well welcome to the graphic nature center some of you have never been here before i think i found out who's never been here before oh bunch you good well we are kind of hidden back off dressed up road you can drive right by us pretty easily here if you don't know much about us we're just a community owned facility owned by the city and we raise about half of our monies to run their programs ourselves through our activities like this maple syrup sales are a big thing nowadays we do a lot of sugaring at the ventral tea farm every spring you guys have been out and seen that happen and maybe in running our evaporator out there that's one of my favorite things to do and we get lots of crowds out there at the farm in the month of march having ice cream with maple syrup in twenty degree temperatures ice cream  good as a new timer is well how many you are beekeepers how many interested in starting it you know you go so that's what you're here for learning more about beekeeping i think keeping these for many many years i'm having difficulties most i know of are having some difficulties with the current i live out in the countryside and there are some situations if you go out in the country with a lot of corn a lot of a lot of chemicals and pesticides are being used on crops that are affecting our bees and that's  this last week there's been a new articles about confirming the effect of some pesticides on insects out there if you're keeping bees in the city here on the bees range about what is it forty square miles in their territory you know an area just six by one of these six by seven miles square and so if you're in the city and you're well you know back away from the agricultural areas you're much have an easier time i think of keeping bees so it's just sort of an introduction to the problem i've had i've had my colonies decline i've talked to season beekeepers that have had fifteen they're down to four or five and so that's the challenge i think ahead and hopefully our government will clamp down on these class pesticides introduced back and about two thousand and five and that's when the problem started so it's interesting thing yeah noids and and they're they're very the farmers like them because they don't affect mammals you know they're very harmless to people and other males but they're very effective on insects and it can penetrate the soil can get into neighboring plants and other flowers the bees feed on it isn't just going to be on the corn it spreads the neighboring plants through the soil and it's it's and it's once they ban it hopefully it'll take a while for its effects to go away i think anyway let's go into the happy of beekeeping is a neat thing to learn about their lifestyle it is a social insect you know about that much you all hear about the queen bee and and she is the core of the queen because she is critical hers in the feed at a special diet called royal jelly it's this feed in an ordinary worker bee and they'll feed it a special diet it will grow into a queen and actually create creates a cell looks like unlike a peanut because she's bigger so it's a bigger cell and sun is a create more than one queen so when the emerge they duke it out only one queen will survive that happened in our region have couple years ago i was sitting my office and i heard this singing of bees i never heard it before it was just so cool and i had to go on google you know what the heck's going on here and it was two queens finding each other seeking each other in and ultimately duking it out when she emerges she has to be fertilized and she has to go outside that's the only time she does that her life flies out and the drones that's their only job is to find her and meet with her sometimes several will meet with her out in the air while they're flying which is interesting it's hard to study these things the scientists the figured out even know more about on how they do it all but they know a lot more about it now than they used to but once she's been meted then she comes back in her rest of her life i don't think is so royal  most the slave to the workers because if she doesn't produce enough eggs and she doesn't really do her job they'll replace or you don't do that to royalty right you know so so she is she's she has to be active healthy queen for the h to keep her and she can lay over a thousand eggs a day and in the new colony that's starting up and growing in the spring will those in that you see back there each frame has about twenty five hundred cells on the side and so there's you know normal high would have ten frames and one deep that's called is about nine inches deep and so you've got she just going to lay eggs like crazy and and they as  hatch they turn into the little tiny white larva and you can see them in the cells if you can peer through the masses their little white curled up little wormy creatures there's the larval stage of a honeybee and they are fed there's picture on the wall real high and actually the picture at the top there shows the series of white creatures in the cells and if you can see very well of your shoulders a little curled up larva and they feed it they will watch these bees going in and giving them food and feeding the larva and it grows and grows and grows to it then it gets to be the pupa and then the cap it off when it's in the people stage and then and that's where it transforms into the adult basically workers there's one class to be that are cleaning the cells and the you see them their little their little butts are sticking out you know in their heads are at the bottom of the getting if there's already been used to raise a baby then then they're getting ready for the next egg to come in there she walks around and she so but there are several classes of workers there's the housekeepers which clean the cells and that's usually there after the first born the workers will be housekeepers if there's any dead bees pick them up carry out the door drop them though ceremony just out the door way  but they keep all the you know death in the rod or in like that outside they don't let in that happen they keep it very clean then the next thing they do is become nurse bees and when bees come in from the field they transfer the nectar t other bees and so they do it mouth to mouth bees and they collect nectar from a flower they'll visit thousands of flowers in one day sometimes if it's a really good blooming period and i think that one frame of honey i have up high there was from i think probably five days they made that whole frame that's about five pounds of honey from these milkweed plants right here they're all in bloom you can smell in our building that is so fragrant and we went out there it is loaded with these i'm sure and then then like that in that week they had a whole frame of honey i mean it was just that rich so they find a source and they get it but he way that nurse bees carob that food from the field bees because that's a different job and transfer and then they take that to feed the younger feed the queen they have to feed her in groom her if she wanders around too and there's the building class the bees as cochlear midlife and by the way in the summertime a worker liz about six weeks because they're so busy during the winter time i mean come come winter they will live the whole winter if they have enough honey stored up in and into the next year spleens can live years if they're a good strong queen you can have one for two three years some beekeepers reap believe in replacing queens every year you know make to keep it strong because they do get a weaker over time i think you've got to get i think if you have a good hiding go more in a couple years some some beekeeper say up to five years with the queen but i think in that time they probably have swarmed and re s and done other things that are bus warming in a minute they were the middle class to be the middle time in your life you're making wax from glands on your abdomen they secreted and they carry that and they actually build comb and you see that black comb at the top that's an old frame of of wax and they've started to put honey at the very top and see it's much lighter color so when they start using that old whacks they will rebuild it and that's  years just sitting in a frame gets black like that it's not bad it's just it's dark but they'll kind of shape it in recoated and make it all nice and pretty again when they put the babies in or the honey and so that's another group that's another job for the bees as the it if they have a lot of nectar and stuff bringing in it will go fast if there's enough workers i mean they're just it's just it's amazing how fast those they work day and night to you know there's like disease a b what's it that i'm going to threaten them by just sitting out front that you want to get right close by me a few feet back and you can watch them coming and going but there's always a little group of them on the front door and they're the guards and if you don't belong in that either if you're a honeybee not from that hive which isn't likely to happen they will came out sting him and and move now but any other foreign be seething months to get in there they will to defend their colony so there's the guards and then the last two weeks your life you get to go on the field which would be for me the fun part of being  be out there i'm a naturalist you know but they get to go out and i was up north last year i think it was june near sleeping bear dunes in the forest and we just heard this home in the air  that piece of forest but it was pretty neat sound and basswood honey is very nice to eat too and so when something like that's happening they'll make honey like crazy you know if they find the right sources last year here i've never seen bloom or even make berries before but lots of things are wall of trees in our meadows are loaded and hanging down i have blueberries in my house in the branches are hitting the ground they're so full of berries this one of these years it's going to be really good  record year for blueberries i know that well when they do really well up the colony will grow and grow and grow and then get too crowded and that can happen in our observation that's just eight frames and that's only half of a normal hive at the best so they could outgrow that space and kind of hoping they will do better because it's only been in about three weeks because that is a swarm i brought in and that's what they will do when they get too crowded they've kind of used up their space swarm across the pond there's a tree on this side of our pond that's always got bees in it twenty feet up this big mass of them so it seems to be the closest one the fine but when they swarm they call it and they'll just hang it you've seen pictures of that so that's how it will look when they're let they've left and then there's a queen in there and all bunch of workers and stuff and they have no honey they've got no brood and so that's when you see the pictures of people wearing them on their faces and all over their bodies because they really don't want to staying when there's nothing to defend basically and during this time they have scouts that are heading out and they're looking in several scouts find the best they all kind of come to a consensus after a day or two of where new home will be they all take off and we had him swarm once from here and we were like they were all leaving the hive and i was like no no and they went out this door and they're all in this pine tree over here this and all of the billings is a cloud  gardens about a month and a half ago now they called us and there was a huge one just like that hanging on one of their planters you could buy lange baskets and there was a basket and then bees and knowing it was going to buy it that way so  look like a fool so i called down i said what's going on these bees are staying and he said well if they're really hungry and they've been out they haven't found a new home after several days they get really cranky and so would you hungry no home way took a regular on one frame deep hive over there set up below them actually took the planner off and then we just went like that and they all dropped it it just all dropped in there with the queen yeah there were it was a lot of  w you know scouting around such so we had to leave the hive put up on the stand right near that plant or we sprayed some be repellent on the on the planter because it so they wouldn't come back and land on it and then we watched for a while make sure the returning bees refining their friends and they're all going in and don went back over after dark and then they're all in there in one to flight one time and he brought it over here and set it right by my side that wall in the ground out there and we just let him be there for about two weeks they adjusted to that hive and moved into those frames and then i came in one morning really early like six or six thirty i think it was and moved him one of school and they were flying yet into that mission i have and that whole thing i can take off the wall and carry seventy thousand or more so it's a lot of bees it's enough to start but we ended up with is what i wanted for this observation i was called a nuke short for nucleus by a queen and a lot of br and some honey and workers and kind of this whole mini hive you can buy those to start up a beehive and they're kind of expensive as i go one hundred sixty dollars i think i saw for once nukes when you buy a package of these you just buy in the workers in the queen know the guards during a swarm aren't doing their they don't even have a job there and break city's probably got a group you know that gets together and you can pool i don lamb drives to georgia twice every spring and fills up a van in a trailer full of packages for all mostly for the beekeepers adu pollination on the blueberries in the in the fruit crops about this though the different jobs they have yeah after a flower is pollinated it's done i mean that's the relationship between insects in the in the in the in the flowers is the flowers want to be pollinated that can produce seeds but and so once they've done that pony they're done so the progression of flowers is important in early spring things like the tree flowers you know really eyes but there's tons of flowers in the trees and then to all the prairie type species and there's a lot of kinds of flowers that they go to no i think prime any high would be a nuke because that's like guts got brewed in there and honey and other stuff and then that would be if you can afford it that's the best way to start a hive but most people do the packages  that you don't need to provide that they forage for that is good you know they go to streams and rivers and banks of things to do in the morning is big this summer no problem with all i mean i thought a rain of the morning my house and it was just heavy do you know if you realized a couple more years ago was like amazing how it was dripping off the trees just do so this year no problem last year again a tough year for everybody i want to go t honeybees were not in north america till the early call colonials brought it brought them here  yes that's what they're finding is that it's not just our honey that's the scary thing as you know we need the honey bees now there aren't enough native bees to pollinate the crops that we have we have to use the honey bees on the blueberry fields and such but the native bees are being affected too which is why they're making people aware of need of these you know even yellow jackets which we all hate radio swarm out at you in your own lawn kill and kill and kill and well kill if they're in your lawn that's sure but if they're often the edge of the woods don't bloody way to kill and they're good pests predators and pest insects they're really good in your garden just not on your pop can when you're drinking it but you know there's there's good and bad in all and probably everything but this is a list of fruits that need to be pollinate by native or honey bees apples apples we kind of like those apricots avocado blue black berry blueberry cranberry gooseberry raspberry strawberry cherry grape fruit lemon mandarin n broccoli brussel sprouts cantaloupe carrots cauliflower celery chinese cabbage collard greens cucumber dill i'm waiting for them i cucumbers to get pollen and a lot of flowers in the net grow a pickle to share eggplant garlic kale lima beans mustard onions parsley peppers pumpkins radish rutabaga squash turnip and watermelon watermelon yeah so that's that's a the other questions on it if you're going to do beekeeping just so i can kind of finish on that i reckon they need this you can buy a you know a retired beekeeper somebody some of the old equipment i start out that way they're going to guys farm and he just had a whole no no they can in five way fashion you can run if you think you're fast you know that they can and they'll get you so i was tell kids you know if there was dark out and you don't know don't as long as they're not down we're going to bump into it because i've been canoeing and almost run into one will die when it freezes and she will be buried in the leaf litter in the forest somewhere so i mean they're not there they're not harmful to us really but if they're in the bush when your front yard kid them are into it you've got to do something about it so you got away to a cool night i a plastic bag around the whole thing and then spray some rage inside to kill it out yeah but you got to do that that's where your kids are going to because they will sting seriously i got one sting once in my belly when i was a kid the city's kids this age and and it was swelled up  month i had a hard spot on my chest you know with one sting so you don't want those are powerful bees yellowjackets as i mentioned are good predators on pest insects but yeah  tree i love the zeal i want to move there when i was younger i still would if i could that's my dream that's my homeland yeah and the southern rock they have that beautiful flowering trees down there is just wonderful but they're having trouble with the beast too down there because this this problem is spreading around the world some of these diseases that europe has just and that those pesticides united kingdom is fighting i think still but fran i think the main europe countries are be india and there's a letter from the sera club was much more environmentally active  group to the e p a it's a very long letter i started to read today just saying please put a stop on this till we can figure out what to do because they but it is it's being used in like ninety percent of corn crops that's huge in this country so well yeah it's true i mean big huge model crops are not be territory really that's where they used you know orchards and things like that or more but all the edges around farm fields and all the rough land the long rivers and streams you know there's a lot of diversity there but these chemicals can seep into the groundwater that goes towards those areas and then it affects the it could make the flowers they're feeding on outside those areas bad news too so it's it's a serious thing it's like your minds me you know i'm old enough to men when they and it's like you know why did they do that right away but they had to go through a period of years in the companies all have their investments in these things yeah money money but you know it's the way it is and the trans fat issue you know we all bought her that in our diets how bad the hydrogenated fat how many years that it take to get that out of all the deep fat fryer in our fast food business you know it took many years you know but it just takes time to make change but this is a change that should happen sooner than later for the bees yeah put lays out real simply about when to do things getting ready for winter and what to do in the spring and how to handle the frames and but building your own unless you have if you have a you know it's a really decent wood shop and know how to get the construction down you could do it that particular about all the spacing in those things so like that high that was outside at a lecture space and one of the frames over there were eight eight frames instead of nine just because you know we just didn't have fall and so they made an extra loop of wax you can see in the front bottom on there the they build another layer you know out because they just know when their brains are a there's room they fill it up you know the thing they do is they create what's called which is a way of gluing their hive together and it's something that beekeeper has to maintain because they will cover up every air vent and seal it and glue everything down and you've got to scrape it off and pop out the frames and clean them off tasting i have i go to the smoky mountains every couple years i try to get down there and they're sour wood trees down there they are in the creek honey have a little bit in a jar there that still left i have a little popsicle sticks he just stick in there and a little piece and taste it and then i have some comb honey there on the table take a plastic spoon just like they were doing there and then he just take a little bit and you get wax with honey you know and if you don't do that don't have to but you could put the whole thing in your mouth and i got to suck on it and get the honey out of the wax and but the w so you can taste little bit in the course i'll be hanging around here if you guys want to observe the high for a while that's the most fun i think is desist deceiving find the queen and watch the workers come in in talk about the waggle dance about that when they've been forging that the workers come in from the field they get in there and they do a little dance in the angle that they walk up is towards the sun down is away from the sun there's an angle from the sun the other be sense that angle they're walking up or down and that tells them which way to go centrifuge it holds three frames so once you get it all and kept on both sides you put three of them in there because they weigh about five pounds apiece and then you turn the crank and the honey goes out to the size of the barrel and rolls down the bottom comes out a little valve i just want to through of a fine little net material that takes out little bits away acts or any kind of pieces of things and then it goes in that's it you don't do anymore it is put right into bottles and sold you don't want to you know you don't like maple syrup has to be taken to two hundred two hundred nineteen degrees you know that's a that's for concentrating it make it syrup and all that they don't do that with honey commercial clover honey is great is made in california most that i've heard of huge fields a disc clover in clover makes a really bland honey that you know people i generally like it i guess so that they just it's not going to offend anybody but doesn't have hardly flavor to me so when you make your own line your own height is going to be way different than that gold in fact you can see it one run or one bloom will have a different color than the next in the next you  and taste there will taste different because it's all from different sources of plants and such that's one of the fun things about beekeeping is you get so different sources of the nectar you know they need to go into winter in the winter they have to be left with about seventy pounds for them to feed on for to survive the winter seventy but every frame of those they're called the bottom or the seven inch those are honey of queen excluder put on top of that then you start stacking up as once the once the hive is full on you've got a game room or the swarm so they get room to put all their extra honey and i had one year i had up to three supers on one hive some i've seen some with five and six but usually when a honey supersport fifty pounds of honey that's quite a bit you get two of those and every one hundred pounds of very high that's a lot honey so you get five hives you go like this guy and they wanted only high seven or so it's like five hundred pounds every year it's taken off their cell just in the fall well once late summer us up september's if you take off the surplus and then you make sure there's enough money to for them to get into winter and and you see some preparations and such to make sure the it's you know the hive is protected enough from the cold yeah i just want to or you harvest you can take it off like if you have a big run like that lady was taking off the first run to high in june so i said well let's take some off you know just to take it and it was really fruity flavored i think it was blueberry honey in the sea you can just do that if it's beyond the high you know want to take from the hive you might take the stuff now it's not the best because it's hard to get a nuke or a package or you know now's the time to maybe find a site start getting the equipment together and buy one you know starting next spring  deep some people even do three that i've always just done two and then when that full of honey and it's like going gangbusters and then they need room because you can see if all the frames are full to the top you know then you add honey supers and you got to check those every couple weeks usually to see if you need to put another one on top because it might be a run you know something happening they need room to put their h well yeah and they're honey supers if they're only i five inches tall and then they're called hive bodies or deep in beekeeper lingo is for the is the hive boxes  they they won't fly they won't fight it's raining i mean they'll hang on i nor hives really full on a bad cloudy dark day that's rainy they'll stay in there on the field i think they just hang underneath the leaves and stuff it just kind of hang out like birds do that they just kind yeah they don't fly in the rain