I used to get stung several times every summer by every kind of bee, wasp, hornet, imaginable. It hurt and the odd thing is that for the most part, they didn't bother anyone else in the family--I was the primary target. When my father took up beekeeping with honey bees, I never got stung again. Normal bees--not the Africanized aggressive bees--are very gentle. To this day, I sometimes pick them up on a finger and just watch them till they buzz off. So long as you are not swatting at them, they are totally non-aggressive--mosquitoes and gnats are a bigger problem. One of the reasons why I never got stung once we took up beekeeping is because the honeybees would not tolerate foreign hornet/wasp interlopers and would run them out of Dodge.

You guys are the best. I’ve followed you for years but haven’t watched from the beginning. Ariel is awesome and Eric is so so talented. The best thing; they don’t ask you to hit the subscribe and like button❤️

I think you did just fine. The bees are pretty hardy, you did exactly what you are supposed to, dump as many as you can, and then put the open shipping container in front of the hive. I get all my stuff from Barnyard Bee's, he has a KZfaq channel also. Really caring guy, family-owned company. Great job, Jimmy

Your sugar water should be of heavy viscosity. If you're feeding patties, i wouldn't feed them sugar water. Since you're still in a colder weather pattern, your modified patty should be sufficient. When you buy your patties from a store, take about a pound for each pattie, add a fistfull of old pollen then about 1 or 2 tablespoons of ProHealthy. Mush your patty for a minute or two and you're good to go. P.S. I would also add an electric fence around the hives. Predators, mainly grizzly bears can be a pain in the arse.

You’re videos are addicting. I will watch almost all of them. Cool stuff

Drift snow and snow in general performs as insulation material, and protects early perennial buds from frost bites. Well snow around the bee hives would do the same as long as they get a bit of air.

Your bees were in a state of torpor - it's two years later so of course you know this. But while in that state they can not move so brushing them away was good. I have never seen an install with bees in torpor! Makes it so much easier!! Edit: OH! You sprayed them with sugar water the night before! But your cabin is warm and I hope the temperature that day was too or that they had dried off. They were huddled together for warmth! I hope these were Alaskan raised so the temperature was not a shock! I can see there is a lot of differences in how you will handle your bees than how we do in Florida! Glad you have some local beekeepers to ask questions when they come up. Welcome to beekeeping!

New sub binge watching to catch up. Ya'll are amazing! I can see why working and homesteading wore you out. It's impossible for ya'll to not give 100% to whatever you do. I love the out takes and banter between you, your pups and your reasonable approach to everything you do.

Wish I lived closer have been a beekeeper for a very long time and would love to help. It is not easy, hang in there,OK?

BEE IGLOOS, so interesting seeing bee keeping in various parts of the country.Great video,I love how you guys explain everything you do.😀

Super video. Milan from Přerov CZ.

Wow!! What a great job you did!! I’m living vicariously!!!!

You guys are a homesteading machine! Haha! Great to see you two getting so many things set up. Very interesting seeing how this type of hive goes together. Have a good one!

On future assemblies you can use a medium large set of "channel lock pliers " also called "water pump pliers". Use them to squeeze the thin nails into that soft wood.

We learned a lot ...thank you.

Interesting project. New to beekeeping here so the setup/tips/tutorial will keep me glued to the progress for sure. Like how you are starting small and economizing everything; think this is the tried & true method/best practice to go esp. with a new venture. The bees look happy and settled in their new place, seems like the surrounding area would support an plethora of nectar-filled flora and nice to see Hunter making a cameo! Appreciate giving us the tour.

Y’all are such badasses.

Mother Nature, Beautiful and amazing guys ❤️❤️

Beetastic, great info video. Best of luck with the bees

amazing..love your videos

I've never heard of these hives before, Thanks for sharing.

Cool, thanks for sharing your plethora of knowledge you are acquiring along the path.

Love the bees! Keep on keepin' on!

I've been told each hive should have a different design painted on it. That way the bees have a visual identifier which hive is theirs. Great job and good luck. God Bless

Glad to see young couples like yourself getting into bees. something you might want to do before winter to also help with thier survival is build a wind break. Look up waddle fence simple cheap and replaceable. Ideally on the north and windward side.

Glad we found your channel! Cheers from some homesteaders down in Idaho :)

Snow on the ground and skeeters coming out crazy. Really enjoy your videos. YOu two are quite industrious! Been to Alaska once on a caribou hunt. Great country and if I was younger I would move there. For now Wyoming will do.

How cool. French wife(not really country type,) has just, over the past two years, gotten into bee-keeping, and loves it. Keeping bees in Alaska must be not the easieast thing to do(not that I know anything about the subject.) Really enjoy finding your videos...cheers...rr Normandy, Fra.

WOW so many bees lol. I hope they give you lots and lots of honey guys. It's great to see the snow melting so you can get your hoop house done and plants into it for future food. Michelle

Since my wife won't move to "where it's cold" I have to live vicariously through you guys and use a secret account because I have to sneak and watch at work. Anyways, y'all are seriously living my dream. I was wondering about there only being a screen bottom to your bee boxes? I have never seen that before. Also, all these comments about the bears.....I have some excellent bear dogs, a good truck and do not care one bit to make the drive from TN back to AK to help with that problem should it become an issue. LOL

It's crazy to me that you have snow and mosquitos. Here in Georgia, USA we look forward to cool weather because the mosquitos go dormant.

I don't like bees but I love their honey 😂

You can make your own pollen patties significantly cheaper. It's just some flour, regular bread yeast you'd get from the store, bee protein powder (AP23 works great for me), and some sugar.

Awesome ✔✔☺✔✔

I saw those in the background of your previous video,since they were purple I figured they were hives.....you did a great job for your first time. It must be quite daunting in the beginning.

Just found you and have been bing watching over past few day. Congrats on a wonderful series ,you sure have a good eye for a photo. Dad keep bees over here in England at 52 degrees latitude and enjoyed it until the rape and varroa got the better of him. You may be aware of this already mark your queen so you can identify them/find them easily; also he kept copious notes.

Now I know why you painted the polystyrene! Added insulation, so smart.

I have homesteaded with my grandmother in Southeastern Alaska on an Island named Sokoloff 10 nautical miles from Wrangell. I want to tell you that you are both doing a great job. I see that you are having a hot summer up there. As you go along, you will learn new things. My grandmother and I raised chickens - they were Rhode Island reds. They are a very hardy breed very good for alaskan weather. They lay brown eggs and have red combs. Their dark meat is a bit darker than other breads, but they are very tasty. We did not have refrigeration, so we canned them, ate them fresh and sold them to a local grocery store. We put Seine netting over the top, but any small weave netting will do. If we didn't do this the eagles would scoop them up. Good luck with your homestead and keep on trying ways to do things. Maybe think about solar one of these days. If this was available to us at the time it would have helped power up the hen house. Instead we used Colman lanterns hung from the ceiling to give them light and help keep them warmer.

Love honey, scared of bees! Awesome video though.

Bears love Honey!!!!

are some of the chicks in the kitchen with you, while making the pollen patties?? I can hear them haha, cute

If you have willow native to Alaska, planting some of them in that back pasture would help tremendously with the bog/water. Where I am from (west scotland) we use willow (and water reeds) to dry out bog area. Also, Have a look at ''flow hive'' australian invention of how to harvest honey from the hive without disturbing the bees.

Going to try a horizontal hive...havent picked it up yet. im partially disabled so thought it may be easier for me.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Great information. I like the care and thinking you put into the placement of the hives. The foam material was a new one for me. I always assumed they were made out of wood.

Just a pointer from a fellow Alaskan Beek. Don't bother shaking them out of the container. Remove the sugar can and put the whole box inside the hive. They will work their way out towards the queen. Return in a few days and remove the empty shipping container.

Those are some lethargic bees. Vino farm made a super unsulated bee barn. I woukd question the lack of ventilation on his his original design but ut may work for your new location tho even better would be a bee house(google bee houses in Switzerland)

I’ve been wanting to do some bees. I’m concerned about the bears here. I was going to put an electric fence around it when I do. In a year or so. Are you concerned of the bears there? So cool to see you do this in Alaska.. what wii you do with the hives in winter? Get to have some fun wheeling around the yard too.. Love the purple. So exciting to see how this works. I have wanted bees for a while now. Those hives’s will last so much longer also. Less maintenance too.Looks like you are doing a great job to me..!! Ya. Feed it to the chickens.. Have a fantastic day you two..!!

Viewers, common, don't be stingy on thumbs up. Even if you can do better. Like, like, like!

The inner cover is not also known as a queen excluder. Thias is a queen excluder: www.mannlakeltd.com/shop-all-categories/hive-components/queen-excluders . It is placed between the hive body and the first honey super and allows smaller worker bees to get into the honey supers while restricting the larger queen to the hive body.

Hey there again, I like your videos and most of the time the attitude of you both, HOWEVER, I must say that after watching quite a few of your videos (and yes, I'm subscribed and the bell is 'dinged'), I have to say in some areas, you and your husband definitely meet the standards for the old axiom: "Penny wise and Pound foolish." What I mean by this is that you are NOT figuring your TIME as a Financial Cost!!!!! The prime example in this video is your remark about not using a stapler gun in putting the frames together; you assert that 'hand hammering' is saving you money, when in FACT it is NOT saving you money! It is also harder on the wood of the frames than the staples from a staple gun would be. Staple guns are NOT expensive; if you have a Harbour Freight store near you, you can pick one up on sale often times for UNDER $20. Normally they would be between $20 and $30. A box of staples usually costs anywhere from $5-$10 and that's for 1,000-3,000 staples, which go a LONG WAY for a multitude of projects. Lastly, and this is the key point of my comment, a staple gun allows you to finish a frame in SECONDS rather than MINUTES! It does a more secure job than just nailing AND it is LESS destructively impactful on the wood being staple than nailing is. Your time IS money! Utilizing time saving tools really DOES save money, both on a daily basis and in the long run! Work smarter, not harder! Cheers from a crippled up old Neanderthal in the Oil Patch of Central Wyoming!

Glad you are getting into bees. I am a bee keeper and I love them.. I do not have those kind of hives but I have watch videos of people who have them.. Might be instrumental in wintering them. Love the color. Do they have hive beetles or wax moths there? I would totally not use that much pollen patty.. Maybe the size of a 1/2 dollar.. If you do have wax moths or hive beetles, it will feed them.. .. If not, bees have a lot of food.. This will be interesting to follow your progress with this adventure. You did great installing your packages.. I was wondering what your temperature was.. that will slow them.. Hope you have grand success.. Bees are so essential to our living.. Happy Bee keeping.. :)

Glad Hunter left the area.

There's a mix-up, an inner cover is different from a queen excluder.

Hi it's Blake

My second year Bee Keeping now at 8 nives cheers and good luck if i can ever help look me up cheers Canada here Alberta we also get brutal cold in winter --

Hoping to get started with bees, still doing a bunch of research but where did you get your hive?

Hello! I am loving your channel. Alaska gorgeous place to be & live. I was wondering why do you have to paint the hives? Here is Arizona they are usually just white. Keep up the great work. You two are doing an amazing job!!

Hi Arielle and Eric, Do you follow Doug and Stacy? Did you see the video on their beehives? It's a shame Doug didn't think about a wind block. I hope you get a wind block set up for your bees before winter sets in. Is it an option to move the bees into the green house after the growing season? Would that offer them the protection they need? Cheers, Bill P.S. Getting caught up on the backlog of your videos.

Hi , I don't know about Alaska but having kept bees for a long time in upstate NY temperate climate my bees always did well on the east side of a windbreak whether its shrubs or trees. I always kept the colonies out of the wind. I tried to face them east so they work earlier in the morning and in the afternoon they had some shade from the hot afternoon sun. Warmth and dry vs cold and wet made a huge difference in colony health and honey production. Also air drainage, ie the natural tendency of cold wet air to settle in low ground pockets is something to avoid, I always put hives on the leeward slope of a hill if I had a choice.Your conditions may call for some different practices but I would monitor the hives to see what is needed in your area. Good luck in your venture!

So sorry to ask! What happened to the double axle on the Polaris .Tim in Cape Town.

This is so interesting. Do you plan on selling the honey that you get from the hives?

Can't wait to have own hive, but can you explain why bees need help with foundation? In nature, they build their hives in tree trunk hollows.

I live in a northern part of Canada, in Quebec, and I am also a beekeeper. I use Bee's box' polystyrene bodies for some of my beehives. I have never seen the type of beehive you use. Do you have a link or just the name of the product or company for me? Thx and great video I had fun watching it 5*

Where did u get your bee hives from?

That’s super cool! You guys have so much going on. Will the bees live through the winter or do you have to get new bees every year? I’m excited to see you guys get some honey this year. Just got to the over wintering section. Let’s hope these little guys survive the cold. Eric’s a bold man. I’d be standing a little further back😂 You don’t feed friends to the chickens 😂 You guys ha e a beetastic day too. lol

will the foundation change as the the bog warms up(softer) or did you plan for that as to staying level?

Are you not worried about bears getting into the hives? A solar powered fence perhaps?

Where did you get your supply’s. And what books or links did you get to make you successful. We are a zone 6 and I have wanted to do beekeeping for a while now. But totally ignorant.

I like all your video's :) You used a lot of bee terms in this video ,,, I have no clue what those terms mean ,, wish you would have gone into that for us ,,

Suddenly, thinking BEARS???

Where did you get your bees from

Yes, at the temps you guys are messing with the bees in this video the chances of getting stung are very low as....they cannot be very active at those temperatures. I did some beekeeping as a kid in Oregon and, I had never heard of pollen patties! But, makes sense in Alaska to get the bees going as early as possible. But, my big question is how do you keep bears from tearing up your hives?

Don't quite understand the reasoning of using the 3/4 inch nails attach the foundation cleats instead of a stapler. you indicated that you didn't have a stapler but it the 16: 27-minute mark there is a stapler laying on the pallet by the smoker.

What about the bears??

That wooden top board is NOT a queen excluder! A queen excluder is a precisely spaced mesh (normally metal or plastic) that is just too small for the queen to pass through but just big enough for the workers to squeeze through. The top board goes on the top (clue is in the name) , a queen excluder would go where you have put the top board. photo of queen excluder ;- cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-5bblj3/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/814/1385/STAINLESS_QUEEN_EXCLUDER__74469.1440766253.jpg

The bees were cold, that's why they were so inactive/ lethargic. Should have waited until the day warmed up bit and worked quickly to get them into hive and closed up. If there is too much space for the bees to keep warm with body heat they get cold and die. You placed smoker slightly upwind from hive so smoke was drifting into/over hive. Do not even do that with African bee's I work with as it taints the honey and is not good for bee's. Enjoy yourselves.

Bears?

What about bears????

Umm bears bees equal honey honey equals bears

Only complaint... you painted all your hives the same color... you need to make them all look different in some way so the bees can identify which hive they belong to .. and yes this is something and not a joke. You don't want them to get confused and end up going into the wrong hive... one reason for a high number of bee deaths...