A Whole Season With No Inspections

We're gonna take you from the very beginning, which is a 6-frame nuc, all the way through to the middle of August where we're gonna harvest some honey. Is the system going to work or are the bees going to swarm? There is only one way to find out. Let's give it a go. So we're starting off with a 6-frame nuc. I've placed that into a beehive like this, and as you can see, we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 frames that are in the nuc, and then we've just got foundation on the edge over there. So even the frames that are right next to the nuc at the moment, they are not drawn out. But let's just have a quick look at the status of the colony for day 0. So frame number 1, we've got some stores, we've got a little bit of pollen. Frame number 2, beautiful frame of brood. Can't get much better than that. F1 Buckfast from Black Mountain Honey. Frame number 3, again, lots of brood. This nuc here is ready to explode. Another beautiful frame of brood there. Lots and lots of eggs there. We're getting closer to the queen. And there we go, an F1 Buckfast queen, center of the shot, center of the frame there. And then final frame, hopefully we've got a bit of stores on this one. Yeah, we've got a lot of stores for the bees there. All looking good. So all I'm going to do as a manipulation is I'm just going to put a frame of foundation inwards like that, split the bees a bit, but I'm not splitting any of the brood. So first thing that's going on is my queen excluder. I've got a wire-framed queen excluder here. That means that the queen cannot get up past this excluder, which means that hopefully they're going to store lots and lots of honey in my supers. So next step, I'm taking a super. All of this is foundation, every single frame. That is going onto this colony here is foundation. Nothing has been drawn out. So the first super goes on like that. The second super goes on like that. Third super. And finally, the fourth super. Now, if we get any further than 4 supers, we're gonna be doing very, very well here. I'm gonna replace my crown board and I'm gonna replace my roof. So there we go. We're all set up. A brood box, a queen excluder, 4 supers, and no intervention at all. I'm not gonna do any inspections on that colony whatsoever. I'm just gonna open the top box and see if the bees have reached the ceiling. If they've reached the ceiling, I'll give them another super. If I open up the roof and I can't see them, I'm just gonna leave them. Stay tuned though, every single update will be included in this video here, and we will not finish it until we get to the end of the season. Crossing my fingers, hopefully you've got a good system. So it's been 6 weeks, the hive that had no inspections and unlimited space. Are they still there? Have they swarmed? Have they produced lots of honey? What's going on? I have no idea, but I'm going inside today to check. Let's take a look what this colony has done. So just as a reference point, the colony next door was about the same size when they started off, and the colony next door has just swarmed. It is in the tree up there. So I thought it's a perfect time to go in and see what's going on with this colony. And, hmm, empty, which is strange because the colony next door is pretty much full all the way through. Second one is empty as well. If I had to hedge my guess, I'd say they've swarmed because I would be expecting with the spring that we've had For there to be lots and lots of full boxes. I have to go down to the 3rd box from the top before I even get a couple of bees, literally like a couple of bees like that. But then when I get to the box after that, we're into some honey. So okay, that's not looking too bad. And it's not the end of the season yet, but they've definitely not produced 2 supers of honey yet. Like some of the frames are completely empty. That one there may be half full, something like that. This one here, they always do this when you give them unlimited space, they just go where they want. So 1 frame of foundation, 2 frames of foundation, 3 frames of foundation, and then the bees have stored a little bit in there. So I would say on average we've got maybe 1 super of honey in here compared to the colony next door that had 4 supers of honey. So if I had to take a guess, has the colony swarmed? Is there going to be the same queen in here? I don't think there is. I think they're long gone. I think we're going to see a new unmarked queen and not that much brood. So queen excluder off. And you know what? At least there is some brood in there. That's a really good sign. My absolute fear there was coming in and just seeing no brood whatsoever. But what I'm not seeing in here, I'm not seeing any eggs until now. I see eggs. So that's very, very good. We've got brood and we've got eggs. We've also got frames. In the brood box. So the first shallow is running on a brood and a half. I put that on a little bit later, but they've not touched some of those frames as well. So in the brood nest there, they're storing a fair bit of honey, which I guess is a good thing. Gives them a buffer against any starvation, which means you don't need to go back and feed them if they are indeed struggling. And here we go. This is the problem with this technique, and it's divine intervention, I think, that I've gone in here today because I found swarm cells. So if I hadn't have gone in here, this colony would have swarmed. It wasn't performing particularly well anyway, and even with unlimited space, it has started swarm preparations. So you can see there, swarm cells all on those frames there, just beginning to open up, which means that within a few days this colony will swarm. The queen that's in here will go. I'm here in advance, I can take control of it. I'm going to do that in this video today, and then we'll talk about at the end why I'm really not a So more swarm cells being created there. You can see them. I just broke them as I've taken that frame out, but they were all on the bottom bar there. This is the frustrating thing that I find with unlimited space. Look, that is the bottom brood box, and we've got frames of foundation in there, and the bees are swarming. I just don't like this laid-back approach for a number of reasons, but mainly because I don't think it suits the bees very well. You definitely don't get the best out of your bees. Another frame there, not touched in the brood box. That one's full of nectar down there. Not supposed to put the nectar down there. So that's a nice brood frame there, but again, we've got swarm cells. Swarm cells just tucked on that corner there. You can see all the swarm cells on the top of that one as well. And that one there is about as clear as they come. This colony here is swarming. Very lucky that I went in here today to check. So another swarm cell on that one there. Don't let people tell you that's a supersedure cell because it's on the face of the frame. About 40 cells in here. They're definitely swarming. And then on this frame here, we've got lots of swarm cells, different stages. They've started to take this one down. If you see a swarm cell where they've chewed it from the side, means they didn't like it. This one here is a good one. These ones over here are good as well. So I've been through the whole colony. I can't find the queen. I can still see eggs, but I've got capped queen cells. I'm going to treat it as if the colony has swarmed. I think they have actually swarmed. It doesn't make a massive difference if you're in this situation whether you find the queen or not. If you just knock it back to a single queen cell, which is exactly what I'm going to do here. Go through, take down every single queen cell that's there but leave one. Then whether you find the queen or not, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference. They shouldn't swarm again. If you leave a colony like this and do nothing, they will chuck out a big prime swarm, which I think they've already done. And then for each of those queen cells, they'll chuck out various cast swarms, depleting the colony further. It's all about damage limitation at this stage. I'm going to go through every single frame, shake off the bees, find my queen cell that I want to keep, and then take down every other single So that was my favorite cell, definitely that one there. So I'm going to put that frame off to one side, and then what I can do is I can shake off every other single frame and take down those swarm cells. Now, whenever you're taking down anything, swarm cells or bits of wax, have a bucket like this and chuck all of the bits in there. Don't just chuck them over your shoulder. So then on the frame that you want to keep, you can't shake it because you'll damage the larva. So you just want to brush them off. And obviously the one that you're going to keep, you keep, and then any of the rest of them you just take down. But you do not shake this frame. So there we go. That's my one frame that I'm going to keep. I'm just going to place that over on this side here. Nice safe place for it. Now we're on brood and a half here, so I need to do the same thing with this top box here. There we go. The colony is now set up. I've taken down all of the queen cells. I don't think there's a queen in here. I've left one open, really good-looking queen cell. The bees will put their energy into trying to requeen using that queen cell now, and then we'll keep on going from there. Do I like the system? No, I do not like the system for this exact reason. I don't like to give too much space because I find the bees go all over the place, which makes my management and my maintenance much more difficult. But the bigger reason that I do not like it is that if I had not come into this colony here and realized that they were about to swarm— and okay, the colony next door has swarmed as well— but if you do this en masse, say you do this with 100 colonies and you don't go in and 30 of them swarm, or 20, or 10, or whatever it is, even 5, and those swarms go into your neighbor's chimneys or into really difficult places to get out, I feel that you have a responsibility as a beekeeper to manage your bees and to stop them swarming, and I really don't like the approach of just putting them there, neglecting them for a few months, and coming back and just taking whatever they've done. I feel as a responsible beekeeper I need to look after my bees, make sure they've got whatever they need at all times, so I cannot recommend this system. If you enjoyed this video, as always, the biggest compliment you can pay me is sharing it on social media.