Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey tours a bee shed untouched for five years, cataloguing antique observation hives, National hives, a stainless-steel extractor, and dozens of other pieces of equipment. He assesses what's usable, what needs repair, and what can be salvaged from the unexpected haul.
I got a call today about a bee shed that hasn't been touched in about 5 years. In this video, I show you what's inside. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I am going to show you what I found in a bee shed that hasn't been touched for 5 years. So I got a call from a guy who actually called me about 2 years ago to come and remove an abandoned hive on his property, and he's just got round to working his way through all of the sheds, and he rung me up and he said, there is so much bee stuff here, do you want to come and take a look? And you can have it free of charge. So I thought, why not get the camera on? You can follow what I find in this bee shed that hasn't been touched for 5 years. So let's get straight into it and I'll show you what I found.
Right, so we take a look at what we got then. We've got a very old, really nice looking observation hive. Looks like it probably takes 3 deep nationals. Needs a bit of work, but really, really nice. Um, very old, definitely an antique. Had a few mods done to it over the years, but looks nice. Probably going to keep that one and do it up. The glass looks in good condition, which is really good. Often you find that these are broken. And then we've got a Paradise Bees polyhive. So there's no frames in there, but everything else is intact. So you've got the floor, the brood box, queen excluder, 2 supers, crown board, and the roof. And then we've got another observation hive, um, equally old. Unfortunately, the glass on the back of that one is broken. And then we've got 2 National Hives there. Both incomplete and a bit of a mismatch. So both of the stands are very rotten, falling apart, and then you've got 2 different floors. One of them's got one brood box, one super, and a roof. Both have got a crown board, both have got queen excluders, and then the other one's got 2 brood boxes, but in, in okay condition. Not the best, obviously, just needs a bit of treatment, maybe an oil, liquor paint maybe. And then we've got a wide selection of beekeeping accessories as well. So you've got a clearer board there, you've got a polycarbonate glass quilt, not sure which it is. Got 2 crown boards, 2 wire-framed queen excluders, a few metal queen excluders at the back, probably 100, 120 top bars there, a selection of sidebars all from Thorne. So you've got DM1, DM2s there, it looks like. Little bag of spacers, and then you've got 4 wooden nucs. Look like they might be homemade, um, but perfectly fine for Keeping little nucs in. I think they're probably 5-frame nucs. Then inside there you've got loads of foundation, probably 50 packets of deep, and then a similar 50 packets of shallow. Foundation's definitely seen better days, but you know, you could probably recover some of that if you warm it up a bit. And then we've got 3 frame feeders, part of a national roof, what looks like a swarm catching box there. It's got a few bits in it, that, so I've just kind of gone around and collected all the bits that go in there. I think that's probably used for swarm catching the way it's designed. A couple of smokers and then a nice extractor as well. Stainless steel, so it's not galvanized, can be perfectly used. Got a bit of rust on the top there, so probably best to take that apart and sand it right down, paint it up. But it's got the 2 Perspex clear pieces in the center, so fully functioning extractor there. It's got a really nice mechanism to it as well, so it does work. Plastic gears. And then we've also got relatively new Sheriff apiarist suit as well, and then a couple of other suits as well there.
Well, I have to say, I didn't hold too much hope for what I was going to find there. I thought this is going to be a bit of a disease risk, I'm going to find loads of rotten equipment, I'm going to find lots of antique rubbish beekeeping equipment. That's not going to be any good to anyone, and I'm pretty much doing a removals person's job. I'm going and clearing out someone's shed, and like I say, I know the guy. He let me have a full colony of bees free a couple of years ago, so I definitely owed him a favor anyway. But oh my God, what an absolute haul of goodies! That's probably the most fun video I think I've shot all year, just going in and imagining what it must have been like when that beekeeper was there managing his colony. Pottering around in his bee shed, making up the frames, putting together those observation hives. You can see he had some more hives, he had plans for expansion. That's what I loved so much about that video, is that it wasn't just a case of me going in and finding what was there, it was the experience that I had while I was there, thinking about the beekeeper who was actually living there during that time with his equipment, just having a really great time. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I'm still a bit undecided on what to do with the equipment, so if you got any ideas on what I should do with all of that equipment, stick it down in the comments and maybe I'll take you up on it. But I hope you enjoyed that video. I certainly did. That's probably in my top five videos of the year. I really, really enjoyed that one. But as always, please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
