Money Saving Hacks for Beekeepers

0:00 In a world brimming with complexity, few creatures embody harmony like the honeybee. With tireless precision, she dances from bloom to bloom, each motion guided by millennia upon millennia of instinct, each act in service to the whole. And then there are... the beekeepers, watchful stewards of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist, part poet, they move along their hives with the efficiency of mole, levy, and curly, tending to the bee's needs as best they can comprehend, and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends and partners in beekeeping, Man Lake. Today's interview with

1:31 a 50 plus year beekeeper will give us insights into two important topics. How to read frames and how to save money with some great beekeeping hacks. But first, did you know that NASA once sent honeybees into space? In fact, they've done it twice. In 1984, NASA sent about 3 ,300 honeybees into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery to see how they would behave when zero gravity was no longer guiding their movements. The experiment was less about honey and more about a basic piece of bee life. building comb. Honey bees normally construct their wax cells inside a hive using gravity and contact with one another as part of the process. In space, those familiar cues completely disappeared. The bees had to work in microgravity where there was no obvious floor, ceiling, or natural direction. On Earth, a colony can build new combs surprisingly quickly when food is plentiful and extra storage space is needed. The space bees on the other hand, well they had the same basic instincts but the environment was completely different. Without gravity, the bees couldn't rely on their usual sense of which way was up. Their first attempts at comb construction reflected that problem. Instead of producing the neatly oriented structures familiar from a terrestrial hive, they created sections at

3:02 different angles. As the mission continued, the honey bees became better at moving around in microgravity. They learned to fly in the unusual environment and began building comb inside the enclosure, both on the provided foundation and even away from it. The colony ultimately produced roughly 31 square inches of honeycomb. That amount may not seem like a lot compared with the huge structures a healthy colony can create on Earth. But the experiment demonstrated that the bees could perform one of their most important tasks without normal gravity. Their comb wasn't perfectly aligned. In fact, the different angles suggested that orientation remained difficult, but the bees were still able to produce a functioning structure. They also behaved in other familiar ways. Dead bees were removed from the colony, just as they would be on Earth. The bees continued with many of their routines that keep a colony functioning, even though their surroundings were anything but ordinary. In fact, during the mission, the queen laid 35 eggs. Somebody counted. And the 1984 experiment was not NASA's first attempt to understand how insects cope with spaceflight.

4:20 An earlier mission in 1982 had carried 14 honey bees along with other insects to examine how microgravity affected their movement. Those adult bees struggled with flight and tended to cling to hard surfaces instead. So is there a future in space -based agriculture? If humans were ever to grow crops away from Earth for long periods, it seems logical. that pollinating insects would be useful members of that system. I'd like to welcome to the show today a really special guest that you're absolutely going to love. We've got Ben Cooper on the line here. How are you, Ben?

5:05 Living the dream, Eric. Love it. And Ben's coming to us from Pennsylvania, what, right down near the Maryland border, if I remember right? Correct. If you take a map of the United States, put a pin in Pittsburgh, put another one like North Washington, D .C., and where that line hits the Mason -Dixon line, that's just about where I am, right in the foot slopes of the Eastern Continental Divide. You know, there's a lot of people that don't know what the Mason -Dixon line is, so maybe you should explain that. I think I remember it from history class. Yeah, that's the line that separates Maryland and Pennsylvania and it kind of continues on from the air. It's interesting because there's a pipeline that follows almost that same signature and military planes and helicopters and stuff follow that as a sight line. So we get a lot of air traffic that way. It runs the whole southern border of Pennsylvania. But the term Mason -Dixon line has some history behind it. It does, and I think, like you, vague information from history, from my history classes. I think they were surveyors or whatever, and that has a portion of it, but I don't know for sure. All right. You could have made something up about, you know, some kind of family feud on each side of the border or something. We would have loved it, but that's okay. We'll call it dueling beekeepers.

6:38 Yeah, one had bees on one side, one had bees on the other, and You know, they didn't want them to cross lines, but we all know better. I have bees both in Maryland and Pennsylvania. They cross the border every chance they get when there's a full bloom in place. So I can't label my honey that it's strictly Pennsylvania because they can move across the line. Free country. All right. Just so people have an idea of your depth of knowledge. How long have you been beekeeping? I started 51 years ago as a 14 year old. individual with no mentorship for each project. How does one do that from a book? I'm the type of person that if everybody's going one direction, I'm going to see what they're walking away from.

7:22 I'm going to go the other way. And so I was the only one in my county north of Pittsburgh that as a project went into beekeeping and nobody to help me. Really. If you remember long ago, there was such a thing called a Montgomery Ward's farm and, or farm and ranch catalog. That's what it was. And for $28, I ordered, I pulled the trigger, sent them money and ordered a package of bees. I think 1974 -ish, $28 for a package of bees. Wow. When I got it, I was in school, 14 years old, and the post office called the school and said to come and get them. A funny story is my cousin, was old enough to drive.

8:08 He drove to school every day and he had a 69 charger. I think, Eric, that thing got three miles to the gallon. And I said, you want to get out of school early. A true muscle car, by the way. Yeah. And I said, just drive me to the post office. I have to go pick something up. I didn't tell him it was bees. When we got there, he says, you're not putting that in my car. So the worst case scenario on a hot day, he allowed me to put him in his trunk. And so by the time I got them, first experience of opening the package, they were kind of, let's say, double hot, hot physically and hot ready to sting. So that's how my experience of beekeeping started. Did you have a box to put them in and a bee suit to wear? Yes. OK, good. Well, one of the things that I want to talk about that we haven't talked about much on the show is how to read frames.

9:02 You can see a million videos on YouTube of people pulling a frame out of a beehive. And when I say frame, of course, there's honey frames and there's brood frames and there's some that are kind of in between. Let's talk about just what we should look for, what we can learn so that people, especially beginners, aren't just pulling frames and going, oh, OK, and sticking them back in. Yeah, you got to look for the resources. Right now, this time of year in mid -October, I'm getting some messages from some of the students that I've taught in my beekeeping class over the years. Is it too late to requeen? I think there's something wrong with my queen. Well, she's shutting down. There is no larva. There are no eggs. And they're not necessarily looking at it. They said, I think I'm getting honey bound.

9:59 They're packing it full. of honey when the bees hatch out and I said that's perfectly normal because the queen will shut down because the bloom source is going to be gone and the pollen which is protein and uh nectar which is carbohydrates they need that to raise a young uh worker bee tober they're already in winter mode and so that queen's shutting down that's one way to read when you pull a frame out I usually like to not stand over the open box because you'll get some guards and stuff. Just take a step back or two and those bees aren't going to be aggressive that are on the frame. I like to actually work my bees at the hottest point of the day. I don't care if it's 90 degrees or a day like today it's going to be 70 degrees. Half the bee source force is out foraging. So I don't have as many bees and I can see so I want to see this time of year in mid -october that my brood is All capped.

11:04 I don't have eggs and I don't have open larvae because We're getting we had a frost warning this morning So we're getting down to where these last bees are winter bees are hatching out and I want to see that the workers are packing that all those openings full of nectar right now late, about a month late, actually five to six weeks late, our strongest goldenrod bloom is right now. It's late. We've had a wacky year with cold springs and my fall flow probably three times stronger than my spring flow. That doesn't normally happen. But reading those frames now, you want to be able to see that Cells are being backfilled and capped for their winter food and then you want to be able to make sure People used to say you probably heard of this before Eric when it gets cold They just go behind the bees and lift it up and do the heft test to see if it's heavy enough to have enough Honey to last over winter That's not a good idea because you got to remember in February Here our Queens start laying eggs if you got three boxes high and they're in the middle box, they're gonna move nowhere if they lay brood. They'll stall out and starve to death with food right on top of them. So doing that heft test doesn't do anything but break the cluster and that's not good whenever it's cold and they

12:35 might not reform as well as they should in stressing them. So there's other ways. fancy gadgets, too expensive for me to buy, a FLIR that can tell you this heat signature, but some bee clubs buy those and let people use them throughout the year. But reading the frames during the summer or the spring, let's start with the spring, is much more complicated because you're searching for eggs, larva, and all the stages and also looking for queen cells in case you could the best swarm to catch. is before they leave the box, in my opinion. Take that queen out, make a split before they swarm, and then cut out the queen cells and leave maybe two. But looking for all the resources in the dead of summer, sometimes you have dirts where nothing's there, out there for them to forage on because it didn't rain for a while and there's no nectar source.

13:33 And that queen will shut down because when she checks the resources that's not enough there she'll quit laying for a while and people will sometimes say my queen's bad she's not bad know what's going on by reading your frames do you have the pollen there in the brood frames do you have the nectar source there that that queen will take inventory of and then make use of those are some ideas of reading the frames and all of this is dependent on time of year dependent on where you live Because that frame that you're looking at right now in Pennsylvania if you were in southern Texas or Florida or Arizona It may be a problem Right and your location weather dictates everything almost whether you can even pull that frame out if you have larva I don't pull any brood frames unless it's above 60 degrees.

14:28 That's my Standard if it's 60 degrees, but there's a chilly wind blowing. I'm not I'm not gonna pull them I'm going to save that because you'll chill the open brood and you've just lost some momentum. Yeah, they have to hurry up and warm that back up as soon as you put it back in and they better do it quick or they're going to lose that brood. So what are some of the other things that we can find by doing that? And where I'm going with this is Not everybody is good at finding a queen, nor do we need to find the queen every time we get into a box. So let's say it's June or July or a busy, active time of the year, depending on where you live. What are we looking for that's going to tell us, OK, I have a good, healthy queen or I don't? Number of drone cells, whether they're actively charged, meaning they got a larva in them or they're capped and trying to do an inventory on your brood frames uh because they will take worker size cells and expand them and put drone size in for whatever reason and if you've got too much uh i would say if i could live with a frame that has capped worker and capped drone at 30 but i will take my scratcher tool and i'll destroy the drone comb on there and then figure out when the best time to pull

16:01 that out so that you can recycle melt that wax down use it for something else and put another frame in because if you have too many drone cells you're just taking up space if you have a mated queen you won't need that if she's doing well you don't need drones until next year when you requeen so i would say searching for The cell size, beekeepers know they call it wonky comb. That kind of makes it hard. Be looking for frames to cycle out that may be a problem down the road with drone population or just the fit into your box. I'm fortunate, Eric, to live in an area that because of the steep hillsides, we're in Hill and Valley. The valley... is not very wide.

16:54 The hills are very steep. So it's mostly the agriculture is pasture and beef cattle. There are some crops, but it's limited. And most of the people don't really use chemicals an awful lot. And so I don't have to worry about that as much as I do what is going on inside my hive, not what they're bringing in. And so uh pasture doesn't usually get sprayed and hay ground usually doesn't get sprayed in the locale that I am in and so I rely strongly on my spring forested tree plants uh but this year the frost was late in the spring it killed no fruit production and probably an hour's drive of my location this year so no apples no pears none of that stuff so in June I got something when it's finally warmed up. I got something and after 51 years the first time I can actually say I got blackberry honey and I harvested that off. It tasted quite unique and I take my honey off at different times so I can experience the different flavors. On this podcast you often hear a lot of talk about winter preparation and there are many different philosophies mostly involving hive insulation.

18:15 But what you haven't heard until now is a solution where insulation is built right into a traditional wooden hive body. That's what Man Lake just did. Created an insulated wooden hive and really guys, this is a big deal. I hope you'll take a look at it. Beekeepers have been trusting Man Lake for over 40 years. So if your winter prep involves feeding, mite treatments, new insulated hives, or even hive hugger insulation for your current hives, you can find it all in one place. And right now, Man Lake is offering podcast listeners $10 off your next order. Just enter code MLBlove10 at checkout. That's manlakeltd .com, discount code MLBlove10. And just two weeks ago, for a marketing into this little segment. My daughters worked for quite a few years in a coffee shop and they developed coffee flights. I don't know if you know what that is. Some might know what beer flights are. You get little samples of different flavors. I took my honey and saved the different flavors throughout the season this year and I made honey flights. four ounce jars in glass jars. So you got 12 ounces, but three different flavors, distinct flavors, and sold them as a three jar honey flight. And at the event that

19:46 I was at, that I tried it, the college women's soccer team bought them all. They were excited to be able to taste the different flavors that are available rather than the market store. You go into a grocery store, The honey's all the same flavor, all the same taste, because it's just homogenized together. So that's a benefit of beekeeping a little bit different than what you normally do. Instead of taking it all off at one time and say I'm done, I still probably will have to harvest goldenrod honey because I'll have far more on my boxes than I need to. A couple more questions about comb and frames and then we'll move on from there. What kinds of things as far as diseases or pests can you diagnose by pulling a frame? First let me just hit on the frame itself. I really don't like the plastic frames. Why is that? A lot of people use them. The little edges around the plastic frame that have openings in them are perfect places for small hive beetles to live and dwell and get away from any bees that might want to try to get them out. If you have them, you know, maybe you could pack them with modeling clay or something or do something with them that you can fill those gaps because when I'm still looking for reading my frames, I'm looking for these black dots that move around and it's hard to

21:18 smash them. If you smash them, you're smashing comb. But I take my hive tool with that J hook on the opposite end and I'll smash them inside of those plastic frames so choosing the kind of frame you have I'm an advocate of wooden frames but you know if you ever have some foul brood that can last for 90 years and so you're not going to have that problem with plastic frames so you got to give and take on you know what do you have what what's the likelihood of American foul brood versus small hive beetles man small hive beetles can just overpopulate Really quick you can have not just a mite bomb, but you can have a small hive beetle bomb as well And they don't need the ground to complete their life cycle. They can complete complete it now in the hive itself on drone brood or something else one frame I pulled out that was heavy on the drone brood and Small hive beetles probably on the one frame. There was probably at least a thousand larvae one frame. I got it out took it for a walk shook it off and didn't care that there was a worker brood I cycled that out and it's no longer freeze it and get rid of any threat.

22:38 So small hive beetles are quick you can't always just smash them and I use those little trays that look like it has an outrigger that clip on to the next frame over and it separates two frames put them in the edges and found that using apple cider vinegar is just as good as using the vegetable oil. So I'm looking for here where I am. I'm looking for mite damage and I'm looking for small hive beetles. Those are the pests that really hit us here in this locale. And certainly if you had fell brood, you'd know that from some of those frames as well. Correct. Knock on wood.

23:20 I haven't had any in my experience, but it's been around and close. And some of the non -social groups, Amish, aren't so quick to do some of the treatments that, because they're not up to some of the treatments that are available. And we've had some that was quickly taken care of. I'll say it that way. When you and I were talking the other day, one of the fun things that we were going over was you have some nice creative ways to save money on beekeeping. And for some people, it's actually a, wow, that's a little too expensive of a hobby for me to get into.

24:03 Or if they're going from a hobbyist to a sideliner, there's a lot of equipment to invest in or up to a commercial beekeeper. There's a lot of investment. And there's so many gadgets and everything else. So would you just... Part some of your wisdom and creativity on us with some money -saving ways to do beekeeping You know Eric, I teach a fall beekeeping class to beginners and Right now I've seen Some prices are ready for packages. I told you $28 was my first package 51 years ago. I'm seeing like $228 from some places to order your packages now the idea of freebies are really interesting. So if you don't, you should be putting out swarm boxes, not just in your yard. That's a good idea for best management practice. But have some family or friends allow you to put swarm boxes out. And with a little bit of lemongrass oil or swarm commander or whatever you choose, you can get freebies. Now that doesn't mean they're disease clean and free, but they could be feral bees. they could be bees from somebody else's bee yard and once in a while you might pick up a marked queen so you know what age she is if she's marked correctly but free bees are nice and you can put out those bait hives and there's lots of places will tell

25:34 you you know how to build them i know one guy that bought two packaged bees his first year uh second year he split them he lost the packaged bees and his splits survived. And he said, I'm not buying any more packaged bees. He put out swarm boxes, bait hives, charged them with some kind of lure, a good lure. And his third year, he caught 90. Wow. 90 swarms. That is a lot of swarms. He said, I will never purchase bees again. He said, there's too many out there. it's nice because he was in that border of Ohio and Indiana where if it wasn't corn everything is flat and the bees go to wherever there's a little block of woods and so every block of woods that he could put a swarm box in he did and he caught repeat take them catch them put them in another box put that swarm box back it has the smell of recent bees and that's a lure in itself and so Yeah, his wife didn't like the idea that he went from two to pushing a hundred, but he was able to get those freebies. One of the other things that I like to do is people will say only start with brand new equipment. There's a lot of people now that are sealing their equipment in wax and boiling up wax and dipping in their

27:05 boxes and that's good. That's a way to seal if you have spores or other stuff in there to clean that. But here's something that, you know, Eric, in teaching and the experience I've had, the two harshest things where I am that cause bees to not survive are mites and beekeepers themselves. You know, beekeepers, if you go buy a brand new box, it's polished, what I call polished. pine that the bees can't even put propolis on on the inside. So I'm slowly going to start turning over. I've got some pine boards that I cut some pine trees off of my property and I'm going to leave the inside rough cut. I've never seen a tree in nature have glass finished inside that hollow. Propolis is a layer of protection that bees will propolize the inside of that punky wood in a hollow portion in a tree. We strip that away. That keeps insects, ants, and other stuff out and protects from that moisture that might be in there. But we as beekeepers give him a product that won't allow them to put propolis on. We strip them of that natural defense of plant materials that builds a barrier. And so maybe rough cut inside. would be a much better

28:37 box than nice smooth. They can't even climb it, so they got to build these little ladders between the sections. So rough cut inside, leave your outside nice and smooth. You can paint it, treat it, do whatever you want, dip it, but give the bees a lot better opportunity to protect themselves. That's what they do in nature. And frames, I don't care. There's people that are starter frames and they don't use, they use the poor man's kenyon hive which is just a square box a regular box and just use top bars maybe put a little starter across the top but i found you better put a full frame on every other one because you'll get wonky comb they'll bridge over to the next top bar and not work so well but cheapen down take that a full frame of foundation and cut it up into Pieces in every other one have a solid frame of foundation and a starter frame a solid frame and you can allow your Foundation to last and stretch you longer Than just putting it in every single frame. That's a savings that I've found over time Made the mistake of putting all starter frame in and then having to cut out wonky comb Because you can't pull one frame out. You might have to pull three um so every other one it allows you to save a little bit of money. So freebies and some starter foundation. One of the other

30:10 things we talked before we came online is I do not like having to have a hot knife because you're tethered to a cord and it gets in the way. And so my dad when he retired gave me his Stanley Thermos and I use knives that I can pick up for 50 cents or a dollar at a yard sale that fit inside of that hot, that thermos. I pour boiling water in it and in between each decapping of my frames, I put that knife inside that hot water, pull it out, wipe it off. It's hot and it can go and I'm not tethered to electric cord. Those hot knives, if you see, you know, if you use them, They get heavy if you're doing a lot of cutting and a thin bread knife that will flow through a Deep frame if you have some that you're using that that thin knife goes into That thermos real easy people have those gintu knives from the 80s and infomercial You know it slices it dices it'll cut a nail, but a hot one will go through comb really quick and cut that off extremely fast and you don't have to pay 90 dollars for a hot knife or more yeah and yeah there is the cord i imagine they'll have battery powered ones

31:41 one of these days that'll just be even heavier you talked about the weight and it'll cost more Yeah, there are a lot of things in beekeeping that we can make ourselves. You talked about these swarm lures or people call them swarm traps. They don't actually trap bees, but they they lure bees in. I've made some of those. There are plans online. You don't have to be some kind of master woodworker or something to do them, but you do need a few tools to be able to build them. You can do those yourself. I think I made three or four out of one sheet of plywood. with the right plans. You can do the same for boxes. You can even do the same for frames and other things if you want to. I've got to share one quick story about a swarm trap because this spring I wanted to catch One swarm or maybe two because there was one I wanted to give away I certainly didn't want to catch 90 or anything like that and I got in my woodshed where I keep some old equipment that needs to be fixed and stuff like that and I had a couple of these old swarm traps in there that had caught swarms before so I knew the size shape and stuff worked well and They were both kind of beat up and so I took parts like the lid from one to put on the other and took one and cleaned it out really nicely and put some good frames in there put some swarm commander in there hung it up on this perfect

33:12 place just like ideal and the right you know right height off the ground and everything for a swarm to move into there now what I didn't think of was The old broken down one that had all the broken down parts that I had also left in the woodshed was dirty inside. It had some old mouse stuff in it and was on the floor of the woodshed. And guess which one a swarm of bees moved into? The old one. Yeah, the old one. After a day or two of them being in there, I took the frames out, put them in a nice permanent box and away we go. Turned out to be a fantastic swarm by the way. That was late May or early June. I wasn't expecting a swarm that late and a couple weeks ago we harvested two completely full supers off of that hive and I left them a good hundred pounds or so for winter. And the beautiful box that I had hung up in another place not a beat in it. So they're always going to play with us and give us a hard time and make us, let's just say humble. We think we know it all and they humble us. Eric, they're ultimately in control. We're learning every year. And what I do with my bait hives, I'll melt down wax and I'll pour it wax along on the sides of my bait hives, just so they have that smell in there.

34:43 But the best thing is catching one swarm in that bait hive will recharge it for the next one and the next one the next one and so I have an apple tree that on an average year I know I'll catch two or three swarms with my bait hive in that apple tree because it's close enough to my bee yard and sometimes even if you don't have the box buy swarm commander go out to where your bee yard is and maybe 200 300 feet away Spray a branch that you can reach from the ground. Don't even need a box, but you gotta check on a regular basis every day to see if a swarm landed.

35:24 And you know, if you've been around bees enough, you know the perfect swarm day in spring when it's rained for seven days, it's cloudy, and you get a nice warm 70 degree day. If you have boxes that it's been too cold to get into to check to see for swarm cells, spray swarm commander on a branch. forget the box, but then check it on that next day or two. And if you have bees ready to swarm, they're going to land. Good chance they'll land on that. You can also take a deep brood frame that maybe bees have used in the past, stick it on a pole or hang it from a branch of a tree and the same thing can happen. That can be enough to get a swarm to it. But yeah, don't leave it for too many days because they'll move on. One of the other things we talked about that I like that I want to share is those little shock absorber spring load a spring that you put on the bottom of your extractor. Yes, I've seen those. I haven't used them. They look great.

36:27 They look great. But for 50 cents to a dollar, you can do the exact same thing without having to pay for those. My extractor has three legs like a lot of them. And I've mounted that on a four by four sheet of plywood. And in combination I can put a deep, a medium, and a shallow in any combination anywhere in that extractor. And I take a swimmers noodle that is cut in half and put it underneath the plywood platform between the floor and that plywood. And it does the exact same thing. You could buy those fancy little shock absorber springs from whatever company you wish, but I can do any amount. I used to get frustrated because that four by four sheet of plywood with uneven weight try to move and manipulate frames so you're equalizing everything out and it still wants to walk across the floor when you're spinning it out. That goes away with those swimmers noodles as shock absorbers and they'll heavy heavy Let's say you're doing all brood frames that you want to reduce and and take out some people do double double do double deep boxes for their hives I don't but You're spending that out. There's a lot of weight in there and Get it balanced as tough Doesn't matter

37:58 put a swimmer's noodle underneath there and that thing will just spin nice and soft and won't even, it'll wobble, but the shock is taken out of it. And I'll bet you can get one of those at the dollar store. End of the season? Yeah, I think I bought them for 25 cents. I love it. I love it. You're full of great tips. Hey, before I let you go, would you like to share a wild and crazy beekeeping story with us? And I know you've done a lot of cutouts, so. I'm guessing you've got one that fits from that genre. Every cutout is a story in itself. And once in a while, they're easy. I went up to just last month. Somebody said it's late to do a cutout, but this house that was burnt 14 years ago was left in its same state for 14 years. And somebody decided we're going to restore this house. an electrician was there and there was bees on the side of the house, inside and out. They're flying in from outside.

39:04 I'm surprised the glass wasn't broken from the fire. But I'm stepping on burnt and melted plastic things inside this. And I use a borescope. If you're familiar with a borescope, it's an endoscope basically, but mechanics will use it. But I'll drill a little three -eighths of an inch hole and try to figure out. all the things that you don't want. The floor isn't nice and even. You can trip over stuff. There's no electricity, so it's dark. You only have the window to work on. And if you have a flashlight, you know where the bees are going to go. They're going to cover that flashlight. So me and this girl start on this. It's plaster lath board. Horsehair plaster.

39:50 That's its own challenge and it's of itself. You can't just take a piece of drywall and cut it and remove it. You got to take every little piece of laugh board out and comb might come to it. And Eric, this hive in between the wall and two studs with the challenge that it was, was from the floor to the ceiling, totally packed. I have a picture that she took of me standing next to it. And the eight foot by two foot centers on the two by fours. was solid packed with bees. My bee vac only can contain so many bees. Her and I have done some cutouts before and so I'll bee vac the side that I can see looking for the queen and we'll take a chunk of comb out, I'll cut a piece, she's putting it together. The other side, I flip it over when the vac side goes down, the bee side goes up and we keep those bees in that. those frames that we're putting together to take home, plus the bees in my bee vac. The very last piece of comb, I said, must have the queen in, don't know, very last piece of comb had the queen on it. My box for the bee vac was totally packed with bees. In fact, about an inch of dead bees, because there wasn't enough air moving in it, even with the vacuum moving. I think they died, but found that queen, caged

41:21 her put her in a clip with the frames that we were putting together with the comb in it with rubber bands and probably left at least 10 to 12 000 bees behind because we couldn't get them all. That's a beekeeper's dream but in the process it's a nightmare because there was so many there's three layers of comb in the wall deep and everything was just active. It was either honey or it was, we left open honey that was capped for the owner to have because it was so full. I'm guessing there had to be 60 ,000 to 70 ,000 bees in that hive, in that wall, way more. And it was so far away that we weren't going to be coming back for it. So unfortunately we just said, you know, Go ahead and get rid of the rest of the bees.

42:14 We've done our best and saved as many as we could. Found the queen and moved him into a hive, and that hive's doing well. But you gotta be prepared for just about anything and everything. So fun. Hey, Ben, thanks for sharing all the wisdom with us today. There is always so much to learn in beekeeping. It's part of what I love about it. 51 years, I'm still learning. The more I dive deeper into beekeeping, the more I realize I need to study and learn more. All right. Take care, my friend. All right. Thanks, Eric. Thanks again for joining us on the number one Bee Love Beekeeping podcast presented by Man Lake. Another big thank you goes out to Vita Bee Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Epistan, Epigard, and now Varroxan.

43:08 Extended release, oxalic acid strips. If you haven't yet, hey please subscribe to and follow the show, tell your friends about it, and click on over to BeLoveBekeeping .com to sign up for our free newsletter. If you have a guest suggestion or a topic you'd like discussed on the show, shoot me an email eric at BeLoveBekeeping .com. And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.