Black Mountain Honey: Let's Talk Bees with Laurence Edwards - Episode 39

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Bees with Lawrence Edwards. So I'm going to start tonight's video with an announcement. We thought that my wife was going to give birth on the 4th of June. That's what the doctors told us. That's what the consultants told us. That's what everybody told us. And we questioned it and said, that's that's a bit late. And they said, nope, definitely 4th of June. And then they rung us up today and said it's going to be this Tuesday, two weeks early. So there is a little bit of a mad panic on at the moment, trying to sort out queens for next week, trying to sort out nucs for next week. I've had to rearrange and change a lot of plans, and then it dawned on me that I'm supposed to do a live stream today as well. And if I don't do it today, I can't do it tomorrow— doing something else. Um, I can't do it next week because that's Griff's week, and then I'm gonna have a very small baby on hand. So I'd probably best get on tonight and do a live stream, talk about bees. Um, so all very, very exciting. Beautiful day out today. You could tell the bees were incredibly busy today. Uh, I went up and started doing a little bit of playing, just, just messing around, checking the nucs, making sure the nucs are okay for a couple of weeks when I'm sending them out, and they looked very, very good. The next announcement, which is quite an interesting announcement, and I think a few channel members on here will, will know where I'm going with this one. So I do a lot of videos on YouTube at 1,400 at the last count. There's 1,400 videos on YouTube that I've done. And when I go and film, you know, I'll go and film a day's worth of videos. I might do 13 or 14 videos, but then trying to edit the videos takes a huge, huge amount of time. So for maybe like a 10-minute video, you're talking like it could be, could be 2 or 3 hours worth of editing. If it's a feature-length video, for example, the Beekeeping Uncensored one that I did at the North American Honeybee Expo. It took me about 6 days, and there's a lot of work that goes into it. So I never want to release anything onto YouTube that doesn't, you know, it doesn't look good. I don't like the ums, and I don't like the ahs, and I try and condense everything down and give a polished product. But it kind of dawned on me the other day that I've got 150 channel members now, and I do a lot of beekeeping that never ever gets to YouTube because I've not got the time to just kind of edit those things together, so I have decided to do some exclusive channel member content. And the first video went out, uh, yesterday or today, I forget which one. And basically it's me just either talking in the car or talking as I'm going to the apiary or talking as I'm kind of doing my beekeeping inspections, just to the little DJI pocket camera that I've got, and just talking through What I'm doing, talking about what's happening in the beekeeping season, trying to give advice and tips and everything like that. And I'm not editing the videos at all, so they're not really— sorry, channel members— but they're not really ripe for YouTube. But I'm happy to put them up on the channel member section. So I think they've been quite well received by channel members. They tend to be— they're going to tend to be quite a lot longer. They're not going to be the polished, edited 8 to 10 minute videos. They're going to be like 30 minutes long, 40 minutes long, gonna have a lot of, uh, ifs and buts and me getting stuff wrong and falling over like I did yesterday. But if you are interested, there is a new membership level for exclusive content on my channel membership page, so I hope you'll enjoy that. Peter Goss became a channel member today. Welcome, Peter. So let's jump straight into some questions. I'm gonna go and try and get all of this done within an hour today, so I'm gonna be a little bit quicker, uh, because I've got stuff to do, um, but I will answer everybody's questions. And now, I no doubt there is going to be a huge amount of questions today because it's beautiful And it was, it was sunny earlier on today, and I think a lot of people have been out beekeeping. So first question from Matt Burrows. He says, hi Lawrence, would you be able to advise if I clip my queen's wings and I miss a queen cell, will the original queen kill the new queen? Also, if not, will the new queen swarm with the hive as the— I'm just going to expect that's dot dot dot dot dot. So clipping queens, great thing to do. So normally if a colony swarms, uh, the, the bees in the colony will, you know, they'll put pressure on the queen. The queen will lay eggs into a play cup. The, the bees will feed that egg or the larva once it emerges, royal jelly, turn it into a queen. And then the general rule of thumb— it's not always perfect— but the general rule of thumb is on the day kind of as they cap over the swarm cell, the first swarm cell, the original queen leaves with the swarm. That's generally what happens. If you get bad weather, you might get 24 or 48 hours difference. So when you have a clipped queen, same thing happens. They produce the cells and then they cap them over, and then the original queen goes to try and swarm And either realizes that she can't swarm and just retreats and just says, right, I'm not going to swarm, or they do swarm, they're underneath the open mesh floor, or you find the queen on the floor outside the front. I would say 9 times out of 10 with the queens that I've got though, with the colonies, they don't try and swarm. So the queen just kind of just like can't fly, not leaving the hive. So I go in, I'll find the queen on the frame with capped queen cells. So what happens from then on is the colony will still swarm, so it's not a silver bullet. It doesn't stop swarming. The colony will definitely still swarm, and they swarm with the first virgin that emerges. So the first virgin that emerges doesn't kill the mated queen. She flies off and takes half of the bees with her. And then if you don't do anything, they cast, they continually cast. But you do ultimately end up with the mated clipped queen still there, as long as you catch it before they start casting. Because when they start casting, you can get multiple virgins emerging at the same time and they will fight with each other, and then one of them could kill your clipped queen. So what people say is that it means that you don't have to do 7-day inspections, you do 10-day inspections instead. Definitely buys you some time though. I would advise everyone, clip your queens. Great. Uh, Steve says, evening all, hope all you beaks are enjoying the weather and your bees are buzzing. It's a perfect day for it. Brooke Lay says, good evening, Lawrence. Your podcast with Alex was brilliant in the week, so looking forward to his video with you both. Uh, both soon. Uh, it was, it was good, wasn't it? I really like Alex, he's a good guy. Uh, and somebody else has just posted down here, Steve, saying, love the video that I put up tonight. So that's on the channel membership section at the moment, that will go live though. Did you realize it had an abrupt ending? And I did realize it had an abrupt ending, and then I went and checked it and it— I didn't, I didn't mean for it to be quite as abrupt as that, so I've taken it down. I've got a real issue at the moment, I've got an Alienware like Dell PC that I paid crazy money for, and it started making a noise like it was taking off like a rocket about 3 weeks ago. So I sent it back to Dell and they sent it back to me, and there is— there's something wrong with it. It's just not working for Premiere Pro and everything is dead slow. So, uh, it's annoying. I should have checked that, but thanks for picking it up. One good benefit for me of having channel memberships. Another channel member there, Aiden. How you doing? Brian Morgan says, good evening, Lawrence. One of my nucs seems to be suffering from Nosema. Are they likely to recover or are they doomed? So have you, have you double-checked that it's Nosema? The only way to tell whether it's Nosema is to take some kind of like microscopic samples and get it under a microscope and actually kind of analyze the spores. It could just be they've been confined. It could just be they've eaten something a bit dodgy and they've got dysentery. So just because they've got dysentery doesn't mean they've got Nosema. But let's work on the basis they do have Nosema. No, they can get through it by themselves, and also there is no medicine in the UK that you are allowed to give your bees to treat Nosema. However, I have heard that if you give them Hive Alive as a stimulant, just to kind of like give them a little bit of strength, it can anecdotally help with Nosema. So read between the lines, but you definitely cannot give them Hive Alive to treat for Nosema, and you cannot give them thymolated syrup either. That is against the VMD rules. If swarm cells are found, are removed if there's space, and a queen will, will try to swarm again, or would they lose the impulse if the cells are continually knocked back? So I would say this is, it's not so much a beekeeping myth, but this is probably the number one piece of bad beekeeping practice that I see. And you see people say, oh, if there's swarm cells, just knock them back. If you knock them back, then the bees don't swarm. What it gives you is a kind of situation or a scenario that's far less manageable than actually just managing the situation in the first place. So if you've got a colony that is jam-packed full of bees and you go in, you know, you pull out the frame or you're double brood and you look on the bottom of the frame, there's loads of swarm cells. If you just take them all down— Wait, sorry, let's rewind back. So if you open it up, there's loads of swarm cells there, the bees are going to swarm when they cap over those cells. So you know that if you open it up and you've got open cells, open swarm cells, and they're not capped, the queen's like 99.9% chance she's still going to be in there. So you can do something about it. If you take down all of those cells, I find that that rule doesn't apply anymore, and they could— they'll start rebuilding them because they're like, what are you doing? We want to swarm. So they'll start rebuilding them, and then they don't necessarily wait until the cells are capped before they go. which leaves you in like a really awkward position because you might come back and think, well, I've got swarm cells that are open here, so the queen must be in here. You can spend forever looking, she's gone. So my rule is, if you come across your bees— I say my rule, what I do is, if you come across your bees have got swarm cells, you need to make a split. Simple as that. You have to make a split. You can't just take down all of the swarm cells. And you can make a really, really simple split. You can just take out like a 2-frame nuc with the queen, Knock all the cells down, leave the best one, leave them to requeen. You can take out a split with the nuc, like with the original queen, knock down all of the cells and add in a mated queen. There's loads of different ways of doing it, but by far and away the best way of dealing with that though is don't ever let yourself get to the point where your bees start creating swarm cells. And that is, you know, no one's ever going to get to managing 100 colonies and not losing any swarms. Everyone loses swarms. Like, and if they say they don't lose swarms, they lie. 100%, they lie. But on a risk-based approach, you can limit the amount of swarms that you lose each year. Clipping queens definitely helps. It at least helps maintain your good queens, your queens that you don't want to lose if you've spent good money on queens, especially breeder queens. But then doing preemptive demerits, my one trick, uh, before the bees are ever in the position to swarm It makes a massive, massive difference. Like, I remember when I first started doing them, I just couldn't believe how much honey I created versus what I used to get. But then the final thing that I'll say about swarm cells is like about genetics. So some bees just want to swarm, and I do find like the local Mongols just swarm and swarm and swarm and swarm. Like, with a Buckfast colony, they might swarm once in a year, but they're definitely not going to swarm more than once in a year. So if you do your Demaray at the right time, That's it, you're done. You might have to do it twice, but I've had colonies where, uh, swarms where you go and collect a swarm in like May, big massive swarm, you know, swarming— what is it, a swarm in May is worth some hay or something like that? Big huge swarm, you put them in a box and you think, right, that's great because that's a swarm, they're not going to swarm again. And then before they've even gone up into the super, they just swarmed again. They just created new cells and go, and they just— it's just drilled into them, which is just swarm, swarm, swarm. So by getting rid of those, those genetics out of your colonies and out of your apiaries as well kind of makes, makes things a little bit easier for you. So I hope that was helpful. I don't know, I don't know why whenever I do my live streams I get an itchy nose, but I got a, I got a tea today. My wife bought me some different Pukka teas. This one here is called Peace. It's not as nice as Nighttime or the one I had before, but I'll do my best to get more than an inch down it like I normally do. Linda Hunt, hello. She says, hiya, I did my first demeray this year, have 14 by 12 brood frames. Bees did a lot of backfilling with nectar and now capping it. Moved a box on top of the new brood box. Bees were quiet but now defensive. Okay, well, I hope, I hope it's gone well. You can get with the demerays, like, if you're— the, the more bees that are in the colony, the more aggressive the bees will be. And that rules apply— that rule applies with super calm bees, and that rule applies with really aggressive bees. But the more bees that there are there the higher the number of kind of like older bees, the aggressors. So when you do demerages, you end up with big massive colonies, so you end up with more of these older bees in the colony because they've not gone off and swarmed. You ever notice when you— if you lose a swarm and then like a few weeks later, a couple of weeks later, you're just like, oh, the bees are like super chill, they've got a queen, she's mated, and it's because all the old ones are just buggered off with the swarm. So they can get a little bit defensive if they're if they're like big stacks of demerits like that. Good evening, Laurence, to you and your family. As a new beekeeper, is it normal to see some bees clustered sleeping outside one of your hives at night? So no, I would say it's not normal to see that, but it's a sign that they've not got enough space. Simple as that. So just give them some more space, all of the bees will go inside. And unless— the only kind of caveat I'd add to that is unless it's really warm and not like UK today, like 21, 22 in the day and 12 or 13 at night, but if it's like 26, 27 degrees at night, you might get some clustering out the front where they're just like, it's just too hot, too hot in there, just chilling outside the front. But it's not— I wouldn't be overly worried about it, but if I had— if I went up there and I saw like a nuc with some bees clustering outside the front, I'd be thinking give them more space. Be Enthusiast Peter. I love how your name changes occasionally on here. Be Enthusiast Peter, channel member, one of the longest running channel members, I might add, says, "Hi Lawrence, I now have some F3s from your original Buckfast. They look like beauties. Just hope my local dranger is good. Time will tell." Well, I hope I hope they are. It looks very nice where you are. Hopefully it's quite isolated. John Sylvester says, "You know what? I haven't checked them for swarm cells since the end of March. I need to get on it tomorrow." Smash the likes and subscribe, folks. Oh, we definitely do that bottom bit, but definitely do the top bit as well. Yeah. you are a good few weeks behind on swarm cell inspections. Hopefully you find all of your queens intact. Evening, Laurence. Out splitting hives tomorrow, ready for the queens next weekend. Hoping all goes well. That sounds good. It's supposed to be really nice weather tomorrow. I'm very much looking forward to doing the long list of things that I need to do. No pressure. Same one. Evening, fellow Beeks. B Grease Bees. John says, Brian Morgan, if you get photos and share in Facebook group, it will help give better advice, as without a visual it's hard to say if your case is minor or more serious. Good advice, very good advice. Probably get 11 answers, but you know, you'll get the right one as well. Uh, Robert Bone says, evening all, thanks for the videos today, Lawrence. Everyone will be thinking, what videos? But they are channel member videos. They will be coming out shortly, apart from the exclusive ones. Cub Rider says, evening everyone, is a queen cell made when— sorry, is a queen cell made then she lays in it, or do the bees move the larva into it? I'm talking about a swarm cell, not an emergency cell. So that is one of the age-old questions in beekeeping. Do bees move larvae? Do bees move eggs? I think it'd be more likely they'd move the eggs. I don't know because I've never seen, uh, I've never seen a queen laying into, uh, kind of like a play cup or a swarm cup. Like, the emergency cells, obviously, like you said, that, that's just— they're just laying that into a normal cell. and the bees feed them the jelly and turn them into emergency cells. I've seen arguments for both cases here, so I don't know either way. I think the bees move the eggs, is my— I don't— because why would the queen— why would the queen do it? But then the queen is just as big a part of that organism than all of the rest of the bees. It's not like the queen is at the top. and all of the rest of them fall underneath. Like, probably quite the opposite. It's almost like the queen is the colony's slave, and they will make her do stuff, you know. They make her swarm. They kick her out of the hive and say, right, you get, you get going, and all of the bees follow her. I don't think she voluntarily leaves. So maybe they harass her, maybe they do, but I don't know. I don't think anyone knows that one. And if you speak to a lot of beekeepers, that, that's one of the ones where it's very much 50/50. I think they do move them. I think they just kind of go and place them in there, but some people don't. Steve says congratulations. Thanks, Steve. Jay says evening peeps. Lee says hit the like button. Very good, Lee. Thank you. Ben Davis says have you put any supers on your hives? If so, how many? So yeah, everything's got at least two supers now. We'd be well late if we didn't have any on now, but. That is, is like, we've got full colonies that have overwintered, some of them on double brood, some of them on single brood, but big strong colonies booming coming out of winter. If you're starting off the year with like a nuc or something, depending on when you've got your nuc, you know, we sent, we sent some nucs out last week, we sent some nucs out on the 17th of March, so kind of everywhere in between. My rule of thumb, 80%. So if your brood box is 80% full of bees, put the super on. and even like 75, 70, 75%, I'd probably be kind of like erring towards putting a super on if the weather's good. And then the same applies all the way up. So when the preceding super is 80% full of bees, put another super on. Never let them hit the walls, never let them hit the roof is a, is a good mantra. Hi folks. Hi peeps. Simon's on 3 supers. Thanks for my queen installed into my nuc split yesterday, so we'll release her tomorrow if all is well. Excellent, cheers, Nav. Hope the nuc and the queens are going well. Uh, Lee loves the idea, I'm guessing, for the exclusive content videos. So yeah, have a look at that, you'll see me fall over. You can see I'm going slightly quicker today. Hello Lawrence, all the way from Central Florida, USA. Seen a lot of rain today? So no, today's been really nice, beautiful. It's been a bit, a little bit hazy, but I quite like an overcast. It's not overcast, it's been like sunny hazy but not like clear, but it's been warm. And I think the bees, I think the bees like it. Uh, Jay enjoys the unedited stuff. Excellent, there we go. Uh, Paulius, or Paulius, how do you say it, says, what do you do with mites at this time of the year? So for me, I know that I've got a good regime, good varroa management, like pest management regime, but specifically targeting varroa. So I cut my honey season short I go in middle of August, I take all the honey off, I put the feeders on, I put my Apivar strips in, and then I leave them for 2 months, take them back out in October, and by that time got loads of healthy bees. Winter bees are either started or already there, and my mite load is very, very low. And then in kind of end of November is generally when I do it now. I use afibioxal, try and target a broodless period, give them a single blast and that's it, I'm done. That's my yearly varroa treatment regime. So for me, at this point in the year, you might see the very odd single varroa, but like quite rare. But I know at this time the varroa load is slowly increasing with the amount of brood that's being increased. So when you have more brood, you have more varroa. The time when it becomes a real issue is when the— I want to say when the clocks go back, not when the clocks go back, when the days start getting a little bit shorter and the bees sense that and they cut back on the brood. Because then you have so many more mites versus the population of bees, and that's where you see that dramatic decline or increase in the amount of varroa per bee when you get into like August, September, October. So that's the time I treat early. So at this time of the year, I do nothing. However, if you've got issues, if you've maybe like bought a colony off someone, or you haven't been treating your bees and you kind of think you want to treat them now, There's not a huge amount you can do anymore. Like, the, the one thing that you used to be able to do is use MAC, so Mite Away Quick Strips, which is a formic acid-based formula. And that used to be allowed— used to be allowed to use that on with supers on. Horrible stuff though, MAC. Like, I remember it just like burns you, properly burns you. Uh, but you can't use that anymore, so they changed the formulation. It's now called Formic Pro, and it says you need to take the supers off. So there's no— there's nothing that you can use at this point in the year. You almost need to say, right, I'm just gonna not have any honey supers on and just use brood boxes and then maybe take some splits. So all of the treatments either need the supers to be taken off, or you need to accept that any supers or any boxes that are on are going to be tainted with whatever miticide you're going to use. The only— and it's not If you're not in the UK, what you could do is you could cage the queen, give it 3 weeks, make sure all of the broods emerged, force a brood break, and use oxalic acid. And that would be like by far and away the easiest and most effective thing to do at this time of the year. And you can give them like multiple vapes and you'll get the mites down really, really quickly, and then just release the queen and get back on track. Unfortunately, in the UK you can't do that. You're not— even with ApiBioxyl, you're not, you're not allowed to do that more than once. You could do it once, you could sublimate them once, but you couldn't do it with the supers on. Because Apivoxal again is not licensed for use with the supers on, which is a bit rubbish because in the, in the US they've proven that it's absolutely fine for it to be used with the supers on and it doesn't impact the honey or doesn't result in increased oxalic acid kind of composition in the honey. But you know, UK have decided you can't do that. Uh, Paul Lewis says hi. Hi Paul. Hi, I saw you put up a video some time ago about the bee suit with a little window in the veil. Are you using on a daily basis? Any more information about the suit? So I do. I do use it for some of my inspections, but I can't use it whenever I've got the camera on. Beeping, beeping van outside. Um, it I got glare on the camera, a really bad case of glare. So the whole the whole point that I wanted, the reason that I wanted that veil was that so I didn't have to look through a veil when I'm doing the videos because I just think it's difficult to see it on the camera. So I thought having a clear thing would mean that I could see the camera. And then basically like every position that I stand, I just have like the reflection of trees or the reflection of the sun or something on it. It's made it even worse, so I can't use it for filming. But I do use it, I do like it. It's— it's— I don't want to say it's steamed up more than I thought it was going to steam up. It's steaming up kind of a little bit on like warmish days. It gets a little bit more steamed up. But it's, it's good. I think, I think it serves, I think it serves a purpose. I don't reach for it every time. I don't think that's, that's my go-to suit. I, uh, I kind of maybe like, uh, on the side of the normal veil, which, yeah, but, but for some people, some people can't see through a normal veil. So I think there is, there is a case out there where it would work. Uh, John is prepping tomorrow for my Carniolan arriving on Friday. Excellent. Got loads of loads of different orders for different queens coming in at the moment. It's good. So we've got the Carniolans, got the Caucasians, got Carpathians, Elgon, Primorsky, Lagustica, VSH Buckfast, normal Buckfast, and then if this weather stays good, maybe some UK Buckfast very soon. Right, Cup Rider says, "How long do you leave a new queen before clipping?" Oh, congratulations next Tuesday. Thank you very much. So as my rule. I say my rule, it's not my rule. The technique that I use is that once the queen has laid enough eggs and those eggs are capped over, I'll clip the queen. I think it's fine to clip the queen then. Says, my camera to make vlogs, trying to edit on PC and currently using Clipchamp, which is free Windows program, or trying to anyway. I'm finding it's not the best software. So what do I use? I use Premiere Pro, which is, which is really, really good. Premiere Pro is great and it's quite, it's quite simple to use. They do a Premiere Rush as well, which is slightly cheaper slightly simplified version, but I find Premiere Pro pretty simple as well. Uh, David, David Pisco, channel member, new channel member. Hi David. Uh, and he says, hi Lawrence, how is the new American hive going? It's, it's so funny, like whenever I do a new, a new kind of hive video, I just get people saying comments like, 3, 2, 1, uh, product placement, let the product placement commence. And I just think, well Do you not want me to do videos about new hives? Because I just do videos about me talking nonsense if you want. Like, it's fine. I know it's supposed to be no-nonsense beekeeping. Oh, this guy— all this guy's trying to do is trying to sell people this new hive. And it's like, you can't even buy them in the UK. I haven't— I have no vested interest in this hive whatsoever, other than the guys very kindly went well out of their way to get one sent to me from the US and got all of these crazy documents signed and kind of wood infestation reports, uh, and paid the import charges for me and paid the shipping for me and gave me it for free. And it's pretty cool. Like, I'm really, really happy with it. I've only done 2 inspections of it, but you'll see on the next inspection, because the first video that I did was me chucking loads of bees in it and stocking it, and I've done 1 inspection since, and it was just like the best inspection. I know, just jump into advert mode, but it was the best inspection that I've ever done in my life. Because I didn't undo the ratchet strap, I didn't take the roof off, I didn't take the supers off. All I did was just sat down next to it and just opened the roof and just went straight in and just took all the frames out. And the only thing that I need to remember next time is to like bring an additional box with me, and I just want to leave a box there to put the frames into. But it was great, like there was no nothing stuck on the hive, there was no propolis. But you know, that might happen in the future, although the owners and the designers assured me that it won't. But if it does, like, you know, I'll say I'll always give an honest appraisal of things, but it's cool. It is a really, really cool design. Uh, my two concerns with it that I think what might happen though is water might get in on that rubber seal, but at the moment no water's got in because you'd see it on the crown board. So if water did get in, you'd see it, and I haven't seen it yet, but I was concerned about that. And then my other concern was when you're reaching through to get the hive and pull the frames out that they were going to propolise it down, but They haven't done that yet, but I think there's enough space even if they do, just to get the hive tool in and pop it up and then lift it up before sliding it. But I'm excited. I like, I like beekeeping kit. It's cool, right? Hi, says, just done a walkaway split. I'm feeding the split syrup, but could I add a super from the original hive? So, so I'm really worried, Alex. Don't— I don't want to scare you here, but I'm worried. So whenever I hear split and feeding, I just think, oh no, don't Don't do that. Split and feeding ends in disaster. So if you, if you do a walkaway split, you've got one hive there and you turn it into 2 hives and you feed either one or both of the hives, what the bees start doing is they get the food because they're kind of going into each other's hives. They'll get the food, go back to the other hive and say, next door, free-for-all, just get in there. And they basically both just rob each other out. And it, it does balance out in the end. But you end up with a lot of dead bees, so I never feed splits. Whenever I'm doing splitting in the same apiary, I never ever feed them. But on the basis that you have, you said, I'm feeding the split syrup, but could I add a super from the original hive? So yeah, that would be a much better way of doing it. And just when you make splits or walkaway splits, just make sure that you're splitting the supers or the brood frames with stores in. Make sure they've both got enough food and try not to feed. I'm gonna sip a tea. 28 minutes in, I don't think I've had one sip. Uh, so Paul Lewis says, after last week or fortnight ago about the queens not laying, I was impatient. I have ordered more queens from you because I'm splitting again already. F1s only for me. Loving your channel. Thanks. Oh, it's good, that's good, good to hear that. I do— I get a lot of emails every day, a lot of emails, a lot of calls, a lot of WhatsApps, and I love it. I'd never I'd never moaned like some beekeepers on Facebook about people asking me questions, but we do get it quite often, people saying, I bought queens and they were, you know, it's 2 weeks and they've not started laying yet. And I always say, give them 3 weeks, but send me some pictures of how you set up your hive. And a lot of the time, and it wasn't like this in your instance, Paul, but a lot of the time I'll see like not even a 1-frame split, like a half a frame split of bees that's clearly been split in the same apiary with a feeder on And just all of the bees have just gone back to the original hive, just left the queen. And I'm like, there's— she can't lay because there's not enough bees there, there's not enough young bees there to tend to the brood. So you need to kind of like cage the queen back up, make a proper split, like a good at least 2 frames of brood, 1 frame of stores, but at least 3 frames of bees. Like, that's the most important bit, is that you've got a good 3 frames of bees in there, and then like she'll lay. And then they come back and they say, oh yeah, she's laying now. So it is But sometimes they do, like they just look outside and it's whales and they think, come on, this was very wet, we're not, we're not laying just yet. But they generally come good. But if they don't come good, we do replace them. Uh, Flam Wellman says get a Mac. Yeah, I kind of really anti-Apple everything. I have to say I'm not, not a fan of Apple. Um, it worked perfectly before, my Dell PC. I like, I like PCs and I like Android. So I'm not a fan of Apple. Um, just— I'll just jump back to that. What I am a fan of though, I bought a new phone that comes next week. So I bought the new Sony Xperia V1 or 6 or whatever it is, which is pretty cool. It is like a— is it quite expensive? But it's— it works with all of my cameras. So all of my camera stuff is Sony, and then I've got the Sony phone to go with it. And it means that I can get my camera— it's got my camera up there— and I can get my phone, put my— imagine that's my camera there. I can put my phone on top of my camera, connect the 2 together, and then I can live stream from my phone using my camera as like the lens. So it means that if I'm like out and about or in the apron, I hopefully do live streams using my good cameras. Whether I get enough reception in Wales is another question, but it would be— it'd be pretty cool. And I think the cameras on them are supposed to be good as well. Uh, says, hi Lawrence, hope you're well. I'm very well, thank you. He says, looking up Looking at setting up an extraction room, what should I be looking out for in terms of layout, power, and space? Thank you. Really, really good question, that is. So double-check the load. I'm not an electrician, but my brother-in-law is an electrician. Double-check the loadings. The equipment loadings on a lot of the stuff is insanely high, really, really high. So I can't use all of my equipment all at once because I underspec the cable going to it. Um, and, and it's not— I wouldn't want to use all of them all at once anyway. But if I try and use— it's the Meliflow really. Meliflow's, I think it's like 3.6 kilowatts or something crazy like that. And then you've got the creaming machine, which has got a heating element. And then I've got the extractor that's got a heating element. And then you've got the uncapping machine that has not— has not got a heat— no, it's got a heating element, but like a water-fueled, so it's not as energy intensive. So you've got all these different things like fighting for power. So Work out what equipment you're going to get and then just over-spec the power, because that's one where it would be really annoying if you dug the trenches and lay the cables and then your cable wasn't big enough for the power. So work that one out. Um, in terms, in terms of size, in terms of space, as big as you can possibly get. My log cabin is 4 meters by 2.7 meters, and you know, I had to do a big mass clear out and get rid of loads of the stuff because it was just not enough space in there. And I would say It's significantly undersized still. I really, really struggle for space in there doing, doing anything, doing extraction, doing jarring, doing anything. I just like, I wish it was twice as big. So I would say like, if you're going for it, go for like 4 meters by 5 meters as an absolute minimum, 5 meters by 5 meters if you can get away with it. But you know, I do mine 4 meters by 2.7 meters and it's all right, I get by. In terms of layout, that's the biggest one, is like properly map the layout. What I would suggest is once you've got the dimensions of your room, get some graph paper and like to scale draw your equipment on it and kind of like lay it all out, and then think about that flow and think about, right, what's the first thing that comes in? Well, I'm going to stack supers, so where am I going to stack supers? And do you want your supers to be stacked somewhere where they can be warmed, or are you gonna go to your bees and get the supers off the bees whilst warm and then extract? Kind of at that point during that day and then put them back out again. And it's just trying to think through that process. I started off thinking, well, I would— I want somewhere to keep my supers warm, so I built somewhere to keep my supers warm but didn't really think about how they were going in and how they were coming out and how that was going to impact the flow. So you might have seen the old wall, it had like a false wall with like a honey warming heater down one side, and it was just so impractical that I just took it out because it was, it was too much space and it was just an Absolute nightmare to use. But then I think once you've once you've jotted all that out, it's pretty straightforward in that you're gonna get the supers in. You need to stack them somewhere, and then you're going to take them. You're going to uncap them somewhere. So it goes from stacking to uncapping to extracting, and then back to stacking again. And then you just need to be able to move in the middle. And then you're going to have another area maybe for jarring or bottling, and then you're going to have another area for settling. So. My big piece of advice is, when you're getting your equipment, is trying to go for like multi-use equipment. So for example, I got— I used to have a number of settling tanks and I thought, well, I have one settling tank for settling, like, so extract, um, I'll extract my honey and then I'll put it into the settling tank. And what I used to think was I'll extract my honey and I'll just, I'll extract it raw into buckets and just leave it in buckets and then I'll do the settling on another day. But I scrapped that idea very quickly because I got bored of cleaning my buckets. Um, but you might think, well, I'll have a settling tank for settling, and then I'll have like a jarring tank. And I had that, and I just— I don't need both of these things. I'm just going to have one tank. So, but I'm going to go for a mega tank. So I'll go for one 200-liter tank now with the sieve built in. So then for me, the extraction process is really, really simple. And that's the big thing, is just don't, don't think you need all of the fancy kit, but spend your money on the bits that you're really going to need. So Good extractor. Get a good extractor, biggest drum you can get through the door. Measure the door, measure the drum, make sure it goes through. A lot of people make that mistake. And then uncap with a knife. That's what I would say. Don't— like, uncapping machines are brilliant, and the newer ones are really, really good, but that is a huge, huge investment. So that can be like a secondary investment. But uncap with a knife, extract your honey, have 3 buckets in there, big buckets, and then just extract crude, like, into a bucket, and then immediately take the bucket and just pour it into the settling tank through the sieve, and then put another bucket underneath the honey extractor, and then just keep on doing it. And you just basically just keep on going, keep on going, keep on going. And 200 liters is quite a lot of honey. It's about 600 pounds of honey. So that's our limit. That's our limit for, like, a day's worth of extracting. I don't do anything more than maybe like 6 hours of extracting because I just get well bored by them. And then it goes into the settling tank. And then generally what I will do though, the efficiency coming through, is that I'll finish the extracting date, tidy everything up, take the supers back to the apiary, pop them on the boxes, come back to the room, clean everything up, like real deep clean, but just with, you know, just with water, just to get the stickiness off. And then— put the lid on the settling tank, and then the next day I come back and I jar it, and it goes straight into jars. So then you're just not going like from extractor to bucket to settling tank to bucket back to settling tank into jars. You haven't got to keep on washing the buckets. So just hopefully I've given you like some flavor for some ideas in terms of a process, but just try and think about the process a bit. I spent way too long on that question, but I like talking about honey extraction. It's good fun. Watching on Facebook. So we're going live simultaneously on Facebook and YouTube at the moment. I've paid for a StreamYard subscription. You might notice that I've no longer got the StreamYard logo, which is the free version. So I've actually put my hand in my pocket and bought something. It means we can go live simultaneously. So says, hi Lawrence, we did a Pagden, uh, sorry, last Sunday. All went well. We ordered a queen from you. She arrived yesterday and is safely ensconced in the hive. with the hive tab intact. Thank you for the excellent service. Excellent, good to hear. I hope it goes well. Now the reason that your name rings a bell is that when everyone was putting their YouTube videos up on No Nonsense Beekeeping, you're one I was like, oh, he's got a good YouTube channel, that's brilliant. So I think, I think I have subscribed, um, but I was certainly intrigued. And I love, I love it when people have the ability to like do stuff make stuff, because I've not got that ability. I'd love to have it. I remember my mum when I was young, she was really impressed with one of her friends. One of her friend's sons was like this, he was like really clever. And she— the mum's friend's son got her this old Canon camera, and he'd taken it home and he'd got this— he looked like 10 at this time, so like a young kid. He'd taken it home and got all the right screwdrivers, and he'd taken it all apart like into every single little bit and then just like to learn about cameras and then put it back together again. And it was like, oh, that's great, yeah, thanks very much. And then she— it gave the camera to my mum and said, oh, Laurence might like to, might like to do the same thing. So I was like, oh yeah, give that a go. So I, I couldn't get the first screw off, so within 5 minutes I resorted to smashing it up with a hammer to try and get into it. And then it just obviously smashed up the camera with the hammer. Didn't quite realize why I'd smashed it up and then got bored and probably went and watched telly. So I am not one of these people that can kind of do things, but you, you are. So I'll get back to your question now. He says, when doing a walkaway split with a spare brood box, is it better that you take the queen with the split or leave her in the original hive? It's a good, it's a good question. Now, I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference when you're doing a walkaway split and you're putting them right next to each other. You basically just— the bees are going to go back into both of the boxes, and I think they're going to go back into both of the boxes interchangeably. They'll be more inclined to go into the, the obviously the one that's in the exact same location, but I like to try and split the location, split the difference, so the bees are really like, what's going on here? I do think my preference is to put the queen into the box that doesn't smell like the queen. I do, I do think that's the preference, and that's generally what I will do. I'll always make sure that the side that's got the queen in has got less brood in because the queen will attract a lot of bees, but the brood— the bees won't leave the brood. So if you have 2 sides of the split, one with the queen and not that much brood, the bees will get attracted to her. And then the other side, if you leave lots of brood in it, they won't abandon the brood because they need to keep the brood warm. So that's generally how I'll balance my splits. Channel member, says, why do Langstroth medium supers have such a variance in depth? I have three different depths at 15.5, 16, and 16.5 centimeters. Unfortunately, there is no standardized spacing or kind of frame size for a lot of Langstroth, and although people talk about it as like a universal system, each country does have a slightly different take on it, and it results in these very annoying kind of tolerance differences because you know. you've got over a B-space difference in some of those frames there, which means that if you interchange them, you end up without a B-space, or you end up with them clashing. So it is a bit annoying. Well, what I would say, John, is just find, find a good trusted manufacturer for boxes and for frames and for foundation and just stick with them. And then at least you know that the tolerances from one manufacturer should be kind of within with intolerance, within, within reason though, as opposed to going chopping and changing and going to different people. John is shouting out for Aaron Cornish. Not sure where he's gone. I think he's gone on holiday, Aaron. Hi Lawrence, I checked my hives today and had a cluster of bees under one of my nucs. Do you think they are from the nuc as it was quite hot and they will go back in? So the difference between There being a cluster of bees underneath the open mesh floor and there being a cluster of bees at the entrance. So if they're at the entrance, I think it's a bit hot and they'll go back in. If they're underneath the floor, highly likely that something's happened swarm-wise. So if you clipped your queens, could be a clipped queen underneath there. She swarmed, they've swarmed, she couldn't fly, she's crawled back underneath the floor. So under the open mesh floor, that, that's basically generally what happens with a clipped queen. She either remains in the hive or she's under the open mesh floor. Could be something perfectly innocent though, so go have a look. I would just kind of go under and have a little look, see what's under there. One follow-up question, how do I use the Abelo Ashworth feeder? There is a sliding tab at the top which opens a hole. Do I need this opened or closed? So the hole is there to clear out the feeder at the end of the year. That's the only reason that the hole is there. So for me, I always, I always keep it closed. I have to say though, I think I prefer all Ashworth feeders without the metal or without the plastic bit. The plastic bit is like a single bee space to try and get the bees to kind of go up, go down, or go up, go across, and then go down to get the syrup. But you can get some drowning when you do that, and I find if you start getting bees that drown, you end up getting quite a lot more Bees that drown, so it's it can end quite messy. So what I would suggest, and what I do now, this is the way that I feed all of mine, is I just take that metal bit out, and I just chuck loads of hay or straw, and I always forget which one it is, but basically either the one that's less grassy, the one that's more coarse, and just chuck like literally fill the feeder up with hay or straw, and then pour the syrup in over the top. And you look at it, and you think, oh, that is like serious bee death trap. And then you come back, and it's just dry. like not a single drop of syrup on it, and, and the hay or the straw just acts as little life rafts, and every single bee gets out. You don't get a single drowned bee, and they take it down way quicker as well. So that is, that's the way that I would go. Kodiak Farm Bees Lee says hello from Louisiana. Hello, Kodiak Farms Bees Lee. Says literally done a 2-frame split off an 8-frame hive in the last hour, took original queen and 2 frames 3 miles away and left one open cell. How long should I leave the cell before the next inspection? So it— I don't go back for weeks after I do that. So you've got 2-frame split, so you know they're not going to be running out of space because there's no queen in there laying. You've got an open cell, so you're confident that you're going to get a virgin that's going to emerge. I just— I don't think you need to go back in to check that the virgin has emerged. It is my view, but like, with, with me, it's generally like a numbers game. So if I've done 30 splits like that I won't go back and check. And then I might go back and 1 out of the 30 didn't emerge, so I just think, okay, I'll just shake them out and put that frame in with another one. So it doesn't really matter. But if you're just doing it with one, you might want to go back in and check. But realistically, you've got an open cell, so it's not going to be capped for— depends how far away, but maybe like 2 or 3 days away from capping, and then maybe a week away from emerging, and then another 4 or 5 days away from being sexually mature, and then depending on the weather, maybe another week before she goes out and mates, pushing it, but that's probably where we are in the UK. And then once she mates, she doesn't lay eggs straight away, so she comes back kind of like 3 or 4 days later. So you're talking 3 weeks minimum before you'd expect to see eggs. So I would say give it, give it 4 weeks and come back, and hopefully you see some nice capped worker brood. Hi Lawrence. Hi JK Photography. Aaron Cornish looking for advice, has added 4 Black Mountain honey queens 2 days ago, going away for 10 days, does not want to clip too soon and will remove queen cells. Any other advice? Worried about getting— I'm, I'm guessing getting maybe like the queen's getting stuck. Um, oh no, he's saying about clipping. I, I just, I just think with new queens, if he's worried about swarming, I, I think it does suppress the swarming instinct. quite a lot. So you'd be really unlucky to introduce 4 new queens and then come back and for them to have swarmed. I'm not sure of the configuration, but if you can do a Demeray before you go, brilliant. Um, but you need to time it to get the cells back down, so maybe a Demeray is not the best thing. So then the other one is I'd maybe like checkerboard. If it's not double brood, go double brood, but like do a bit of checkerboarding as well. Obviously give them tons of space, just give them way more space than they would need. They're not going to get chilled like this time of the year. And, and even if they— even if it does slow down the laying of the queen temporarily because they can't keep it as warm, then kind of probably a good thing. And it means they're not going to get to a point of swarming. Um, yeah, I think it'd be all right. But then you say here, any more queen cells, what do you advise? I was worried about getting any more queen cells. So were there queen cells there before? I'm confused, John. You got me confused on this one. So if there were queen cells there before, split, definitely split, and just leave a queen cell and, and let them requeen while he's away. If there weren't queen cells there before, just give them loads and loads of space and, and hope for the best. Good evening, my bees had swarmed on Thursday, so now how many queens, uh, how many queen cells should I leave? So I always suggest just leaving one queen cell. I know a lot of people say leave 2 queen cells in case one of them is a dud, but my argument is that if you leave, if you leave 2, they might swarm again. So then you end up not only losing 50% of your bees, you might lose another 25% of your bees as well. If, if it is a— this is, this is the big benefit of leaving one. If the one cell that you leave is a dud, then it's the easiest requeening process in the world because I've only got one cell. So then if it fails, you just take it down, chuck it out, put mated queen in, and then you're not chasing virgins around the hive. So that's what I would do. Oh, I've managed to jump down to the bottom. Have I done that? Wow, I'm really behind on all the— have I done that? This is okay. We need to speed up. We need to speed up. Right, quickfire now. So Liam G, I have the nucs on double brood put in today so they have space. Excellent. Hi, can you— do you think you can overwax plastic brood foundation? Asking for a friend. So yes, you can, but I don't think it makes a massive difference. Like, you're putting wax foundation on there so they can build wax on the hexagonal bit and build it up. You don't need wax on the base of the cell, so it's kind of like a waste of wax. So you can overwax it, but I think it's more of an economic thing. The bees will still— these will still sort it out. Brilliant name. Says, hi, my new Langstroth nuc is brimming with bees. I want to do a split from it. I've had lots of queens from you, including Buckfast, Yolanta. What is your favorite bees for being the most gentle? Mia, age 12. I love, I love that Mia, age 12, is watching this video. So Mia, I, I always go back for the Buckfast, I have to say. And I have had people say that the UK Buckfast, they find the UK Buckfast gentler than the F1 Buckfast. I can't say that I've experienced that, but saying that, going to Richard's apiary, so doing the video with Alex, Alex came down, we decided that I'd give him a nuc, and he came down and I said, Richard, we need a nice— get Alex a nice nuc. F1 Buckfast overwintered from your stock, and they're definitely the calmest bees I've ever seen. So that was the breeder queen that we used last year, so they are very, very good, but you will get variation. in F1. But I, I would always say, Mia, go with the F1 Buckfast, either UK or the imported ones, as the most gentle. Um, I wouldn't say the Yolanta are the most gentle. And not to say that the Yolanta aren't the most gentle, but the Yolanta are specifically bred— you know, you've got some Carniolan in there, you've got some Buckfast in there, in terms of some are Buckfast and some are Carniolan. So it's a bit, it's a bit hit and miss in terms of what you're actually going to get, but they are bred very specifically from Murray McGregor. and Yolanta's bee unit, which is huge, magnificent colonies of bees that can produce incredible amounts of honey and build up at the right time. I don't think temperament comes— temperament doesn't like not come into their breeding process, but it's not as high up as I would like it to be. So I've had a couple that have been a bit pingy, but they are, they're really good. Like, I'm always impressed with my Yolanta queens. But for gentleness, I would go with the Buckfast. Right, Darryl Clement says, hey Lawrence, did a demo last week. They're drawing out the new brood box and laying it up nicely now. 3 brood boxes and normal super almost full of honey above the queen excluder. Thanks for the tips. Excellent, I love to see big stacks of demo. It's brilliant. Hope your apiaries are all doing well. They're doing very well, thank you. Is it okay to just use starter strips on your super frames or cut comb, or will it cause problems if it all, if it all falls out? It's just strips. I hate starter strips. I hate, I hate, I hate starter strips, and I hate anything that isn't wired foundation. And I know that is a U-turn from what I've said previously, but I love the idea of a wired frame. Yeah. And I love the, the kind of mechanics of a wired frame in that, you know, once you've wired that frame up, when you come to recycle the frame, you just melt it out, scrape it back down and like sterilize it, and then you can use it again, and you can just embed new foundation on it. But the number one thing that I hate about wired frames with embedded foundation, and it might be me doing something wrong, is that the foundation can fall off the wired frames. It's just, no matter how well you embed it, and it might be my embedding technique, when the bees go on it, like if you, if you chuck a swarm in there, they just sit on it and it falls off. And the amount of times I've come back to these frames and I look at them and I'm just like, the foundation's fallen off but the bees have just drawn comb here, there, and everywhere. So then I'm just like picking through all of these frames and it's always in the brood box that it happens. So brood everywhere, queens everywhere, queen cells everywhere, and I just think, why didn't I use— why didn't I use wired foundation and wireless frames? Because what you can do with wired foundation and wireless frames is that when you put in the kind of top bar on— not the top bar, I always forget what it's called— the bit that holds the foundation in. What I do now is I put a nail in between the loop of the wire, so you get 3 loops of wire that go through. I make sure I get a nail in each one, so basically that foundation is going nowhere, and then I have the confidence that it's not going to fall out. So I don't like starter strips, not a fan. It's— I understand the logic, it does save you the initial setup costs of foundation, but I think you lose honey because the bees need to make all the wax themselves. So I think it's probably a false economy as well, and then they fall out and you get really angry. So not for me. Although with your YouTube skills and making things skills, I want to see you do something. I want you to see— I want them— I want you to— I'm gonna talk. I want to see you make starter strips. work. There we go, got it out. Channel member says bees are going mad, expanding really quickly. Spending tonight making 24 brood frames and 40 super frames. Been caught out by the bees. You won't be the only person caught out. Good weather. Says, hi Lawrence, adding a queen to a hive that has no queen for more than a month, is it worth it, or are the worker bees too old to accept a new queen or raise any possible brood from her? So I've had colonies that have been months without a queen and you think they're on their last legs. And you might get like a brood box, say you've got a brood box with 8 frames of bees in it, they're old bees, and then you put a queen in and you think, oh, that queen's been introduced, okay, that's good. All right, there's some, there's some cell— uh, sorry, there's some eggs being laid, right? You've got some capped worker brood and you think, right, might have, might have caught this in time. 8 frames of bees and got capped worker brood. And then the brood starts to emerge and you start to see it going in and you just start, you're like, oh, they're going, they're going. And it can go down to like 2 frames one frame. You just think that's mad because you think you thought you caught it in time, but all of those old bees, what they've not had to do is rear brood. And rearing brood is by far and away the, like, the thing that kills bees. It takes weeks off their life. So if they've not done it, they'll last for ages, but then when you ask them to start doing it, they die really, really quickly. So you do— you— it can work and it's definitely worth giving it a go, but you'll see, like, they'll just— they'll go down to nothing, but then hopefully they'll come. they'll come back again. As long as there's a frame or 2 of bees at the lowest point, they should be fine. Uh, Richard R. Bryner Jr. says eggs laid in queen cells are larger and superior to an emergent cell queen is inferior. They're using the wrong egg to make queens. Seen the research? Yeah, I'm not sure, not sure about that. I, I, I've seen similar research as well, but I think it does come more down to like what they're feeding them kind of at the beginning of the process and, and the amount that they're fed early on. But I, I have, I have, I have seen what you've said about them laying different eggs in there. And, and, and for people that would have seen the video yesterday, this— no, no, the one that I'm— no, I'm not gonna send that one out yet. There is a video and I was chatting to Richard and Richard's talking about, um, the size of the eggs that are being laid for his grafting, and that he's trying to influence the queen to lay the biggest, most nutrient-rich eggs possible. And he's saying that that makes superior queens. And I said I'd never— I've never heard of that before, but he was, he was keen on that. And but I have seen this research here in terms of the different, the different, uh, eggs that are being laid. And maybe that is— yeah, maybe, maybe there is something to it. Yeah, you know, I'm not ruling it out at all. I have seen the research. It is a good point. I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into that more. Good chat. Uh, uh, Ali, is it ALJ, says, will, will local black mongrel bees accept one of your Buckfast queens, pick up a swarm, and want to requeen? So they will, but the one thing that you have to bear in mind is that what often happens with darker bees putting a Buckfast queen in there is that they accept her, they let her lay a bit, and then they try and supersede her. And what you need to do is go back in literally every 3 days and just knock down all the supersedure cells until, until you start seeing like orange bees on the frame, like a good proportion of orange bees mixed in with the black bees, and then you can stop doing it. But you do need to go in every 3 days because they just, they think they're prolonging their genetics. They're a bit, a bit backward. And I guess, I guess they are a bit because there'll still be drones up in the air. But, uh, yeah, they do. It's very frustrating. Hi, I put supers on last week, inspected this weekend, nothing in them. 6 hives going backwards. There is a huge— they're on a huge farm. June gap, not going to be far away from the June gap at all. It could be, could definitely be hitting the June gap. Like I was looking at today, the bramble is so like nearly ready to burst. And what's the date today? It's like, was it 20th, 21st, 22nd? It's not far away. So I reckon somewhere in the UK the June gap probably started. Um, Yeah, but you know, you know what comes after the June gap, so should be good. Just get them through. Uh, Steve's Honeybees channel member says, what's the availability of queens for 10 days' time? So we should be good. This is, this is going to be the first week this week— I'm looking at my weeks up there now— where I, I reckon we'll start being able to have queens back on next day delivery. So I've been selling out 10 days in advance every, every week for 7 weeks now, and this is the first week where We've upped the order a little bit, and I reckon we'll be good. So for ten days' time, you'll be fine. But just try and order them early as possible. Paul says bought two queens and introduced successfully. Been in two weeks and not a huge amount of eggs. Is that long enough to realize they are not well mated and likely will not be good layers? So no. So talking about that before, it given three weeks. So three weeks is kind of my cutoff point to say if they're not if they're not laying after three weeks, they're not. going to start laying. But look at the composition of the hive. Is there enough young bees in there? Is there enough worker bees in there? Is there enough food? Is there enough protein, pollen? Is there enough carbohydrate? Is there a good flow on? What's the weather like? Like, all of these factors will come into whether the queen is going to start laying at a good rate. So you can have the best queen in the world, 10 out of 10 best queen, put her in a hive and she's just like, no, not laying. because the conditions aren't right. Fix the conditions and then I'll start laying. And then you fix them, you're like, whoa, that's, that's pretty brilliant. So I would just, I would look at kind of what's, what's going on with it. If there's not enough bees in there, the only real way to fix it once the queen is out of the cage is just to add capped, like capped emerging brood. So get a frame of capped emerging brood from another colony, shake the bees off, just place that in the middle, do that a couple of times, and then That should, should get her going. Uh, Jurassic Bees channel member says, looking forward to the raw, no-nonsense beekeeping videos. Me too. I, I really enjoyed doing that one the other day. I got so out of breath doing it, uh, and it was annoying because people would have caught me out saying like, and I go like that, and then I think, oh, I can't, I can't cut and edit out, I'm just gonna have to carry on talking. So I think I'll get used to that. And then, but you get, you do get to see everything. So that's pretty cool. When placing a new super on with just foundation, is it better to place it on top of the existing super or underneath it? I don't think it makes a massive difference, but I do think placing it underneath it as close to the queen excluder as possible potentially gives the bees in the brood nest a little bit of like— it eases the congestion a bit. So I just think— I don't think, I don't think it matters in terms of the supers. but I like to kind of put them underneath just to ease the congestion. But it may well have no difference at all. Hi Lawrence, many thanks for my Langstroth nuc delivered safely on Wednesday. The colony are lovely and chilled and have settled in well, and they found the syrup I've given them. Very happy. Excellent, that's very good news. We had a few— we had the most ever colonies die this week, last week, and it was really bad, uh, just I don't know what's happened with Royal Mail. They, they, they did something with that batch that they've never done before, and I think we maybe put some bees that were a bit too strong into some of the boxes, and I had 5 nucs that died, like complete write-off meltouts. Really, really annoyed. Um, I wouldn't say it's like my mistake, but it's like a culmination of maybe with— maybe they're a bit too strong, maybe I didn't spray them enough. and then maybe Royal Mail put them somewhere they shouldn't have put them, and then that led to some dead bees. So I'm annoyed, and obviously we're sending out replacements to people. I was due to send out replacements this week, but now I've got to— my wife's got to go and give a baby. So, uh, I say give a baby, have a baby. Um, but we sent out a lot, we sent out a lot, so the vast majority of them did get through and people are happy with them. So Good stuff. Thomas, channel member, says, "I've got cold palmers. This this thing cold palmer shocking." Hi Lawrence, what is the difference between native honeybees and buckfast honeybees? I'm seeing a lot of people keeping buckfast bees. I have eight Irish native honeybees. So buck so Irish native honeybees are going to be predominantly AMM. So Apis mellifera mellifera, which is depending on who you want to believe, yeah, is like the widespread European bee. Believe it or not, it is, because the Isle of Wight disease wiped out loads of them, and then I think it was like the Dutch stocks that they brought in. So the native Irish honeybee is probably Dutch, very, very similar to the AMM found throughout Europe. But the pockets that you have in Ireland are quite pure, so they are AMM. Buckfast is not like a line of bees, it's not its own species, it is a hybrid. So it is a hybrid, and the hybrid was developed by Brother Adam, and it is AMM and Lagustica. So Italian and AMM crossed to various degrees, and, and that's about it. That's the difference. Uh, Nick Gabriel says, how do you become a channel member? Uh, so if you go onto the home page, there will be a subscribe button, and then next to it there's a join button. You can click join, and then you can become a channel member. Uh, Steve's Honeybee says, do you think Arsenal will do it tomorrow? I'm not a Gunners fan but would rather they pit Man City to the title. So if you've watched any of these streams before, you'll know that I am by far and away the most real Arsenal fan going, uh, and I'm just a natural pessimist. So there's no way we're going to win the league, and I said it back in— when did the league start? August. I said no way we're going to win the league, absolutely zero chance. No, we won't. Aiden's become a channel member. I think he was one before, might have canceled it, come back. A lot of people do that. Uh, Dominican Beekeeper says greetings from the Caribbean. Very nice, greetings to you too. Nick Gabriel, click the join button. Yep, that's the way. Why are they requeening every year? Because they have inferior queens. Not sure what that's in relation to. Uh, Malcolm Leith says changed my days, all I can hear is buzzing, wondering if I can have a fire in the garden. I like a fire in the garden. Uh, says, hi Lawrence, have you seen this before? Found charged queen cells in a hive last week. I wasn't prepared at the time to deal with it, to take the queen away, so knocked them cells down and added a brood box with drawn foundation. Went back today and no more cells. So there we go. So I, I said before, that's the worst possible thing that you can do, and it doesn't always work, but occasionally it does work. So there we go. Nice, nice tip. I like that. So you knocked down all the cells, added a brood box with drawn cells, drawn comb, and foundation, and they decided to give up on it. So it's worth a bash. Uh, but I, I have done that before and come back and they'd swarmed, just to add a little bit of context. But I'm glad that it worked for you, and, and it makes sense, doesn't it? I, I— this is what, this is what I thought when I did that. Well, the bees want to swarm because they haven't got enough space. So I'm going to give them— I'm going to knock down all the cells and say, no, no, no, don't do that, that's very naughty. And I'm going to give them enough space, so they're going to say, that's fine, thanks very much, we're not going to swarm. But I always think back and think, well, it's not just the space, is it, for swarming? Like, bees have to swarm, they've got to swarm. And so the space is just one factor in there. If the bees didn't swarm, there would be no bees, simple as that. So they're going to go. And you're always gonna like, you're always gonna be fighting swarming. But I'm glad that they didn't go for you on this occasion. Uh, Cub Rider said the 2 queens I had from you that took were laying in 5 days. Good to hear. Uh, Lee Leatherbarrow, member for 12 months. I like that it's saying how long people have been members for. I looked, I looked earlier on, there is someone who's been a channel member for 48 months. I don't even think I've had a YouTube channel for 48 months, or maybe I have. I don't know, it was 48 months. Uh, says, just an FYI, the queen I rang you about is laying like mad. Like you said, she must have got a little chill. Oh, chill in the post could have been that. Well, that's good. That's another person who, who has had an issue with the queen and then got some advice and then they're doing well. So that's, that's really good. Uh, he also says, only 6 likes, let's get the live shared and the likes up. That'd be much appreciated. Thank you, Lee. Says, not a fan of apple myself, call it crapple. Brilliant. Says, I have 4 frames of capped honey on various hives. Is there any reason to leave them on the hives, or is it okay to take them off and jar it up? So absolutely no problem taking it off and jarring it up, but remember, the June gap is either here or is very, very close to being here. So I've seen people do this before. You, you get like a single brood box 3 supers full of honey and you think beekeeping's easy, isn't it? Just put bees in a box, take the honey and be done with it. And they're going to come back next week and get some more honey and they time it wrong and they take all the 3 supers off and it's like 29th of May and then they're off extracting all their honey thinking, I've taken 3 supers off, I've given them more space, they're not going to swarm. And they come back and every single bee is dead. Because if you take away all, like, that's their honey, that's their stores and they know there's going to be a June gap. So they're thinking, well, we We're all right, we've got that stored, we've got all that honey upstairs. So the way that I like to do this, the system that is a good system to use if you don't want to do a demerare is single brood box management throughout spring. So single brood box and you just add the supers, keep them going until, you know, they fill them. Once they fill them, you put another box on, and then when you get to the June gap, you take your honey off. But basically, as soon as the June gap's there, you take your honey off. The bees will get angry because it's June gap, so they're always a bit more angry. But you take the honey off, you put the Ashforth feeder back on, and you double brood. And it's a really good system because it gives you the ability to feed the bees at that point, just like 1:1 sugar syrup. So they're like, yeah, this is brilliant. They're well chilled out and they're just expanding kind of into this double brood. And you don't want to feed them loads, you're just giving them, you're giving them just enough. So maybe like a litre. And then give them a few days and come back and see what they've done. Have they turned that into just drawing out the comb, or have they turned it into brood, or have they stored it? And if they stored it, you say, right, you're not having any more. But if they've drawn out comb and if they turned it into brood, then you say, okay, you can have a little bit more. And then you just do that for like 5, 6 days, not even that long. So you're talking 2 or 3 liters syrup max. And then once you see the flow come back on, and you know when the flow's back on, like you can smell it, you can hear it overnight, then you just take the feeder back off. and you put your supers on and you run it on double brood, and then I overwinter on double brood. And then in the spring, when you get to like February and you're looking at the double brood configuration and all the bees are in the top box, take the underneath box out and then you start again. That's a really good system, that one. I, I used that one before I used the Demaree. That was, that was basically the system that I used, and it's good because you get 2, 2 crops as well. Good evening, just want to say all the queens and the nuc are doing fantastic. The early splits that you sent the queens for now I've just had the put the first supers on all of them. Okay, excellent. That's good to hear. I'm really enjoying listening to everyone saying how good the queens are. That's brilliant. Thank you very much. Cheers, Adam. Nick Gabriel says forgot to say I saw the queen too. She's a beauty. Excellent. I've been I've been filming queens today. I've been getting some good close-ups. It's good. Cody at Farm B says whatever honey height, whatever size honey house you think you need, double it. Really good rule of thumb. That boy Jacob, we did that one. Good technique though. Uh, Lee Leatherberry says, I think it was an Instagram post, did you get anywhere with the pictures, names, hives a while ago? Would love to see our logo on one of your hives. No, so I just— I didn't even get to the point where I would feel like a super. Oh, I would have liked that, it would have been pretty cool, but I know didn't go. You've got to try new things, but unfortunately that one didn't Didn't take off. Vegan Activist says, no honey at all yet. Should I be worried? Nope, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be worried if there's no honey at all yet. But you know, if you bought like a six-frame nuc and it came middle of April, you're building the colonies up, and then you put the supers on. Like you might just be getting to the point where the bees are filling up, and then the June gap comes. So just keep at it. I said to some of the good analogies, like the pot never boils when you watch it. Never boils, but as soon as you stop watching it, then it's full or it's boiling, whatever. Uh, says, hi Lawrence, enjoy listening to you in the garden. Why don't you ask Stuart Spinks to come on your show? So I did, I did one with Stuart. There is a live chat if you go back through. I've had a good hour and a half chat with Stuart. It was good. I don't think he'd come on again. Not, not like that he wouldn't want to come on again, but I don't, I don't particularly like asking people to come on again for a second time. Um, it is interesting. Whenever I do, uh, a live stream with someone else, no, nowhere near as many people watch it. I think people like to come on— I'm guessing this is it— like to come on and answer questions. Sorry, like ask questions and have their questions answered. And whenever I do a live stream, it's just like me chatting to someone else, so you don't, you don't get your questions answered as much. So I don't know, maybe I'll just stick to me and my, my tea, my peaceful tea. Right, good sip of tea. Uh, Pat the 14th, channel member, says, hey Lawrence, I'm low on bee numbers, small hives, and would like to expand hives with queen cells. Is there any advice you could give? Thank you, sir. Uh, so it's a— so start as soon as possible. That's, that's going to be my good, good advice. Get going with it, because the later you leave it in the year, you know, the wasps will become more difficult. The robbing bees will become more difficult. So I would just crack on with it straight away. The, the only thing that I would say, like, and you know, take it with a pinch of salt, we do sell mated queens, but this is genuine advice. If you want to get your numbers up, doing it with queen cells I don't think is the way to do it. Because say, say for example you've got 3 hives and you want to go up to 12 hives. So you take those 3 hives and you make You split each one into 4, so you've got your 12. And then, like, realistically, I would say in the UK we probably get, like, for me, like 50 to 65% mating success-ish, something like that. So if you take it straight down the middle, you get 50%. So you've taken your 3 hives, you've tried to split them into 12, but really you've only ended up with 6. So you waste a huge amount of bees, and then you kind of— you've lost like a month, and all of those bees just become really, really old, and then they've not generated any new bees. So you get like this really slow growth. Whereas if you— what I would say is, if you don't want to go out and like split it into 12 and buy 12 queens, I'd do a bit of both. And then at least some of those, you know, some of the queens, you'll get them introduced and you'll get those colonies going really, really quickly. And then it gives you more bees to be able to split again. So it's just maybe like have a think about that. But you know, you could, you could split 12 hives, those split those 3 hives into 12 and get 12, and they all take, and you've got 12 splits because you've had amazing weather and it's been 25 degrees every day with no wind. Or it could just rain for like 2 weeks or 3 weeks in a row and they all fail, and then you've literally got nothing. And that, that's beekeeping. That is beekeeping in the UK. And that's what happened last year. Loads of people's colonies would have swarmed, and then it rained from July to September, didn't it? There was, there was a couple of weeks, I think, in August that were all right, but it rained a lot. And loads of people lost their bees because the bees, the queens just didn't get mated, and then they just turned drone laying like September, October after the mated queens were available. So yeah, that's what I would say. Uh, Beelissima says, hi Lawrence, is there a place channel members can share pictures of our bees and hives? Um, that's a good, that's a good shout. I'm not sure if there is a place on YouTube where you can do that. Like, there's the Discord. Um, not, not sure that's the best place for you considering you're 12. Uh, but maybe the Facebook group, Nonsense Beekeeping, would be good. We've got a Facebook group called No Nonsense Beekeeping where you can definitely share pictures of bees and hives. If anyone's asking for advice, like, you can go through the website. So on the website, there's like the Black Mountain Honey logo at the bottom right-hand corner. If you click on that and then choose the WhatsApp function, that's our business WhatsApp. And like, if you want to send pictures and stuff on there, that's cool. And then I will give you advice. Steve's Honeybees channel member. Loads of channel members on. It's great. I love, I love how many people decide to support me as channel members. I do appreciate it. Thank you. He says, after splitting and knocking down queen cells, is it best to leave 2, air and spare, or knock down to 1? I love that, air and spare. That's brilliant. Uh, I, I always go to 1. It's just, it's just I don't like losing cast swarms. I find if you leave 2, they cast on the second one, or so they cast on the first one and then leave you the second one, and it annoys me. So I leave 1. Tyrell's Honey says Tyrrell's Honey, just— I— and you do need a shout out for sending me really, really good feedback on the website. That was brilliant. I think it is— I'm pretty sure it is you. Uh, he went through the website and said, I like your new website, looks cool, but there's like some really bad things going on with your website. This, this, this, this, and this. And basically I wasn't aware of any of them, and then I fixed 3 of them and then got the web developer to fix the other 2. And there's really good, really good feedback, especially the shipping one I knew about. And the shipping one was annoying, and I still not got a solution for the shipping one, but I basically prioritized the Queens for the shipping one. Um, but the bigger one, the one that you highlighted, I just had no idea about, was on the mobile site. When you sign up as a member, the light box that it brings up was just like someone had dragged it off somewhere. So I was like, why am I not getting any channel members, uh, or site members, sorry, I should say, and fixed it. So thanks for that. Uh, he says, evening Lawrence, can you explain why putting the grafted queen cells to the finisher does not cause swarming? Why is the queen right hive tolerating the queen cells from the starter? I always have to like kind of like cleanse my mind to read these questions. Well, let me get it right again. So it says, can you please explain why putting the grafted queen cells to the finisher does not cause swarming? Why is it the queen right hive tolerating the queen cells from the starter? I'm just having like a complete mind fart here. Why would it— why would it cause swarming putting the crafted queen cells to the finisher? Oh, okay. So, so this, this, this is the reason why, is that when you put the cells into the finisher, all you're doing is you're just using that swarming impulse. So they swarm when they're capped over. But now I'm talking about— yeah, you are right. Why doesn't it influence it? Because they should. Once they're capped over, they should go, shouldn't they? So what I was going to say is that it's the nurse bees just blindly feeding the larva that you're putting in there. So you've got grafted queen cells going into a finisher. Your finisher is just tons and tons of nurse bees that are finishing off them because they're— I'm guessing you've got it, yeah, as a queen right. Why is the queen right hive tolerating queen cells from the start? Yeah, so you've got it as a queen right finisher. I don't know. I honestly don't know. Like, you learn these techniques and you just— it's go from A to B to C to D, and that's what you do, and that's what the bees— but I've never questioned why don't the bees think they're actually natural swarm cells and swarm when you cap them over. Great question. I don't know. I had to read it 4 times to understand it, but it's a really good question. I don't know. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and ask some people. And maybe I'll email you back. It's a good question. Cal the Spa says, "Thank you so much for mentioning my YouTube channel and subscribing to it. Love your channel also. No problem." Sim Bob Craft says, "Can you do a split with a super seizure cell or bad idea? I think it's a really bad idea doing a split with a super seizure cell, only because you're like pushing it. You're pushing your luck. So if you if you took a split away with a super seizure cell." The likelihood is, I guess the likelihood is they would just create another supercedure cell. So it might not be the end of the world. And it's using a similar impulse to the swarming impulse in that it's doing it not in an emergency fashion but in a play cup. So you're getting like the right eggs, the right larva, the right royal amount of— the right amount of royal jelly. I guess a lot of— I reckon a lot of people have done splits with supercedure cells. I just you know, if you— if they are superseding the queen, there's something wrong with the queen. So there's probably something wrong with the colony as well. So weakening it by taking out a split, um, might not be— might not be the best idea. I wouldn't, but I, I reckon people have. Uh, Aaron's post on No Nuts and Speaking gives the full info, so I'll have a look at that after this, John. Uh, channel member, says, hi Lawrence, can I do a demerite on a brood and a half colony? If so, how? Just move the deep box up to leave the shallow behind. So no. So if you're going to do it on a brood and a half, you need to move everything up. So the whole, the whole kind of premise of the Demeray is that the, the queen needs to be in a box that doesn't have any brood in it. So you can't just leave brood nearby to the queen because then it doesn't work. It's the distancing between the brood and the queen that, that makes the Demeray work. So if you're going to do brood and a half, you need to move the the deep box of brood and the shallow box of brood up to the top above the supers and then put in a new brood and a half if you want, or just probably a single brood box down below. Good evening, Laurence. I did third inspection today and I was gobsmacked. Both brood and boxes were nearly honey-bound in the last 3 weeks. I have a flow super on. I bruised capped honey. Yeah, it can get you, can't it? This is the thing, the pot never boils when you look at it, but you look away and they go pretty quick. It's been a good flow, I think, the last, the last 3 weeks. Like, we've had some good days, and like, they will collect way more honey on a good day than they'll eat on a bad day. So it's not a case of like, you have a good day and they store some, and then you have a bad day and they eat it all. Like, it accumulates quite quickly. And days like the next— I don't know what it's like everywhere else in the UK, but it's nice up here. Today was nice, and then the next last 2 or 3 days is really nice, like 21, 22 degrees, something like that. So they will, they will continue to go out and get lots of honey. So if you've got, if you've got a Flow Super on, gotta get it, get it all out as soon as possible. Channel member, says, good evening. 5, uh, was it NYCs? 5 nucs from you this year. Here we go, 5 nucs. Um, all doing well, each on 1 super and 1 on 2. This one won't stop building brace comb above both boxes and up from the queen excluder. Can I just remove it to straighten? Apologies about that. There are some— I've had a few of those this year where— because the Buckfast is not known for brace comb, it's not known for propolising stuff, and I've just got a couple that they've just— they've not gone wild on the propolis, but they have just brace combed everything. And like, I open up the top, like you basically open up the nuc and you look inside And it's just, you see the top bars and wax, they've just— and like the occasional hole, and you just think, what are you doing? Like, the spacings— the spacing is right on the frame. I've checked the spacing with my, like, I said, my measuring tool, with a tape measure, and the spacing is right. But I just— sometimes they just— you get a certain type of bee that's just like, yeah, we go in wild with the brace comb. Uh, so your question, can you just remove it to straighten? So yeah. I would just keep on, keep on taking it down. But if they're anything like the ones that I've got, they'll just build it again within a day. Um, Stacy Richards, channel member, says, evening, Lawrence. What's your thoughts on plastic foundation versus wax foundation? Any preference? And if so, why? So this is a classic example of I don't like to take other people's opinions. So I, I could have just said 2 or 3 years ago, you know what, yeah, I prefer wax. I think wax is more natural. I think wax and wooden frames are better for the environment. I think wax and wooden frames are probably like more accommodating to the bees and the bees prefer them. That's what everyone told me, and that was the general consensus. But I thought, you know, some people like plastic foundation, some people like fully molded plastic frames. I thought I'd try them. So I've been using the Frames and Feeders frames now for like 2 years. 2 years? Maybe like, yeah, I think, I think it is a— I think this is my second season on them. I had a whole season on them last year, so I bought them the season before that, and I'm not buying anymore. And it's not that I don't like them, but the bees just prefer wax and wood so much more, like to the point where you— if you're going to use plastic, if you're going to use plastic frames or plastic foundation you can only use plastic frames and plastic foundation. If you mix and match, you get real, real problems. The bees do not want to work the plastic when they've got wax available to them. Plastic is so much slower, like I cannot believe the difference in— and this is like plastic that's been coated with wax— is so much slower. It's like if one's at 25%, the other one's 100%, so I'd say it's 4 times slower. incredibly slow in comparison. And then you've always got that lingering issue of what do I do if there's disease? Like, I can't burn everything, or do I, do I burn everything? Like, what do I do? Or do I have to go and get incinerated? Luckily, that's, that's never happened. We've got our DASH, we got our DASH accreditation through the other day, which is brilliant. So we had 3 full, every single colony and every single apiary inspections last year for our DASH audit. So Disease Accreditation for Scheme for Honeybees audit. And so they come and just basically do all three, three full inspections on every single colony. They didn't find so much as one cell that they even wanted to test. So they were like, yeah, bow, rubber stamped. So I got my DASH accreditation, which I'm very happy about. But if we ever did get EFB again and I had plastic frames, it would, it would give me a real conundrum. So I know that's a bit of a long-winded way to go around saying that, but it's 100% wax. And wooden frames for me going forward. Won't be using any more plastic frames or any more plastic foundation. But you know, I've got quite a lot of them now, so you will continue to see them, um, and they're fine. I know I've just like kind of slated them a bit there, but they, they are fine. They do the job, and once they're drawn out, they are fine. But I'm, I'm not a fan. Uh, Aiden says, are there any nail guns you suggest for making frames and the length of nails? So I, I've got, I've got 3 nail guns and they've all got slightly different jobs. So I've got a pin nailer, I've got a 23-gauge pin nailer from Makita, I've got an 18-gauge brad nailer from Makita, and then I've got an old 16-gauge like big nailer from Makita that is not very good because it's a bit old. But that's, that one's, it was supposed to be for making boxes, but I don't, I don't really use it anymore. Um, So if you're going to go for one, I'd go for the 18-gauge brad nailer. I forget what it's called. It's like a 353Z something something something from Makita. If you if you Google Makita brad nailer 18-gauge 353 whatever, I think that's the one. And then the length of the nails. I always order the wrong nails. So I reckon it's twenty mil or twenty five mil 18-gauge brads that you want for it. One or the other. Definitely not thirty. There we go. Good luck. Says— we've done that one. Uh, Simon G says, bit that holds the wax in the top is called the wedge. It is called the wedge. I'd fail my BBKA exam, wouldn't I? Definitely called the wedge. Says, good evening. When trying to maximize honey production and give the bees plenty to do, is it better to swap supers around so the fuller ones are above the less full ones, or the other way around? Um, so I don't think that makes a difference. I have to say, I don't, I don't think that makes a difference. Adding, giving them additional space, giving them additional frames of drawn out— uh, sorry, frames of foundation definitely helps. And I, I like to think like putting that closer to the queen excluder gives you a little bit more of a boost. But I don't, I don't mess around with, with the order of them apart from putting the new ones at the bottom. Uh, yeah, I don't, I don't think that makes a huge amount of difference. Demarays make a massive amount of difference. Lifting the brood box up And then putting a new brood box underneath really fools them. I just think the simple way to think about trying to maximize honey production, it's a simple, simple formula: more bees equals more honey. Simple as that. And that sounds really, really simple, doesn't it? But basically what he's saying is don't let your bees swarm. If you work out how to limit the amount of swarms that you lose, you'll get loads more honey. And clipping the queens is one way of doing that. Uh, demerare is another way of doing that. If you, if you just do artificial swarms all the year round, you end up with loads of colonies, which is good if you want to sell nucs, but it's not good if you're trying to get honey. So you just need to, yeah, think about that. More bees, more honey. Will you be trying Gris-made frames that you heat wax onto the wires? So I love how they're called Gris frames. So they're Murray. You can get them directly from Murray. I've had about 3 or 4 pallets of those in the past, and Murray did ask if I wanted to sell them and I politely declined. Um, but no, I, I won't be getting them, I'm afraid. I'm not, not a fan. Richard's not a fan of them either. I've had them and we've gone back to thorns frames. So I, I don't like the wires. Not a massive— I'm not a massive fan of the frames either. Um, but they're good. I say that, they're cheap. like they are cheap and they're made up. I do like cheap made-up frames. I, I would almost be inclined— well, what I would like is, is made-up frames without the fat, without the wires. Um, but yeah, I'm not— yeah, I'm not 100% sold on them, I'm afraid. Love the new video released today, but it seemed to cut off mid-sentence. Yeah, sorry about that. I've, I've been having real issues with Premier Pro, so I've taken it down. Um, I'll fix it tonight and I'll add, I'll add the ending on. There's not a huge amount more to come, but it shouldn't— it wasn't supposed to finish there. Um, but it was good fun chatting with Alex in front of the beehive. Uh, David says congratulations on your expectant, uh, baby, new grandpa here. Congratulations to you too. Alex says update, split per split nuc I purchased in April, just opened tab yesterday for Black Mancin Honey Queen. Fingers crossed all goes well. Question, I'm on holiday mid-June, any suggestions to prevent starvation? So if they've not— oh, you should be all right mid-June. Like, the June gap is for most people kind of like back end of May now or early June. So as long as they've got like a full super by that time, leave them with a full super and you'd be very, very unlucky for them to starve leaving them with a good full super. if they're nowhere near a full super, double brood them. Double brood them, brood them on, you know, double brood them underneath, put polyashworth feed on and feed them. And don't feed them loads, but just give them so they've got enough food in the double brood box. And then when you get back, if you need to, you can make a split. Channel member says, I've done a Bailey comb exchange on my 2 hives. After all of the brood has finished hatching in approximately 5 days, can remove the old brood box and immediately put them back onto double brood? Uh, so let me just read that again. Yeah, you can put, you can put them back on. It depends what you want to do with, with the old comb once you've taken them out, but I would, I just get them straight back on. What you'll find with, with any of the kind of comb exchanges, like the Bailey comb exchange, but more like a shook swarm as well, is that you get like this vibrant comeback. It's incredible because the, the diseases and like the viral loading in the dark frames just seems to really hold them back. And it is a bit like no one really knows, but I know from my own personal experience that I've got colonies that are like on frames that are 3 or 4 or 5 years old and they're dark, and you're looking at them thinking they are, they are knackered, those frames, right? I'll do a shook swarm. And then you shook swarm them. So shook swarmed a lot of colonies like that last year. And they build up and you're thinking, yeah, you know, they're looking, they're looking okay. And then they build up and they just about get to the point for me where they got into winter with a bit of feed strong, and I was like, yep, happy with that, they look good. And then this year you're like, whoa, they were not that good last year. And it's the same queen, I haven't changed the queen or anything, but I've just given them nice fresh new clean boxes and nice brand new frames, and it, it seems to get them going very, very good. Uh, oh David, come on. Before I even read that, I'm Spurs fan. I think Arsenal will beat Everton and West Ham will beat City. It will be a slap in the face for our fans who want us to lose to City. Yeah, David, let me down there, man. Um, I won't hold it against you, but I just, I can't believe you didn't beat City. Shocking. But, but also you are wrong because we won't, we probably won't even beat Everton, but West Ham will get spanked by City. If you want my prediction, Arsenal will win 1-0, or it'll be a draw, and City will win like 5-1. There you go. That is a pretty cool name. Buzz Stings and Bee Juice says, I have a strong hive on single brood with 2 supers, found 3 charged uncapped swarm cells. Am I best to put the queen in another nuc and let that hive requeen with these swarm cells? That is exactly what I I would do exactly perfect. Just take out the queen, one one frame, two frames, the two frames of brood, one frame of stores. Take her out as far away as possible. Don't feed the nuc. Knock all the cells down except one and let the colony requeen naturally. That's that is the easiest way of doing it. Aiden says I didn't cancel my membership. I've updated it to exclusive content membership. I've been a member for one month, twenty-five days looking. Forward to exclusive content. Oh, sorry, I doubted you, Aiden. I shouldn't have. You've upgraded your membership. Excellent. Good man. Right, John Sylvester says, congratulations once again. Come Tuesday once again, more life, more life. Thank you very much. I'm, I'm very excited. I'm a bit scared, I'm not gonna lie. I'm a little bit scared. I just hope it all goes okay. David says, I'm thinking of doing a split. Is it best to wear one of your queens and do the split before she arrives or on the day she arrives? That is a really good question, and I think my previous videos have confused people on that. So the rule that I have here is that you should never ever release the queen by popping open the fondant tab before day 8 of the split. So what I say is that you can— the queen can arrive at the beginning, or the queen can arrive on day 8. But really, like, if you're saying I'm going to make a split, I would say, well, don't, don't order the queen to arrive until day 8 of the split. That's the best way of doing it. So make the split, day 0, taking the queen out, she goes elsewhere. So you've made a split and then you need to wait 8 days for them to become hopelessly queenless. So on day 8, you'll go back in, you'll see loads of emergency cells, popping them all down, shake the bees off, don't miss a single cell. And basically that's the exact point you should put the queen into the hive. And then I used to say 48 hours, but at that point 24 hours is fine. So 24 hours later, you go back in. Pop the tabs, two tabs, and then seal it all back up. Leave it for seven days, and that's the process that I would use and recommend. Tyrrell's Honey said, Lawrence, last year you spent a fortune on a new drone. I did not see many videos with drone footage. Did you find it useful? So I love my drone. I really, really love it. I used drone with Just Alex the other day, so you'll see some cool drone footage on that one. The problem with the drone is that so so basically it's perfect is a Brilliant drone, brilliant footage. I crashed it the other day into a tree, which was quite fun. Shouldn't have crashed, um, but it's only really useful if I'm able to fly it while somebody else is there. So that's the reason that you've not seen it that much. So when, you know, when Alex was there and I, I could, I could fly it around a little bit, I hadn't— what I thought I'd be able to do with the drone is that I would be able to like set it up like, I don't know, wherever it is, zoom in on me active track my face, and then I would just walk around and it would like follow me around. And it does to a certain extent, but it's like pretty boring. There's not a huge amount of movement, it's just giving you this quite far away look. So, so I don't, I don't generally use it. And even the other day, like, I lift— I, I set it up like above the hive, kind of think I'll get like this top-down view, and it wasn't, it wasn't really the best view. So it's not, it's not the drone that's at fault, I just don't think it's particularly well suited to beekeeping videos. I love my drone. I've seen wasps, bumblebees very close to my hives, even caught a European hornet about 100 meters away. Okay, I wouldn't worry about any of those, you know, big strong colony will like kind of be able to fend off any attacks from any of those. It's only when the colonies are weak that the wasps and the hornets get in, and bumblebees aren't aren't a problem for them. If supers are half full when June gap comes, should you take them off or leave them for the bees? That's a really good question. I would always just leave them for the bees. Like, you're always kind of thinking, oh, do I take that one off, do I not? What you definitely can do is you can go through all of the frames throughout the whole hive and like mix and match. So you might have like one box that's completely— everything's capped, and then you've got one box that's 8 are capped and 3 are not capped, or 2 are not capped, and then you've got one box where 2 are capped and then none of the rest are capped. So I just like pinch all the best frames and then just leave them with all of the open nectar. That's the way that I generally do it. Hit the like and subscribe button, I'm going to join after the stream. Thanks very much, Dave. I saw it, saw that come through. Thanks, David. Beginner, beginners based in Scotland, second year, no honey last year due to July rain. Both hives have chalk brood quite bad in one with mummies all over the floor and outside hive desperate for the honey harvest. What kind of bees, Stuart? If once I get further down, is it dark bees like AMM? Because they are notorious for chalk brood. Buckfast will fix that pretty quickly. Hi Lawrence, do you pay for your apiary space? My dad has 8 acres behind our house where I keep my 16 colonies. but I'd like to get another apiary far enough to do splits to get to 30 colonies. So 2 things there. One, definitely get another apiary, makes beekeeping so, so much easier by having 2. Also, you're 12 and you've got 16 colonies and you want to get to 30, that is brilliant, well done, that's— I'm well impressed. Third one is no, no, you should never have to pay for apiary space. So you've got 8 acres behind your house, Other people have 8 acres behind their house, and farmers have land. People are well up for having bees on their land, especially farmers. So just go— my tips and the way that I find it is just go on Google, go on Google Earth, look for the things that you'd want to look for in an apiary. So good vehicular access— I'm guessing you don't drive yet, but good access is very key. Good forage, closest to water, well out of the way of people, good for security. And then once you've found somewhere, like you've nailed it down, basically I want to keep these on this person's land in this position, you just go around there with your bee suit on with some nice jars of honey saying, oh, I'm, you know, I'm Mia, I'm 12, I keep 16 colonies, but I'm going to have 100 and I'm going to be the best beekeeper ever. Can I keep bees on your land? Because if you say yes, I'll give you one jar of honey per hive per year? You know, honey's really nice, but here's a jar as a sweetener. And they always say yes, so you'll get loads of sites, but you don't have to pay for them. No, you should never pay for sites. But then saying that, I've heard at the moment that— so borage, you used to get paid for borage pollination. I never went down there, but farmers paid for borage pollination because you've got a huge amount more yield if you had bees on there. But a lot of people, so I've heard, are saying, well, I'm up for putting my bees on there and not even taking any pollination charge at all. So basically, don't pay people for pollination, I'll put my bees on for free. And then it's gone even a step further than that, which is people saying, I really want to bring— I really want to put my bees on your borage, I'll pay you to let me put my bees on the borage, because the borage is like— you get crazy yields down at the borage, and it's my favorite honey, borage honey. I love it. So people are thinking, well, like, I want to go, I want to go on the borage, so I don't care if I don't get paid. I'm actually happy to pay a bit of money because I'm going to get such a whopping great yield. I think a few bee farmers are a bit annoyed about that. I'd be annoyed about that as well if I was getting paid to keep my bees on the borage. and then someone not only undercut me but kind of reversed it and said that they'd pay. So I'd be, I'd be slightly frustrated. But no, Mia, don't pay, you'll get it for free. Hi Lawrence, do you ever take splits from the demeray? So you can take splits from the demeray, there's no, there's no problem taking splits from the demeray. You can take splits from the demeray like really quickly from the top. But my argument is like, what, why would you take a split from a demeray? Because for me, the reason I do a demeray is to not take splits. It's like that. It's the reason I do it, is to create more bees, to create more honey, but more importantly than that, to keep one vertical system. So if I wanted to take splits, I wouldn't really need to do the demerare in the first place. I could just, just take splits and then they wouldn't swarm. But I understand where you're coming from though, because you've got the top box and you think, well, that's kind of like free brood, so you can just go in there and pinch it. And you can, so you definitely can do it. And maybe there is a slight advantage to doing the demerare and then taking the splits as opposed to just doing the splits. But yeah, it's not something that I do. Sorry, there was more to that question there. So he said, I've had bumblebees and wasps around my hive, and yesterday I caught a European hornet 100 meters away from my hives, attracted to a pile of waste honeycomb I had left outside to melt. What do I do? Please do not leave waste honeycomb outside your hives to melt. Really bad practice. So that's what's attracting them. So stop doing that and they'll, they'll stop coming. The risk of doing that is that if you've got disease, if you've got EFB or you've got AFB, and you're leaving out waste honeycomb, like the remnants that are inside it, you'll get all the bees coming and just infecting themselves with it and taking it back and spreading it. Just really, really bad practice. So I wouldn't, wouldn't do that. Just to add to my previous question, I think that by transferring the charged graft queen cells from the starter to the queen right finisher changing the impulse from emergency to supersedure. I find it fascinating. Yeah, I, I really find it fascinating. I, I love the different impulses that are at play, and I love how we've— like, for the bees, it might not even be that there's these different impulses at play, but like, we've given— we use this, um, certain terminology and we're saying it's changing from like emergency to supersedure, but the bees might just be thinking, yeah, what are you talking about? Let's not do that. But we know it works because when we do it, it works. But yeah, I'd love to be— I say a fly on the wall— I'd love to be a bee on the wall and like listen to it as it's all going on. Do you have any hats left? The one that I won in the comp has been stolen by the hubby. I'd love to buy another. So I do have a few left, but I'm not selling anymore. Oh my God, selling hats is the worst thing ever. Um, I, I do if you email me. I do have a few left, I can send you one. Rob Wallace says, you don't need to burn them, just wash them with antibacterial. I'm missing something there. I have one hive that has filled the super with pollen and bee bread, every little honey. Is this normal? So there's a clear sign when they do that is that your brood box isn't big enough. So the way that they construct a nest is that they put like, you know, brood in the middle and then pollen around the edge and then honey. So if you've got like a loop of pollen up into your supers, I'll bet you any money your brood box is just packed full of brood. Like there's just not anything else in the brood box, no stores, no pollen, no— might be a bit of pollen, but like a lot of brood in there. So that's, that's what it's indicating. So it's a good thing, it's a good problem to have, but you just need a bigger brood box. So if you're on single brood, I'd go, I'd go double brood and just stop that happening. Pollen in supers is really annoying. Because you don't think it's like— you don't think it's a major issue, and then you come to extract it and it's a real pain to get it balanced in the extractor because it doesn't extract. Uh, Jurassic Bees channel member says, we did a recent demerit with a hive on the oilseed rape. We don't want to extract it. Can we feed it back and get the bees to draw up new frames? Any problems doing this in the June gap? So yep, that works perfectly well. Obviously oilseed rape is going to crystallize, going to set like cement, but the bees will work it, but what you have to do is you have to like give them no other choice other than to work it. So don't think that you can put it underneath the brood nest and they'll work it. Like, they might do, but I doubt it. So you need to like piecemeal give it to them. Bruise all the cappings, like really bruise the cappings, basically uncap it, and then put it in one frame at a time, split the brood nest, and they just— You're like, you gits, you know exactly what you're doing here. But they they don't like it, and they clear it out, and then they'll they'll use it for something. And if you give them space and foundation, then they will use it to draw out comb. Right, we're one hour and forty-three minutes in. I said I was only going to do an hour, but I've not got to the bottom. I think I'm getting pretty close. John Sylvester says, "What would be some Arsenal up?" That was some Arsenal up. Painful being an Arsenal fan. Um, Cub Rider says, scared you've got a year to get to grips. So yeah, so yeah, I, I am, I'm scared. BBB says, evening, jumped in late, would be awesome to spot a drone swarm with the drone, no pun intended. I really want to do that, that would be cool. And I thought there's a couple of things, like I'm doing a video at the moment about like a farmer who's planting a field of sunflowers, and I wanted to do, um, so I've done some cool drone shots of him in like his tractor and stuff. So anything where there's like machinery or a car going through, like it's pretty cool and it gives you really nice shots. Um, but what I wanted to do was like show where my hives are and then kind of like go up and then go down to the sunflower fields and then come back again. So that'd be pretty cool. Um, the other thing is you've also got to be careful of like showing people too much. So I'm always aware of them. Like, I've probably had drone footage which is pretty cool. I think you could— you know exactly where my hives are now, so I've just not really put it in. Uh, John's off, gonna work tomorrow. See you later, John. BBB says, we've got new bees beside 2 wild breeds. We received 2 more Buckfast colonies from an Englishman in the Netherlands. Chance of that anyway next weekly, it will probably rain a lot. Any tips? Um, I'm not sure about tips. Englishman in the Netherlands, not sure. You have to, have to clarify the question down a little bit more. Um, also got 6 Abel hives. I'm impressed by the quality, expected less. The Annell ones, I think you mean. Yeah, there we go. Annell, not Abel. Uh, says, Lawrence, we have hives with chalkbrood. Yes, local black bees. Should I requeen immediately or shook swarm followed by requeen? We do plan to get Batmans and honey queens. So that if you, if you read the books, what it says there is that chalkbrood is very much driven by the, the queen. So if you have bad chalkbrood and local black bees, AMM, are, are known for not, not only chalkbrood, they are known for pretty much all brood disorders. But when people breed black bees, they don't look at that. They're just, hey, don't worry, don't worry about the chalk brood, don't worry about the sac brood, don't worry about the fact that they're way more susceptible to European foulbrood. Look how black they are! Oh, they're really black. So sorry, tongue-in-cheek, you know, but there's not— that's basically the breeding selection that goes on, in my opinion. But I've had that before, so I've had black bees, you know, I can talk about it. I've had Welsh black bees for 3 or 4 years before I had Buckfast, and they were very chalky. And the first ones that I requeened, I followed the, the rule book, which was it's the queen, and the queen is the problem because her offspring are susceptible to the fungus in chalk brood. So if you requeen, it will fix it. And it did fix it in some colonies, but in some other colonies it didn't fix it at all, and I still had really, really bad chalk brood. And I thought it must just be that Buckfast queen. So stupidly killed that Buckfast queen and put another Buckfast queen in there, and then they still had chalk brood. And I thought, no, it's— there's definitely something more going on here. So I spoke to Richard, and Richard said, no, it's definitely like— it's once you get contaminated kind of like fungal spores in a colony so bad like that, he said regardless of the genetics, it's quite hard to get rid of it. So he said shook swarm. He said shook swarm and it'll go away. So I shook swarmed it and it went away. So you've preempted it already. Shook swarm followed by requeen. I would go requeen followed by shook swarm. I'd do it that way around and just not let the new queen have any chance to lay any chalkbrood in there whatsoever. So requeen followed by shook swarm would be the way I would deal with that. Been offered to put some hives in a, in an acre field that is fully surrounded by conifers that are 5 meters high. Will the bees fly over these to forage if they can't find enough in the field? Yes, definitely they'll fly over. I've got a very, very similar setup in the forest, which is an opening in a big, big coniferous forest, and they, they do really well up there. This, this is Rob, owner of Frames and Feeders. I clicked just on as you were chatting about our frames. Um, Sorry, Rob. Like I said, I don't, I don't hate the frames. I won't backtrack on what I said, and I still, I still use the frames that I've got. But just kind of comparing the two, if I was to buy more, I'd buy frames with wax and wood. Um, but I like that the frames, once they're fully drawn out— it's that getting them up to the drawn-out bit is the bit that was difficult for me and the bit that I really struggled with. Um, I know you've kind of mentioned down here in terms of You don't need to burn the frames if EFB, just wash with Hibiscrub or an antibacterial wash. That's what advice we would give. See, the problem is with that though, like, so that could potentially work, but if you've got 20 or 30 hives in an apiary and you've got them all on plastic frames like that, it's a huge amount of work. Like, dealing with EFB is a huge amount of work as it is, so you almost like, you're going to be forced down the route of doing that because you've got like such an investment in the frames. But it's good, it's good that there is a strategy for dealing with it kind of on a smaller scale like that. And I guess that they would, they would dip perfectly well in a, yeah, like you say, a sodium hypochlorite tank as well. But once they, once they were fully drawn out, the frames, they're fine. And you'll see them, as I said, I'll continue to use them, but I just find that they don't draw them out properly. properly in, in the— not, not that they're not drawn out properly, but more they're just like incomplete. And, and I've got some that are at the moment like creating to try to swarm. So they're trying to swarm, but they've got like a third of the frame that's left to be drawn out on like the whole of the bottom of the brood box. And I just think it's really frustrating. But it's— once I've got a few of them that are completely fully drawn out And they're great. And my only concern with them is that if I get EFB again, what I have to deal with. But you know, you can, you can try and not get EFB, I guess, is a good way. Uh, BBB says, sorry, one more. Any tips on good software app combination to keep track of your hives, notes, etc.? So I think I've tried most of these. Uh, I don't like anything on the phone, anything on the phone, because it's just too sticky. And then it's like a vector for disease as well. So I just like to leave my phone kind of in my pocket. Um, so, so I, I've just, I've just gone back to really simple writing on the hive with a pen, or, or pinning, um, a laminated piece of paper underneath the roof and then writing on that and then scrapping it each year. That's probably the easiest way of doing it. It means that you can't bring your notes home, um, but I don't ever need to bring my notes home. Uh, Mem, if Arsenal win the league tomorrow, can I have one of your hats? I guarantee if Arsenal win the league tomorrow, you can have one of my hats free of charge. I'll send it to you. Okay, there we go. Another one-off deal for Mem. Uh, West Ham. Yeah, so there we go. My thoughts exactly. Uh, Wilbert McDougall says, hey Lawrence, what's the best method for swarm control with 14x12 that doesn't Require splits. So, so this is the reason that I moved away from 14 by 12, this exact reason, which is what do you do? What do you do when you find swarm cells in a 14 by 12 box that isn't splitting? And I really don't know the answer. So like, demerare fixes it preemptively, but you don't want to be demeraring with 14 by 12 boxes. Like, it's, it's— you can't lift them. They're just too heavy. And then once you've found swarm cells, like, the only real thing that you can do is make a split. So what some people do is they'll kind of try and limit the amount of splits that they have to make— not limit the amount of splits that they have to make, but limit the impact of that split. So I see some people using like Apideas, and they'll take the queen and they'll just put the queen up in an Apidea, shake full of bees, Lock them in for 24 hours and then let the bees fly again, and then let the bees try and requeen themselves in the main colony, and then use the queen as a backup or sell the queen. That's kind of one way of doing it. So you kind of, you have made a split, but you've not really, you've taken 1% of the bees out of the hive as opposed to taking a third of the bees out of the hive. I'm a bit lost because I said like this is the problem that I found myself with, and the way that I fixed it was to move away from 14 by 12s and give myself the ability to, to move the boxes vertically. It's, it's a difficult one, um, I'm not sure I've got an answer for that one, I'm afraid. New beekeeper last year, started with 20 hives. Wow, 20 hives, new beekeeper. This spring I lost all hives due to mice. Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, sorry. Um, I use green drone combs and oxalic acid ideas. So with the greatest respect to you, Justin, I think starting with 20 hives was maybe a bit of— a bit too much, a bit too quick. I would like start with a couple of hives, 2 or 3 hives, and learn a bit more about bees. And then you lost all of the hives due to mites. For me, the thing that I changed with my mite regime was doing treatments way, way earlier. So in the UK, the general advice was— the general advice was do your varroa treatments after you've taken off your honey crop. That was the advice, and that's written still a lot in a lot of the literature, which I think is really bad advice because when does the honey flow end? If you're near Himalayan balsam, you're collecting honey into the middle of October, all the way through to the last frost. and that's just way too late. So mite treatment should be done really, really early. If you're using oxalic acid as well, you need to make sure that you're doing it either numerous times at 5-day intervals, or you're doing it once when they're 100% broodless, because the oxalic acid will only get the phoretic mites, the mites that actually live kind of on the bees, not in the brood. So I think a combination of those Those two things should should help you. I wouldn't rule out them dying due to something else as well. Be interested to see like postmortem of the hives and see if it was definitely mites. Like to lose if you had to have twenty hives and to lose them all to mites would be really unlucky, I would say, especially in the first year. Like bees don't excuse me tend to fail in the first year due to mites. They'll last a year. They'll last two years. Maybe every 3 years, and then it's after 3 years, really 3 or 4 years, that they'll all start to die. So I reckon it might have been something else. Without seeing them, it's difficult to, difficult to judge. Uh, BBB says, how do you inspect when it rains? Use a cloth, be very swift. That was my question. Rain's expected when the next inspection is due. Be very, very quick. I used to say, right, I won't inspect today because it's, uh, it's raining, but, uh, they swarm the next week. So you've got to get in there, just be super quick, maybe pull out the first couple of frames in the middle. Cheers, Rob. I, I don't want that to come across as negative. It was, it was a genuine response to a genuine question, um, and I tried them and gave them the best go, and I like the ones that I've got, but I won't buy them again. Um, Aiden says, the dark bees that split in, uh, that you split in the 14th of April with the queen, I have transferred into a hive this week and they have 3 frames of stores and 6 frames of brood. Would it be better to keep these on double brood? Um, so not, not necessarily, no. It's— some people like to, to push it on a, a single brood system, but I, I do, I do prefer double brood. I think double brood gives you a lot of flexibility. Or go with the demerare and kind of get a couple of supers on there, build them up, and then demerare them, which ultimately ends up at the end of the year on double brood as well. There's loads of ways to do it. Milo 27 says, had EFB last year, shook swarm the whole apiary. Hard to do, but the bees so much better since with really low varroa, and so far, touch wood, no signs of EFB. So good, good luck with that, and, and well done for shook swarming the whole apiary. Not everyone shook swarms the whole apiary. Don't have to shook swarm the whole apiary. Like, as you'll know, the law in the UK— not sure if you're in the UK— law in the UK is You— I don't even think this is— I don't even think it's as bad as this, but my understanding is you have to kill the colony that's got the EFB. So if you've got one colony that's got EFB out of 30, you've got to kill that one colony. That's it. And I'm not even 100% sure you have to kill it, but I think you have to kill it. Um, but you definitely don't have to shook swarm every other single colony in the apiary, and a lot of people don't. So it's good to do it. And then the bigger one as well is making sure that you don't reinfect yourself through your kit, through your car, through your hive tools. You'll know all this, it's just for other people's benefit. So don't think killing the colonies and shook swarming is the elixir that fixes everything. You can put your boxes back on and just reinfect yourself. So cleaning and sterilizing everything and melting out frames is the key. Says another fantastic live stream. Thank you very much. Good luck with the birth. You'll never walk alone. Brilliant. I love the football jokes, but thank you, Steve. Much appreciated. Uh, says thank you for spending another Saturday night with us. Thank you, Stacy, for coming along. We'll sort you out your hat. Channel member says pegging 18, as the late great Jimmy Greaves said. It's a funny old game, you know. It's a funny old game. Well, I hope, I hope you're all right. You're a lot more confident with me. Um, Richard Atkins says Makita DFNJ 3— sorry, 350ZJ 18-gauge pin gun. You reviewed the nail gun around 3 years ago. Would you recommend it now after years of use, or another way of building frames? Thank you. Brilliant nail gun, absolutely brilliant nail gun. It is so good. And what, what some people say is, oh yeah, but the compressed air one is better. And I've not tried the compressed air one, and it probably is a little bit better, but it's so convenient not having a hose So just having it with a good— I've got a good 6 amp-hour battery with it, goes forever. So it's not like it didn't use that much battery at all. It's a really, really good nail gun, that one. Highly recommended. Says the bottom boards were full of mites. There were some moisture issues as well, so that probably added to it. I should say I used to beak it with my grandfather many years ago. Really unfortunate. I, I hate to hear that. Henry Cheese says, hi, went in today to the original hives to get rid of all but one queen cell after performing artificial swarms. How long would you wait to go back in to see if the queen is laying? So I would say 3 to 4 weeks, like minimum. Definitely not before 3 weeks, but probably I'd leave it 4 weeks. Give it a good 4 weeks. And I think that's it, we've reached the end of the stream. So I've done 1 hour 58 minutes, we've got 129 people still in here. We've got five likes, so it would be nice if you could hit the like button on your way out. But we are finished for the day. Next time you see me, hopefully I will have a very healthy young baby girl and a recovering wife. So fingers crossed. Next time you see me, 100% Arsenal won't have won the league. If they do win the league, Mem gets a hat. I might pick someone else to get a hat as well. And there we go. Mem said, "Can everyone pray tonight that Arsenal wins?" In the league. So we are done. I'm finished. I'm going to bed. Thank you everyone for dialing in, and definitely sign up as a channel member because it makes a lot of sense. I'll end the stream. Thank you.