Wintering Bees with Bruce White A FREE Step By Step Video

Beekeeping - Basics
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Recently, we spent some time with Bruce White guiding us through a detailed demonstration about preparing hives for winter. Commonly known as Wintering Bees. You can view on YouTube on the Save Our Bees Australia channel or view the video for FREE here

The video shows many very specific tasks from opening a hive, smoking the beehive entrance, wraping the hive, placement and observing colony health.

The video has been divided up to about 23 chapters indexed so you can jump to specific spots in the video.

See the video below and note the chapter topics indexed in the list.

00:00 intro

00:17 observing the flight & entrance

01:07 the importance of keeping hives in the sun during winter

01:34 sloping (traditional langstroth) hives forward

02:07 keeping the hive entrance clear

02:48 strapping the hive

03:22 preparing to open the hive

04:04 feeling the weight of the hive

04:23 removing the lid

04:42 observing frames covered with bees

05:16 removing the supers & observing the weight to indicate stored honey

07:21 the brood box (or nest)

08:01 observing the brood frames

08:51 frames covered with bees

09:26 inspection of brood health

10:33 observing stored pollen, honey & brood

11:25 controlling SHB (small hive beetle)

13:35 removing excess supers or mat

17:35 wrapping so most frames are covered with bees & kept warm

19:06 wintering bees checklist 19:44 reducing the entrance

20:32 conclusions

21:08 reassembling the hive

2 Likes
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It is a good video for people to get a perspective of wintering a hive. I shared it with members of the Western Australian Apiarist Society a few days ago.

The only thing I didn’t do was look at the climate date for where you guys are.

Adam

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Hi Adam,

thanks for the feedback. Great to hear you liked and shared it. BTW it was filmed 3 May 2020, just south of the centre of Sydney. So it’s mid autumn here a probably a bit cold at night with sunny dry days at them moment.

1 Like
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Yep I liked that it was recent and Australian bee content.

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Thanks Adam, yes Bruce is a very good beekeeper. Known by many in several countries. I always learn a lot watching him. Did you see the part on wrapping frames? I’d never seen this done before and thought it was a great idea for winter.

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I am with you @Emmanuel, first time I had seen or heard of “wrapping”… well done on the video, its excellently put together, may I ask what program you used to edit and collate the video?
Did you notice the queen? I didn’t but Bruce did… have a look at 13:23mins, she was on the top of the queen excluder. That was a close call! :grimacing:

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Hi Rodderick, thanks for the feedback. I use a few things:
Edius
DaVinci Resolve
Photoshop
After Effects
and a few other plug ins.

Are you a video editor? What do you use?

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unfortunately NOT! … I have been trying to put a short beekeeping clip together for a market promotion on the north shore here for World Bee Day next week and am trying to use OpenShot… but my laptop is really struggling under the load. Was hoping there was a lightweight software editing program where I could add some text and fade transitions, nothing complex, the video needs to be only 30secs.

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Hi Rodderick

Yes video editing is a huge load on computer power. IMHO it takes a good fast machine and a good video card to edit in realtime, especially 4k video. There are a few bits of software around but I only have experience with a few. I don’t really know of the one you spoke of.

Are u a member of the NSBKA? I’ve met michael Symes from the club a few times. They seem like a collection of good beekeeping people up your way.

If u need assistance with the video maybe I can help you out with the editng. Just let me know.

Regs
Emmanuel

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Hey Emmanuel, yes. I am on the committee with Michael. I regularly enjoy popping down to your club for the Mead Meetups with Matt. I grew up down there and know a few members of the club quite well. Its a fantastic spot and clubhouse you have, we are working towards building something similar in the next couple of years at Terrey Hills.
Thanks for the video tips by the way, I did some filming today for World Bee Day coming up this week, its pretty amateurish but its the best I could manage. Should be up on Facebook and Youtube soon.