Bee Inspector Visit - National Bee Unit Inspection Of My Beehives

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. We have the bee inspectors here today, and I'm with Frank, who's the regional bee inspector for Wales. So Frank, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, hi, I'm Frank Gallickley. I'm regional bee inspector, and I'm on a joint visit with Tony Davies, who's the seasonal bee inspector. I know Laurence likes to put out videos, And obviously we in the National Bee Unit like to get our message across, so it seemed like it's a win-win situation. So I said I'd say a few words to Laurence.

Definitely. So thanks so much, Frank, for coming along. So all we're going to do in this video is we are going to run what we would normally do if the cameras weren't here. So every year the bee inspectors come out, they take a look at my colonies, they're checking for disease, they just want to make sure they're happy with my colonies, are disease-free and healthy. I love the bee inspectors coming along because I learn something new every time, and I would recommend everybody get your bees onto Bee Base and welcome the bee inspectors along every single time they want to come out. You learn something new.

Just to give you a bit more detail on, on the setup, so I manage a team of 10 seasonal bee inspectors in Wales. We work for the National Bee Unit. We're part of the Animal and Plant Health Agency in Wales. The, the service It is funded by Welsh Government, so we're appointed by Welsh Government to carry out their statutory disease inspection programme. We're very fortunate in Wales that they do— government does put money into the rural economy, so we, as I said, we're fortunate in Wales. We keep disease to a minimum. The process of doing that has obviously helped an awful lot by beekeepers registering on BeeBase. I mean, historically, everyone we've inspected in the past will be on BeeBase, obviously, and BeeBase generates our inspections every season. So first on the list is where there has historically been disease. We reinspect beekeepers that have had disease, which I say, fortunately in Wales, Isn't that many, but it keeps us busy. We do a sweep around areas of disease, and we also like to visit new beekeepers for a couple of reasons: to get the apiaries onto BeeBase, the National Bee Database, and also, of course, we don't know where those bees have come from, so, you know, there's an off chance that they could have come from an area of disease. So we like to make sure they're free of disease, and that's what— so that's what we're doing. Well, actually, this is a new site for you, so we're at this site because it's a new site for Lawrence. So we're going to get that onto BeeBase, and we're going to have a look at the bees at the same time. And in the process, if we find anything juicy, we'll get it on camera, will we?

We certainly will. So what we're going to do today is we're going to go through every single one of these hives. We'll cut and edit this video, give you any good snippets of information, We're looking for brood disease, anything nasty in the hives. Hopefully we're not going to find any EFB or AFB, maybe find a bit of sac brood, a little bit of bald brood.

Well, that would be good if we did, because, I mean, you know, the starting point for looking for brood disease is knowing what healthy brood looks like for a start. And then if we find any, what we call the common brood disorders, like chalk brood or sac brood, which can be confused for foulbrood, you know, we'll flag that up and hopefully have a look at it as well.

So that's it for the video. I'm going to get my suit on, we're going to get into the bees, and we're going to take a look at what this colony looks like. But don't be afraid of these guys, they're here to help, really knowledgeable, and you can learn a lot from them. So welcome them into your apiaries. Right, should we get going, Frank?

Okay, yeah, let's give it a go.

Right, so we're straight into it. Perfect Welsh summer weather, liquid sunshine on tap. First colony, we found a swarm. So in this apiary, I've taken it upon myself to clip all of my queens. because I just can't get down here to do 7-day regular inspections. And this is the exact reason why I'm clipping my queens in order to not lose bees. So what do you think's happened here, Frank?

Well, so they've swarmed. The old queen has come out on cue, but they haven't been able to get very far. And as Laurence said, it's a very good means to not lose half your hive. And have your bees end up in someone's roof or chimney. So it's what I'd call responsible beekeeping, where the swarm can't actually get very far. If you have your hive on a nice stand, well off the ground with a mesh floor, very often you'll find in these circumstances the bees will end up hanging nicely from the mesh floor. And it's a matter of just carefully dismounting the hive without jarring it and having a box handy, which Laurence has got there, and just lifting up the floor carefully and dropping them into the box. And hey presto, that's probably where they'll stay. You feed them and they'll set up home there. We've almost got that here. It's actually on the side of the box. So we'll just amend our modus operandi accordingly and get them in a box.

Yeah, the rain is going to help them cluster up, but we're going to get them out of the rain now because it's going to be a bit cold and wet for them. So I'm going to get a box and we're going to tap them in. So normal practice with swarms is that you would put them directly onto foundation. You don't want to feed swarms, especially unknown swarms, but when they're the bees in your own apiary, you don't need to take that kind of precaution. because the disease risk is very low. So I'm putting these directly onto drawn combs, and I've got a bit of stores in there for them as well, because it is Wales and it is wet. So are we expecting to see the queen in here, do you think, Frank?

We're not especially looking for the queen. We're just— our main priority is to get them all carefully into the box. Okay.

So, and Good amount of bees?

Yeah, yeah, it's not bad at all. I mean, obviously, yeah, we just have to assume that the queen makes it as well. As I say, it's a matter of doing it as quickly and carefully as possible, and they're very obliging. Bees that are swarming have already gorged themselves with honey from from the hive, so they're usually pretty docile. They're not going to readily sting you. So we've got most of them there now, Laurence, I think. Right, okay, there's only a few stragglers left, so I think that's pretty good.

All right, let's get the lid on then. So I always like to take swarms to a new apiary. You don't need to do it, but if you've got somewhere else that you can take them, just makes it a little bit easier in terms of balancing the hive and reorientation. So we'll package this one up and I'll take it to the next apiary that's hopefully not as wet.

When we do an inspection of an apiary, we like to inspect all the hives. So we're going to have a look in this hive and obviously expect to find sealed queen cells, maybe some unsealed, but they usually swarm at the point of the first queen cell being sealed. That's the rule of thumb, and it's a pretty good rule of thumb. So expect to find Seal queen cells, and, but there'll still be some brood for us to have a look at. When we do an inspection, we're not interested in the honey supers. Obviously, we like, we gauge the sort of number of frames of bees in the hive, but we're really interested in looking at the brood, making sure the brood is healthy. So we generally go straight down to the brood box and have a good look at the brood.

Cool, so we're going to get inside there and have a look. Just goes to show though, while Frank's working away on this, if it's raining, people don't like to go inside their beehives, but the bees will still swarm. So unless you're doing those regular 7-day inspections, which I've obviously missed here, your bees can swarm. It's not a case that it's always raining, which means you don't need to go in and the bees aren't going to swarm. You do always run that risk, so regular 7-day inspections is the best way to stop this happening and stop losing swarms. So a bit of a dual-purpose one, this inspection. Frank's taking a look at the brood, looking for healthy brood, looking for any disease. And then obviously for me as well, I'm looking for queen cells. I want to see if that queen is still there. We think she's probably not and that she's in that box where we put the swarm. So we're suspecting that we're going to see at least some capped queen cells, maybe some open. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to knock them down, preferably get it down to one open queen cell. If we can't do that, we'll probably leave a couple of the best-looking capped ones. No, no queen cells yet. So, you know, it might have thrown us that swarm because we're assuming that it's come from this hive. Could have come from any of these hives, and it's just chosen that spot there because that's south-facing. So that's probably going to be the warmest spot for them in the apiary with a queen that can't fly that far. So it's a good shout we might not actually find any swarm cells in this colony.

And if we haven't, I think actually we have found the queen.

And Frank's interrupted me at the perfect point there. We found the queen, so chances are we're not going to find those swarm cells now.

We've got the wrong hive.

We've got the wrong hive. Great. So hopefully the weather will improve, we'll continue. I'm pretty sure they will find the hive in this apiary. So we've got a clean bill of health for this colony, Frank?

We've got a clean bill of health for this colony. Yeah, as I showed you in the bottom box, Lovely, healthy-looking brood, yes.

Excellent, right, we're going to put this one back together again. Those bees will dry out, they can handle a little bit of rain, it's not the end of the world. They put out so much temperature and heat within the hive, they'll warm themselves back up. Obviously you don't want to be going in all the time when it's pouring down with rain, but the bee inspectors have to work to a schedule, and if it's raining when they come around, unfortunately we still have to go ahead and do the inspections. So we'll close this one back up and we'll open up another one. Hopefully we can hunt down that colony that swarmed onto this hive.

Let's see.

Right, we've come to the end of our inspections for the day then. I'm going to let Frank give you a summary of what we found in this apiary.

Well, unfortunately we didn't find anything juicy to show you. I mean, there's some really nice strong hives here, so it's a lovely site here, lovely secluded site, some really nice strong hives, so lots of lovely slabs of brood. I told you about Looking for healthy open brood and the sealed brood. There's some lovely slabs of sealed brood. There weren't any perforations, there wasn't any sunken discoloured brood.

It's good to hear. Like I say, every time the bee inspectors come, I learn something new. I've got loads to learn, and the thing that I learned today Tony was talking about is that when you have colonies that are going out to swarm, you get this piping, which I'd heard of, but also you get this kind of thumping as well, and I'd never heard of that, and he's given me a bit of an example of maybe what you could hear if you get your colonies doing that. So if I get that later on in the year, I'll do a video about it. But great to have the bee inspectors here. Frank, thanks for coming. Thanks for agreeing to do the video as well. Much appreciated.

You're very welcome, Lawrence.

Nice one. So that's it for the video. 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.