Frequently
Asked Questions
We will add questions to
this list as we get them from other beekeepers, but below is our best effort
at both asking and answering questions without being self-serving.
(We don't know about you, but we've had enough of so-called FAQs that
say stupid things like "Q: Is Your product good? A: Oh, yes, it is
very, very good!")
Is
Bee-Quick Safe For Bees?
We have tested Bee-Quick
for bee safety, and you can test yourself, as follows:
If you have a pair of observation hives, simply expose the bees in one observation hive at regular intervals to enough Bee-Quick to induce a noticeable reaction, while marking newly-emerged bees to be able to record the average lifespan of a statistically significant number of bees. As a control, have a second observation hive that is never exposed to Bee-Quick, but otherwise treated identically.
We have not seen any difference between test-subject and control hives over many generations of bees. We are open to proposals from interested and credentialed researchers who might do more professional studies, suitable for publication. (Of course, the researchers would want us to fund the study, but if we were to fund the study, that would raise questions about the impartiality of the study, so we suspect that beekeeper experience will be the final legitimate word on this subject.)
Is Bee-Quick
Safe For Me?
It certainly is much safer
than all other "bee repellents", since it is the only one that is non-toxic,
and the only one that is not classified as "Hazardous Materials".
Since Bee-Quick produces vapors through oxidation, we suggest that you
avoid splashing Bee-Quick in your eyes, but other than this obvious warning,
you need take no special precautions.
Is
Bee-Quick Safe For Honey?
We have an "attitude problem"
on this issue, one we hope you share. We feel that nothing except
honey should be in honey. If you spill ANYTHING into
honey, we hope that you will not sell it. Bee-Quick liquid, when
used correctly, stays on the fume board, and only the vapors come near
the honey. Both Bee-Quick liquid and the vapors produced are non-toxic,
which is something that no other product can claim. Regardless, one
never needs to "soak" a fume pad with Bee-Quick, so one need not worry
about Bee-Quick getting into honey.
Of course, everyone knows that honey will absorb odors, so it is reasonable to ask if Bee-Quick vapors might be absorbed by honey. Rather than giving a lecture in organic chemistry, enthalpies of vaporization, Gibbs free energy, and Boltzman distributions, we can simply state that Bee-Quick vapors are much too volatile to be absorbed by honey, (even uncapped honey) under normal use conditions. (As soon as we can lay out the proof of this in less than 40 pages, we will add a page that shows the chemical equations and math.)
What
is A Fume Board? A Breeze Board?
A fume board is an item
that costs under $10 at any bee supply house. If you own a few hand
tools, you can make one in a few minutes. It turns sunshine into
heat, creating more Bee-Quick vapor than would occur at room temperature.
A breeze board captures the breeze, and directs it through a cloth sprayed
with Bee-Quick, pushing the vapors down into the supers. Both types of
boards are described in detail here.
Will
Bee-Quick Get ALL The Bees Out Of My Supers?
Nothing will get all the
bees out of every super. There will always be a few bees that are
too stubborn to leave, for reasons unknown. (There, we just admitted
what no one else except a beekeeper will tell you! At least we are
honest...) The few bees that remain in the supers are fairly
easy to shake or brush off the frames. If you remove the "stubborn"
bees from one super while waiting for the fume board to work on another
super or hive, things go fairly smoothly. An important trick is to
stack the cleared supers with care, and put a cover on top of the stack(s)
to prevent bees from getting back into cleared supers. If anyone
has any ideas on why some bees are "stubborn", we would be very interested
in hearing about your views. We wish we could make 100% of the bees
leave the supers every time, but it only happens very rarely. Don't
make the mistake of thinking that you need to use more Bee-Quick to get
those last few bees to leave. It won't work, and you will drive bees
completely out of the hive entrance. Use less!
What's
All This About "House Bees"?
"House Bees" are young bees,
not yet old enough to forage. They collect nectar from foragers near
the hive entrance, and place it in comb. Other, even younger House
Bees do things like draw foundation out into comb. While these bees
can fly, they tend to stay in the hive. These bees are crucial to
success in producing large honey crops, since there is quite a bit of labor
required to move nectar around, combine evaporated nectar, cap cells of
"ripened" honey, and so on. These bees are the overwhelming majority
of bees that are found in supers.
Bee-Quick keeps the House Bees in the hive, which is much less traumatic than blowing or brushing. Unlike bee escapes, Bee-Quick does not put house bees at risk, since the bees are free to move downward through any path they choose, and there is no chance of trapping House Bees in the supers above a jammed bee-escape.
To learn more about House Bees, beg, borrow, or request by inter-library loan a copy of "The Wisdom Of the Hive" by Thomas Seeley. It is the best book we have ever seen on the actual day-to-day operations of the bees in a hive, and provides the best understanding we have yet encountered about why bees do what they do.
What's
The Lowest Temperature At Which Bee-Quick Is Effective?
We do not know the exact
temperature, but we suspect that you are worrying about the wrong temperature.
The outside air temperature really does not matter on a sunny day.
If you have painted the metal top of your fume board black, it will heat
up to an acceptable temperature even on days that are "too cold for bees
to fly". If the day is cool and cloudy, you can use a breeze board
and get better results than you would with a fume board. Obviously, it
would be a very bad idea to harvest honey when it is too cold for bees
to fly unless you plan on brushing the "stubborn" bees directly onto the
hive landing board.
If you want to track the temperature of your fume board, get a metal lab thermometer, drill a small hole in the wooden frame of your fume board, and stick the metal probe through the hole so that it touches or comes close to the fume pad. The temperature of the fume pad is the temperature of Bee-Quick in its liquid form, and this temperature will control the rate of vaporization, and therefore, vapor production. As we say elsewhere in these pages, even after a night in your freezer, Bee-Quick still "smells nice". If you can smell the vapors coming out of the bottle, the bees will take notice and evacuate your supers.
What's
The Shelf-Life Of Bee-Quick?
If the bottle is unopened,
still sealed with it's plastic wrap-around seal, and kept out of direct
sunlight, Bee-Quick will remain ready-to-use for years. Once opened,
the shelf-life depends upon how tightly you screw the cap back on.
The bottle contains only a limited amount of air, and Bee-Quick reacts
with air (oxidation/evaporation) to produce Bee-Quick vapors. If
the cap is screwed on tight, only a small amount of Bee-Quick will react
with the air in the bottle, and the bottle will still be "good".
We are still testing one of the first bottles of Bee-Quick bottled for shelf-life under high-heat
conditions, keeping the bottle on top of our furnace. Years have
gone by without any degradation.
An important point to remember is that the pump-spray nozzle does not seal as well as the flat cap. The flat cap is for storage, and the pump is for apiary use.
What
do you mean by "Your Money's Worth Or Your Money Back"?
We mean what we said, and
we said what we meant. If you are not satisfied, contact the retailer.
The retailer will refund your money. No risk, no hassles, no run-arounds,
no questions asked. But please take the time to tell us about your
successes, failures, problems, and ideas. Bee-Quick was created because
of frustration with existing bee repellents, not due to divine inspiration,
so we certainly are not going to claim any special insight into any aspect
of beekeeping. We need your help to make the product better.
What's
In Bee-Quick?
That would be telling, wouldn't
it? Colonel Saunders never listed his 11 secret herbs and spices,
and we are not going to reveal our formula of oils and herbal extracts,
either.
If anyone has any concern about Bee-Quick's ingredients, note that the bottling plant that we use bottles nothing else but food for human consumption. They cannot have any unsafe or non-food-grade materials to come anywhere near their shiny bottling equipment. The USDA inspects them on a regular basis, and they are not about to risk their multi-million-dollar business over a mere sideline like our product.
What
About the EPA? Is Bee-Quick "Legal"?
It sure is. We aren't
crazy, or nearly as stupid as we look, so we sought approval from the EPA,
FDA, the USDA, and even the CIA. They told us that Bee-Quick was
not a pesticide, which seemed obvious to us. They showed us The US
Code, section 152.8, which says:
"A substance or article is not a pesticide, because it is not intendedWe asked them "but what if someone wants to insist that Bee-Quick MUST be a 'pesticide' of some sort?"
for use against "pests''... ...if it is......(d) A product intended to force bees from hives for the collection of honey crops"
"...(d) Any edible food commodity... which is used as a pesticide is exempted
from
the requirement of a tolerance when used in accordance with good agricultural
practices in or on all food commodities."
They then kicked us out of their offices and told us to take our bees with us.
Who's
this "Fischer" person, anyway?
There is more than one us.
Both the patriarch of the family and his son are named James, and just
to make matters more confusing, we each keep bees at different apiaries.
We are nobody important, and like it that way.
Where
Did Bee-Quick Come From?
A brief history: Both
beekeepers had difficulty in shaking and brushing bees at harvest.
The son kept designing new and innovative escape boards, bought a very
expensive, powerful, and noisy Stihl backpack-type blower, and after getting
frustrated with each approach, bought a bottle of Butyric Anhydride.
This small bottle could have led to a divorce, but for the tolerance of
his long-suffering wife, who suggested that it be stored at the end of
the farm furthest from the house, along with all the clothing to be worn
when using the Butyric, preferably in a concrete bunker at least 20 feet
underground. The patriarch stated that he started beekeeping for
fun,
and did not find the harvesting process "fun" at all. Thus, after
long hours spent re-learning long-forgotten chemistry and countless late-night
sessions in the lab, Bee-Quick was created and fine-tuned.
Why
Such A Funny-Looking Bottle?
We don't call it "funny".
We call it "pocket-sized". We actually thought about the bottle long
and hard. We wanted something that could slide into a shirt pocket,
fit in a tool belt, and stand up to being squeezed, all while looking good.
We even thought about how much Bee-Quick a typical beekeeper would need
in a season, and how much everyone dislikes storing things between seasons.
We tried to create the best-packaged product since comb honey!
Why
Isn't Bee-Quick Less Expensive?
Well, it is MUCH less expensive
than other "bee repellents", when one looks at the total cost of using
"the other stuff". We are not just talking about the Haz-Mat shipping
fees, we are talking about costs like clothes that must be thrown away
because you spilled Butyric on them, honey that was not made because you
had could not harvest when you wanted and had run out of drawn comb, and
so on. Bee Quick is even cheaper than fuel and maintenance for a
leaf blower.
We are hoping to sell a lot of Bee-Quick. If we do, we can get lower prices on the ingredients, the bottles, and the little spray caps, and we can then lower the price. We have no illusions about getting rich. (Heck, we are beekeepers, which is clear proof that we have little interest in fame, fortune, or a life of leisure!)
Can
I Use Your Flying Bee On My Website?
While our bee is copyrighted,
trademarked,
and service marked, as long as you don't use it in connection with things
for sale (or as our lawyer says, "in commerce") we don't mind at
all. If you include a link to the Bee-Quick website, this will make
us very happy.
What
Is "Farmageddon"?
Its our farm, nestled in
the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Its not a very big farm, but
we're not very big on farming. The name alone says volumes about
our success at farming so far. The bees really enjoy the wide variety
of weeds and brambles that we produce no matter what we try to grow.
Show
Me Your Ads!
Many people wonder who does
our ads. We do.
Here are the ads
Where's The Usual Obligatory
Links?
Right Here
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