on that, let's take a break.
00:16:25.400 --> 00:16:28.680
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So the thing I wanted to come back to you with on this ant business.
00:17:30.960 --> 00:17:38.080
Was to tell you that I actually began to use them as a wax moth control technique
00:17:38.620 --> 00:17:47.980
So when I would find a hive that was dead, that was sitting high on a stand, and the ants had not mounded against the base of it, they couldn't get to it.
00:17:47.660 --> 00:17:55.420
and there were wax moths beginning to attack this dead and dying colony, specifically those that were dead already.
00:17:55.420 --> 00:17:59.420
I would just take those things, those colonies that that deep, that super
00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:13.200
and go to the nearest fire ant mound, which was usually very close by, and I would jam that equipment right into that incubation mound until the ants were just rolling out
00:18:13.240 --> 00:18:16.200
and they were upset.
00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:17.640
And then you leave it.
00:18:17.640 --> 00:18:20.760
I would leave it for about a day or maybe two.
00:18:20.760 --> 00:18:25.800
And then I would go back to it and move that ant-infested equipment
00:18:26.120 --> 00:18:34.120
about ten feet away and just set it up and then leave it for another day and then and then when I return to it
00:18:34.519 --> 00:18:43.480
The ants were gone, and they had spotlessly cleaned everything edible out of that colony.
00:18:43.480 --> 00:18:44.840
There were there were no
00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:48.840
No wax moth larvae of any kind.
00:18:48.840 --> 00:18:51.560
Am I recommending this as a type of control?
00:18:51.800 --> 00:18:52.520
Not really.
00:18:52.520 --> 00:18:58.600
I'm just saying that if you happen to have such a situation, you could kind of use it
00:18:59.019 --> 00:19:10.139
to your advantage, and the thing you get from it primarily is a sense of satisfaction that you're tormenting wax moths, which in many other cases could be considered a viable part
00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:22.400
of apiculture because they may be given credit for cleaning up old nests and uh preparing them for future bee nest or for squirrels or birds to move into that natural cavity.
00:19:22.400 --> 00:19:25.280
So it just depends, is it a weed or not?
00:19:25.160 --> 00:19:28.360
Well it depends on where it's growing and whether or not I want it.
00:19:28.360 --> 00:19:29.800
That was my situation.
00:19:29.800 --> 00:19:31.560
That was my understanding of ants.
00:19:31.560 --> 00:19:36.200
It seems like ants and bees are always coexisting in some form
00:19:37.100 --> 00:19:42.380
I did a chat GPT search and tried to find out, you know, how that bees deal with it.
00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:46.380
And it's very general that the bees fan, they carry the ants away.
00:19:46.860 --> 00:19:49.580
It was nothing miraculous.
00:19:49.500 --> 00:19:55.260
And the thing I didn't find anything out about was the ants opinion on this.
00:19:55.260 --> 00:19:57.179
What were they trying to accomplish?
00:19:57.179 --> 00:19:58.700
What was their mode of action?
00:19:58.700 --> 00:20:00.140
What were they trying to do?
00:20:00.140 --> 00:20:00.620
They
00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:06.020
Ants were so small and they have their own sting, so it'd be sting versus counter sting.
00:20:06.020 --> 00:20:09.780
But yet somehow, most of the time, they seem to coexist.
00:20:09.780 --> 00:20:13.860
Every time I've seen ants really be a problem in a colony
00:20:14.060 --> 00:20:20.220
It was a small, weak, defeated colony that was experiencing failure to thrive.
00:20:20.220 --> 00:20:21.980
Now on this hot day
00:20:22.700 --> 00:20:32.540
In this hot bee yard with the wind blowing kind of cooking me evenly, I need to say that here in Ohio I have an ant problem of a different scope.
00:20:32.540 --> 00:20:35.180
Even if the bees are up on a hive stand
00:20:36.120 --> 00:20:49.400
Black carpenter ants move up into them and I've had a problem with expanded polystyrene equipment just being eaten alive by both wax moths when they're available
00:20:49.780 --> 00:20:53.460
and by ants when the opportunity arises.
00:20:53.460 --> 00:21:04.260
So those black carpenter ants would just tunnel all through that thick expanded polystyrene hive body, bottom board, whatever.
00:21:03.720 --> 00:21:15.080
So anytime that there's been a s a possibility, some use of uh pliable plastic equipment, of course carpenter ants can readily eat wood too, and they will
00:21:16.140 --> 00:21:18.620
They were always up on the inner cover.
00:21:18.620 --> 00:21:21.500
All these ants that I see are up on the inner cover.
00:21:21.500 --> 00:21:27.660
And when I would see an occasional ant inside the colony, I had to wonder, well that did it drop off
00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:31.400
when I moved the intercoper, when I came out and disturbed things.
00:21:31.400 --> 00:21:36.120
The ants seemed to be co-living, coexisting.
00:21:35.800 --> 00:21:46.760
I've said before that the bees are basically beavers of the insect world because they colonize an area and then all these other critters move into it, raccoons.
00:21:47.400 --> 00:21:52.520
Uh beetles, scavengers, all kinds of insects come to live here.
00:21:52.520 --> 00:21:56.440
Birds, toads, ants just seem to fit right in with that.
00:21:56.440 --> 00:22:01.559
I would mention earwigs, but that's an interesting story for some other time.
00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:10.160
None of those animals were systematically centralized in one area until the bee yard made it opportunistic for them.
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:14.000
The point I'm making is that I've not had the best luck
00:22:14.220 --> 00:22:26.460
with expanded polystyrene when carpenter ants were available to tunnel through it because the bees couldn't get to them tunneling inside those thick walled hives.
00:22:26.220 --> 00:22:34.540
I also have smaller ants that live on the inner covers, black ants, and they don't they're just laying, all their pupae and larvae are just laying there.
00:22:34.540 --> 00:22:38.140
They're not they're exposed up on the inner cover.
00:22:38.140 --> 00:22:40.460
Does that hurt anything?
00:22:40.660 --> 00:22:53.059
By disrupting that relationship, am I am I destroying some kind of ecological balance or are they possibly oh it would be heavenly if they were somehow eating mites
00:22:54.260 --> 00:23:06.019
I've seen on the screen bottom boards when they drop down to the aluminum plate that's down there that there would be scavengers down there and I assumed they would eat any Varroa mite that dropped down through
00:23:06.580 --> 00:23:16.660
But for right now, most beekeepers have historically said that ants are not good for anything and they have the ant traps that they put on the edge with oil.
00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:20.240
And then the ants would figure out how to stream across the oil.
00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:25.760
There were always these things to be done to try to keep mechanically keep ants out.
00:23:25.760 --> 00:23:29.760
You couldn't use pesticides because that was such an issue
00:23:29.560 --> 00:23:31.080
That's the ant thing.
00:23:31.080 --> 00:23:35.880
I routinely have ants in these beehives that I don't routinely manage.
00:23:35.880 --> 00:23:39.720
If if everything comes to an ecological balance.
00:23:39.820 --> 00:23:49.580
In Ohio, the ants seemed to live on the top box inner cover lid, and they seem to be happy there.
00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:50.399
I don't know why.
00:23:50.399 --> 00:23:51.440
Are they protected?
00:23:51.440 --> 00:23:52.559
Is it warmer?
00:23:52.559 --> 00:23:55.279
Is it just a possible nest cavity?
00:23:55.279 --> 00:24:00.799
Why do ants leave their natural ground nest and move to a beehive?
00:24:00.919 --> 00:24:02.440
And how are they getting up there?
00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:06.919
I don't I don't see trails of ants going up these beehives.
00:24:06.919 --> 00:24:08.600
I don't I don't know how they do it
00:24:08.740 --> 00:24:16.900
But I gotta tell you this, any any styrofoam equipment in Jim Tew's yard, I don't speak for anyone else.
00:24:16.740 --> 00:24:19.460
I can't put it on during the ant months.
00:24:19.460 --> 00:24:23.780
It can only go on during the cool months or the cold months.
00:24:23.780 --> 00:24:24.820
One last chapter.
00:24:24.820 --> 00:24:26.260
I don't know where I am on my time.
00:24:26.260 --> 00:24:28.900
I tried to set my phone and it's not working
00:24:29.320 --> 00:24:31.000
But I want to do one last thing.
00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:33.960
Yesterday I went over to Jason's Go On Away party.
00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:36.840
I told him bye, had my picture made with him
00:24:37.140 --> 00:24:40.020
And I left after a while, ate some barbecue.
00:24:40.020 --> 00:24:43.620
I had a nice time, saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time.
00:24:43.620 --> 00:24:46.020
And as I was leaving, I drove by
00:24:46.419 --> 00:24:58.580
a natural patch with an Ohio State sign professionally and boldly standing right before the patch that said Ohio Natural Grassland Tall Prairie
00:24:58.840 --> 00:25:09.080
Well hang on listeners because I'm basically sitting in that right now and I tried to describe it to you last year that when I couldn't take care of my bees.
00:25:08.940 --> 00:25:10.860
and for the previous years.
00:25:10.860 --> 00:25:13.899
This tall grass, weed, whatever thing would take over.
00:25:13.899 --> 00:25:23.580
It had a lot of flowering plants to it, and I really brought in a a diversity of butterflies and native bees and animals and deer nesting back here.
00:25:23.640 --> 00:25:34.680
There's still the deer press back here and my neighbors did see a fawn coming out one day, so I've got a really small unintentional ecosystem here
00:25:35.019 --> 00:25:49.659
And I've have labeled this my Ohio Tall Prairie Grass Beekeeping Yard, just as a defense measure against not being able to justify why the grass is so tall back here.
00:25:49.940 --> 00:25:52.900
I just can't I just can't cut it all down.
00:25:52.900 --> 00:25:54.020
I I can't do the work.
00:25:54.020 --> 00:25:55.780
I can't stand the heat.
00:25:55.780 --> 00:26:02.820
In fact, I was just having a few medical tests done this past two weeks or so, and I'm happy to tell you that I passed them all
00:26:03.220 --> 00:26:05.620
I'm I'm relieved to tell you that.
00:26:05.620 --> 00:26:08.340
But don't come out here and push it, Jim.
00:26:08.340 --> 00:26:12.820
So what I'm going to do, I'm going to make a trip to one of the national parks.
00:26:12.820 --> 00:26:14.580
My family is taking me.
00:26:14.580 --> 00:26:16.260
A biggie for me
00:26:16.440 --> 00:26:18.039
You know, you give up a lot of things.
00:26:18.039 --> 00:26:19.480
I don't water ski anymore.
00:26:19.880 --> 00:26:21.480
I'm not going to zip line.
00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:23.000
There's just all kind of things you give up.
00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:27.000
But in the new column, you get to do a lot of new and different things.
00:26:26.820 --> 00:26:35.300
And on this particular trip, I'm supposed to sit in a wheelchair so they can get me through the airport quickly to the next gate.
00:26:35.140 --> 00:26:38.900
without me having to hob along at my old man totter speed.
00:26:38.900 --> 00:26:42.420
So you see, you give some things up and you acquire some new things.
00:26:42.420 --> 00:26:46.660
But when I get back, my plan is to cut paths
00:26:46.720 --> 00:26:52.320
to my bees and to keep the entrance opened up, even though it does shade.
00:26:52.320 --> 00:26:54.480
As I say that, I'm wondering
00:26:54.500 --> 00:27:06.820
If the tall grass actually shades the bees and by me open it, yes, it would clear a flight plat path, but yes, it also lets this hot summer sun hit the front of the hives.
00:27:06.540 --> 00:27:09.820
You know you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
00:27:09.820 --> 00:27:14.060
But I've got to have I've got to have paths and and I can open pathways
00:27:14.100 --> 00:27:21.460
I'm going to see how that works to lay out to bring my my walk behind string tremor out and not try just to take down these weeds.
00:27:21.460 --> 00:27:26.500
Some of them this grass, I don't know if it's weeds or grass or natural plants
00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:36.720
And instead of trying to fight everything and mow everything, I know you people, I've seen those pictures of your beautiful mown mowed yards and colonies painted.
00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:38.160
I just that's just not me.
00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:39.280
I can't do it
00:27:39.980 --> 00:27:41.500
So that's my plan.
00:27:41.500 --> 00:27:47.820
I have learned to justify the mess in my yard by saying it's a natural tall grass, Ohio Prairie.
00:27:47.919 --> 00:27:56.000
and I'll cut colorful paths to it and then all these things can grow and bloom and everything can have a nice time back here.
00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:01.360
I know, I know, I know that it's not traditional beekeeping
00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:07.519
And I know that nearly all of you are traditional beekeepers.
00:28:07.519 --> 00:28:12.240
It's the right sermon for the wrong congregation.
00:28:12.380 --> 00:28:18.940
But you need to know that everybody listening to me who are is not here yet, you will be one day
00:28:19.760 --> 00:28:29.679
So it's okay if you begin to think and accept the fact that traditional beekeeping is not necessarily always the only beekeeping.
00:28:29.620 --> 00:28:31.220
out of sheer necessity.
00:28:31.220 --> 00:28:34.020
I'm going to have some visiting speakers, I hope, next week.
00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:35.780
We're going to address this heat thing more.
00:28:35.780 --> 00:28:41.300
I'm sitting here now just in the shade, just perspiring like crazy.
00:28:41.019 --> 00:28:44.620
This heat thing, I think, needs to be discussed again.
00:28:44.620 --> 00:28:49.980
Apparently, as the as the climate seems to be changing, maybe this heat thing is going to be
00:28:50.800 --> 00:28:52.640
More common than it has been.
00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:54.640
I don't know.
00:28:54.640 --> 00:28:56.080
You know I'm done.
00:28:56.240 --> 00:28:58.640
Wanna get ready to make a a nice trip here.
00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:00.720
I'll be talking to you again next week.
00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:01.840
Thank you for listening.
00:29:01.840 --> 00:29:03.360
I always enjoy talking with you.
00:29:03.360 --> 00:29:04.560
Please know this, no matter how
00:29:05.240 --> 00:29:16.040
defeated, no matter how old, no matter how haphazard I sound, I always care about the bees and I always enjoy the bees and I always do enjoy talking about them.
00:29:16.040 --> 00:29:19.960
Until we talk again, I'm Jim telling you bye.
00:00:02.560 --> 00:00:05.040
Hey listeners, you know the drill.
00:00:05.040 --> 00:00:10.720
I don't wear my windscreen anymore because the bees keep attacking it.
00:00:10.719 --> 00:00:13.120
I'm walking back to the bee yard.
00:00:13.120 --> 00:00:16.800
Listeners, it has been insufferably hot.
00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:22.240
I'll go ahead and tell you exactly where I am, even though when you listen to this, you won't be there
00:00:22.840 --> 00:00:28.840
It's July the 4th, and we've been under that heat dome.
00:00:28.840 --> 00:00:32.279
And everything has just been unreasonably hot.
00:00:32.279 --> 00:00:33.800
I felt like I was
00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:37.440
in my hometown in South Alabama again.
00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:45.680
I mean to see 87 at 9 o'clock at night is just unheard of in Ohio
00:00:47.060 --> 00:01:01.380
So I'm walking back and I want to talk about heat a little bit, but I want to come back with a more vibrant beekeeper to talk about how you can deal with heat if you're a bee guy working my way through the bar.
00:01:03.900 --> 00:01:08.460
So this will be kind of a two-part segment, I suspect.
00:01:08.460 --> 00:01:16.300
Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here about once a week where I try to talk
00:01:16.740 --> 00:01:21.540
about something to do with just plain talk beekeeping.
00:01:21.540 --> 00:01:31.140
Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
00:01:31.660 --> 00:01:40.460
Join Jew Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees.
00:01:40.460 --> 00:01:46.460
Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:55.860
Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
00:01:55.860 --> 00:01:57.860
You know, I know I'm wearing you out.
00:01:57.860 --> 00:02:00.660
I am so sorry for that.
00:02:00.740 --> 00:02:06.500
But I know I'm wearing you out with this.
00:02:06.500 --> 00:02:07.460
I can't do it.
00:02:07.460 --> 00:02:08.340
I can't manage it.
00:02:08.340 --> 00:02:08.899
I'm old.
00:02:08.899 --> 00:02:09.700
I'm sick.
00:02:09.700 --> 00:02:10.500
I'm sad.
00:02:10.500 --> 00:02:11.700
I'm whatever
00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:19.000
I'm just a chronic excuse manufacturing system.
00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:21.480
But honestly, in this heat
00:02:21.820 --> 00:02:33.100
At my age, I cannot be out here alone running some kind of weed tremor to keep the grass down.
00:02:33.959 --> 00:02:39.560
I grew up in Alabama, and not just Alabama, I grew up in South Alabama.
00:02:40.760 --> 00:02:46.200
It uh not uncommonly snows in North Alabama, but it's rare.
00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:52.840
In my hometown, Dothan, right on the Georgia, Florida line inside of Alabama
00:02:53.860 --> 00:02:55.780
And that's where I grew up keeping bees.
00:02:55.780 --> 00:02:57.860
And I I can't imagine.
00:02:57.860 --> 00:03:06.420
No offense to Alabama beekeepers or southeastern beekeepers who might be listening or southwest beekeepers who have heat all the time
00:03:07.200 --> 00:03:09.040
I know you learn to live with it.
00:03:09.040 --> 00:03:11.440
I understand that.
00:03:11.440 --> 00:03:14.480
But right now the last thing I would want to do
00:03:14.940 --> 00:03:16.540
is to open these hives.
00:03:16.540 --> 00:03:23.019
There are several hundred bees on the landing board all fanning frantically.
00:03:23.019 --> 00:03:29.099
It thunderstormed last night, so I hope there's pools of water around for them.
00:03:29.220 --> 00:03:37.140
I used to put water out, and then it just got soggy and ugly, and then when I put it out, the bees didn't come to it.
00:03:37.140 --> 00:03:39.459
They've already found their own water sources
00:03:40.700 --> 00:03:48.780
I stopped doing it, even though years ago I would have hundreds of bees at these birdbath water sources
00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:51.760
Taking on water.
00:03:51.760 --> 00:03:56.400
And I even had bees doing it when it was stunningly cold.
00:03:56.400 --> 00:03:59.519
And I talked about all that, and that's not where I want to go today.
00:03:59.519 --> 00:04:01.120
Where I want to go today is
00:04:02.060 --> 00:04:07.260
This just would not be a good time to open these hives.
00:04:07.260 --> 00:04:11.020
Number one, my my physiology is all keyed.
00:04:11.020 --> 00:04:11.500
I'm hot.
00:04:11.500 --> 00:04:12.700
I'm sweaty
00:04:13.500 --> 00:04:16.780
I would fill the stings a lot more.
00:04:16.780 --> 00:04:18.940
The bees are very active.
00:04:18.940 --> 00:04:24.060
It would destroy the cooling system they've got going inside the hive.
00:04:24.460 --> 00:04:27.340
So, why would I open that colony?
00:04:27.340 --> 00:04:27.900
I'm not.
00:04:27.900 --> 00:04:28.460
I'm not.
00:04:28.460 --> 00:04:34.300
If I were a young beekeeper and had exuberance, I'd probably rip right into it
00:04:35.340 --> 00:04:36.860
But I'm not doing that.
00:04:36.860 --> 00:04:43.260
So in my late life form of beekeeping, I have to assume
00:04:43.980 --> 00:04:52.860
that the bees can fly about a half mile away to where there's a stream and it's never gone dry since I've lived here in 50 years, the Apple Creek.
00:04:53.060 --> 00:04:56.260
And I hope they can find water there.
00:04:56.740 --> 00:04:59.300
I'm just not trying to provide it for them.
00:04:59.300 --> 00:05:02.900
I know, I know, you're supposed to let a water hose drip
00:05:02.940 --> 00:05:04.860
You're supposed to put out containers.
00:05:04.860 --> 00:05:10.140
I know I know all of that, but there's so much now that I just don't do.
00:05:10.140 --> 00:05:13.580
More and more and more I become a natural beekeeper
00:05:14.220 --> 00:05:15.820
So I'm back here today.
00:05:15.820 --> 00:05:22.460
The bees are all vibrant, strong, healthy.
00:05:22.460 --> 00:05:25.180
I want to walk over in this tall grass
00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:32.320
Probably going to pick up a tick and look at one of those little hives.
00:05:32.320 --> 00:05:34.160
You remember I talked about it
00:05:34.600 --> 00:05:44.440
Several weeks ago, by now several months ago, and their bees are still coming and going, so they have a queen in there, and they're surviving okay
00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:47.120
That looks good.
00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:49.600
I'm not going to open them either.
00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:55.840
I want to go back to where we had the dreaded swarm where we Jason and I pulled the
00:05:57.400 --> 00:06:07.000
The vacuum way back here, I put a little swarm over there out of the way so maybe it wouldn't get robbed out by being too close to the big colonies
00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:11.680
I'm walking back there now trying not to fall.
00:06:11.680 --> 00:06:15.840
If I do, somebody dial 911 for me.
00:06:15.840 --> 00:06:17.600
And they're still flying
00:06:19.460 --> 00:06:21.780
Not a lot, there's just two or three bees.
00:06:21.780 --> 00:06:29.700
There may be a problem in that one, but just directly under the tree where Jason got the swarm down
00:06:30.940 --> 00:06:33.259
Let me ramble off the subject for a while.
00:06:33.259 --> 00:06:35.020
Jason has been a good friend of mine.
00:06:35.020 --> 00:06:37.180
He's about half my age.
00:06:37.180 --> 00:06:40.940
I've known him since the day he was born.
00:06:40.940 --> 00:06:43.020
His wife is Mexican.
00:06:44.480 --> 00:06:48.640
And last night I told Jason Bai he's moving to Mexico.
00:06:48.640 --> 00:06:50.480
So that's gonna be a loss for me.
00:06:50.480 --> 00:06:51.760
I'll go ahead and tell you that.
00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:53.040
He's been here several times.
00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:54.240
He was always a good
00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:57.880
A good podcaster to be here.
00:06:57.880 --> 00:07:01.560
Plus, he's far more agile than I am.
00:07:02.280 --> 00:07:06.440
I don't know how it's going to work out if he finds bees down there
00:07:07.020 --> 00:07:12.700
Certainly I'll log out on our program and capture something, but that's a change.
00:07:12.700 --> 00:07:17.660
So what little help I did have, I'm losing that.
00:07:18.640 --> 00:07:22.880
When I lived in Alabama, I remember it distinctly.
00:07:22.880 --> 00:07:26.160
You would just sweat yourself wet.
00:07:26.160 --> 00:07:27.520
I got to move back to the shade.
00:07:27.520 --> 00:07:29.040
I can't sit in the sun
00:07:30.060 --> 00:07:37.820
So if you had on those old style bee suits that all they were was modified painter clothes.
00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:51.040
and an old A.I. Root screen veil and you'd sweat right through it and then immediately the veil would begin to rust from your sweat and then after you used it for hardly a year
00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:56.919
Then that rusted spot would break out and then you got a hole right in the middle of your veil.
00:07:56.919 --> 00:07:58.440
And you put duct tape over it.
00:07:58.520 --> 00:08:01.960
Then you got to look around the duct tape until you buy another veil.
00:08:02.360 --> 00:08:16.759
So at least now with these ventilated suits and galvanized wire, I'm not galvanized, vinyl wire, vinyl screening, and the hoods has been a major improvement.
00:08:16.580 --> 00:08:21.700
And I have no interest in going back to the old hot cotton clothes.
00:08:21.700 --> 00:08:30.980
You'd sweat them wet, and then once they sweat once you perspired so much that the suit stuck to you, then the bees could much more easily sting through it.
00:08:31.140 --> 00:08:33.300
Especially at night.
00:08:33.300 --> 00:08:37.940
So I I understand you people who have to to live in high heat.
00:08:37.940 --> 00:08:40.740
My grandparents, you know, lived in a
00:08:41.300 --> 00:08:51.380
An old dog trot type house with the hall down the middle to go to Venturi pulling the hot air through the house at least at night, sometimes during the day too.
00:08:51.339 --> 00:08:56.699
Sometimes they would sleep out there if the weather was particularly hot.
00:08:56.699 --> 00:09:05.660
They grew up at a time with no air conditioning and the way the way they dealt with it is they started very early, an hour before dawn.
00:09:05.079 --> 00:09:08.920
They fed animals while my grandmother cooked.
00:09:08.920 --> 00:09:14.040
Then they'd come back and eat, and then they'd go work in the field until around 10.
00:09:14.040 --> 00:09:16.519
45, maybe 11.
00:09:16.620 --> 00:09:26.459
And in the heat of the day, long before daylight savings time, they would come back and sleep, nap during the middle of the day
00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:30.800
and then would not go back out to work until much later.
00:09:30.800 --> 00:09:36.240
I bet you that that philosophy would still work for hot weather beekeeping.
00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:39.520
Get up as early as you can when it's cool.
00:09:39.520 --> 00:09:41.600
Go outside.
00:09:41.600 --> 00:09:45.440
Get your bee work done as quickly as possible.
00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:51.000
And then leave the bees alone during the heated part of the day.
00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:55.800
And under those conditions that warm, you could actually open the bees late in the afternoon.
00:09:55.100 --> 00:09:57.339
afternoon and they can still have time to recover.
00:09:57.339 --> 00:09:58.220
They're not clustering.
00:09:58.220 --> 00:10:03.180
They're going to mostly be outside by then to avoid the heat inside the colony.
00:10:03.140 --> 00:10:15.060
I think that it's proper to say that a lot of my grandmother's grandparents' grandfather's techniques for heat avoidance would work for beekeepers and avoiding the same thing.
00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:26.240
I guess a lot of you people in colder climates, Minnesota, Dakotas, are kind of rolling your eyes right now because this is not a topic really related to you, but it's related to me right now
00:10:26.820 --> 00:10:33.540
I don't know what all this heat means, but the bees seem to be tolerating it okay.
00:10:33.540 --> 00:10:35.460
It just really, really
00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:44.640
reduces my entrance into putting on a full bee suit, lighting a smoker, and tearing into these colonies just to look.
00:10:44.640 --> 00:10:50.960
So my just have a quick look days of beekeeping.
00:10:50.779 --> 00:10:53.100
are pretty much gone.
00:10:53.100 --> 00:11:00.540
If I now at my age and this heat, if I open a beehive, there needs to be a crystal clear reason for it
00:11:02.460 --> 00:11:05.180
Let's move on to some other updates.
00:11:05.180 --> 00:11:08.700
The animal was a raccoon.
00:11:08.700 --> 00:11:10.220
The bedding and the
00:11:11.260 --> 00:11:17.340
The wearing down part seems to have subsided because the grass is regrowing.
00:11:17.340 --> 00:11:23.660
There is one over here that may still be nope, there's there's grass growing there too
00:11:23.759 --> 00:11:36.639
One of the cues that an animal is bothering it is that the front edge of the landing board will be bright and polished, where the animal has laid up against the landing board while it was eating.
00:11:36.520 --> 00:11:40.280
Clearly not a skunk because there's not a bit of an odor out here at all.
00:11:40.280 --> 00:11:43.640
I'm gonna walk over again to a different shade.
00:11:43.640 --> 00:11:47.320
Being from Alabama, you don't stand in the sun, you stand in the shade
00:11:49.500 --> 00:11:51.740
This is a swarm that I picked up.
00:11:51.740 --> 00:11:52.620
I didn't pick it up.
00:11:52.620 --> 00:11:54.940
It moved in by itself.
00:11:54.940 --> 00:11:56.700
They're washboarding
00:11:57.680 --> 00:11:59.200
I never know what that is.
00:11:59.200 --> 00:12:02.320
We'll talk more about that probably next week.
00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:07.280
It's just a weedy, natural beehive.
00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:08.160
Bee yard.
00:12:08.400 --> 00:12:12.160
Everything looks okay.
00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:16.800
I don't know what else to say about that that would be relevant.
00:12:16.800 --> 00:12:20.480
I want to talk to you for a few minutes about ants.
00:12:21.560 --> 00:12:24.920
Because I have ants in most of my colonies.
00:12:24.920 --> 00:12:30.199
If I had a bee suit on I'd start popping tops just to have a look, but I know what I would find.
00:12:30.199 --> 00:12:35.560
On top of the inner covers, I frequently have functional ant nest.
00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:38.960
of different species of ants that I can't identify.
00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:40.800
There's so many of them.
00:12:40.800 --> 00:12:45.040
There's carpenter ants and there's medium-sized black ants.
00:12:44.940 --> 00:12:47.420
And then in one of them there was really small ants.
00:12:47.420 --> 00:12:56.220
And I've tried to figure out how to ants and bees, both Hymenopterous insects, closely related, similar respiratory systems
00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:01.680
different lifestyles, how do they coexist?
00:13:01.680 --> 00:13:09.280
And my impulse, as I always do in so many cases, is to dump the ant nest and try to dis disrupt it.
00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:11.320
and see if that helps the bees.
00:13:11.320 --> 00:13:16.840
Well when you go back the next day, either the nest has reconstituted itself
00:13:18.360 --> 00:13:20.520
Or it's a different nest.
00:13:20.520 --> 00:13:21.480
I don't know.
00:13:22.360 --> 00:13:27.320
But it looks like that ants and bees coexist in perpetuity
00:13:28.899 --> 00:13:30.980
It's been that way as long as I can remember.
00:13:30.980 --> 00:13:36.019
I've already mentioned my southeast Alabama roots over and over again.
00:13:36.019 --> 00:13:41.620
Well fire ants were just just unheavenly common.
00:13:41.880 --> 00:13:49.320
And I know I've talked about it with Kelm and others in the past, but it was a peculiar situation when I would read
00:13:49.800 --> 00:13:52.840
At the time, it was books and pamphlets.
00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:54.280
It was not on the web.
00:13:54.280 --> 00:13:56.600
There really was no web then.
00:13:56.600 --> 00:14:00.920
People in Texas said that they actually killed beehives.
00:14:00.920 --> 00:14:02.680
And that was reported
00:14:03.540 --> 00:14:11.220
I am not arguing, I'm just saying that was not my experience with fire ants.
00:14:11.220 --> 00:14:16.020
Anytime I had an incubation mound piled up against
00:14:17.140 --> 00:14:26.740
A beehive, I had to to watch that nest, that mound, that incubation mound.
00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:38.640
Because if you stood at it while you're working bees, all of a sudden your feet and legs would be on fire, hence the common name given to these ants
00:14:39.020 --> 00:14:52.780
I dare say that in most cases strong colonies in some way, some fashion dealt with those ants because they seemed to coexist.
00:14:52.720 --> 00:14:56.240
I never actually found them in the colony.
00:14:56.240 --> 00:15:06.320
They cleaned up the front of the nest so all the dead bee detritus was eaten and foraged on by ants and whatever else wanted to forage on that.
00:15:05.940 --> 00:15:17.620
But the thing that I really want to jump to is when a colony did die for whatever reasons, I don't know, possibly fire ants, the wax moths never had a chance.
00:15:17.420 --> 00:15:24.060
Because when the wax moths began to kind of take over as that colony declined, the ants were on top of it.
00:15:24.060 --> 00:15:26.699
The fire ants were on top of it.
00:15:26.259 --> 00:15:38.819
And seeing this happening and seeing that in Alabama where wax moths were actually available all the time, to see that in a n a nest that should have been completely consumed by wax moths
00:15:38.820 --> 00:15:43.940
was not consumed by wax moths, those ants were doing it.
00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:47.460
They were foraging on those wax moth larvae.
00:15:47.400 --> 00:15:58.120
They seem to be, oh, someone may really want to argue with me on this, and that would be okay, because I'm I'm only know what I'm talking about from my experience in Alabama.
00:15:58.120 --> 00:15:59.320
I can't discuss
00:15:59.620 --> 00:16:02.899
ant predation in any other state.
00:16:02.899 --> 00:16:04.899
But they seem to be beneficial.
00:16:04.899 --> 00:16:05.779
There's the word.
00:16:05.779 --> 00:16:10.180
They seem to be beneficial to the bee yard basic operation.
00:16:10.180 --> 00:16:13.940
They suppressed wax moths, they cleaned up yard litter.
00:16:13.900 --> 00:16:17.020
They were they never nested inside the colony.
00:16:17.020 --> 00:16:21.340
They always nested around the hive stands that were down on the ground.
00:16:21.340 --> 00:16:25.500
While I give you a chance to chew on that, let's take a break.
00:16:25.400 --> 00:16:28.680
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So the thing I wanted to come back to you with on this ant business.
00:17:30.960 --> 00:17:38.080
Was to tell you that I actually began to use them as a wax moth control technique
00:17:38.620 --> 00:17:47.980
So when I would find a hive that was dead, that was sitting high on a stand, and the ants had not mounded against the base of it, they couldn't get to it.
00:17:47.660 --> 00:17:55.420
and there were wax moths beginning to attack this dead and dying colony, specifically those that were dead already.
00:17:55.420 --> 00:17:59.420
I would just take those things, those colonies that that deep, that super
00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:13.200
and go to the nearest fire ant mound, which was usually very close by, and I would jam that equipment right into that incubation mound until the ants were just rolling out
00:18:13.240 --> 00:18:16.200
and they were upset.
00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:17.640
And then you leave it.
00:18:17.640 --> 00:18:20.760
I would leave it for about a day or maybe two.
00:18:20.760 --> 00:18:25.800
And then I would go back to it and move that ant-infested equipment
00:18:26.120 --> 00:18:34.120
about ten feet away and just set it up and then leave it for another day and then and then when I return to it
00:18:34.519 --> 00:18:43.480
The ants were gone, and they had spotlessly cleaned everything edible out of that colony.
00:18:43.480 --> 00:18:44.840
There were there were no
00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:48.840
No wax moth larvae of any kind.
00:18:48.840 --> 00:18:51.560
Am I recommending this as a type of control?
00:18:51.800 --> 00:18:52.520
Not really.
00:18:52.520 --> 00:18:58.600
I'm just saying that if you happen to have such a situation, you could kind of use it
00:18:59.019 --> 00:19:10.139
to your advantage, and the thing you get from it primarily is a sense of satisfaction that you're tormenting wax moths, which in many other cases could be considered a viable part
00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:22.400
of apiculture because they may be given credit for cleaning up old nests and uh preparing them for future bee nest or for squirrels or birds to move into that natural cavity.
00:19:22.400 --> 00:19:25.280
So it just depends, is it a weed or not?
00:19:25.160 --> 00:19:28.360
Well it depends on where it's growing and whether or not I want it.
00:19:28.360 --> 00:19:29.800
That was my situation.
00:19:29.800 --> 00:19:31.560
That was my understanding of ants.
00:19:31.560 --> 00:19:36.200
It seems like ants and bees are always coexisting in some form
00:19:37.100 --> 00:19:42.380
I did a chat GPT search and tried to find out, you know, how that bees deal with it.
00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:46.380
And it's very general that the bees fan, they carry the ants away.
00:19:46.860 --> 00:19:49.580
It was nothing miraculous.
00:19:49.500 --> 00:19:55.260
And the thing I didn't find anything out about was the ants opinion on this.
00:19:55.260 --> 00:19:57.179
What were they trying to accomplish?
00:19:57.179 --> 00:19:58.700
What was their mode of action?
00:19:58.700 --> 00:20:00.140
What were they trying to do?
00:20:00.140 --> 00:20:00.620
They
00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:06.020
Ants were so small and they have their own sting, so it'd be sting versus counter sting.
00:20:06.020 --> 00:20:09.780
But yet somehow, most of the time, they seem to coexist.
00:20:09.780 --> 00:20:13.860
Every time I've seen ants really be a problem in a colony
00:20:14.060 --> 00:20:20.220
It was a small, weak, defeated colony that was experiencing failure to thrive.
00:20:20.220 --> 00:20:21.980
Now on this hot day
00:20:22.700 --> 00:20:32.540
In this hot bee yard with the wind blowing kind of cooking me evenly, I need to say that here in Ohio I have an ant problem of a different scope.
00:20:32.540 --> 00:20:35.180
Even if the bees are up on a hive stand
00:20:36.120 --> 00:20:49.400
Black carpenter ants move up into them and I've had a problem with expanded polystyrene equipment just being eaten alive by both wax moths when they're available
00:20:49.780 --> 00:20:53.460
and by ants when the opportunity arises.
00:20:53.460 --> 00:21:04.260
So those black carpenter ants would just tunnel all through that thick expanded polystyrene hive body, bottom board, whatever.
00:21:03.720 --> 00:21:15.080
So anytime that there's been a s a possibility, some use of uh pliable plastic equipment, of course carpenter ants can readily eat wood too, and they will
00:21:16.140 --> 00:21:18.620
They were always up on the inner cover.
00:21:18.620 --> 00:21:21.500
All these ants that I see are up on the inner cover.
00:21:21.500 --> 00:21:27.660
And when I would see an occasional ant inside the colony, I had to wonder, well that did it drop off
00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:31.400
when I moved the intercoper, when I came out and disturbed things.
00:21:31.400 --> 00:21:36.120
The ants seemed to be co-living, coexisting.
00:21:35.800 --> 00:21:46.760
I've said before that the bees are basically beavers of the insect world because they colonize an area and then all these other critters move into it, raccoons.
00:21:47.400 --> 00:21:52.520
Uh beetles, scavengers, all kinds of insects come to live here.
00:21:52.520 --> 00:21:56.440
Birds, toads, ants just seem to fit right in with that.
00:21:56.440 --> 00:22:01.559
I would mention earwigs, but that's an interesting story for some other time.
00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:10.160
None of those animals were systematically centralized in one area until the bee yard made it opportunistic for them.
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:14.000
The point I'm making is that I've not had the best luck
00:22:14.220 --> 00:22:26.460
with expanded polystyrene when carpenter ants were available to tunnel through it because the bees couldn't get to them tunneling inside those thick walled hives.
00:22:26.220 --> 00:22:34.540
I also have smaller ants that live on the inner covers, black ants, and they don't they're just laying, all their pupae and larvae are just laying there.
00:22:34.540 --> 00:22:38.140
They're not they're exposed up on the inner cover.
00:22:38.140 --> 00:22:40.460
Does that hurt anything?
00:22:40.660 --> 00:22:53.059
By disrupting that relationship, am I am I destroying some kind of ecological balance or are they possibly oh it would be heavenly if they were somehow eating mites
00:22:54.260 --> 00:23:06.019
I've seen on the screen bottom boards when they drop down to the aluminum plate that's down there that there would be scavengers down there and I assumed they would eat any Varroa mite that dropped down through
00:23:06.580 --> 00:23:16.660
But for right now, most beekeepers have historically said that ants are not good for anything and they have the ant traps that they put on the edge with oil.
00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:20.240
And then the ants would figure out how to stream across the oil.
00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:25.760
There were always these things to be done to try to keep mechanically keep ants out.
00:23:25.760 --> 00:23:29.760
You couldn't use pesticides because that was such an issue
00:23:29.560 --> 00:23:31.080
That's the ant thing.
00:23:31.080 --> 00:23:35.880
I routinely have ants in these beehives that I don't routinely manage.
00:23:35.880 --> 00:23:39.720
If if everything comes to an ecological balance.
00:23:39.820 --> 00:23:49.580
In Ohio, the ants seemed to live on the top box inner cover lid, and they seem to be happy there.
00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:50.399
I don't know why.
00:23:50.399 --> 00:23:51.440
Are they protected?
00:23:51.440 --> 00:23:52.559
Is it warmer?
00:23:52.559 --> 00:23:55.279
Is it just a possible nest cavity?
00:23:55.279 --> 00:24:00.799
Why do ants leave their natural ground nest and move to a beehive?
00:24:00.919 --> 00:24:02.440
And how are they getting up there?
00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:06.919
I don't I don't see trails of ants going up these beehives.
00:24:06.919 --> 00:24:08.600
I don't I don't know how they do it
00:24:08.740 --> 00:24:16.900
But I gotta tell you this, any any styrofoam equipment in Jim Tew's yard, I don't speak for anyone else.
00:24:16.740 --> 00:24:19.460
I can't put it on during the ant months.
00:24:19.460 --> 00:24:23.780
It can only go on during the cool months or the cold months.
00:24:23.780 --> 00:24:24.820
One last chapter.
00:24:24.820 --> 00:24:26.260
I don't know where I am on my time.
00:24:26.260 --> 00:24:28.900
I tried to set my phone and it's not working
00:24:29.320 --> 00:24:31.000
But I want to do one last thing.
00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:33.960
Yesterday I went over to Jason's Go On Away party.
00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:36.840
I told him bye, had my picture made with him
00:24:37.140 --> 00:24:40.020
And I left after a while, ate some barbecue.
00:24:40.020 --> 00:24:43.620
I had a nice time, saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time.
00:24:43.620 --> 00:24:46.020
And as I was leaving, I drove by
00:24:46.419 --> 00:24:58.580
a natural patch with an Ohio State sign professionally and boldly standing right before the patch that said Ohio Natural Grassland Tall Prairie
00:24:58.840 --> 00:25:09.080
Well hang on listeners because I'm basically sitting in that right now and I tried to describe it to you last year that when I couldn't take care of my bees.
00:25:08.940 --> 00:25:10.860
and for the previous years.
00:25:10.860 --> 00:25:13.899
This tall grass, weed, whatever thing would take over.
00:25:13.899 --> 00:25:23.580
It had a lot of flowering plants to it, and I really brought in a a diversity of butterflies and native bees and animals and deer nesting back here.
00:25:23.640 --> 00:25:34.680
There's still the deer press back here and my neighbors did see a fawn coming out one day, so I've got a really small unintentional ecosystem here
00:25:35.019 --> 00:25:49.659
And I've have labeled this my Ohio Tall Prairie Grass Beekeeping Yard, just as a defense measure against not being able to justify why the grass is so tall back here.
00:25:49.940 --> 00:25:52.900
I just can't I just can't cut it all down.
00:25:52.900 --> 00:25:54.020
I I can't do the work.
00:25:54.020 --> 00:25:55.780
I can't stand the heat.
00:25:55.780 --> 00:26:02.820
In fact, I was just having a few medical tests done this past two weeks or so, and I'm happy to tell you that I passed them all
00:26:03.220 --> 00:26:05.620
I'm I'm relieved to tell you that.
00:26:05.620 --> 00:26:08.340
But don't come out here and push it, Jim.
00:26:08.340 --> 00:26:12.820
So what I'm going to do, I'm going to make a trip to one of the national parks.
00:26:12.820 --> 00:26:14.580
My family is taking me.
00:26:14.580 --> 00:26:16.260
A biggie for me
00:26:16.440 --> 00:26:18.039
You know, you give up a lot of things.
00:26:18.039 --> 00:26:19.480
I don't water ski anymore.
00:26:19.880 --> 00:26:21.480
I'm not going to zip line.
00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:23.000
There's just all kind of things you give up.
00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:27.000
But in the new column, you get to do a lot of new and different things.
00:26:26.820 --> 00:26:35.300
And on this particular trip, I'm supposed to sit in a wheelchair so they can get me through the airport quickly to the next gate.
00:26:35.140 --> 00:26:38.900
without me having to hob along at my old man totter speed.
00:26:38.900 --> 00:26:42.420
So you see, you give some things up and you acquire some new things.
00:26:42.420 --> 00:26:46.660
But when I get back, my plan is to cut paths
00:26:46.720 --> 00:26:52.320
to my bees and to keep the entrance opened up, even though it does shade.
00:26:52.320 --> 00:26:54.480
As I say that, I'm wondering
00:26:54.500 --> 00:27:06.820
If the tall grass actually shades the bees and by me open it, yes, it would clear a flight plat path, but yes, it also lets this hot summer sun hit the front of the hives.
00:27:06.540 --> 00:27:09.820
You know you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
00:27:09.820 --> 00:27:14.060
But I've got to have I've got to have paths and and I can open pathways
00:27:14.100 --> 00:27:21.460
I'm going to see how that works to lay out to bring my my walk behind string tremor out and not try just to take down these weeds.
00:27:21.460 --> 00:27:26.500
Some of them this grass, I don't know if it's weeds or grass or natural plants
00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:36.720
And instead of trying to fight everything and mow everything, I know you people, I've seen those pictures of your beautiful mown mowed yards and colonies painted.
00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:38.160
I just that's just not me.
00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:39.280
I can't do it
00:27:39.980 --> 00:27:41.500
So that's my plan.
00:27:41.500 --> 00:27:47.820
I have learned to justify the mess in my yard by saying it's a natural tall grass, Ohio Prairie.
00:27:47.919 --> 00:27:56.000
and I'll cut colorful paths to it and then all these things can grow and bloom and everything can have a nice time back here.
00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:01.360
I know, I know, I know that it's not traditional beekeeping
00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:07.519
And I know that nearly all of you are traditional beekeepers.
00:28:07.519 --> 00:28:12.240
It's the right sermon for the wrong congregation.
00:28:12.380 --> 00:28:18.940
But you need to know that everybody listening to me who are is not here yet, you will be one day
00:28:19.760 --> 00:28:29.679
So it's okay if you begin to think and accept the fact that traditional beekeeping is not necessarily always the only beekeeping.
00:28:29.620 --> 00:28:31.220
out of sheer necessity.
00:28:31.220 --> 00:28:34.020
I'm going to have some visiting speakers, I hope, next week.
00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:35.780
We're going to address this heat thing more.
00:28:35.780 --> 00:28:41.300
I'm sitting here now just in the shade, just perspiring like crazy.
00:28:41.019 --> 00:28:44.620
This heat thing, I think, needs to be discussed again.
00:28:44.620 --> 00:28:49.980
Apparently, as the as the climate seems to be changing, maybe this heat thing is going to be
00:28:50.800 --> 00:28:52.640
More common than it has been.
00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:54.640
I don't know.
00:28:54.640 --> 00:28:56.080
You know I'm done.
00:28:56.240 --> 00:28:58.640
Wanna get ready to make a a nice trip here.
00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:00.720
I'll be talking to you again next week.
00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:01.840
Thank you for listening.
00:29:01.840 --> 00:29:03.360
I always enjoy talking with you.
00:29:03.360 --> 00:29:04.560
Please know this, no matter how
00:29:05.240 --> 00:29:16.040
defeated, no matter how old, no matter how haphazard I sound, I always care about the bees and I always enjoy the bees and I always do enjoy talking about them.
00:29:16.040 --> 00:29:19.960
Until we talk again, I'm Jim telling you bye.