A Glutton For Punishment - First FULL Inspection of 2022 With NO Veil or GLOVES

We're here today in the stream apiary and we're going to do the first inspection of the year. Now you might think this is crazy. 2 weeks ago I said don't do any inspections yet, it's too early to do that. The weather that we're seeing this week has definitely made me change my mind. But what I would just reiterate, that previous video, I wasn't saying don't ever go into your bees at this time of the year. I was saying assess the reason for why you're going into those colonies at this point in the year. So I stand firm by what I said in terms of there's no need to be going in there to do regular swarm inspections, i.e., going through every single frame checking for swarm cells, because I think you're likely to do more damage at this time of the year than the benefit you're going to get by eliminating a 1 in 100 swarm possibility. But there's definitely valid reasons for going into your colony at this point of the year, and the reason that I'm going into this colony at this point of the year is that it's just full. There's not enough space in this beehive whatsoever, so I'm getting it ready to move it over to a full-size beehive. You might remember this nuc. This was the nuc that I made up in the Making Overwintered Splits. We got up to about episode 11 or 12 before I closed that one off. The bees are doing really, really well. They're filling the box completely. We've got a week ahead of us of fantastic weather, and I want the bees to make the most of that opportunity to actually expand into their new beehive. So the next video I'm going to do is talking about how to transfer this nuc across into the new beehive. In this video though, I'm just going to show you how to do your very first inspection of the year. I'm doing it on a nuc, but the same applies for a beehive as well. A few things to look out for: being as careful as you possibly can not to squish the queen. But we're getting towards the point now where queens will become available soon, towards the end of March. Now, if I was to squish a queen today, the virgins would probably be going and flying in about 3 or 4 weeks' time. And in 3 or 4 weeks' time from now, early imported queens will be available. The difference between going and inspecting your colonies at the back end of March— it's very different to going and inspecting your colonies Middle of Feb, end of Feb, even early March, and I think the risk is far less going in now. But I will stand by the comments. If you've got no reason to be going in there, if you've got a beehive that's hefting well and is on say 60 or 70% of the frames, there's really no reason to be going in there. My reason for going in here today is I need to move all of the frames from this nuc into a full beehive because I don't have any extension boxes for my Payne's poly nucs, so I need to give them the space Else I fear they may swarm early. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll show you how to do the first inspection of the year. Before I get my bee suit on, I'm going to open them up, show you them from the top. These are really gentle, these bees, and I want to get to the position where I don't need to put on loads of beekeeping suits to go into my colonies. Am I tempting fate? You'll have to wait and see. These are such calm bees. We did a lot of work last year trying to kind of get rid of all of the nasty genetics. There's definitely a lot of nasty genetics left over, and I'm going to do my best this year to kind of go through all of those and squish the queen, add a new queen in there. Because I love it when you can have colonies of bees like this where you can open the lid And they don't even bother flying up at you. I just think it's fantastic. And that's not to say that all of my colonies are like this. You do get variation. I know this colony is a good, calm colony though, and while it's still small like this, you can get in there, no veil, and you can inspect them like this. So this is what this colony is looking like, covering all of those 6 frames there. The bees are out, they're foraging at the moment, probably bringing back a fair amount of water still, But lots of good pollen coming in. I'll pull out a couple of the frames here, I'll show you. I reckon we're gonna find a decent amount of pollen in here. And all we're doing is we're just doing that first inspection just to check everything's all right. And then I'll close them back up. And then on our next video, I'll show you how to move them over to their full-time beehive. So the first thing I always do every single time I come to the apiary, kind of between say September through to March, I'm hefting the bees. Hefting the bees tells you so much, and these guys here, they've lost a lot of weight over the last few weeks. Leads me to believe that they're rearing brood, leads me to believe that they're probably getting a little bit light for my liking. Got a couple of options in this situation. The first option would be you put some fondant on, and that would resolve the issue of the bees not having enough stores. The second option is you put an additional brood box on here. That would be my preferred option at this time of year because a Payne's poly brood box, or any poly brood box that you're going to put on top, okay, you're going to lose a little bit of heat upwards, but you have to offset that against the fact that you're giving the bees additional space. They do need additional space kind of when they get towards the early spring expansion. And then the third thing that I'm going to do in the next video here is I'm going to transfer them over to a new full-size beehive. As I said, it's not my preferred method, kind of forced a little bit by the equipment that I've got at the moment, but I also wanted to do that manipulation to show people who are buying nucs from me exactly how to transfer them over from this Payne's poly nuc here. Which is the poly nuc that you'll be getting your nucs delivered in. So as I said, first thing I'm doing is I'm hefting, and I can feel that it's still got an okay amount of weight. I would estimate they've probably got another couple of weeks worth of stores in there if it was bad weather, but the forecast for the next 5 days is exceptional. It really is very good for this time of year. They're going to be bringing in copious amounts of pollen. They're probably going to find a little bit of nectar from somewhere as well, and they're also going to be bringing back water to start breaking down these stores. So in terms of the first inspection of the year, what are you looking to do? First thing you're looking to do here is to not kill the queen. If you kill the queen, all of the other benefit that you're going to get from that first inspection of the year goes out the window. So you do need to be really, really careful. You can do that by starting off on frame one or frame six or any of the frames that are over on the edge. Don't go start pulling out the center frame. That's likely where most of the brood is. If you can see a noticeable cluster, so if your cluster's sitting over this side, try and go for the opposite side. You're trying to break the first frame away. that's going to be most likely just to be capped stores. If you can identify a frame that's going to be capped stores, that's the frame that you want to get out. I always recommend just kind of going right up to the edge. Sometimes in poly boxes, it is actually the edge frames that are the warmest, so that's where you see the brood. But generally, I find that you will find the brood in the center stores off to the side. The next thing I'd say is just don't underestimate how well propolised down all of the frames are. I do this every single year. I get my hive tool in underneath the frame lugs I start propping it out like that and I break the lugs off, and then I curse and think, I do that every single year. So when I get my hive tool out, I'll show you a really easy way just to kind of loosen the frames without messing around with the lugs. And then what I end up doing is pulling out the frames actually from the center as opposed to using the lugs. Very, very easy to break it at this time of the year. And then when we go through the inspection, the kind of things that you're looking for is pretty normal. The things that you're looking for, you're looking to see that there aren't any swarm cells. Highly unlikely you're going to find swarm cells at this time of the year. But obviously have a look for them, see what you can see. You're looking for signs of disease, but again, big, healthy, thriving colonies unlikely to get through the year with lots of disease present. Main thing that I'm looking for at this point of the year, I like to see the queen, but it doesn't matter if you don't see the queen. I like to see eggs. Eggs are always a good sign that the queen's getting ready to lay. But the big one for me and the big indicator to show that the colony is healthy and that they've made it this far through the winter and into spring is a really nice decent size of worker brood. That does not mean that your bees have made it through the year, but what it means is that your colony hasn't turned into a drone-laying colony just yet. Did a video the other day showing you what I did with the drone-laying colony, and I'd do exactly the same with a nuc if I found that as well. I'd shake them out into an active apiary and I just let them find their way back into other hives. So these bees, they are behaving so well, I'm going to take a risk. And I'm gonna try and inspect them without any gloves or any bee suits. So first thing I said was talking about where to get your hive tool in. Normally, I'd kind of try and get in there with the hive tool and lever up some way. Very, very likely to break your lugs by doing that. So what I do is I tend to go in the middle, somewhere like that, one of the edge frames, and I'll just use my hive tool just to break that down a little bit. And as you can see, they are incredibly well stuck together. That's that side done over there. I'm going to do the same on this side over here. You can then go on to the other side, and you can see I've broken the seal on that one, so we've got that one open now. And if you look down, you can see we've got lots of stores. So I'm going to gamble and say this frame here It's 100% stores, so that's the one I'm going to try and get out first. So I'm just taking my time, obviously one, because I've not got a bee suit on, but also because it's the first frame that I'm trying to get out. They're often very, very difficult to get out, and I'd prefer to not get it out at this point of the year as opposed to squishing the queen. So I'm really going to take my time. Once you get that first frame out, it becomes very, very easy to get the rest of them out. Right, so we managed to get the first frame out there. That one came out really nice and easy. It's probably 50% capped stores, and then also I've got a little bit of just empty space in there as well. No queen on this frame, so all I'm going to do is I'm just going to pop this frame off down to the side. I'll do a quick once-over just to double-check there's no queen on it though. That is the hardest part. Whoa, definitely thought I was going to get stung then. That is the hardest part of the first inspection, is getting that first frame out. Once you've got that first frame out, then it makes it a lot easier to break the seals on the rest of them and to pull them out. So depending on how well the rest of the frames are sealed, you might just be able to get in there now. And with this one you can and just pull that apart. Didn't even need to use a hive tool. That really does limit the risk of you squishing any bees because you can do it nice and gentle just with your hands. And again, moving nice and slowly. I'm going to get a job with the Texas Bee Works at this rate, aren't I? Just pull them out. So this is what this next frame looks like, pretty much empty. As you can see, this is why I'm really keen to do something with this nuc. Not got much stores left. I either have to put fondant on, and then I'm going to risk them backfilling and swarming, put the poly brood box on that I don't have, or what I'm going to do in this next video is I'm going to transfer it into a new beehive. So with every other frame apart from the first one, you can just put them back into the brood box. Just move them over by one, gives you sufficient space to start to work. Try not to squish the bees as you're doing it. As soon as you squish a couple of bees, that's it, they're onto defense mode. They're going to ping me, aren't they? For the time being though, I'm going to carry on with no suit. So I was just trying to break open the next frame using the same method, just using my hands, and it was really, really tightly propolised down. So I'm just going to do the same thing again, I'm going to get my hive tool and I'm just going to lever that frame away, and you can feel it, you instantly break the seal, and that's all you need to do to get you to a point where you can actually get that frame out. So next frame along, I get more and more concerned. Still no eggs, still no brood, hardly any food. Hopefully in the next couple of frames we're going to start to see that brood now. Otherwise, we might have an issue. We might not have any queens. Just because they're this strong doesn't mean there's a viable queen in there. Might come across the next frame and they might be drone laying already. You can never tell at this point of the year. I'll leave that bit in for you. I got very, very scared that I was going to get stung in the face. Big jolt made them all fly up. So I won't do a close-up of this one. It's quite difficult doing it and I'm scared I'm going to get stung. Still not finding big plates of capped brood though. I think I can see some larvae through here, but I'm not going to move or shake the bees. And I still haven't found the queen. So I'm always perfectly honest with you, just got stung on the hand there. Maybe you can see that bee trying to sting me. Should probably take a video of that one. That's the one the California Beekeeper got 5 million views on. So there you go, it's trying to get off me now. We will persevere. I'm really keen to kind of get through all 6 of these. I definitely want to find that queen and I want to see some capped brood. So there we go, on the 5th frame we finally found some eggs, some larvae, and some capped brood. Can't see much of it and I'm not going to shake those bees off, but it's definitely there. That means that this colony is a viable colony up until this point in the season. Obviously things can still go wrong. We'll continue the search on that final frame, see if we can see any more capped brood and that queen. What's really noticeable is that since I got that first sting on the hand, and I've just got another one behind my ear as well, is the temperament of the bees has really changed. Now that might be just because I'm taking a little bit too long. It also might be because they can kind of sense that attack pheromone because of the previous sting. Either way though, I'm calling it a day there because I've got 5 frames of the way through. I've got capped brood. It's capped worker brood. I've seen eggs. I've seen larvae. I don't need to go any further. This is definitely a viable colony. I'm glad I went in here because it told me what I needed to know, which is they were really struggling when it came to stores. And in the next video, I was going to move them across anyway. I hope this video has been helpful. I hope it's shown you how gentle you need to be. If you want to see last year's first inspection of the year, check out this video here where it's a very similar size colony.