Transcript

0:05

hi everyone this is Peter from Six Bees

0:07

of Virginia and today we're going to

0:09

take a ride over to a fellow beekeepers

0:11

Chase Ebo he has an organization called

0:14

Eco Honeybees and he does a lot of

0:17

pollination services in the area both in

0:19

building as well as homes and fields and

0:22

the like past fall he agreed to take

0:23

four of my horizontal hive swarm traps

0:26

and convert them into nukes for me and

0:28

I'm curious to see how that turned out i

0:30

know it's been a rough spring for bees

0:32

in Northern Virginia area so we'll go

0:34

over and take a look talk with Chase

0:36

about what's going on in the beekeeping

0:38

community the area around so see you

0:41

over there chase tell us a little bit

0:44

about your operation who you are what

0:46

you do all right well my name's Chase

0:47

Evil um we've been keeping bees in

0:49

Northern Virginia DC Maryland for uh 17

0:53

18 years now 2009 we started 2011 we

0:56

started in-house breeding and since then

0:58

kind of getting away from that F1

1:00

genetic status of most commercial

1:01

beekeepers we call that be that that

1:03

business eco honeybees this is where you

1:05

put hives on their properties and the

1:07

like yep yep rooftops backyards the

1:09

French embassy it's on the side by their

1:11

loading dock and then why do they do

1:13

that well every the environmental credit

1:15

so a lot of that is that idea but it's

1:18

also it's also something that they can

1:19

give back to the community so every year

1:20

we go to the French and German embassy

1:22

for their their German embassy day their

1:24

French embassy day and we'll set up a

1:26

booth and we'll actually serve the honey

1:28

out to everybody coming in most of them

1:30

are not English- speakaking so it's

1:32

always a great time to meet people from

1:34

around the world and and be able to show

1:35

them what we do locally with with honey

1:37

bees from Europe so Wow well you have

1:39

both combination of the American hives

1:41

and the lands horizontal hives we did

1:43

for a long time we've gotten away from

1:46

the lands just because of the expense to

1:47

build them it's a time is too expensive

1:51

nowadays so you run into a majoriz land

1:54

could cost me upwards of $1,500 i'd have

1:56

to sell it for 22 and that's just at

1:59

that point you find more people like

2:00

yourself who are willing to build them

2:02

and that's that's what we've we've gone

2:04

on to we still do have a lot of long

2:05

lengths and we still do have lands hives

2:08

but one of my older buddies um the

2:09

actual owner and creator of Eco

2:11

Honeybees Larry Marlin he keeps all

2:13

those in his backyard okay so Eco

2:16

Honeybees is the name of your company

2:17

yes yep yep yep so I'm co-owner with

2:19

Larry Marlin uh he started in 2011 and

2:22

me and him have been actively working

2:23

together for about like seven eight

2:25

years now wow so how many hives would

2:27

you say you have there's about three of

2:29

us that work together and we'll push

2:30

upwards of 600 annually 600 hives yeah

2:33

250 are probably within the breeding

2:35

program 250 are within the uh the

2:38

service section and then another 100 or

2:42

so are going to be what we're trying to

2:43

explore into honey production wow you

2:46

don't really make a lot of honey in the

2:47

city so we have to get out of there and

2:50

I did start moving bees down to

2:51

Winchester in the past two years okay so

2:53

I'm trying to get I'm trying to explore

2:55

and uh and find larger avenues of income

2:57

and one of those is definitely going to

2:59

be honey but that is pushing out of the

3:01

city wow okay these were the land hives

3:03

you dropped off i hadn't played around

3:05

with them in a while i did struggle with

3:07

them i probably threw $600 worth of

3:11

nukes at that green box right there

3:13

really yes man oh yeah oh yeah i had

3:16

multiple queens leave i had them kill

3:18

queens i had them go into a laying

3:20

worker in 7 days after introducing a

3:22

queen wow and I was struggling and I

3:25

couldn't really figure out what was

3:26

happening i honestly blamed it on a lot

3:28

of things or you start to I started

3:30

realizing and putting together what is

3:32

going on and it's a it's a much longer

3:34

course of action it's never going to be

3:35

a single thing and this year we saw a

3:38

lot of rain we saw a ton of rain and I

3:41

made a lot of splits where those queens

3:43

were going to come out and mate at that

3:44

start of that rain so now all of a

3:47

sudden if I've got four or five days of

3:48

rain on the forecast my queen is sitting

3:51

there waiting and waiting and waiting

3:54

now all of my queens let's say I have 75

3:57

splits in this little neighborhood day i

4:01

would have to assume that my drone

4:02

population is not up to spec to mate 75

4:05

queens in a single day you get me it's

4:06

just not going to be drone heaven i know

4:09

i know i know i'm like okay cuz it

4:11

wasn't just your boxes going into laying

4:13

workers it was a lot of other splits as

4:16

well and and so was my timing was a

4:17

little bit off this year and I'm going

4:19

into this next month of June planning on

4:22

multiple splits as many as I can trying

4:24

to go forth with as many as I can for

4:25

next year june 1st is kind of my restart

4:27

of my beear so this is the first of the

4:29

year for me for my B year may 31st is

4:32

kind of like December 31st for me that's

4:34

when everything stops cuz that's I mean

4:36

our honey flow in this area and in DC

4:38

stopped about 10 days ago so that's

4:40

really hard i mean you're you going to

4:42

be a hard be here mhm and I mean I did I

4:44

did put on a lot of good honey and with

4:46

the ground water we have there are going

4:47

to be secondary sources your clovers

4:50

your tree of heaven soon your sumax your

4:52

stuff like that your swamp milk weeds

4:54

and and and stuff will be popping your

4:56

dogs bane and they're secondary sources

4:58

but they're not primary sources so

4:59

you're never going to have excess honey

5:01

awesome as soon as that that flow

5:03

stopped I saw the lack of comb building

5:05

immediately not only in your hives but

5:07

in mine as well i've seen one of the

5:08

ones I've got out there already i

5:09

brought a queen as hive i queen never

5:11

materialized i went and put a new queen

5:13

in it never materialized this thing has

5:15

gone totally rogue it's useless

5:18

definitely seems to be the consensus of

5:20

this year in this area is that that

5:21

stress and I think it just came from

5:23

prolonged periods of rain wow and then

5:25

also something interesting about these

5:26

boxes that we had talked about and I

5:29

didn't remember and I don't know if we

5:31

actually said it but you had the

5:34

lemongrass swarm caps they're right here

5:35

yeah yeah the lures yeah they were only

5:37

in two of them so that's what I'm

5:39

talking about right there so these are

5:41

swarm lures they slowly dissipate the

5:42

lemongrass i couldn't keep these to save

5:45

my life in there and then I finally took

5:46

it apart cleaned it out tried to reset

5:48

some of the comb tried to put in some of

5:50

my own comb and I saw these and I was

5:52

like hm maybe this is what happened and

5:54

I don't remember if you had told me or

5:56

not this will cause a young queen whose

5:59

pherommones and hormones are not up to

6:01

stat yet so she's still developing this

6:03

will overpower her this will continue to

6:05

push her out and and so that's why

6:07

that's most of the time these are trying

6:09

to pull in primary swarms so your queen

6:12

has already made it so she's already

6:14

coming in i mean you can barely smell

6:16

the lemongrass off of it it's not super

6:18

overpowering really smell it yes and

6:20

then and then a young queen this

6:21

overpowers her oh my god so so I I I had

6:24

I had a suspicion that that was a

6:26

problem as well and then I I measured

6:28

the frames i looked to make sure the

6:30

size was right cuz I had a lot of

6:31

crosscomb but my bees also just do that

6:33

like I said we try to stay out of the F1

6:35

genetic line and we try to move multiple

6:37

genetic lines down the history of a

6:39

decade and we see that all the time the

6:41

crosscomb thing is huge they don't want

6:43

to touch plastic and some wax they just

6:45

don't care about mo most of the stuff I

6:46

use is actually small cell foundation

6:48

okay we started these out with frames of

6:50

wax already in them yeah oh yeah no comb

6:52

but wax yeah they're still all here you

6:54

can see it they did fine i throw a five

6:56

frame to a 10 frame nuke in there see

6:58

them they start to draw it out fine and

7:00

they're not cross combing it it looks

7:01

awesome i think that was a mixture of

7:03

the year mixture of bad splits so So

7:05

what do we got in here now we got bees

7:07

in here now there's nothing in here this

7:09

is just empty comb

English (auto-generated)