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A beekeeper shows how flipping a Polyashforth feeder upside-down in the hive creates 10 liters of extra space to prevent swarming. The buffer doesn't harm the colony, and you can clean it out later to recover honey and wax.
A beekeeper shows how flipping a Polyashforth feeder upside-down in the hive creates 10 liters of extra space to prevent swarming. The buffer doesn't harm the colony, and you can clean it out later to recover honey and wax.
Building in contingency to make sure that your bees do not swarm. I've got over 2,000 videos on YouTube and I have tried pretty much every single method. Some work, some don't, some I like, some I hate. But the method I'm gonna talk to you about today is a mistake that I previously made. And I thought, you know what, that's actually not a bad idea. There's no negatives to it and it builds in a bit of contingency to your swarm planning. So if anybody has watched any of my videos, you'll know that I love a poly Ashworth feeder. That is what we've got on top of this hive here. You can feed lots of syrup at the end of the year. You can turn it upside down, you can feed fondant, Excellent insulation for the colony both in the winter and the summer. There's nothing I don't like about the polyash forth feeder. And luckily enough, this manipulation involves a polyash forth feeder, using it in a slightly different way that you would normally think about it. So summer configuration we've got here, we've got the floor, we've got the brood box, queen excluder in the middle, one super, and then a polyash forth feeder and a roof. Now normally what you would expect to see in this setup here is the polyash forth feeder like that, which is just using it as a kind of insulative crown board. But what I have found is if you just take that and flip it upside down, it makes no difference to the bees whatsoever. Absolutely no difference. There's no issues with temperature above the bees because it's, you know, it feels like the middle of summer at the moment. It's the back end of April, but it's really, really nice and warm. And I bet people are screaming at the screen saying, yeah, but the bees are just going to fill it up with loads of rubbish, loads of comb in there. And that is the beauty of the system. Answer me this question here. What would you prefer, all of your bees to warm and end up in an inaccessible tree or your neighbor's chimney, or for this box here to be half full with stores that you've got to clean out, but all of your bees remain and you get your honey crop? It's an easy one to answer, isn't it? I know I'd be exactly the same. I'd kind of want that one as well. And that's exactly what turning the box upside down like that does. Gives the bees additional buffer space. Okay, it's not convenient. You have to clear it out. That's not where you want the bees to go, but it is a lot better than losing them in a swarm. Now, if you've not watched my channel before, I don't finish the video there. I don't just give you a bit of advice and say, there we go, see you later. I kind of did in previous videos, but I don't do that anymore. Let's go to another apiary and show you this in practice, and you can see exactly why it's such a good system. So a couple of days ago, I came to this colony here. The upturned feeder was left the wrong way round. This box is an additional box because, oh my goodness, they were out of space. But it was the feeder that saved me and saved these bees from going off into the distance. And I have left everything for you to see inside. So let's jump inside. There are a lot of bees up there, so they're just going to go whoosh. Definitely going to put my veil on because they will get me up there. So you can see a lot of bees still up there in the roof. A bit confused maybe, but take a look inside here. So huge amount of space, it's about 10 liters of space, probably equivalent to like a National Shallow, something like that in terms of volume, in terms of actual frame space. But look, that is 3 or 2 and a half Big frames of bees there, and obviously that box there was the other way round. So I'd left it upturned like that, leaving that void for the bees. I was feeding them at the same time, but it's a good little system, and it's maybe something that I'm going to adopt across all of my colonies because every single colony has a polyashforth feeder sitting there. I normally keep it closed the other way round because I don't want this comb. If I can get the bees to use it as this emergency measure to take up that space as and when required. That should result in more honey come the end of the season. So I'm going to tidy all of this up now. I'm just going to shake all of the bees out of there, clean up the comb, put it into my wax bucket, and we'll see what that wax bucket is like at the end of the year. Hit the subscribe button there because that is going to be such a cool video. And then I will replace the polyashwath feeder in the upturned position and use it as a contingency in the swarm season, which by the looks of the weather, we are well and truly in. If you enjoyed that video, the biggest compliment you can pay me is to share it with someone else. So really simple, all I'm going to do, shake those bees in like that, give them a good tap. So got the majority of the bees out there, and you can see, look how cool that comb is. Beautiful dandelion-infused comb. I love it at this time of the year when they bring it back and it's that color. Even without the sun glowing on it, that is some beautiful frames of wax. Okay, come on, let's go and sit in the So just going to give the bees one more tap, get as many out as I possibly can, and then I'm just going to take my hive tool and try and clear it out one by one. And then that last frame there, you can see the queen's been up there. Lots and lots of drone brood. We'll take that out, still put it in the wax bucket just to keep it out of the way. So there we go. The box is now empty and you can place it back on the correct way, or you can place it back on upside down and use it as a buffer. Choice is yours. It's up to you.
